Amazing Friendship!

Did you know

An elephant can be pregnant for up to two years.

Woman's cellphone swallowed by crocodile ringing

Here's something strange that shows how sturdy some Nokia phones can be. There can be crocodile resistant!

A crocodile named Gena at an aquarium in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine swallowed the mobile phone nearly a month back when a visitor, Rimma Golovko trying to photograph the reptile dropped it in the water, according to several media reports.

The zoo authorities did not believe the woman that the 14-year-old toothy reptile ate her Nokia phone until they called it and heard it ringing inside the croc's stomach.

An aquarium employee Alexandra was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “The phone started ringing and the sound was coming from inside our Gena's stomach, and we understood s[he] wasn't lying."
Surprisingly, the device survived the amphibious reptile's teeth and acids in stomach.

Despite being the leader of the group, Gena has not been playing with other fellow African crocodiles. Apparently he is depressed and in pain after swallowing the device.

Croc in pain?

Though the phone has not been damaged, Gena has been unwell. Since the incident, the crocodile has refused to eat food, and has become silent.

The doctors have tried feeding him live quail, which was injected with vitamins and a laxative, but Gena did not eat it.

Alexandra added, "His behavior has changed. He moves very little and swims much less than he used to.”
Despite being the leader of the group, Gena has not been playing with other fellow African crocodiles. Apparently he is depressed and in pain after swallowing the device.

According to Eduard Manukyan, aquarium's representative, the crocodile's condition has been worsening day by day.

Gena may undergo operation

If the croc continues refusing to eat, he will be taken for an X-ray next week.
Currently, the authorities are trying to warm up the air and water to speed up Gena's digestion.

Removing the cellphone through operation will be the last resort, as a surgery in reptiles usually take around three weeks to heal. Also, the move can prove dangerous both for the Gena and the vets.
Dnipropetrovsk chief veterinarian Oleksandr Shushlenko stated that whether the crocodile will undergo surgery or not will depend on where the celephone is located.

He added, "We don't have much experience working with such large animals."

The zoo administrators stated, “We have ordered special transport to bring Gena to the vet.
"We pray only that he survived the operation. We are so worried about him.”

Meanwhile Golovko is only worried about her cellphone and wants to get it back, as it has her contacts and memorable photographs.

Picture of the Day!

What do you think of this picture ??????

Proboscis Monkey

The Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus), known as the bekantan in Malay, or simply the Long-nosed Monkey. It is a reddish-brown arboreal Old World monkey that is endemic to the south-east Asian island of Borneo. It belongs in the monotypic genus Nasalis, although the Pig-tailed Langur has traditionally also been included in this genus - a treatment still preferred by some.

The monkey also goes by the Malay name monyet belanda 'Dutch monkey', or even Orang Belanda 'Dutchman', as Indonesians remarked that the Dutchcolonisers often had a similarly large belly and nose.

Appearance

A distinctive trait of this monkey is the male's large protruding nose, from which it takes its name. The big nose is thought to be used to attract females and is a characteristic of the males, reaching up to 7 inches in length. The females also have big noses compared to other monkey species, but not as big as the males. Besides attracting mates, the nose serves as a resonating chamber, amplifying their warning calls. When the animal becomes agitated its nose swells with blood, making warning calls louder and more intense.

Proboscis Monkeys belong to the order of Primates, from the family Cercopithecidae and subfamily Colobinae (Bennett & Gomber, 1993). According to Bennett & Gomber (1993), in the Old World, these monkeys are divided into two groups known as cercopithecines and colobines. Proboscis Monkeys are colobines. Males are much larger than females, weighing up to 24 kg (53 pounds) and reaching 72 cm (28 inches) in length, with a tail of up to 75 cm in length. Females are up to 60 cm long, weighing up to 12 kg (26 lb). This large sexual dimorphic difference is greater than in any other primate.

The adult Proboscis Monkey is mainly reddish-brown, with grayish limbs (Bennett & Gombek, 1993). According to Burnie (2001), young Proboscis Monkeys have a blue face, blackish fur and a relatively normal sized nose at birth. As they grow older, fur coloration changes and the nose grows. Adult males have a large and fleshy nose which overhangs its mouth, but the female Proboscis Monkey does not have a large nose in comparison to the male.

Ecology and habitat

The Proboscis Monkey is endemic to Borneo's low elevation mangrove forests, swamps, and lowland riparian forests.One of the largest populations is found in the Danau Sentarum National Park. It lives in small groups of 10 to 32 animals. Group membership is very flexible, and animals are known to move from group to group quite often.

The Proboscis Monkey's lifestyle is both arboreal and amphibious, with its mangrove swamp and riverine environment containing forest, dry land, shallow water allowing wading, and deep water requiring swimming. Like other similar monkeys, the Proboscis Monkey climbs well. It is also a proficient swimmer, often swimming from island to island, and has been picked up by fishing boats in open ocean a mile from shore. While wading, the monkey uses an upright posture, with the females carrying infants on their hip. Troops have been filmed continuing to walk upright, in single file, along forest trails when they emerge on land, the only non-human mammal, with the exception of gibbons and giant pangolins, known to use this form of locomotion for any length of time.

Proboscis Monkeys usually lives in a harem which comprises one adult male, several females, and their offspring, but sometimes the male and female Proboscis Monkeys move between social group. The Proboscis Monkey is mostly arboreal, but sometimes the animals migrate downriver into the mangrove forest to feed.

The monkey also has a large belly, a result of its diet[citation needed] Its digestive system is divided into compartments, with bacteria that digest cellulose and neutralize toxins from certain leaves. This lets the monkey eat leaves and remain in the forest canopy. The contents of their stomach weigh in at about a quarter of their whole body. The diet consists mainly of seeds, leaves, fruits, and mangrove shoots.



Source: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stem cells turned injured rodents into mighty mice

(Reuters) - Injecting stem cells into injured mice made their muscles grow back twice as big in a matter of days, creating mighty mice with bulky muscles that stayed big and strong for the rest of their lives, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

If the same applies to humans, the findings could lead to new treatments for diseases that cause muscles to deteriorate, such as muscular dystrophy.

It may even help people resist the gradual erosion of muscle strength that comes with age, Bradley Olwin, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and colleagues reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
"This was a very exciting and unexpected result," Olwin, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
"We found that the transplanted stem cells are permanently altered and reduce the aging of the transplanted muscle, maintaining strength and mass."

Olwin's team experimented on young mice with leg injuries, injecting them with muscle stem cells taken from young donor mice.

Stem cells are unique in that they can constantly renew themselves, and form the basis of other specialized cells.

These cells not only repaired the injury, but they caused the treated muscle to increase in size by 170 percent.
Olwin's team had thought the changes would be temporary, but they lasted through the lifetime of the mice, which was about two years.

"When the muscles were examined two years later, we found the procedure permanently changed the transplanted cells, making them resistant to the aging process in the muscle," Olwin said in a statement.
Olwin and colleagues said when they injected the cells into a healthy leg, they did not get the same effect, suggesting there is something important about injecting the cells into an injured muscle that triggers growth.

"The environment that the stem cells are injected into is very important, because when it tells the cells there is an injury, they respond in a unique way," he said.

The team hopes eventually to find drugs or combinations of drugs that mimic the behavior of transplanted cells," Olwin said.

The findings are encouraging for human research, but Olwin cautions that putting stem cells from young mice into other young mice is not the same thing as making old muscles young again.
And the study is in mice, not people.

But team is starting experiments to see if transplanting muscle stem cells from people or large animals into mice would have the same effects.

If they work, that would mean that transplanting human muscle stem cells might work.

The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Vicki Allen)

Kitten Gets Really Wild Purr-tection

Recently the extraordinary scene appeared in a zoo of the Indonesia. A wild monkey has stunned animal fans after becoming very purr-tective of his new furry friend.

Sources:http://www.atautocar.com

Night owls vs. morning people: Who's smarter?

New York – Recent evidence shows that people who thrive at night have higher IQs. Early risers beg to differ
Are you the type who stays up late to finish your work, or do you get up early to make a fresh start on the day? If it's the former, you may be pleased to learn new research has found that those with higher IQs tend to be nocturnal night-owls. But if it's the latter, you might have good reason to distrust the claim. Here's an instant guide:

Is there solid science behind this finding?

Sleep researchers tend to divide people into two groups, explains zoologist Robert Alison in the Winnipeg Free Press, based on whether they exhibit "morningness" or "eveningness." A recent study claims that eveningness is an evolutionary advancement that marks out "more intelligent individuals," while "those with lower IQs tend to restrict their activities primarily to daytime."

How can that be?

Researchers from the London School of Economics say that human beings used to all be day-oriented, and that eveningness is an "evolutionarily novel preference" made by people with "a higher level of cognitive complexity." Basically, smart people evolve to stay up later.

I want to get more intelligent. Can I just start staying up late?

It isn't that simple. Several studies have shown that your sleep preferences are at least 50 percent genetic, and that your chronotype — that is, the time of day you are at your physical and mental peak — changes with your age. Generally speaking, "eveningness" peaks in the late teens and early 20s.

Are there any downsides to "eveningness"?

Night owls tend to be less reliable, more emotionally unstable, and more likely to have problems with addictions and eating disorders, according to a 2008 study by psychologist Marina Giamnietro. They are also more likely to drink alcohol and smoke, says Dutch psychiatrist Walter van den Broek at his Dr. Shock blog. Another study found that undergrad "evening types" had lower GPAs than those who awake early in the morning.

Is there any advantage to being a morning person?

Early risers tend to be more conscientious, persistent, and apt to cooperate, says van den Broek, a self-described morning person. They also "cope better with academic requirements and receive better grades." And when you think about it, adds Ace Burpee in the Winnipeg Free Press, "there are no sayings about late birds getting some sort of way better tasting worm."

Which am I?

If you're unsure, this test will tell you where you fit on the morningness-eveningness spectrum.

Sources: Winnipeg Free Press (2), Disinformation, Dr. Shock, ScienceDaily
View this article on TheWeek.com

Did you Know!

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

Cicada

Cicadas are probably best known for their buzzing and clicking noises, which can be amplified by multitudes of insects into an overpowering hum.

Males produce this species-specific noise with vibrating membranes on their abdomens. The sounds vary widely and some species are more musical than others. Though cicada noises may sound alike to humans, the insects use different calls to express alarm or attract mates.

Cicadas are also famous for their penchant for disappearing entirely for many years, only to reappear in force at a regular interval. There are some 3,000 cicada species, but only some share this behavior (the 17-year cicada is an example).

Others are called annuals because, although individuals have multi-year lifecycles, some adults appear every year. The dog day cicada, for example, emerges each year in mid-summer.

When young cicada nymphs hatch from their eggs, they dig themselves into the ground to suck the liquids of plant roots. They spend several early life stages in these underground burrows before surfacing as adults. The process varies in length but often takes a number of years.

Periodical cicadas do not create destructive plagues, as some locusts do, though tens or hundreds of thousands of insects may crowd into a single acre. Large swarms can overwhelm and damage young trees by feeding and laying eggs, but older trees usually escape without serious damage.

Cicadas are members of the order Homoptera and are physically distinguished by their stout bodies, broad heads, clear-membrane wings, and large compound eyes.

The insect's amazing lifestyle has been a source of fascination since ancient times. Several cultures, such as the ancient Chinese, regarded these insects as powerful symbols of rebirth.

Wide-eyed primate caught on camera for first time

 A "cute" primate so rare it was thought to be extinct has been caught on camera in the forests of Sri Lanka for the first time, scientists said Monday.

The Horton Plains slender loris is a small, nocturnal animal which can grow up to 17 centimetres (six inches) long with big, bulging eyes.

Endemic to Sri Lanka, it was first discovered in 1937 but had only been seen four times since then.

Scientists last caught a glimpse of the primate in 2002, and believed the elusive animal had since died out.

But field researchers, working with the Zoological Society of London, managed to track down the mysterious creature in the forests of central Sri Lanka.

In a world first, they were able to take pictures of an adult male slender loris sitting on a tree branch.

The field team was able to capture one of the creatures and give it a physical examination, the first time that has ever been done, before releasing it back into the wild.

But experts warned that deforestation in Sri Lanka -- largely blamed on the drive to create tea plantations in the region -- was now the biggest threat to the loris.

Craig Turner, a conservation biologist at the ZSL, said their natural forest habitat had been divided up for farming and logging use, cutting off the "very cute" animals from their partners.

"The forest has now been fragmented into a series of small islands," Turner told BBC radio.

"They can't move to one another, they can't mate, breed, so it has real implications for the future persistence of the species."