SCIENCE DIARY

Briton With Artificial Heart.

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:44:00 +0000

A 40-year-old father has become the first person in the UK to receive a total artificial heart enabling him to go home.

Matthew Green had been critically ill, suffering from end-stage failure of both chambers of his heart.

But surgeons at Papworth Hospital successfully replaced Green?s damaged heart with an artificial heart in a six hour operation on June 9.

The operation went extremely well and Matthew has made an excellent recovery.," said Steven Tsui, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and director of the transplant service at Papworth.

"I expect him to go home very soon, being able to do a lot more than before the operation with a vastly improved quality of life, until we can find a suitable donor heart for him to have a heart transplant.

The SynCardia temporary total artificial heart that Green received is a device that is used as a bridge-to-transplant for patients dying from end-stage biventricular heart failure, where both sides of the heart are failing. It carried out the roles of both ventricles and heart valves, providing a blood flow of up to 9.5 litres per minute.

Doctors at the hospital have previously implanted a total artificial heart but this is the first time a patient has been well enough to leave hospital and go home.

The operation -- which has also been completed successfully in the United States and parts of Europe -- could help cut transplant waiting times in the future.

Green said: "Two years ago I was cycling nine miles to work and nine miles back every day but by the time I was admitted to hospital I was struggling to walk even a few yards.

"I am really excited about going home and just being able to do the everyday things that I haven't been able to do for such a long time such as playing in the garden with my son and cooking a meal for my family."

"I want to thank all the wonderful staff at Papworth Hospital who have been looking after me and who have made it possible for me to return home to my family."

The artificial heart will be powered by a "freedom portable driver", worn like a backpack or shoulder bag.

Green suffered from arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathia, a heart muscle disease which results in arrhythmia, heart failure and sudden death.

Tsui said: "At any point in time there may be as many as 30 people waiting for a heart transplant on our waiting list at Papworth, with one third waiting over a year.

"Matthew's condition was deteriorating rapidly and (without the artificial heart) he may not have survived the wait until a suitable donor heart could be found for him."

One dead In US from Salmonella Outbreak In Turkey

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:00:00 +0000

One person has died and 77 people have been sickened in the United States by an outbreak of drug-resistant salmonella that likely originated in ground turkey, US authorities said.

"A total of 77 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg have been reported from 26 states between March 1 and August 1, 2011," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement late Monday.

"Eating ground turkey is the likely source of this outbreak."

Just over a third of those infected with the bacteria were hospitalized. The illnesses are being linked to a virulent strain of salmonella that has been around for decades.

"The outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg is resistant to many commonly prescribed antibiotics; this antibiotic resistance can increase the risk of hospitalization or possible treatment failure in infected individuals."

The CDC urged consumers to cook meat thoroughly to a final temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 Celsius), and said it was continuing its investigation in an attempt to identify the exact source of the bacteria.

New Antibody Propels Hunt For Universal Flu Vaccine

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:07:00 +0000

The first human antibody that can knock out all influenza A viruses has been shown effective in lab mice, an exciting step forward in the hunt for a universal vaccine, researchers said Friday.

The broadly neutralizing antibody, called FI6, could help vaccinate people against the flu without scientists struggling to piece together a new cocktail each season to match the often-changing strains.

Antonio Lanzavecchia, lead author of the study published this week in the US journal Science, described the finding as "significant," but noted it may be five years before it can be made into a widely available treatment.

"The antibody works not only by neutralizing the virus, which we knew, but also by recruiting killer cells to the virus-infected cells," Lanzavecchia, director of Switzerland's Institute for Research in Biomedicine, told AFP in a phone interview.

"This suggests that once tested in a human system, the antibodies should work even better."

The antibody was found in plasma cells from a human donor. When given to mice heavily dosed with flu viruses, it was able to knock out the illness, offering hope for use as a remedy in people who get infected with the flu.

The discovery was made by using newly patented technology to screen hundreds of thousands of plasma cells in order to isolate the rare ones that produced the antibody.

"We are convinced that this is a very rare specificity but it is a very potent antibody," said Lanzavecchia, who is also chief scientific officer at patent-holder Humlabs.

"The method was really the key to get this very rare antibody."

The antibody was tested in all 16 subtypes of A flu viruses and consistently worked against the often-changing hemagglutinin (HA), the protein that is on the virus's surface.

Mice and ferrets recovered from what would have otherwise been a lethal dose of flu virus when they were given the antibody within two days of infection.

British virologist John Skehel, at the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill, said the finding may eliminate the need to combine different antibodies into a single shot against the flu every season.

"In terms of designing a vaccine, the main advantage of this completely cross-reactive antibody is that you can focus on the region of HA recognized by one antibody, rather than having to piece together structures from different antibodies," Skehel said in an email.

"In terms of therapeutic use, progress may be quicker, and will move toward clinical trials of the antibody very similar to those required before use of anti-viral drugs."

Flu pandemics are unpredictable, and millions of people around the world are infected annually with seasonal flu varieties that can be lethal for those with weak immune systems, including children, the elderly and pregnant women.

The spread of A(H1N1), or "swine flu," killed at least 18,449 people and affected some 214 countries and territories after it was uncovered in Mexico and the United States in April 2009.

The World Health Organization declared a pandemic on June 11, 2009. The event was formally over on August 10, 2010.

Lanzavecchia said "unpredictability of new pandemics highlights the need for better treatments that target all influenza viruses."

The next steps are to try to develop the antibodies into a treatment for flu-infected people, while scientists use the findings to work toward developing a vaccine that could coax the body into producing such antibodies.

"We have a low-hanging fruit, which is the antibody itself and the potential use of the antibody as a drug," he said.

"Then we have the long-term project, which is the use of the information obtained from the antibody to make a vaccine."

Report: More Than Half Of Americans Drink Alcohol.

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:59:00 +0000

More than half of Americans aged 12 and up drink alcohol, a quarter binge-drank in the past month, and one in 14 teens has used marijuana, a US government agency says in a report on substance abuse.

Around 52 percent of 137,436 Americans interviewed in 2008 and 2009 said they had a tipple in the past month, the report released late last month by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says.

Drinking was most prevalent among 18-25 year olds, with the northeastern state of New Hampshire leading the charge: three-quarters of young adults in the state said they'd used alcohol in the past month, the report says.

The legal drinking age in all 50 states is 21, although exceptions in many states allow under-age drinking in certain circumstances, such as in private premises with parental consent.

SAMHSA also found that almost a quarter (23.5 percent) of Americans binge-drank in the past month -- defined as having four or more drinks for women or girls and five or more for men or boys.

In North Dakota, nearly one in three residents and more than a quarter of young people aged 12-20 binge-drank, the highest rates in the United States.

In the US taken as a whole, under-age binge drinking was down from 19.2 percent in 2002-2003 to 17.7 percent in 2008-2009, the report says.

SAMHSA also looked at Americans' marijuana use and found that numbers using pot in the past month were up for the two years covered by the report: 6.4 percent of Americans aged 12 and older said they had used marijuana in the past month compared to six percent in 2007-2008.

In the 12- to 17-year age group, marijuana use fell, but seven percent of US teens still use cannabis, the report said.

The 10 states that saw the highest use of marijuana were Alaska, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Medical marijuana is legal in all of those states except for Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Perceptions of the dangers associated with marijuana use were lowest in the 10 states where the drug was used the most, according to the study.

Nearly a quarter (23.6 percent) of Americans aged 12 and older had smoked cigarettes in the past month, the study also found. At the same time, the number of Americans who perceived cigarette smoking as dangerous fell from just over 69 percent in 2007-2008 to 67.7 percent in 2008-09.

One in five American adults reported having some form of mental illness in the past year, and around one in 16 adults and one in 12 teens suffered depression in the past year, the study says.

The rates for mental illness and depression were unchanged from previous years, says the report, which is based on the 2008 and 2009 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUHs).

New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Gives Scientists Clues to Evolution of Head Ornamentation and Provinciality

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:40:00 +0000

A new genus and species of hadrosaur (duck-billed) dinosaur -- the oldest duck-billed dinosaur known from North America -- has been named by scientists who expect the discovery to shed new light on dinosaur evolution.

The most striking feature of Acristavus gagslarsoni, the name given to the new dinosaur, is that its head lacked the distinctive ornamentation common to later duck-billed relatives. Acristavus means "non-crested grandfather." The genus name is symbolic of the animal's unadorned skull and the fact that it preceded later hadrosaurs.

All other hadrosaur fossils come with some kind of adornment on their skulls (with one exception from the end of the Cretaceous Period, the time just before the K-T extinction.) Ornamentation varied among hadrosaurs. Some adornments were hollow and part of the creatures' breathing apparatus, whereas others were solid. Scientists speculate the crests played a role in species recognition where one species could tell another apart by unique embellishments.

The new fossil hints that the two different styles of hadrosaur headgear evolved independently from an ancestor that did not possess ornamentation.

Especially exciting is that the two fossils of the 79.3 million-year-old dinosaurs were discovered in different locations, suggesting that earlier species of duck-billed dinosaurs roamed over a much larger region of North America than their successors four million years later.

"To find two specimens 650 miles apart that lived at virtually the same time, and were discovered within one year of one another is extremely rare in dinosaur paleontology," said Terry Gates, a research associate at Chicago's Field Museum, and a member of the team that documents the discovery in the July issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The first fossil specimen was found in Montana in 1999 by the Old Trail Museum staff and volunteers, including a group of "junior paleontologists" from the University of Chicago and was excavated in 2001 and 2002 by study coauthor Rebecca Hanna for the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, where it now resides.

The Utah specimen was found in the year 2000 in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument by study coauthor C. Riley Nelson, an entomologist from Brigham Young University, who reported his finding to a local paleontologist. The Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City excavated the specimen in 2003.

The researchers who described the new dinosaur are grateful to the family owning the Montana land where the first of the two fossils of Acristavus was found. "These private land owners are to be commended for their generosity because the dinosaur found on their property is an exceptionally important piece of the paleontological puzzle," says Hanna.

The Montana specimen was found on land originally owned by Cowboy Hall of Fame Member Russell Ellsworth "Gags" Larson (deceased) and his wife Nora Bush Larson of Choteau, Montana. It was donated to the Museum of the Rockies by their children. To honor the family patriarch, the scientists gave the species the scientific name gagslarsoni.

Trojan Asteroid In Earth's Orbit

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:54:00 +0000

Earth is not alone in its orbit around the Sun - a small 'Trojan' asteroid sits in front of our planet and leads it, according to British science revue Nature, which published the discovery Thursday.

This diminutive asteroid has a diameter of just 300 metres but is called a Trojan because of its particular position in a stable spot either in front of a planet or behind it. Because the asteroid and planet are constantly on the same orbit, they can never collide.

Jupiter, Mars and Neptune also have Trojan asteroids accompanying them, as do two of Saturn's moons.

NASA scientists discovered the asteroid, which lies 80 million kilometres (50 million miles) from Earth, using its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.

Astronomers have long thought that Earth did have some Trojans but their discovery has proved elusive because of the difficulty of seeing them in daylight.

"WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth's surface", said Martin Connors, a professor at Canada's Athabasca University and the lead author on the Nature paper on the discovery.

Our Trojan -- which is officially called 2010 TK7 -- has an unusual orbit that takes it further away from the sun that most Trojans go, moving above and below the line of the orbit, which is what attracted scientists' attention.

Connors and his team scanned the sky from January 2010 to February 2011 using additional data about near-Earth objects (NEOs) and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii to try and pinpoint a Trojan.

But this asteroid is keeping its distance: its orbit is "stable for at least 1,000 years", says Connors, and it won't be coming nearer than 24 million kilometres (15 million miles) from Earth over the next 100 years, says NASA.

World Population To Surpass 7 Billion By 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:25:00 +0000

Global population is expected to hit 7 billion later this year, up from 6 billion in 1999. Between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added -- nearly as many as inhabited the planet as recently as 1950. New estimates from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations also project that the population will reach 10.1 billion in 2100.

These sizable increases represent an unprecedented global demographic upheaval, according to David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a review article published July 29, 2011 in Science.

Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa. By contrast, the populations of more developed countries will remain flat, but will age, with fewer working-age adults to support retirees living on social pensions.

"Although the issues immediately confronting developing countries are different from those facing the rich countries, in a globalized world demographic challenges anywhere are demographic challenges everywhere," said Bloom.

The world's population has grown slowly for most of human history. It took until 1800 for the population to hit 1 billion. However, in the past half-century, population jumped from 3 to 7 million. In 2011, approximately 135 million people will be born and 57 million will die, a net increase of 78 million people.

Considerable uncertainty about these projections remains, Bloom writes. Depending on whether the number of births per woman continues to decline, the ranges for 2050 vary from 8.1 to 10.6 billion, and the 2100 projections vary from 6.2 to 15.8 billion.

Population trends indicate a shift in the "demographic center of gravity" from more to less developed regions, Bloom writes. Already strained, many developing countries will likely face tremendous difficulties in supplying food, water, housing, and energy to their growing populations, with repercussions for health, security, and economic growth.

"The demographic picture is indeed complex, and poses some formidable challenges," Bloom said. "Those challenges are not insurmountable, but we cannot deal with them by sticking our heads in the sand. We have to tackle some tough issues ranging from the unmet need for contraception among hundreds of millions of women and the huge knowledge-action gaps we see in the area of child survival, to the reform of retirement policy and the development of global immigration policy. It's just plain irresponsible to sit by idly while humankind experiences full force the perils of demographic change."

Scientists Create Glowing Dog

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:24:00 +0000

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Yonhap news agency reported.

A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.

The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food.

"The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases," the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying.

He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans.

The latest discovery published in 'Genesis', an international journal, took four years of research with roughly 3.2 billion won ($3 million) spent to make the dog and conduct the necessary verification tests, Yonhap said.

Memory Formation & Loss

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:29:00 +0000

A new study published July 27 in the journal Nature shows the neural networks in the brains of the middle-aged and elderly have weaker connections and fire less robustly than in youthful ones. Intriguingly, the research suggests that this condition is reversible.

"Age-related cognitive deficits can have a serious impact on our lives in the Information Age as people often need higher cognitive functions to meet even basic needs, such as paying bills or accessing medical care," said Amy Arnsten, Professor of Neurobiology and Psychology and a member of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience. "These abilities are critical for maintaining demanding careers and being able to live independently as we grow older."

As people age, they tend to forget things more often, are more easily distracted and disrupted by interference, and have greater difficulty with executive functions. While these age-related deficits have been known for many years, the cellular basis for these common cognitive difficulties has not been understood. The new study examined for the first time age-related changes in the activity of neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the area of the brain that is responsible for higher cognitive and executive functions.

Networks of neurons in the prefrontal cortex generate persistent firing to keep information "in mind" even in the absence of cues from the environment. This process is called "working memory," and it allows us to recall information, such as where the car keys were left, even when that information must be constantly updated. This ability is the basis for abstract thought and reasoning, and is often called the "Mental Sketch Pad." It is also essential for executive functions, such as multi-tasking, organizing, and inhibiting inappropriate thoughts and actions.

Arnsten and her team studied the firing of prefrontal cortical neurons in young, middle-aged and aged animals as they performed a working memory task. Neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the young animals were able to maintain firing at a high rate during working memory, while neurons in older animals showed slower firing rates. However, when the researchers adjusted the neurochemical environment around the neurons to be more similar to that of a younger subject, the neuronal firing rates were restored to more youthful levels.

Arnsten said that the aging prefrontal cortex appears to accumulate excessive levels of a signaling molecule called cAMP, which can open ion channels and weaken prefrontal neuronal firing. Agents that either inhibited cAMP or blocked cAMP-sensitive ion channels were able to restore more youthful firing patterns in the aged neurons. One of the compounds that enhanced neuronal firing was guanfacine, a medication that is already approved for treating hypertension in adults, and prefrontal deficits in children, suggesting that it may be helpful in the elderly as well.

Arnsten's finding is already moving to the clinical setting. Yale is enrolling subjects in a clinical trial testing guanfacine's ability to improve working memory and executive functions in elderly subjects who do not have Alzheimer's Disease or other dementias.

source: Science Daily.

Animal Facts (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:52:00 +0000

Compared to other animals, dolphins are believed to be very intelligent.

Dolphins are carnivores (meat eaters).

The Killer Whale (also known as Orca) is actually a type of dolphin.

Bottlenose dolphins are the most common and well known type of dolphin.

Female dolphins are called cows, males are called bulls and young dolphins are called calves.

Dolphins live in schools or pods of up to 12 individuals.

Dolphins often display a playful attitude which makes them popular in human culture. They can be seen jumping out of the water, riding waves, play fighting and occasionally interacting with humans swimming in the water.

Dolphins use a blowhole on top of their heads to breathe.

Dolphins have excellent eyesight and hearing as well as the ability to use echolocation for finding the exact location of objects.

Dolphins communicate with each other by clicking, whistling and other sounds.

Some dolphin species face the threat of extinction, often directly as a result of human behavior. The Yangtze River Dolphin is an example of a dolphin species which may have recently become extinct.

Some fishing methods, such as the use of nets, kill a large number of dolphins every year.

There are only about 700 mountain gorillas and they live high in the mountains in two protected parks in Africa. Lowland gorillas live in central Africa.

You may have seen baby gorillas being carried on the back of their mothers, but for the first few months after birth the mother holds the baby gorilla to her chest.

An adult male gorilla is called a silverback because of the distinctive silvery fur growing on their back and hips. Each gorilla family has a silverback as leader who scares away other animals by standing on their back legs and beating their chest!

Young male gorillas usually leave their family group when they are about 11 years old and have their own family group by the age of 15 years old. Young female gorillas join a new group at about 8 years old.

Gorillas are herbivores. They spend most of their day foraging for food and eating bamboo, leafy plants and sometimes small insects. Adult gorillas can eat up to 30 kilograms of food each day.

An adult gorilla is about 1 meter tall to their shoulders when walking on all fours using their arms and their legs.

A gorilla can live for 40 – 50 years.

Gorillas are considered to be very intelligent animals. They are known for their use of tools and their varied communication. Some gorillas in captivity at a zoo have been taught to use sign language.

Gorillas are endangered animals. Their habitat is destroyed when people use the land for farming and the trees for fuel. Gorillas are also killed by poachers and sometimes get caught in poacher’s snares meant for other animals.

The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world. They can reach a top speed of around 113 km per hour.

A cheetah can accelerate from 0 to 113 km in just a few seconds.

Cheetahs are extremely fast however they tire quickly and can only keep up their top speed for a few minutes before they are too tired to continue.

Cheetahs are smaller than other members of the big cat family, weighing only 45 – 60 kilograms.

One way to always recognise a cheetah is by the long, black lines which run from the inside of each eye to the mouth. These are usually called “tear lines” and scientists believe they help protect the cheetah’s eyes from the harsh sun and help them to see long distances.

Cheetahs are the only big cat that cannot roar. The can purr though and usually purr most loudly when they are grooming or sitting near other cheetahs.

While lions and leopards usually do their hunting at night, cheetahs hunt for food during the day.

A cheetah has amazing eyesight during the day and can spot prey from 5 km away.

Cheetahs cannot climb trees and have poor night vision.

With their light body weight and blunt claws, cheetahs are not well designed to protect themselves or their prey. When a larger or more aggressive animal approaches a cheetah in the wild, it will give up its catch to avoid a fight.

Cheetahs only need to drink once every three to four days.

There are two types of elephant, the Asian elephant and the African elephant (although sometimes the African Elephant is split into two species, the African Forest Elephant and the African Bush Elephant).

Elephants are the largest land-living mammal in the world.

Both female and male African elephants have tusks but only the male Asian elephants have tusks. They use their tusks for digging and finding food.

Female elephants are called cows. They start to have calves when they are about 12 years old and they are pregnant for 22 months.

An elephant can use its tusks to dig for ground water. An adult elephant needs to drink around 210 litres of water a day.

Elephants have large, thin ears. Their ears are made up of a complex network of blood vessels which with regulating an elephants temperature. Blood is circulated through their ears to cool them down in hot climates.

Elephants have no natural predators. However, lions will sometimes prey on young or weak elephants in the wild. The main risk to elephants is from humans through poaching and changes to their habitat.

The elephant’s trunk is able to sense the size, shape and temperature of an object. An elephant uses its trunk to lift food and suck up water then pour it into its mouth.

An elephant’s trunk can grow to be about 2 metres long and can weigh up to 140 kg. Some scientists believe that an elephant’s trunk is made up of 100,000 muscles, but no bones.

Female elephants spend their entire lives living in large groups called herds. Male elephant leave their herds at about 13 years old and live fairly solitary lives from this point.

Elephants can swim – they use their trunk to breathe like a snorkel in deep water.

Elephants are herbivores and can spend up to 16 hours days collecting leaves, twigs, bamboo and roots.

Animal Facts (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Kingsley Silas Chijioke) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:39:00 +0000

In total there is said to be around 400 million dogs in the world.

The domestic dog has been one of the most popular working and companion animals throughout human history.

Dogs perform many useful tasks for humans including hunting, farm work and security as well as assisting those with disabilities such as the blind.

Although experts often disagree, there is scientific evidence which shows that the domestication of dogs could have occurred more than 15,000 years ago.

There are hundreds of different breeds of dogs.
Examples of these breeds include: Bulldog, German Shepherd, Collie, Golden Retriever, St Bernard, Greyhound, Bloodhound, Chihuahua, Labrador, Great Dane, Rottweiler, Boxer and Cocker Spaniel.

The most popular breed of dog in the world by registered ownership is the Labrador. With their gentle nature, obedience, intelligence and near limitless energy, Labradors make for excellent family pets and reliable workers. They often assist police and are a common choice as guide dogs.

Dogs have formed such a strong bond as pets, workers and companions to humans that they have earned the nickname "man's best friend".

Humans help train various dog breeds to enter in competitions such as breed shows, agility and obedience contests, racing and sled pulling.

Dog have superior hearing than humans, capable of hearing sounds at four times the distance.

Dogs have a remarkable sense of smell, they are capable of differentiating odors in concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can.

The average life span for a dog is around 10 to 14 years.

Those involved in dog breeding refer to males as ‘dogs’, females as ‘bitches’, dogs younger than a year old as ‘puppies’ and a group of offspring as a ‘litter’.

Domestic dogs are omnivores, they feed on a variety of foods including grains, vegetables and meats.

Rats breed so quickly that in just 18 months, 2 rats could have created over 1 million relatives.

The blue whale can produce the loudest sound of any animal. At 188 decibels, the noise can be detected over 800 kilometres away.

Horses and cows sleep while standing up.

Giant Arctic jellyfish have tentacles that can reach over 36 metres in length.

Locusts have leg muscles that are about 1000 times more powerful than an equal weight of human muscle.

Hummingbirds are so agile and have such good control that they can fly backwards.

Instead of bones, sharks have a skeleton made from cartilage.

Insects such as bees, mosquitoes and cicadas make noise by rapidly moving their wings.

The horn of a rhinoceros is made from compacted hair rather than bone or another substance.

Sharks lay the biggest eggs in the world.

Even when a snake has its eyes closed, it can still see through its eyelids.

Unlike humans, sheep have four stomachs, each one helps them digest the food they eat.

Despite the white, fluffy appearance of Polar Bears fur, it actually has black skin.

The average housefly only lives for 2 or 3 weeks.

Mosquitoes can be annoying insects but did you know that it's only the female mosquito that actually bites humans.

Cats use their whiskers to check whether a space is too small for them to fit through or not.

The tiger is the biggest species of the cat family.

Tigers can reach a length of up to 3.3 metres (11 feet) and weigh as much as 300 kilograms (660 pounds).

Subspecies of the tiger include the Sumatran Tiger, Siberian Tiger, Bengal Tiger, South China Tiger, Malayan Tiger and Indochinese Tiger.

Many subspecies of the tiger are either endangered or already extinct. Humans are the primary cause of this through hunting and the destruction of habitats.

Around half of tiger cubs don’t live beyond two years of age.

Tiger cubs leave their mother when they are around 2 years of age.

A group of tigers is known as an ‘ambush’ or ‘streak’.

Tigers are good swimmers and can swim up to 6 kilometres.

Rare white tigers carry a gene that is only present in around 1 in every 10000 tigers.

Tigers usually hunt alone at night time.

Tigers have been known to reach speeds up to 65 kph (40 mph).

Less than 10% of hunts end successfully for tigers

Tigers can easily jump over 5 metres in length.

Various tiger subspecies are the national animals of Bangladesh, India, North Korea, South Korea and Malaysia.

There are more tigers held privately as pets than there are in the wild.

Tigers that breed with lions give birth to hybrids known as tigons and ligers.