Brown Boobies, large seabirds

PD Photo: Adult Brown Booby on Tern Island in French Frigate Shoals (the largest atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands).

PD Photo: Brown Boobies building a nest on the ground with sticks/ stems of creepers in Coral Sea islands, Australia.

PD Photo: Brown Boobies returning to nest at sunset, Coral Sea Islands, Australia. This bird is being TRACKED; enlarge the photo (CLICK) and see a wring-like numbered device on its leg.

The Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster), a large seabird of the gannet family, Sulidae, grows to about 76 centimeters / 2.5 feet in length. The Brown Boobies’ heads and upper bodies are black or dark brown and their bellies and the rest of the bodies are in contrasting white. Their beaks are very sharp with many jagged edges. They have short wings and long tapered tails. They have powerful webbed feet to help them in swimming and diving, just like a frogs limbs, but with three fingers in the front with web between them and a toe on the back.

Brown Boobies are mostly silent, but bird watchers have reported hearing sounds similar to grunting or quacking made by these birds. Brown Boobies dive deep in water, plunging into seawater at high speed.

They mainly eat small fishes, squids and leaping fish. They are agile fliers and use strong winds and high perches to assist their takeoffs, as they are clumsy in takeoffs and ladings.

Brown Booby pairs or couples are known to stay together for many seasons and they perform elaborate greeting rituals and dance-like movements. These birds nest in large colonies, laying two chalky blue eggs on the ground. They generally breed on islands and coastal plains in the pan-tropical areas of Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. They frequent the breeding grounds of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea islands.

Tortoises mating

PD Photo: A pair of tortoises mating in a zoo

Tortoises (land turtles) are reptiles living on land belonging to the family of Testudinidae of the order Testudines. Tortoises vary in size from a few centimeters to two meters. Their lifespan is compared to humans, though there are claims about tortoises in zoos/captivity having lived longer. For instance, in the Alipur Zoological Gardens in India there was an Aldabra Giant Tortoise brought to India by Lord Wellesley in 1875. It was at least 130 years old when it died, though there are claims that it was over 250 years old.

Many species of tortoises are sexually dimorphic. In some species, males have a longer, more protruding neck plate than females. In others the females’ claws are longer than males’ claws and females tend to be larger than males. The male also has a plastron that is curved inwards to aid mating.

Tortoises of some species lay only a single egg, while others may lay up to 30 eggs. For instance Testudo hermanni boettgeri, the Balkan Hermann's tortoise, lays 6 to 10 eggs. Most Mediterranean tortoises lay 5 to 6 eggs per clutch, and they can lay two or more clutches per season.

Incubation of tortoise eggs depends on availability of favorable temperature range (around 30 °C), and for most species incubation takes between 8 and 11 weeks. The lower the temperature the longer it takes, for example, at around 27 °C incubation can take 18 weeks or more, while at 35 °C the mortality rate of eggs/newborn tortoises will be the highest.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai, India

Photo: A leopard at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai, India

Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), earlier known as Borivali National Park, is a large protected area on the northern fringes of suburban Mumbai city in India, covering an area of 104 sq km (40 sq miles). It is one of the few national parks existing within a metropolis limit in Asia and it attracts more than two million visitors annually. The 2400-year-old Kanheri Caves sculpted out of the rocky cliffs which lie within the park.

Photo: A monkey and its baby at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai, India

The Sanjay Gandhi National Park is home to a number of species of flora and fauna. Visitors can easily spot animals including leopards, spotted deer, Indian hares, barking deer, porcupine, Asian palm civet, mouse deer, monkeys, Indian flying fox, Sambar deer and reptiles such as crocodiles, pythons, cobras, monitor lizards, Russell's vipers, bamboo pit vipers and Ceylonese cat snakes.

Wild ostriches at Cape of Good Hope

Photo: Wild ostriches at Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

ATTRIBUTION: © by James G. Howes, 2006 (Note: copyright holder must be properly attributed, if you are reusing this photo, as this is NOT a public domain photo).

Insects mating on liatris flower

Insects make up more than two-thirds of all extant animal species, and most insect species use sex for reproduction. Many species have sexual dimorphism. Insects have diverse mating strategies. Some of them make dance-like movements, while others may use sounds and chemical substances to attract their mating partners. The photo shows insects, probably beetles mating on a liatris flower head. Liatris (common names: Blazing-star, Gay-feather or Button snakeroot) is a genus of flowering perennial plants in the Asteraceae family, found in North America and the Bahamas. Their flowers are used as a popular summer flowers for bouquets.

A pair of white-throated kingfishers

The white-throated kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis), also known as the white-breasted kingfisher or Smyrna kingfisher, is a tree kingfisher. The birds are widely distributed in Eurasia from Bulgaria, Turkey, South Asian countries to the Philippines. Though mostly found near water bodies, it can also be found away from water where it feeds on a wide range of prey including small reptiles, amphibians, crabs, small rodents and even other small birds. During the breeding season they call loudly in the mornings from prominent perches, and even the tops of buildings in urban areas.

Local names of the white-throated kingfisher include: Aspi Chidok (Baluchistan), Dalel (Sindhi), Dao Natu Gophu (Cachar), Kalkaliyo or Safedchati Kalkaliyo (Gujarati), Khandya (Marathi), Kilkila or Kourilla (Hindi), Lakmuka or Buchegadu (Telugu), Masroka (Assamese), Neela Machhrala (Himachal Pradesh), Pilihuduwa (Sinhalese), Ponman (Malayalam), Rajamatsi (Kannada), Sandabuk Machhranga (Bengali), Vichuli (Tamil), Wadda Machhera (Punjabi).

Video: Marines and Camel Spiders

Do Camel Spiders attack US marines in Iraq, or Afghanistan? Well, judging from the frequency of stories of Camel Spider attacks on humans deployed by American and Coalition forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, first I thought that they are well-trained by Taliban or Al-Qaeda, or both, or they are themselves hardcore terrorists bent upon attacking the western forces.

While hunting for public domain photos for posting in this blog, I came across the photo of a very nice F-16 fighter aircraft, and while looking for details it, I came to a report that said, on 31 August 2006 a Dutch F-16AM crashed in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan and the pilot Captain Michael Donkervoort was killed. The investigations to find out the cause of the crash could not blame the crash on any technical or human errors, as if it was a mystery. But the investigation report referenced to the fact that a Camel Spider and other creatures had been found recently in the cockpits of Dutch fighter aircraft in Afghanistan. Indirectly, it seemed to allude that the Camel Spider had bitten the pilot who was paralyzed and lost control of the F-16, eventually crashing it.

My further efforts to find out more about these scary, bizarre, vampire-like creatures brought me to this video on YouTube. And I found much more videos and blogs that showed how the foreign soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are scared about these vampire Spiders. (In fact, biologically, they are not spiders but they belong to another family like that of the scorpions with more than 1000 identified species in their family).

Here is, in a nutshell, what the author of this video posted in YouTube (click on the video to go to his page), summarized as, “I made this video in Iraq. When stress comes calling... it has been a little busier and we're at the 1/3 mark in the deployment.”

That night the marine walked outside his office and saw the dead Camel Spider. A devilish idea struck him, as he was always talking about Marines screaming like little girls on the sight of these creatures. So he picked it up, pulled out his digital camera… He would walk up to people filming and telling them he was making a video to send home about Iraq, and what they thought of Camel Spiders... He would then toss the carcass onto their laps. He wrote, “Out of 15 subjects tested, 5 did indeed squeal like little girls, one was female though.” Any way, he has shot the Camel Spider comedy surprisingly well as you can see from this video.

Under the comments, I found myths surrounding camel spiders, like ‘Camel Spiders can move at speeds over 30 MPH screaming while they run, they can be as large as a Frisbee, their venom is an anesthetic that numbs their prey, they can jump three feet high, they got their name because they eat the stomachs of camels, they eat or gnaw on people while they sleep, due to the numbing effect of their venom the victim is unaware until they wake up.’

Any way the Camel Spider in this video is dead, not a living one! I have posted another video that shows a Camel Spider eating up a lizard in Iraq.

Camel Spider in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert

The Camel Spiders (Solifugae), also known as wind scorpions, jerrymuglum, sun scorpions and sun spiders, are not true spiders, which are from the order Araneae.

Most Solifugae inhabit arid habitats, including all deserts in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, including in Afghanistan, Mongolia, India, South Africa, and Middle East countries like Iraq. They are carnivorous or omnivorous; feed on termites, darkling beetles and other small arthropods. Solifugae have been recorded feeding on snakes, lizards and rodents. They do not normally attack humans, but their large chelicerae can penetrate human skin and cause much pain.

The larger species grow to 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) in length and have a leg span of 12 centimeters (5 inches). They have large chelicerae, each of the two chelicerae has two articles forming a powerful pincer and each article bears numerous teeth.

There are many legends about them. In the Middle East, soldiers of the American and coalition military forces believe that Solifugae will feed on living human flesh, stories as scary as vampires sucking blood and killing the victims. They say believe the creature will inject anaesthetizing venom into the skin of its sleeping victims and then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. But these creatures do not produce such an anaesthetic or poison, and they do not attack unless they are threatened.

Other stories about them include tales that they leap into the air, disembowel camels, scream, and run alongside moving Humvees and other military vehicles. These stories are dismissed as baseless by biologists. But for because of their bizarre, scary appearance many people are afraid of them. The only threat they pose to humans is their bite in self-defense, mostly when they are hurt. There is no possibility of death due to their bite. However, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can cause large wounds prone to infection.

Solifugae apparently have no venom, with the possible exception of one species found in India. A published study of one species, Rhagodes nigrocinctus, carried out in India in 1978 by researchers found what they believed to be epidermal glands. Extracts from these glands were injected into lizards, on which it induced paralysis in 7 out of 10 tests.

But this study has never been confirmed by peer verification or research. While other researchers have been unable to locate similar glands in other species, this particular species found in India may possess venom.

However, insect bites of any type can be toxic and even dangerous if not treated, and the bites or injuries caused by camel spiders also need medical attention to avoid any complications. Also, there is nothing as dangerous about them as the westerners holed up in Afghanistan may like to tell others.