aquatic mammal

Aquatic mammal

Anthropoid (5)
Aquatic mammal (349)
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Camels (180)
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Deer (593)
Edentate (148)
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Feline (1466)
Giraffa (96)
Hyrax (2)
Insectivore (12)
Lemur (186)
Mammal (466)
Marsupial (253)
Mastodon (4)
Musteline (234)
Pachyderm (1335)
Perissodactyla (1)
Primates (1788)
Prototherian (71)
Rabbit (106)
Raccoon (432)
Rodent (1353)
Ruminant (142)
Tapir (31)
Tarsier (6)
Ungulate (12)
Viverrine (47)

Once a year, it is host to the breeding of hundreds of northern elephant seals. From 1976 onwards, marine scientist Marianne Riedman, together with her colleague Burney Le Boeuf, studied adoption among the seals oe and why it was happening.

It's a crowded beach, with bad weather, high tides and rough surf, which perhaps explains why one-quarter to two-thirds of pups each year were separated from their mothers at least once oe some permanently.

it's easy for elephant seal pups to get separated from their parents (Frans Lanting/Mint images/SPL) The researchers counted a total of 572 orphaned pups over the course of the four consecutive breeding seasons.

Intriguingly, some adult seals were more likely than others to become foster parents. For one thing, all the foster parents were female.

Some adult elephant seals are more likely to adopt a pup than others (Frans Lanting/Mint images/SPL) Elephant seal pups aren't the only ones to win adoptive parents either.

On 6 may 2000 a dead female dolphin was spotted on the seabed, 50 metres from the eastern coast of Mikura Island, near Japan.

Â It's far from being documented the only instance of dolphin death rituals. On 20 july 2001, a dead sub-adult male was spotted on a nearby seabed,

Â And when a dead dolphin calf was spotted by another group of scientists near the Canary islands in April 2001,

which records"sightings Â of giant squids and whale-like animals. During the visit, the pair began to wonder

as well as sharks and dugongs in Australia. In each case, the major predators help control the populations of their prey,

what has been learned about wolf and elk interaction in Yellowstone national park in the U s. to the interplay of tiger sharks and dugongs in Shark Bay, Australia.

Dugongs are large marine mammals, similar to manatees, that feed primarily on seagrasses and are a common prey of sharks.

Conceptually similar activities are taking place between sharks and dugongs, the researchers found. When sharks are abundant,

dugongs graze less in shallow water where they are most vulnerable to sharks, and sacrifice food they might otherwise consume.

to be able to fit all your ingredients (make sure the lid has an airtight seal).

Kind of like the Vaquita porpoise in Mexico. Who should win out when humans and animals collide?

Experts there gave it an official seal as the worlds sweetest. Honeydew melons like this have a sugar content of 20. 2g per 100g of fruit.

But without a federal or state inspection seal, or a special exemption allowed by some states,

life forms from bacteria to whales is wrong. Apparently, the mysterious oe3/4 law of metabolism proposed by Max Kleiber in 1932,

explained theoretically in Science in 1997 and described in a 2000 essay in Nature as oeextended to all life forms from bacteria to whales is just plain wrong. oeactually,

Over the next decades, hundreds of animals resting metabolisms were measured or estimated, from microbes to whales.

Whenever I see floating whales, I instantly turn around to see where the X-men are standing...

Recreational Area Governors Mansion State Historic Park Gray whale Cove State Beach Greenwood State Beach Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park Hendy

Brazilian aardvark, also known locally as coati (Nasua nasua; collared anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla; gray brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira;

and Bison bison bison. Bison are not native to Brazil, although the rest of the species all have some of their primary habitats within the country s borders.

and almost all of the precise work is done by robots that string together solar cells and seal them under glass.

A dolphin pod can find a dolphin pup lost in the ocean through its distress chirps.

the rugged bags provide an airtight seal for long-term, pest-free storage. The Gates Foundation estimates that by using them,

#Elephant seal is laughing because he thinks you look funny!..Meals on wheels!..Kissing a giraffe is intimidating, even for blind people!..

Manatee County Public library, Bradenton, FL) Teen Battle of the Bands-The winning band will receive 10 hours of recording time at Clear Track and $1, 000 cash.

Seahorses don' t have stomachs just intestines for the absorption of nutrients from food.

When it comes to animals a variety of characteristics can be wrapped up in a common name including where an animal lives (mountain goat) what an animal eats (anteater) the color of an animal (brown bear) or more broadly

A seahorse might slightly resemble a horse without the fur and with a different kind of tail

To be fair to whoever came up with the common name seahorse it's a bit more accurate than the direct translation of the animal's Latin genus name Hippocampus

#Antarctic Mission to Feature Robot Subs & Seals with Sensors A team of British scientists is preparing for a mission to Antarctica an ambitious journey that will involve sensor-carrying seals seafaring robots

seals. Fifteen seals with small sensors temporarily glued to their fur will help the scientists collect data

while the ocean surface is covered by sea ice making much of the region inaccessible for research ships.

The sensors attached to the Antarctic seals will gather information on ocean temperature and salinity or salt content.

when the seals molt their fur the scientists said. The observations may also help the researchers understand how changing Antarctic conditions are affecting seal populations in the region.

and orcas appreciate that we are good and decent people moving in the right direction and show some compassion for our obliviousness.

Due to the widening of the oceanssharks whales and other marine life proliferated. The Great lakes that formed in the western United states during the Eocene epoch were the perfect home for bass trout

Along with seahorses the frogs are thought to be known the only living vertebrates in which dads take on baby-carrying duties with special sacs that make them look pregnant.

and cetaceans (dolphins and whales) have sufficient mental capacities for complex forms of consciousness and for enduring deep suffering.

And many animals other than humans have life spans that continue past their reproductive years including killer whales (Orcinus orca) mynah birds (Leucopsar rothschildi) and nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans.

China has more than 10 flagship species including Amur tigers musk deer and the Yangtze finless porpoise according to WWF.

For example another new study shows that whales pick up feeding techniques from their friends. Collectively these studies suggest that culture is more widespread in the animal kingdom than once thought.

and crabs and serve as food for animals as diverse as manatees and ducks Sumoski told Ouramazingplanet.

A recent DNA study found that hippos are closely related to dolphins and whales. Hippopotamus comes from a Greek word meaning water or river horse.

#Man Arrested for Harassing Baby Manatee in Florida A man has been arrested in Florida after posting pictures on Facebook that showed him harassing a baby manatee authorities announced this week.

The incriminating images show Ryan William Waterman 21 and his two children petting a manatee calf at Taylor Creek in Fort Pierce last month according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife

While the family's actions might look playful biologists said such contact could be deadly for a manatee calf.

This was a young manatee which was likely still dependent on its mother for food and protection.

Separating the two could have severe consequences for the calf FWC manatee biologist Thomas Reinert said in a statement.

World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals The calf also appeared to be experiencing manatee cold-stress syndrome a condition that can lead to death in extreme cases Reinert added.

Waterman faces charges under the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act which makes it illegal to molest harass

or disturb manatees classified as an endangered species in the state. His offense also violates the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972

or get up close to manatees as well as all other marine mammals such as whales seals and walruses. These laws however have not prevented some recent close encounters in Florida perhaps due to a lack of awareness.

and didn't know it was illegal to touch a manatee.)In December a woman snapped pictures at Pompano Beach on Florida's Atlantic coast of swimmers who might have been trying to ride a sickly sperm whale.

The 35-foot (10.6-meter)- long creature was reported to be flapping its tail at the time of the incident

And last October a woman turned herself in after photos surfaced showing her riding a manatee at Florida's Fort Desoto Park near Tampa.

There are estimated to be just 3800 manatees in Florida and each year about 87 are killed by humans according to the U s Fish and Wildlife Service most of them dying in boat collisions.

and destroyed manatee habitat also threatens the species. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebookâ & Google+.

what the ancestor of mice elephants lions tigers bears whales bats and humans once looked like researchers say.

Polar bears hunt their main food source seals primarily while on sea ice. Changes in the ice are driving the bears to spend more time on land where they have to go longer without eating

It is where humpbacks whales mate on their southern migration down the coast; a critical nesting area for hawksbills olive ridley sea turtles and green turtles;

From September to December 2012 more than 90 ivory seals were found hidden in chocolate packages being sent from South africa to Taiwan according to WWF.

In 2004 a whale carcass exploded while being transported from a beach where it died to a laboratory in the Taiwanese city of Tainan according to BBC News. Gas buildup inside the decomposing cetacean was thought to be responsible for the explosion

which took 13 hours and 50 workers to clean up. When a truck carrying construction glue collided with a bus in Chengdu City China it dowsed the street with its sticky contents.

Still some animals such as sea lions have been known to adopt in the wild. 2. Cuckoo sneak When it comes to rearing young female cuckoo birds farm the task out to others.

#Whales Trap Dinner with Mouthful of Swirling Bristles Humpback and bowhead whales create their own food nets from specialized bristles in their mouths to more efficiently nab fishy morsels a new study of baleen whales suggests.

When these whales feed some open their jaws wide to gulp mouthfuls of seawater whereas others swim with half-open mouths (called ramming or skim-feeding).

The new study published today (March 13) in The Journal of Experimental Biology shows that the baleen of bowhead whales

and humpback whales is not the passive structure it was thought to be but forms a tangled mesh in water that streams through it as the animals swim.

And how the baleen gets morphed is different depending on the specific whale's feeding style the study found.

Whales typically have about 300 plate structures on either side of their mouths perpendicular to the direction that water flows.

The whales'tongues wear away the inner edges of the plates to create a fringe that traps krill and other tasty morsels.

whale swimming speeds. Werth also varied the angle of the baleen between parallel and perpendicular to the flow.

Now the bristles formed a tangled net in the flowing water with most beads being trapped at about 28 to 31 inches/s (70 to 80 cm/s) exactly the speed bowhead whales swim

Humpback whale baleen was shorter and coarser than bowhead baleen and captured fewer beads. Feeding styles The findings reveal how the baleen of bowhead whales

and humpbacks differs biomechanically. Those differences explain the specialized feeding styles of the two types of whales:

Bowheads feed by continuous ram feeding at slower speeds whereas humpbacks feed in intermittent gulps at higher speeds.

The baleen of humpback whales performed best at the same speed as that of bowheads despite the fact that humpbacks typically swim faster than bowheads when feeding.

This is a fascinating study marine ecologist Ari Friedlaender of Duke university who was involved not in the study told Livescience in an email adding he was surprised Â that the bowhead whale baleen functioned better at higher flow speeds than the humpback whale baleen.

We think of bowhead whales generally as slow-feeding animals that are basically mowing the lawn and that humpback whales are more energetic

and feed faster Friedlaender said but it appears humpbacks may actually be moving at a similar speed while feeding.

Werth also hopes to explore how pollutants affect the whales'baleen. I'm really worried about

what would happen if the filter gets clogged with oil or debris he said. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter@tanyalewis314. Follow us@livescience Facebookâ or Google+.

#What and When to Eat to Build Muscle (Op-Ed) Katherine Tallmadge M. A r. D. is registered a dietitian author of Diet Simple:

195 Mental Tricks Substitutions Habits & Inspirations (Lifeline Press 2011) and a frequent national commentator on nutrition topics.

This article is adapted from one that first appeared in the Washington post. Tallmadge contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:

Op-Ed & Insights. One of my 50-something clients recently lost 20 pounds through a combination of a few nutrition eating and behavior modification tricks

#Worst-Ever Right whale Die off Continues to Puzzle Scientists still don't know why hundreds of baby southern right whales are turning up dead around Patagonia a decade after observers first saw signs of the worst die off on record for the species according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS.

With no evidence of infectious diseases or deadly toxins in whale tissue samples scientists are scrambling to determine a cause of death.

The whales come to the peaceful Atlantic bays around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast to give birth

At least 605 dead right whales have been counted in the region since 2003 WCS officials say. Of those 538 were newborn calves.

Last year the mortality event was especially severe with a record-breaking 116 whale deaths 113 of them calves.

Whale Album: Giants of the Deep in 2012 we lost nearly one-third of all calves born at the Peninsula said Mariano Sironi scientific director of the Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas in Argentina.

Southern right whales have their first calf when they are nine years old on average. This means that it won't be until a decade from

now that we will see a significant reduction in the number of calves born as all of the female calves that died will not be contributing any new offspring to the population Sironi who is also an advisor to the Southern Right whale Health Monitoring program added in a statement.

Sironi and colleague Vicky Rowntree who is co-director of the monitoring program have studied a strange phenomena that could be stressing southern right whales.

They say kelp gulls at Peninsula Valdes land on the backs of the cetaceans to eat their skin and blubber.

As a result right whale mothers and their calves are expending much precious energy during a time of year

The southern right whale population is still only a small fraction of its original size and now we have reason to worry about its recovery Rowntree said.

Though the southern right whale is endangered not listed as conservationists warn that the species'sister populations could go extinct

For instance there are thought to be just about 500 North Atlantic right whales remaining. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.

and coyotes prevent them from creating a seal around their victims and therefore physically prevents them from sucking the blood out of goats or anything else.

When the female platypus is ready to have her young she will burrow down inside the ground on the riverbank and seal herself into one of her tunnel rooms.

and eyes and noses that seal shut to protect the animals while they are underwater.

Later in the Triassic ichthyosaurs evolved into purely marine forms with dolphin-shaped bodies and long-toothed snouts.

Pacific gray whales migrate thousands of miles from cold plankton-rich Arctic waters to relatively nutrient-poor tropical lagoons off of the coast of Mexico where they give birth.

While the journey takes the gray whales away from a bountiful food supply the southern neighborhood is free of the dangerous orcas (they stick to colder waters) that otherwise hunt the newborn whales.

Like bears the mother whales go hungry for months while still needing to produce high-calorie milk for their babies.

or hollandaise sauce packaged foods with broken seals or cans that are bulging or dented honey that hasn't been heat-treated soft cheeses alfalfa sprouts raw ground beef or fish.

#Most Interesting Science News articles of the Week From a melted road at Yellowstone to growling seahorses a medieval case of downs syndrome to Nikola Tesla's birthday here are some of the coolest stories in Science this week.

Earth's Magnetic field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now Why seahorses growl: Warning growls are for more than the likes of dogs and bears.

The tiny seahorse growls in response to stress as well. Full Story: Whoa! Seahorses Don't Neigh They Growl Celebrating Tesla's birthday:

The eccentric Nikola Tesla would have been 158-years-old this week. How better to celebrate than to debate Tesla versus Edison?

#Dive hole appropriations#by curious seals are more like total coups d'Ã tat once one squeezes its 1000-pound body up the blue hole and bobs

heaps of neon-pink sea stars glow-in-the-dark jellies floating spookily by yellow sea spiders breathing through holes in their bodies amphipods toothfish and yes hundreds of swirling seals.

In his book Play Playfulness Creativity and Innovation (Cambridge 2013) Cambridge university's Patrick Batesonmentions Macquarie University's Rob Harcourt's data showing that Southern fur seals are more likely to be killed by Southern sea lions

Eighty-five percent of the sea lions Harcourt observed being killed were killed while playing in shallow water.

In fact these strains may have been brought to The americas by seals and sea lions researchers say. A new analysis of three ancient Peruvian human skeletons that date to between A d. 1028 and 1280 well before Europeans landed on American shores shows evidence of tuberculosis including skeletal lesions

and curved spines. 8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries It looked as though tuberculosis was present in the New world before European contact based on these skeletons said Kirsten Bos the study's lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow

Seals of the World TB is known to jump across species and there have been cases of people who have caught bovine TB Brown told Live Science in an email.

The reason why there are fewer reports of humans catching TB from seals is because we don't come into contact with seals so much Brown said.

There have been previous speculations among archaeologists that this might have been a source of TB infections in coastal areas of South america where seals were hunted

and possibly even farmed. But with only three human skeletons it's unclear whether the seal strains of tuberculosis infected many people or just an isolated few.

whether the strains transmitted from seals and sea lions were widespread in the early Americas experts agreed.

What's more the 6000-year-old birth date of tuberculosis needs further scrutiny researchers said.

and nearby mound containing the hind limbs of young cattle the seals of high-ranking officials which were inscribed with titles like the scribe of the royal box and the scribe of the royal school and leopard teeth (but no leopard).

and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) where she focuses on food and drug safety protections for scientist whistle-blowers and government transparency and accountability.

The author's most recent Op-Ed was Why Whistle-Blowers Should Watch out for New Loophole.

Another group of researchers discovered seal dolphin and fish bones near a Neanderthal hearth on the Rock of gibraltar located on the Iberian peninsula.

Located 300 miles (483 kilometers) north of the Arctic circle Wrangel Island boasts the highest biodiversity in the Arctic including the biggest population of Pacific walruses and the greatest density of polar bear dens.

Carbon credits proposed for whale conservation: Nature Newsbiological oceanographer Andrew Pershing wants carbon credits for whale conservation.

That's because whales, he says, are like trees. Like any animal or plant, they are made out of carbon.

And whales are so big they each store a lot of carbon, he says. Pershing, of the University of Maine in Orono and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine, calculates that

even though some whale species are now recovering from the effects of factory whaling, total whale biomass today is less than one-fifth of

what it was in 1900, before whaling decimated the population. Letting the whale population recover

he said on 25 february at the American Geophysical Union's 2010 Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland,

Oregon, could eventually sequester 9 million tonnes of carbon in their combined biomass. He compares it to planting trees.

Whales take carbon out of the system through their food, then incorporate that carbon in their tissues.

You're taking whales out of the population and putting their carbon somewhere else. In the early days of whaling

the carbon is released through the consumption of whale meat by humans, but you're still taking carbon out of the whale

and putting it into something that's going to respire it. Furthermore, when whales die naturally,

they usually sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying their carbon with them. Back in 1900,

when whale numbers were high, that would have totalled about 200,000 tonnes of carbon per year, Pershing estimates.

Even though benthic creatures eventually eat the whale carcasses (see'Bone-devouring worms discovered), 'the carbon will remain in the depths,

If whales increase in numbers, other species that compete for the same food might decline.

there could still be a substantial increase in total biomass owing to the difference in size between whales

any given food source (such as krill) can support a lot more biomass in a whale than in a small animal such as a penguin.

Santa cruz. It means that whales are important not just because they're charismatic, but because they play an important role in the carbon cycle.

Pershing's research may actually understate the degree to which whales could sequester carbon. The iron in whale faeces is an important micronutrient that is often in short supply in waters such as the Southern Ocean,

and it can help boost algal growth which ultimately means more food for everything, including whales.

In order to drive these large algal blooms you need iron says Costa. In fact, he says, the indirect benefits of iron fertilization from whale faeces might remove more carbon from the atmosphere by boosting algal growth than the growth of the whales themselves.

Pershing adds that the same analysis applies to other large ocean animals whose populations have been reduced drastically, such as bluefin tuna and some species of shark.

they are talking about apples and oranges and Porsches and whales and moons, he says.

and ignore the reality of the burgeoning demand from the middle classes in Asia for ivory products such as seals and ornamental tusks.

including walrus and beluga whales. The review, by scientists at the US Geological Survey, will be completed by 1 october 2010.

Seals threatened Two Alaskan seal species may become the first animals since the polar bear in 2008 to be listed as'threatened'under the US Endangered Species Act because of climate change.

On 3 december, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration proposed adding Arctic ringed seals (Pusa hispida) and Pacific bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus) to the threatened list

and someone working on whales might call it something else. The researchers bolstered their anatomical results with DNA,

and aardvarks, evolved from ancestors in North and South america that are now extinct. This creature must have been around after the supercontinent of Gondwana split into today s southern land masses,

For example, grouping animals according to their anatomy alone puts physically similar species such as pangolins, anteaters and aardvarks in the same tight group,

Hungry sailors ate the Steller's sea cow to death within a century of its discovery. The Xerces Blue butterfly disappeared with the sand dunes from San francisco in the 1940s as that city swelled.

In the second study, a team led by St andrews marine mammal science student Jenny Allen examined 27 years of whale-watching data from the Gulf of Maine, off the eastern coast of the United states,

to determine whether social cues helped an innovative feeding method to proliferate among humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) 2. Humpbacks everywhere feed by blowing bubbles under schools of fish,

a humpback slapping the surface of the water with its tail fluke before proceeding with a standard bubble feed.

but by 2007,37%of the humpbacks in the Gulf of Maine were observed using the technique,

Allen and her colleagues applied a method called network-based diffusion analysis to observations of humpback behaviour collected by the Whale Center of New england in Gloucester, Massachusetts, between 1980 and 2007.

Allen's analysis found that up to 87%of whales that adopted the lobtail-feeding technique learned it from other humpbacks."

"We know that humpback songs are transmitted also culturally, says Luke Rendell, a biologist at St andrews and co-author of the whale study,

"so here we have a population with two independently evolving cultural traditions a culture. David Wiley, research coordinator at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in Scituate,

"It adds to a growing body of information demonstrating the complexity of humpback-whale behaviour and its apparent roots in social learning,