The Dominion - Baby Animals

The "River Horse" Rides Again

Tim McSorley — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:30:29 +0000

Hippos keep on hippoing

For such a large and immovable animal, the hippopotamus plays a constantly shifting role in our popular imagination. A symbol of the god of virility in ancient Egypt, it was also brought to the Colosseum of Rome to fight gladiators. The hippo has inspired names for everything from children's games, to polkas and chess openings.

The fourth largest creature in the world, the hippopotamus naturally inhabits parts of north-eastern Africa, but populations extend west to Ghana and south into central and southern Africa. Once known to Greeks and Romans as the "Beast of the Nile," it no longer inhabits its historic habitat.

Weighing up to 4,000 pounds, the "river horse" is often considered to be a relative of the pig, but is actually part of the porpoise family.

While the hippo is reputed to have a temper, it is only territorial over small parts of the Nile, about 250 meters long. Most of a hippo's life will be spent in that tract of water, but in the evening it will wander as far as eight kilometres inland to graze on grass. Natural herbivores, hippos have only been known to eat meat in times of nutritional distress. And while they give off the appearance of lazy immobility, hippos can run at a speed of up to 30 kilometres per hour. Their girth also allows them to sink to the bottom of rivers and walk or run along the river bed.

Not very social animals, hippos will still live in pod groupings. Social attachment only seems to develop between mothers and daughters, if at all. At the same time, hippos will lay close together when on land, although the reason for this is unclear.

Like their disappearance from the shores of the Nile in Egypt, the hippopotamus' population in general is diminishing. The largest decrease has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, since the 1970s, populations have dropped from some 29,000 to a maximum of 800. Worldwide, the population is placed at a maximum of 150,000 as of 2006, a decrease of up to 20 per cent from the last count in 1996, prompting the UN to place it on its vulnerable species list.

But there may be hope for re-population: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar kept hippos at an estate east of Medellin in Colombia. When he died, the hippos were left on the estate, too difficult to seize. As of 2007, they have reproduced, from the existing four to 16. It is still unknown what impact they may have on the Colombian ecosystem.

Baby animals. Because a serious world needs serious cuteness.

Hippos

More hippos

Ai Ai Ai

Tim McSorley — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:08:48 +0000

The slow-moving, smiling brown-throated sloth

The brown-throated three-toed sloth inhabits the upper branches of the tropical forests of Central and Latin America. Spending up to three days in a single tree before moving on to the next, this long-limbed critter feeds on leaves, twigs and fruit. Brown-throated sloths can sleep up to 20 hours per day and move at a maximum speed of about 0.3 miles per hour. Their slow movement and low metabolism means they can take up to a month to digest just one meal.

Its incredibly slow movement makes it easy prey, especially on the ground. But lengthy arms with long, sharp claws provide a significant defense from larger animals. In the rainy season, its long, wiry brown and grey fur develops patches of green algae, which helps it camouflage itself among the foliage.

The most common of the four species of three-toed sloths, the brown-throated sloth is distinguished by brown fur around its throat and on its chest, a "mask" of black fur around the eyes and, on males, an orange or yellow patch of fur between their shoulder blades. Like other sloths they can turn their heads 90 degrees, and their mouths naturally take the shape of a smile. While they are mammals, they also have the reptilian characteristic of having a body temperature that fluctuates as the external temperature goes up or down. Weighing 0.2 to 0.25 kilograms at birth, adults grow to the size of a cat—about four kilograms.

The brown-throated sloth is a primarily solitary animal, coupling only to mate. To attract males, the female makes an "ay" cry, which many say sounds like a woman screaming. It is also very similar to the sound both male and female sloths make when they are in danger. This noise has led the animal to also be referred to as the "ai" by the Guarani people of South America.

While the sloth moves with difficulty on the ground, it still descends from its perch in the humid canopy once every week. The terrestrial trek is made in order to dig a small hole into which it defecates, covering the hole with leaves. It is a precarious venture for the sloth, as it might need to descend 30 metres to reach the ground, putting it at the mercy of jaguars and other carnivores.

While its habitat has suffered from deforestation and fragmentation, its wide habitat (from Honduras in the north to parts of southern Brazil) and adaptability have allowed the brown-throated sloth to thrive.

Brown-throated three-toed sloth

Squirreling the Days Away

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 04:33:21 +0000

The life of the eastern gray squirrel

Resilient, sturdy and fast, the first-ever squirrels date back about forty million years ago and continue to evade the threat of extinction today. This tiny, twitching critter got its name from the Greek "skiouros," meaning shadow-tailed.

Apart from having large incisors that never stop growing and which they continually sharpen on branches and even power lines (causing many a power outage), squirrels also possess the unique superpower of being one of very few mammals that are capable of climbing down a tree head-first, due to their strong and limber claws that lend them incomparable skill in the world of grasping woody surfaces.

These little mammals are at their most active in late winter at the start of their mating games. The males chase both the females and their suitors through the trees at unfathomable speeds, all the while performing stunts that even the most fearless of stuntmen would dare not attempt. The female will usually choose the strongest male available to her, but this is a one-off; the next time she mates it will be with a different partner. Some say this is nature's way of preserving the genetic strength of the species, and may be why squirrels continue to survive and thrive.

A mother squirrel usually gives birth to one or two litters of about four baby squirrels each year, all of which are born completely bald, toothless, blind, and dependent on her for guidance for many weeks. But they grow up strong and they grow up fast—these well-adapted creatures not only live to enjoy excellent vision with their large, incessantly searching eyes, but they are also sexually mature and ready to carry on a legacy that would make Darwin proud only one year into their scuttling, scrambling lives.

Baby Squirrel

Capybara

dru — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:33:45 +0000

Because a serious world needs <cite>serious</cite> cuteness

Found in rivers, swamps, ponds and other freshwater bodies throughout South America, the capybara grazes on grasses and aquatic plants. This sheep-sized rodent—it is the largest of the rodents—is most comfortable in the water, and can stay submerged for up to five minutes.

Reminiscent of an aquatic hippo-guinea pig, the capybara can reach up to four feet in length. Few reach that size, however, as they are preyed on from the sky by harpy eagles, from the water by caimans and from the land by jaguars, pumas, ocelots and anacondas. Capybaras have adapted to these threats by breeding rapidly, swimming swiftly with their webbed feet, sleeping for short periods during the day and grazing at night. The capybara can sleep underwater, keeping only its nostrils above the surface.

Its name derives from a name meaning "master of the grasses" in the Indigenous Guarani language, and its Greek name, Hydrochaeris, means "water hog." The furry, water-dwelling beaver-pig is also hunted for its hide, which has the characteristic of stretching in one direction, and its meat. At one point the Catholic Church classified the sleek aquatic herbivore as a fish, making it an appropriate food while observing Lent. According to legend, 16th-century missionaries hinted that their converts (in modern-day Venezuela) would starve if they were not able to dine on the meat of the hardy rodent.

Capybaras are highly social, living in groups of ten or more which feature a dominant male. They communicate with a combination of purring, clicks, whistles and grunts. The gregarious web-footed grass-munchers also communicate by scent; the dominant male is identifiable by a prominent scent gland on his nose, which he uses to wipe pheromones on grasses to mark his group's territory. Young capybaras will form their own group within a group, and nurse from any of the group's females.

A capybara named Boris became a local legend in Scotland last January after he escaped from a zoo. Locals reported sightings of an animal the size of a sheep with the head of a bear, until word spread about an escaped capybara. He "led the life of Riley for months," reported the Ayrshire Post, until cold autumn weather forced Boris to seek food and warmth in the local residents' gardens and porches. He was finally captured whilst "warming his backside" at a dryer vent inside a garage, according to retired businessman David Hammond. Hammond quickly closed the garage door, and Boris was returned the zoo.

—DOJ

Capybara

Red Panda

Cameron Fenton — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:09:11 +0000

The real life firefox

Living among the trees of temperate Himalayan forests from Nepal to western China, Red Pandas (Ailurus fulgens) spend most of their adult lives alone but live their first year under the protection of their watchful mothers.

These small mammals are primarily nocturnal, but have also been described as crepuscular—most active at dawn and dusk. Daytime hours are spent sleeping, lazing among high branches in the heat and covering themselves with their bushy tails in cooler weather. Their tails, with six yellowish rings, also serve as effective camouflage in the trees.

Like their distant relative the Great Panda, Red Pandas lack the enzymes necessary to digest cellulose and primarily subsist on a diet of bamboo, although they have also been known to consume small animals, eggs, fruit and other plant materials.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List—considered one of the most reliable systems for determining the extinction risk of wildlife populations—the Red Panda is categorized as a vulnerable species.

Not a major prey animal, population threats are primarily man-made. Deforestation due to industrial and agricultural expansion is one of the largest, fragmenting habitats and destroying food sources. Red Pandas are also hunted for their fur—especially their ringed tails, thought to be a good luck charm—used for making hats, and in local ceremonies across their endemic habitat.

More of a curse than a blessing, Red Pandas adapt extremely well to captivity and can be found in zoos around the globe, with over 150 in North America alone. This created a strong live animal trade for both public and private zoological collection. Today, thanks to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), live trade is now illegal. Unfortunately, with little enforcement locally or internationally and a sizable private market still in existence, poaching remains a widespread problem.

Red Panda

Common Snapping Turtle

Cameron Fenton — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:22:01 +0000

Ograbme!

One of the largest freshwater turtles in North America, the common snapping turtle—a member of the Chelydridae family—can trace its roots to the Late Cretaceous period, over 70 million years ago.

Chelydra serpentina, named for its powerful jaws and the snake-like appearance of its neck and head, can be found all across central Canada, the United States and as far south as Ecuador. Typically living in shallow water, the common snapping turtle can be a prickly customer on land, with a reputation of being unfriendly to wayward fingers.

Snapping turtles’ snorkel-like nostrils lie on the very tip of their snouts, allowing them to remain in shallow water and mud for long periods of time.

Efficient aquatic scavengers, the omnivorous snapping turtle has a varied diet of plant and animal matter. Snappers are also known to hunt on occasion, eating small fish, rodents, reptiles and even unsuspecting birds.

Human interest in the snapping turtle has typically been for making soup, with hunting still practiced in most of North America. In Ontario, they have been labeled a species of special concern—a species with characteristics that make it sensitive to human activities and natural events.

Known in North American folklore as the “Ograbme” (embargo spelled backwards) the snapping turtle earned a place in the history of our southern neighbours, becoming a feature in political cartoons commenting on the 1807 Jeffersonian embargo act which banned trade between the United States and other nations.

Snapping Turtle

North American Badger

Moira Peters — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:00:49 +0000

Diggin' it

This proud creature, recognizable by the distinctive white stripe on its otherwise dark brown and black coat, can be found in Central Canada, Western and Central parts of the US, and Northern Mexico.

These solitary souls keep to themselves for most of the year. Communal activity is restricted to the summer mating season and when the females are rearing their young.

Badgers are known for being keen diggers, and justifiably so. Indeed, one of their best defence mechanisms is their ability to dig at an alarmingly fast rate. When in danger, badgers dig to safety, disappearing far underground in less than a minute.

They also dig in order to construct burrows, used for living and pursuing prey. Not content with just one abode, badgers switch between their dens during the warmer months, sometimes on a nightly basis. This high level of activity decreases in the colder months, and during the winter they tend to settle for one den in particular. This allows badgers to spend much of the winter drifting in and out of periods of deep sleep, each of which can last up to 29 hours.

By no means a fussy eater, a badger will feast on squirrels, moles, skunks, ground-nesting birds, lizards, frogs, insects, but also foods like cereals, peas, mushrooms and sunflower seeds.

Although badgers are largely peaceful creatures, the North American badger’s Eurasian cousin is the unfortunate key participant in the blood sport of "badger baiting," which emerged during the Middle Ages in Europe. This involves confining a badger to a small space, letting dogs into this enclosure, and goading them to fight the badger to death. Bets are placed on the outcome.

Unable to dig its way to safety, the badger shows remarkable bravery when cornered by the dogs. Its sharp bite, powerful claws and reckless defence reflexes make it a formidable adversary. Yet badger baiting almost always ends in the death of the badger, while the dogs may only sustain injuries. Despite being illegal, this blood sport still takes place in secret in some parts of Europe.

North American Badger

Arctic Fox

dru — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:00:54 +0000

Because a serious world needs serious cuteness

In the farthest northern reaches of Turtle Island, Asia and Europe, right to the shores of the Arctic ocean, this extraordinarily hardy creature and its brethren hunt and wander. To adjust to widely varying seasonal temperatures, the fox grows a head-to-toe coat thick enough to walk on ice without freezing, and then sheds massively in the spring thaw. Other adaptations include powerful vascular circulation and a proportionally small skin surface area. These foxes will eat any available meat, but most commonly dine on lemmings—small rodents that share the foxes’ circumpolar territory. —DOJ

Arctic Fox

Lemming

dru — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:09:50 +0000

The life and mythology of a northern rodent

Lemmings are small, hardy rodents who live in the tundra of northern Canada, Greenland, Europe and Asia. Rather than hibernating through the winter, lemmings eat stored grass clippings, and forage beneath the snow for roots and bulbs. The lemming's long, soft fur keeps it warm in harsh weather, and its extremely short tail cuts down on heat loss.

Though they are close relatives of hamsters, gerbils and mice, lemmings have long been distinguished by their place in pseudo-scientific folklore. A 16^th century geographer from Strasbourg, France, posited that lemmings fell from the sky during stormy weather. A century later, this theory was refuted by a Danish scholar, who concluded that lemmings could be carried by the wind, but were not generated by clouds.

More recently, lemmings have come to be known as creatures that spontaneously commit group suicide, gripped by a sort of herd mentality. The myth largely dates to a 1958 Disney documentary, White Wilderness. The film's producers had difficulty finding migrating lemmings in northern Alberta, where the creatures are not native. Disappointed but not discouraged, a photographer paid Inuit children from Manitoba to catch dozens of lemmings. The furry rodents were placed on a turntable covered in snow and made to run, simulating migration. Later, the hapless creatures were herded off a cliff, with cameras recording the apparent suicide from a low angle.

The myth of lemming suicide has its roots, however, in what appears to be adaptive migratory behaviour on the part of these industrious furballs. In times of abundant food, lemmings can reproduce rapidly. From birth, the creatures can reach sexual maturity within a month, and produce litters of around 10 baby lemmings. When the lemming population in an area outstrips the food supply, the small herbivores disperse in all directions in search of shoots, grass and roots. In their migratory fervour, lemmings will sometimes overestimate their capacities, and die while swimming across a particularly swift river or large body of water.

In addition to limited food supply, lemmings must also contend with predators that depend on the long-toothed rodents for much-needed sustenance in a sparse landscape, including the snowy owl, the arctic fox and the long-tailed skua.

While lemmings' periodic population booms and busts have led to some misunderstanding, the behaviour may be a potent strategy for the species' continued existence. In a land where food is quite scarce, these population explosions and migrations keep the lemming population vital over a vast, inhospitable, globe-circling expanse. Some observers have noted that in areas with much less variable conditions such as rainforests, lemming-like population growth is far less likely to occur.

Beyond its own survival, the lemming is a major source of food for other northern animals such as ermines and gyrfalcons, whose populations in many cases rise and fall with that of the lemmings. —DOJ

Lemming

Moose Calves with their Mother

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 05:00:45 +0000

baby animals: things that make you go "aww..."

The largest mammal in the deer family, the North American Moose (Alces alces americanus) has long lived throughout most of Canada and the northeastern United States.

The word moose comes from the Algonquin Eastern Abenaki name moz, which loosely means "twig eater."

Moose cows remain pregnant for eight months, after which time they generally give birth to just one calf, although twins and triplets have been known to occur. Although moose are usually loners, a very a strong bond is formed between a mother and her calves, who learn to walk and follow her around almost immediately after being born. Young moose tend to stay close to their mother until just before she next gives birth.

Newborn moose begin by drinking their mother's milk and quickly work up to eating plants. The moose is a strict herbivore; most of its diet is made up of woody plant material like the tips of twigs, fresh leaves and shoots, which it is able to pull sideways through its mouth, often stripping off up to half-a-metre of plant life with its rough, dense tongue and lips.

Moose have few natural enemies, but wolf packs sometimes pose a threat to mothers alone with their young. A moose will become paralyzed with pain if its extremely sensitive nose is bitten by wolves or other attackers.

Moose bulls are highly distinguishable by their wide, outstretched palmate antlers. After mating season, the male will shed its antlers to conserve energy over the winter, and a new pair will grow when spring comes. A male calf is born with two tiny bumps on its head from which his first pair of antlers will grow.

Baby moose with their mother

Hoglet

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:42:06 +0000

This Western European Hoglet, also known as the common hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), has ancestors living anywhere from the British Isles and western Europe to the Mediterranean islands and New Zealand. This earthy creature likes deciduous forests, woodlands, farmland, sand dunes, scrub, and grassy heaths for its home, occasionally ending up in suburban areas. Usually it will build a nest out of grass and leaves under a bush or amid tree roots. Prickly by nature, this nocturnal young animal will roll into a ball to protect itself against threats with its spines. While it can't see very well, this spiky little wanderer has a sense of hearing and smell that are sharp as can be. It clanks around all night, rummaging or sniffing out worms, insects, snails, and, sometimes, small snakes.

Baby Hedgehog

Mallard Duckling

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:03:59 +0000

This baby Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) is among the most commonly found duck species in all of North America, and can be found almost anywhere in the world. This cute quack is happiest in the wetlands, because much vegetation, worms, insects, and snails live there, and these are some of her favorite things to eat. Generally tolerant of people, every so often this young Mallard takes advantage of human food sources, and gleans grain from their crops to supplement her diet.

Mallard Duckling