Cymothoa Exigua

This pale little bug is Cymothoa Exigua, also known as the Tongue-Eating Louse, or the Tongue Isopod. They enter through the gills as a juvenile, the Tongue-Eating Louse will clamp on to the base of the fish’s tongue. It uses its claws to sever the blood vessels to the tongue. The tongue falls off after losing blood supply. The Isopod will then take the place of the fish’s tongue, attaching itself to the muscles that controlled the tongue. Probably Hollywood getting idea of Alien type movies from this type of creatures. Therefore, many of bait species like slimy or jack mackerel and yellow tail have them in warmer months.

Brown Pelican got so many fish in it's Large throat pouch, made the throat pouch looks even larger

Pelican is characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped up contents before swallowing.

The Spotted Color Pattern Knabstrupper

Well, we’re sure; you haven’t seen this type of horse in your life before. So, we’d like to tell you, that this is a “Knabstrupper”. This horse breed is habitually about 15.2 to 16 hands (62 to 64 inches, 157 to 163 cm), but there’re also pony sized ones under 14.2 hands (58 inches, 147 cm). The majestically beautiful coat patterns range from solid to a full leopard spotted coat, with several variants in between. 

Therefore, the spotted color patterns common in the Knabstrupper are seen in other breeds, such as the Appaloosa horse, however the two breeds grown independently of one another. But few “Knabstrupper” are born with solid colors, like in as bay or chestnut. The “Knabstrupper” breed was first established in 1812 in Denmark. A chestnut mare with leopard complex blanket markings was bred to a solid-colored stallion, bring into being a colt with dramatic spotting. Therefore, the mare and her son were each bred to several other horses, creating numerous offspring with spotting and establishing the “Knabstrupper” as a breed. 

Indeed, this breed was once very popular, but later on, it was crossbred with other horses and it is not sure if any purebreds from this breed remain. They do well in dressage and show jumping, and are used in general riding, as carriage horses and as circus horses. Moreover, in 1971, three Appaloosa stallions were imported to Denmark to enlarge new blood to the “Knabstrupper breed”. Thus “Knabstruppers” these days are bred in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, USA, and, most lately, Czech Republic, Australia and New Zealand.

Penny the Hawksbill Sea Turtle is released in front of a large crowd of tourists and locals near Flat Rock in Ballina

After eight months of rehabilitation, Ballina Seabird Rescue volunteers couldn't have picked a more perfect day to release Penny, the critically endangered Hawksbill sea turtle, back into the ocean. Seabird Rescue general manager Kathrina Southwell said Penny had been severally underweight and suffering from float syndrome when she was brought in. She was in a terrible condition, a really poor condition. Although she only weighed just under 4kg. She was way way skinny and really sunken underneath, and she wasn't eating for quite a while, while she was in care. Penny was found in February by a local lady and her son who saw the turtle floating in the surf. In addition to being underweight and suffering float syndrome, Penny was also covered in barnacles and algae.The rehabilitation process consisted of giving her different types of medications and looking at her poo under a slide in the microscope and we actually found lots of micro plastic within her.

The Most Beautiful Fox in the world

We can imagine how much you people love foxes, so we got an idea to introduce you some of the most beautiful and striking types of foxes out there so you’d know which type of fox is your favorite! The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) normally comes into mind when you hear the word “fox,” diverse and adaptive genus has species all over the world which makes sense since it can be found throughout the Northern hemisphere all of which are particularly adapted to flourish in their environments. If you really love foxes then you have to think they look better in the wild than they do around someone’s neck, then you will certainly love seeing all of these foxes in their natural element! Well, Fennec foxes, mostly native to North Africa and the Sahara desert, for surely distinguished by their large ears, which serve to dissipate their body heat. These ears give them such good hearing that they can even hear their prey moving under the sand. The Fennec foxes cream-colored fur helps them deflect heat during the day and stay warm at night. However, the red fox is the largest, most wide-spread and, as a result, the most distinct species of all the foxes. They can be found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and in Australia as well. They are very agile hunters and have been known to jump over 2m tall fences.

The “arctic marble fox,” also a member of the red fox species, is not a naturally occurring coloration and it was bred for its fur by humans. Although gray fox, which lives throughout North America, is distinguished by its “salt-and-pepper” upper coat and black-tipped tail. This fox is one of the only canids capable of climbing trees. The silver fox is in fact the same species as the “red fox” they simply have diverse pigmentation variations. The silver fox was, at one time, one of the most valuable fur foxes that could be found ever. They’re still bred and farmed for their fur and can be found throughout the Arctic Circle. Moreover, their thick fur keeps them from shivering in extreme temperatures as low as -70 degrees Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit). These foxes have comparatively short legs and snouts, which supports them to keep their surface area down and retain heat. The cross fox is yet another color variant of the red fox. It is most common in North America. 

Felis Lynx

The lynx is a member of the cat family and one of the bigger felines of North America. Lynx are best known for their short stubby tails and the long tufts of black hair on the ears of a lynx. There are three different types of lynx with these being the North America lynx found in Canada and Alaska, the European lynx found in Spain and Portugal and the Asian lynx which is found in Turkestan and central Asia. The North American lynx is the biggest species of lynx and some of these lynx individuals have extremely thick and fluffy looking fur which keeps the lynx warm in the freezing Canadian winter. The European and Asian lynx species are much smaller in size and have personalities that resemble those of a domestic cat, rather than a large feline.

The lynx tends to inhabit dense shrub and grasslands in the forests of North America and parts of Eurasia. The lynx hunt small mammals, birds and fish, and the lynx are prey to few predators. Although the lynx is a ground mammal, lynx are often known to climb trees or swim in order to catch their prey. Lynx hunt small mammals, birds and fish but prefer to hunt larger mammals like reindeer, deer and elk if the lynx can find and catch them. The lynx has large paws which help the lynx to balance and also give the lynx more power when pursuing potential meals. The lynx also has extremely acute hearing which allows the lynx to hear oncoming prey and predators over long distances, and the lynx also has a strong jaw and sharp teeth which the lynx uses to bite down on its prey.

Lynx are usually solitary animals and will spend their time both hunting and resting alone, however a small group of lynx may travel and hunt together occasionally. Lynx mating takes place in the late winter and the female lynx will give birth to two to six kittens after a gestation period of about 70 days. Female lynx will usually give birth to a litter a year. The young lynx kittens stay with the mother lynx for around nine months meaning that the lynx kittens will have the mother lynx to watch over them during their first winter. The lynx kittens then move out to live on their own as young adults. It is known that adult lynx will give their young the prey to play with it before they eat it as this thought to develop their hunting skills. Lynx live in dens in rock crevices or under ledges which gives the lynx a safe place to rest as well as a home for when the lynx kittens arrive and need safely looking after. Lynx do not normally take their kill back to their den, the main exception to this is when the mother lynx is providing for her lynx kittens. Lynx children love to wrestle with each other.

Weird “dinobat” Discovered in China

A strange new dinosaur with bat-like wings has been discovered by a farmer in China and is now helping to shed new light on the evolution of flight. Paleontologists in China say the impeccably preserved fossil belongs to a small dinosaur thought to have lived 160 million years ago. The bizarre looking creature had slight stiff feathers on its body and long finger-like bones extending from each wrist that were covered in a membrane like a bat’s wing. Further, Dinosaur with wings like a BAT may reveal clues about the origin of flight, it’s named Yi qi is thought to have lived 160 million years ago during the late Jurassic. 

The dinosaur has an unusual bone sticking out of its wrist and had a membrane that covered it to form a wing much like that of a modern bat. Researchers say it is unlike any other dinosaur, which evolved into birds, and may have glided or even been able to fly by flapping over short distances. Therefore, the fossil was discovered by a local farmer in Qinglong County in north China. Researchers say the dinosaur, which would have weighted just 13 ounces and was 33cm long with wings that spanned 60cm, may have been an early evolutionary research with flight. Yi qi belong to the group of carnivorous dinosaurs recognized as the therapods which includes Tyranosaurus rex and velociraptor. Therefore, these dinosaurs are thought to have been the ancestors of modern birds. But unlike modern birds, Yi qi was found to have a strange extra bone extending backwards from its wrist, rather like an entirely separate group of animals that learned to fly the bats. Professor Xing Xu, one of the world’s foremost prolific paleontologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and who led this work, said: This is actually something for me and it is the most unexpected discovery I ever made.

Moreover, birds are descended from dinosaurs, but how accurately the transition occurred is not really clear. This fresh discovery is a new species of these birds like dinosaurs. This dinosaur is completely different, and it has completely different wings from all other birds and their close relatives. Furthermore, close to the origin of birds there are numerous lineages trying to get into the air but there was only one group that succeeded. It’d have said this example shows how much experimentation close to this transition. The discovery comes in the same week as researchers announced the discovery of a bizarre vegetarian relative of the T-Rex. 

The Yi qi fossil was discovered by a local farmer in Mutoudeng, in Qinglong County, Hebei Province in China. The fossil has preserved stiff filamentous features on the forelimb and hind-limb, along with patches of the membrane that once stretched across its wings. However, it was the strange wrists and long rod-like bones that extended from them that baffled the attention of the paleontologists. There are three main groups of flying vertebrates - the birds, which evolved from dinosaurs, pterosaurs that were flying reptiles that existed alongside the dinosaurs, and the bats, which are mammals that evolved after the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Most winged avian dinosaurs to be discovered so far all have wing structures that are similar to those of modern birds. However, Yi qi, which is pronounced “ee chee”, appears to be a strange hybrid between a dinosaur and a bat. This has also suggests that at the time numerous different types of winged dinosaurs evolved wings in an attempt to fly.  This has analysis by Professor Xu and his coworkers, which is published in the journal Nature, proposes that it is likely that, the dinosaur glided, perhaps like modern flying squirrels. The dinosaur lacked the strong muscle attachments to the forelimb bones and its bone structure would have interfered with the flapping and rotating movements needed during powered flight. Instead it may have launched itself from elevated perches and glided to the ground. If it did flap its wings it would probably have only been able to fly over short distances.  

But Professor Xu said: “We thought giving this animal a name meaning "strange wing" was appropriate, because no other bird or dinosaur has a wing of the same kind. We don’t know if Yi qi was flapping, or gliding, or both, but it definitely evolved a wing that is unique in the context of the transition from dinosaurs to birds. It is likely that the conclusions will be controversial with other evolutionary biologists, but it could prove hugely valuable in unravelling how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors. Professor Zheng Xiaoting, from Linyi University in Shandong who also took part in the study, said: Yi qi lived in the Jurassic, so it was a pioneer in the evolution of flight on the line to birds. Thus, it reminds us that the early history of flight was full of innovations, not all of which survived.

Dr Kevin Padian, a paleontologist at the University of California Berkeley, warned that the animal may not have been able to fly at all. The fossil of Yi qi was discovered by a farmer working his fields in Mutoudeng in Qinglong County in China, He also said: As for gliding, if Yi qi’s styli-form element helped to support a membranous aero-foil, it can be used to rebuild the planform of the wing, as Xu and colleagues have done. But in a gliding animal, the center of lift of the aero-foil should be fairly congruent with the center of gravity of the body if the bulk of the animal’s weight falls too far behind the center of lift, the back end will sag and the animal will stall. 

That is clearly the case in the authors’ reconstruction of Yi qi, but an aero-foil that was swept back more, if anatomically possible, might have mitigated this problem. Still, we’re left in a quandary; an animal with a bizarre structure that looks as if it could have been used in flight, borne by an animal that otherwise shows no such tendencies. And so far, there’s no other plausible explanation for the function of this structure.Source: Dailymail

The Rare “Magic Rabbit” is endangered to Lost Forever

Are you ready to fall in love and have your heart broken at the same time: this gorgeous rabbit that you’ve probably never heard of, the “Ili Pika”, is also one of the rarest and most endangered living being in the world. Their population in their native China is likely to have dropped to less than 1,000 and these photographs are of the first one that has been spotted in 20 years. The “Ili Pika” population is strongly believed to have declined by around 70 % since its first discovery in 1983, scientists say. 

The “Ili Pika” was first discovered in the Tianshian Mountains in northwestern China, but it is projected their population is rapidly decreasing. These adorable teddy-bear look-alikes, which’re a distant relative of rabbits, are so infrequent that scientists know very little about them. Li Weidong, the conservationist who discovered them, told CNN, “I discovered the species, and I watched as it became endangered. If it becomes extinct in front of me, I’ll be so sad and I must feel so guilty. He and his volunteers have dubbed it the “magic rabbit”, but they’re doubtful that rabbit populations may be declining due to global warming as the altitude of permanent snow in the Tianshan mountain range has risen.

Li Weidong, the conservationist who discovered this beautiful Rabbit

 Source: Charismatic Planet