Animals of the Middle East - Camel, Falcon and Jellyfish

Camel

The Dromedary, or Arabian Camel, inhabits the Middle East and makes up 94% of the world’s camels. A camel can live for 40 to 50 years and stands 1.85 metres tall at the shoulder and 2.15 metres tall at the hump. It can run up to 65 km/h in short bursts or up to 40 km/h at sustained speed. The camel has long been domesticated and provides milk and meat, and fibre from hair. It is a vital means of transport in the desert.

Interesting Facts

·         The hump of the camel is a reservoir for fatty tissue which helps it to survive in hot climates.

·         It need only drink once every 10 days, even in very hot conditions. When it exhales water vapour is trapped in its nostrils and then reabsorbed into its body, enabling it to conserve water.

·         It is able to withstand changes in body temperature that would kill most other animals. At sunrise it temperature is 34 C and this steadily increases to 40°C by sunset, before it cools off at night.

·         Camel racing is the main racing sport in the United Arab Emirates.

According to Wikipedia, ‘around 700,000 dromedary camels are now feral in Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.’

 Falcon

The national bird of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the falcon is a ‘symbol of force and courage’. It plays an important role in Arab tradition and culture with one-third of the world’s falconers being Arabs.

The falcon is a fast flying hunter that easily takes prey in the air. Adult falcons have thin, tapered wings enabling them to fly at high speed and quickly change direction. The peregrine has been clocked at 290 km/h in a stoop, or dive. And although the falcon strikes its prey with its sharp claws, it generally kills with its beak.

The falcon, like many birds of prey, has exceptional vision with one species measured at 2.6 times that of the average human. The largest falcon is 65cm long, the shortest is 25cm long and the females are bigger than the males. Falcons are distributed across the world, except in Antarctica.

Interesting Facts

·         The falcon is by far the leading ‘pet’ in the UAE.

·         The world’s first falcon hospital opened in Abu Dhabi in 1989.

·         The traditional term for a male falcon is tercel (from the Latin tertius meaning ‘third’) because it is believed that only one in three eggs produce a male bird.

 Jellyfish

The medusae has been in existence for at least 500 million years and was renamed jellyfish in 1796. It is a mainly free-swimming marine animal with a near transparent body, umbrella-shaped bells and trailing tentacles armed with stinging cells used to defend against predators and capture prey. Most species grow quickly and mature within a few months but die soon after breeding.

The jellyfish looks peaceful as it glides gracefully through the water, but at times it will form vast swarms and can be responsible for damaging fishing nets or clogging cooling systems of power and desalination plants. It moves through the water by radially expanding and contracting its body to push water behind it.

The jellyfish is generally carnivorous and feeds on plankton, crustaceans, small fish, fish eggs and larvae, and other jellyfish. It ingests its food and the waste is repelled from its mouth.

Considered a delicacy in some Asian countries, the jellyfish is eaten by humans in other cultures too. It is used in research where the green fluorescent protein produced by some species has been adapted as a fluorescent marker for genes inserted into other cells or organisms.

Interesting Facts

·         There are some jellyfish that are not mobile and are in fact anchored to the seabed by stalks.
·         It is the most energy efficient swimmer of all animals.
·         It is causing problems all over the Middle East due to its growing numbers.

Charismatic Capybara

About

The capybara is the world's largest living rodent. This semi-aquatic mammal comes from South America where it lives in dense forest near water. It can grow 134 cms long, 62 cms tall and weigh anywhere from 35 to 66 kgs and its nearest relative is the guinea pig.

The capybara is an herbivore that eats grass, fruit, tree bark and aquatic plants, but during the dry season its diet expands to include a greater variety of plants. It loves to socialise and gets around in groups of 10-20 but in the dry season it is known to be found in groups of as many as 50 to 100. It also mixes well with other animals.

We saw capybaras at the Auckland Zoo last year including a number of babies. Interestingly, the mother rejoins the group a few hours after delivering her babies, usually about four. And the babies also join the group quickly as within a week they are already eating grass.

Capybaras with babies at the Auckland Zoo

Curiosities

• The capybara can run as fast as a horse and is an excellent swimmer. It can stay fully submerged for up to five minutes.
• It is a gentle animal that makes a great pet, but more than one is recommended.
• Other birds and animals love to perch on top of it in order to get a free ride.
• It can live for up to 12 years in captivity.

Conservation

The capybara is not threatened but it is hunted in some regions in South America for its pelt and meat, and in some areas is farmed.

There are capybaras in many Australian zoos, including this one at the Tasmania Zoo at Riverside.

Dashing Dinosaurs

Anyone who knows me knows of my passion for animals, but this also includes the pre-historic kind.

My love of dinosaurs began in 2009 when I visited the Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways at Winton in Queensland, and saw the actual footprints of animals that lived some 95 million years ago.

Of course dinosaur discoveries have occurred since the early 1800s, around the world. But recently, on Victoria's Gippsland coast, the fossilised remains of a new species of herbivore dinosaur have been uncovered. This wallaby-sized dinosaur, known as Galleonosaurus dorisae, is 125 million years old.

Interestingly, when this dinosaur was roaming the earth, Australia was still joined to Antarctica and a huge volcanic ridge connected us to New Zealand.

Scientists hope that this latest discovery will help them to understand how Australian dinosaurs fit into the dinosaur family around the planet.

And hopefully I will learn more about this and many other dinosaurs at The Royal Society of Tasmania's A Symposium: Dinosaurs and Evolution of Life this weekend!

Books for Animal Lovers

This post isn't about an animal, its about lots of different animals. And if you like reading about animals then this is for you - I highly recommend all four books.

The Travelling Vet by Jonathan Cranston is a collection of tales from a young vet who works in a vet practice in Oxfordshire, England but also travels the world treating everything from guinea pigs to giraffes. Its funny and its moving but there's always something different.

Our Zoo by June Mottershead follows the extraordinary journey of a young girl who, with her father George, set up the Chester Zoo in England in the 1930s. An inspiring story of determination.

The Last Rhinos by Lawrence Anthony, described as the Indiana Jones of conservation. Apart from his incredible, and often dangerous, attempts to try to save the northern white rhino, Anthony runs his own game reserve in South Africa and has saved hundreds of animals.

And for those who would rather just look at the pictures, then you just have to see The Photo Ark by Joel Sartore, whose goal is to photograph every animal on earth, before it becomes extinct. Wonderful book, full of beautiful photographs of animals you know and some you've never even heard of!

Tasmania's Turbines

I recently read about the Cattle Hill Wind Farm which is currently under construction in the Central Highlands of Tasmania. It will have 48 turbines and is due for completion later this year.

Reading about this piqued my curiosity about other wind farms in Tasmania, as the only one I have ever visited is at Woolnorth in the far north-west of the state. Bluff Point and Studland Bay Wind Farms is Tasmania's largest wind farm so far with 62 turbines, and it was commissioned in stages between 2002 and 2007.

I took these photographs at Woolnorth in 2016

Granville Harbour Wind Farm is on Tasmania's west coast, 25 kms north-west of Zeehan. It will have 31 turbines when it is completed, also later this year.

Musselroe Wind Farm in the far north-east of Tasmania has 56 turbines and was commissioned in 2013. King Island has the Huxley Hill Wind Farm with 3 turbines commissioned in 1998 and the Flinders Island Wind Farm has 2 turbines which were commissioned in 1988 and 1996.

And another island just off the north-west coast of Tasmania will host the Robbins Island Wind Farm. This isn't scheduled for commission until 2023 but it will have up to a whopping 300 turbines!

I have always been fascinated by wind farms and I don't mind the look of the turbines in areas where the landscape is remote and the views are generally spectacular.

The views from the Woolnorth turbines

So, I guess Tasmania is really pulling its weight when it comes to producing wind power.

Source: https://ramblingsdc.net/Australia/WindTas.html

Remarkable Rakali

 

About

Described first in 1804, the Australian rakali (or water rat) is a semi-aquatic rodent that looks a lot like an otter. Growing to 60 cm in length and weighing 600 grams it eats insects, fish and crustaceans.

Rakali is found in waterways, both salt and fresh, in the eastern states, and in small groups in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Curiosity

Some people mistake the rakali for a rat, and in times gone by they were hunted for their fur.

Intrigue

In Tasmania almost five years ago a wildlife carer named Corey Young first met a rakali when it turned up, unwell, in the reception of a hotel on Hobart's waterfront. He took it to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, cared for it and it was later released back into the wild. Corey has since started a campaign, Water Rat Awareness Day, to bring the rakali to the public's attention.

Conservation

The rakali is now a protected species.

Gentle Giraffe

Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.  Kurt Vonnegut

About

The giraffe is our tallest land animal and is native to Africa. A fully grown giraffe stands at between 4.3 to 5.7 metres. Males are taller than females with the tallest ever male at 5.88 metres.

The average weight for a male giraffe is 1,192 kgs and for a female 828 kgs. The giraffe has big bulging eyes on each side of its head for all-round vision, and it sees in colour. Its lovely long eyelashes are actually modified feathers and it has very good senses of smell and hearing. It uses its 45 cm long tongue to grasp foliage and to clean its nose.

Giraffe feed on leaves, fruits and the flowers of woody plants, which are out of range of other herbivores. They live in herds of related females or unrelated males. Males use their necks in combat to establish hierarchy and the dominant male then mates with a female who has the sole responsibility of raising calves.

Curiosity

A giraffe's neck is too short to reach the ground so they need to bend their front legs to drink. Their heart is incredibly strong to enable them to pump blood throughout their long neck and legs.

I took this photo at the Auckland Zoo in December 2018

Conservation

The Giraffe Conservation Foundation tells us there are less than 100,000 giraffe now living in Africa. Over the past 30 years their numbers have plummeted by 40% due to habitat loss and poaching, amongst other things. There are also some 2,000 giraffe currently in zoos around the world.