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SAPIENS ENVIRONMENT SPACE ABOUT/CONTACT US LU Terrestrial Biology Click on the imagesfor a better view! The largest spider (by leg span) is the 'giant huntsman spider' discovered in La os in 2001. Believed to be cave dwellers, very little is known about them. The ir recent discovery places the 'goliath bird eater' (a species of tarantula) in the number 2 spot (though still larger by weight). Albatross have the largest wingspan of any extant species (the largest exceeds 3 40 cm [11.2 ft]). This facilitates extremely long glides (22-23 m of forward gl ide for every 1 m of downward glide). This birds are also able to fly while sle eping. Orangutans have been found acting out some of their requests by means of gesture s. Researchers believe this suggests that the animals might have an understandi ng of the minds of others as well as the potential grass roots of the human lang uage. This video demonstrates an animal 'asking' the caretaker to open the co conut with his machete. The Racket-tailed Drongo will mimic alarm calls of other birds. The bird acquir es about 20% of its food using these calls. By scaring animals who made a fresh kill, the bird swoops in and consumes the food. Juvenile albatross spend their first 5 years of life on the ocean. They do not nest at this age and therefore do not need to go to shore. Juvenile T-Rex' have been found to have filamentous structures thought to be pre cursors to feathers. It is believed these were used to keep the young dinosaurs warm before they grew large enough to maintain body-heat. T-Rex' were cannibals. All breed of dog are separated by only 0.2% in DNA. Fruit-eating bats living in the tropics, pound for pound, can drink more alcohol than humans without appearing drunk. Fruit in the tropics ferments naturally p roducing alcohol. Bats with 0.11 grams per 100 ml (legal limit is 0.08) show no signs of impaired coordination maintaining their ability to fly using echo-loca tion. Their constant exposure to ethanol naturally selected for bats who could 'hold their liquor'. This is only the case for New World bats. The strongest land animal for its size is the rhinoceros beetle capable of lifti ng 850 times its bodyweight. This means if you were 150 lbs you could bench-pre ss 36 Toyota Camrys. 'Temperature dependant sex determination' means that some reptilian eggs will be come male or female depending on the surrounding temperature. Gorillas have been observed 'playing' tag. One will approach another, hit, then run away. Then their roles will switch. Similar to humans this appears to be important for maintaining competitive advantage. Raccoons dedicate the same proportions of their brain to touch as we do for sigh t. Pterosaurs are the earliest known vertebrates to have flown. They are believed to have been capable of flying 5000 km without eating and vary in size from a sp arrow to an airplane. The largest had a wingspan of 12 m (40 ft) and weighed 50 0 lbs. A group of kangaroos is referred to as a 'mob'. The world's most venomous spider, the Brazilian wandering (banana) spider, has a neurotoxin 5.5 times more potent then the black widow. It is physical impossible for pigs to look up to the sky.

Horses are unable to vomit. Before laying eggs, Hornbill females will find an opening in a tree, climb in an d seal it. Males then feed females and chicks through this aperture, protecting the nest from predators. You cannot 'kill' a virus. They are non-living bits of protein that require a h ost to provide nutrients. Pigeons have to bob their heads to walk. Some millipedes use hydrogen cyanide as a form of protection. This is released through pores in their skin. Capuchin monkeys rub the millipedes on themselves a s a form of mosquito repellent. The largest bone-bed ever documented was found near Hilda, Alberta. The 2.3 sq. km area contains thousands of Centrosaurus apertus bones (about the size of a c ow). Spring floods are believed to have caused widespread drowning. This prove s that dinosaurs congregated in large groups. A hippo's mouth is capable of eating a 4 ft child whole. The Jesus Christ lizard has the ability to run 20 m on water with its webbed h ind legs. They can grow up to a foot in length and live 8 years. Earwigs have two penises that are larger than its body. The second is believed to be there in case the first snaps off. Scientists have created a fully functional, synthetic cell. This goes against ' all cells come from preexisting cells'. This cell's 'parents' was a computer. To prove they created it, the developers inserted their names, a website and 3 f amous quotations into its genome. Armadillidiidae (Pill Bug) have organs similar to gills...except they live on la nd. They have to keep these organs moist. They are a key species between land and water. Tapeworms can grow up to 80 ft in length. Cows produce about 190 L of saliva per day. Think about the number of milk cart ons! Speaking of milk, cows produce 1500 gallons (6000 quarts) of milk per annu m. Dragonflies can fly backwards just as quickly as forward. The leopard got its name during medieval times because it was believed it was ha lf 'leo' (lion) and half panther (pard). The Newfoundlander is thought to be the strongest of any dog. They excel at wa ter rescue due to their great strength, webbed feet and acute swimming abilities . Pictured is a Newfoundlander trained to rescue swimmers from Italian beaches. Cats have 32 muscles in each ear. Flying Snakes, living in south and southeast Asia, are able to glide up to 21 m (from a 10 m high branch) by flattening their bodies and gliding through the air by undulating its body (like a swooping 'S'). The exact mechanism of their lan ding is unknown, however they appear to reorient their tail so it hits the groun d first, like a landing gear, leaving their head for last. Ibycus rachelae is a 4 cm long slug found in a Bornean rain-forest (the oldest i n the world). The female slugs use 'love-darts' made of calcium carbonate. Thi s pierces and injects a hormone into a potential mate increasing production. Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand. Recent research suggests that dinosaurs were warm blooded. Scientists argue tha t this would facilitate living at high altitudes, being relatively active and, s ome, having fairly large brains. Proponents argue that they must have been cold blooded because of their size could not be supported by a warm-blooded metaboli sm nor could they survive in the prehistoric climate. The debate continues. Chameleons' eyes have 360 degrees of sight, capable of moving their eyes indepe ndently and can see in the UV spectrum. It is thought that these animals are de af due to the lack of a vomeronasal organ and an inner ear. Their tongues can e xtend longer than their body length and move at 0.003 of a second. A T-Rex can yield about 450 gallons of gasoline. Cold blooded animals are 10x more efficient then mammals because energy is not ' wasted' as heat. 1 lb of armadillo meat has 780 calories. They have 4 babies at a time, they're

always the same sex and perfect quadruplets. They sleep an average of 18.5 hour s per day and can walk underwater. The golden mole swims through the sands of African deserts. It has fur protecti ng their eyes from constant scraping. As passing sand continuously produces hig h pitched sounds, they're tuned to incredible low sounds. Macaque monkeys have a hierarchical system whereby animals from the higher class can take food from the lower class. If the lower monkey refuses, the group wil l beat him. Endospores are created by bacteria as a way of 'hibernating' during tough times. These spores can live almost indefinately with recorded lengths of 250 years! Praying mantis' have excellent eyesight, capable of seeing 18 m (60 ft) away. T hey live 12 months and, while mating, the female will eat the male's head. Why do worms come out when it rains? Worms can pull oxygen out of the air or wa ter using their skin (so they won't drown). Worms instinctively will come out a t night, triggered by the dew on the grass, because there are no predators or su nlight to dry them out. As worm's cannot see, they also come out when it rains (because they cannot tell the difference). Porcupines have adopted a unique way of pulling out quills (should they be accid entally quilled) using their teeth. If they are not pulled, muscle contraction will slowly drive them forward which could potentially hit vital organs. Orangutans can only have one offspring every 6 to 7 years, the longest of any ma mmal. A camel can live 8 days without water in 50 C weather. Its hump can weigh up to 80 lbs. The star nosed mole has spades for paws. It has the abilityto swim under frozen lakes to catch bugs. It has 22 fleshy arms on the front of its face that are s o sensitive that they could differentiate between 600 pin heads placed against i ts face at the same time. It uses tunnels to travel and eats anything it finds in them. The tapetum lucidum is a membrane found in the back of some animals' eyes. They allow the animal to see in low light conditions by recycling the low amounts of light. This results in eyes that 'glow'. Elephant shrews use 'highways' that they have constructed, and memorized, in the tall grasses of the African Savannah to escape from predators. They spend thei r entire life running. Females have evolved with nipples on their shoulders to facilitate a rapid escape. Crab-eating macaques have been observed flossing with human hair! This particul ar group lives in temple ruins. They collect hair that has fallen from tourists and weave it into thread. The adults then teach their young the trick. Curren tly there are about 100 dental flossing macaques. This behaviour is highly unus ual for any animal outside of humans. Japanese macaques wash potatoes before eating them. Bullet ants are wingless wasps. They got their name from their sting which is s o painful it has been related to a gunshot wound. Recent research and slow motion cameras have captured that cats utilize fluid dynamics to drink. Unlike dogs, who create a scoop with their tongues, cats mak e their tongue into a 'J' shape that touches the surface of the liquid about 3.5 times/second. The substance adheres to the tongue and is pulled upwards and in to the mouth. The cat will then close its jaws over the water column before gra vity pulls it back down. The larger the cat (tongue) the slower the drinking. Penguins have an organ located above their eyes capable of converting salt water to fresh water. Giant anteaters have the lowest body temperature of any other mammal, 32 C (hum ans are 37). This temperature conserves energy (ants aren't very nutritious). This lack of energy means their brains don't work very quickly and they sleep 15 hours per day. The snake was found fossilized in a Columbian mine. The snake would have been 2 500 lbs, 43 ft long and 75 cm in diameter. It could have consumed crocodiles fu ll. Currently, the largest snake by length is the python at 33 ft; by mass, it' s the anaconda.

Coryanthes (Bucket Orchids) have co-evolved with orchid bees. Male bees land on the lip of the plant and fall into the bucket because it's slippery. Small kno bs inside the flour facilitate the bee climbing out toward a spout (see picture) . As the bee crawls through the flower constricts attaching two small packets c ontaining pollen to the bee. The 'glue' on the packets doesn't set immediately so the flower holds the bee for upwards of 45 minutes before setting it free! Lava lizards in the Galapagos are quite innovative when it comes to acquiring fo od. When marking its territory, male pandas will do a handstand to ensure their urin e ends up highest on the tree (similar to how a dog will raise its leg). The bacterial genus 'Clostridium' includes some of the most dangerous bacterial species: C. botulism: leads to muscle paralysis C. difficile: extremely dangerous for compromised individuals and very difficult to contain C. perfringens gangrene: involved in the breakdown of tissues C. tetani: 'lock-jaw', terribly difficult to cure Lonesome George is the rarest species on Earth. He is the LAST Pinta Island To rtoise (1 of the 11 subspecies of Galapagos tortoises). He is believed to be be tween 60 and 90 years of age. Currently he is housed with two females of simila r species however attempts to reproduce have not been successful. A woodpecker can peck 20 times per second. The largest hornets are located in Japan. They have a 3 inch wingspan with a st inger thats 0.5 an inch in length! See the video by National Geographic (N.B. T here is a short advertisement at the beginning). A study by the University of Arizona found that there are 25,127 bacteria per sq uare inch on pay phones vs. 49 per square inch on a public toilet seat. The naked mole rat lives underground in eastern Africa. It has no nerves in its skin and is not related to a mole or rat. It has lips that close behind its te eth so that it doesn't swallow dirt. Badgers and coyotes have a symbiotic relationship whereby one flushes out pray w hile the other catches it. At a British zoo Flora, a komodo dragon, gave birth without being exposed to a m ale. This is because komodo dragons can reproduce asexually, one of the largest species capable of doing this. They also have a red saliva and a venom that wo rks as an anticoagulant. E. coli can reproduce so quickly that, if left to grow with ideal conditions, in 24 hours a single bacterium could produce a mat 1 m thick covering the entire w orld! Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million d escendants. The global termite population outweighs the human population 10:1. Experts believe 100 species are lost daily due to rainforest depletion (this inc ludes microbes). Zebras are white with black stripes (if shaved they would look like white horses ). A bat's sonar is so effective that they can differentiate between single hairs on one's head. A bat's eyesight is just as effective as humans'. Dog's have been 'man's best friend' for over 12,000 years. 50 million bacteria can be contained in a single drop of liquid. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. In South East Asia, locals have reported that Rhinoceroses, when they spot a fir e, will stamp it out though this has never been officially observed. Polar bears are left-handed. Their livers are so rich in vitamin A that their c onsumption by humans is not suggested. The strongest known material (strength to weight ratio) is spider's silk. The Amur leopard is the rarest cat in the world with only 35 individuals left i n the wild. Their demise has been linked to poaching, loss of habitat, and chan ges in weather. Snails can crawl over a razor blade without injury due to a colourless discharge

they produce to facilitate travel. The number 1 killer of beavers are falling trees. Beavers are superseded only b y humans when it comes to altering their environment. In one year a horse will eat 7 times its body weight. Harvestman (daddy longlegs) are opiliones(unlike spiders which are araneae). Sp iders only have two body sections while harvestman have an abdomen with 10 secti ons and a cephalothorax which are closely joined so that they appear as one oval structure. They have a single pair of eyes, no silk glands or venom glands (th ey are not venomous). The Brontosaurus was an accident when archaeologistsplaced the head of a Camaras aurus on the body of a apatosaurus. Turtles can breathe through their rectum. The fastest land animal on the planet is the cheetah, which can travel over 100 km/h. Some species of bug can SCUBA dive! Using waxy covered legs, they collect tin y air bubbles around them and create a bubble around their head which they can u se to breath. Some have gone further using these bubbles as external lungs. It pulls oxygen out of the water and forces carbon dioxide into it. The King Cobra's venom is so potent that it cankill 13 adult humans or a full gr own elephant. Cats can see 6 times more effectively than humans. A chimpanzee can recognize itself in the mirror, but monkeys cannot. Bats are the only mammals capable of flying. 'Flying' squirrels actually glide. The furthest recorded glide was a Canadian football field. A cockroach can live 9 days without its head (its brains are located in its knee s), submerged in water for 24 hours and can survive 800x more radiation than hum ans. In 7 years, a female cat can have approximately 420,000 descendants. Out of eve ry 10 kittens only 2 will have a permanent home. Elephants are the only four legged animal to have all four knees bending forward . This means that they cannot jump. Their trunks have 40,000 muscles and no bo nes. The two-toed sloth has the most ribs of any animal (6 more than an elephant, 10 more than a horse, and 22 more than a human). Sloths spend almost their entire life upside down including eating, sleeping and mating. They sleep 15 hours a day and take 1 month to digest a meal. Their fur is designed to attract algae g rowth and works as camouflage. Donkeys kill more people per year than plane crashes. Cat's whiskers are used for measurement. If they touch something on both sides the space the cat is trying to squeeze through is too small. Male Malaysian fruit bats can produce milk for their young. Butterflies taste with their feet. Cows have 4 stomachs. A penny would cover 3 hummingbird eggs. 18 hummingbirds weigh 1 ounce. Cheetahs are prone to various diseases because of inbreeding. This is attribut ed to a very small population. The poison arrow frog is so venomous that only 1/100,000 of an ounce of its veno m can kill a human. Snakes can still bite after they are dead due to nervous reflexes. The now extinct Irish Elk had the largest antlers of all animals. They were 3.6 m (12 ft) across and weighed 88 lbs (40 kg). A hummingbird flaps its wings about 80 times per second and its heart beats 1260 times per minute. They burn so much energy they must eat every 10 minutes. The arctic tern has the longest migration of any bird travelling from Arctic br eeding grounds to Antarctica. The longest flight was over 22,000 km! Snails are able to sleep for up to 3 years! The black widow spider has venom that is 15 times more potent then a rattlesnake 's. It is named the black 'widow' because it eats its husband after mating. If humans were as strong as ants we would be able to lift 3 compact cars over ou r heads!

Red ants recruit 'slaves' to build their homes and find food. They do this by s tealing the larva of other ants. Red ants are unable to do anything except figh t. It requires 15 lbs of food to make 1 lb of beef. If you look into a gecko's ear you can see through to the other side. Bees communicate via dance. They walk in a pattern which is copied by others an d initiates an action. The longest flight by a chicken was 13 seconds. Camels are native to North America. Originally thought to be a species of its own, the Triceratops has been found to be a juvenile Torosaurus. Examinations of skull samples indicated that the 2 ' separate' species were in fact the same species (just different stages of develo pment). Therefore the name 'triceratops', being more well known, took priority and now the 'Torosaurus', as we knew it, no longer exists. Giraffes only sleep 20 minutes per day (usually in 5 minute intervals) and they do this standing up! They have the same number of bones in their neck compared to us. Their tails can reach up to 8 ft in length. Mosquitoes are the cause of the most human deaths of any other war or natural di saster. They have infrared vision that allows them to see at night and identify individual blood vessels. The largest beaver dam was discovered in northern Alberta using Google Earth. It's 850 m in length. It's more than 1000 ft longer than the Hoover Dam. It t ook the beavers over 20 years to complete. The Amphicoelias fragillimus is a 'long neck' discovered in the late 1800s. Onl y drawings of the bones remain. Calculations reveal a towering animal capable o f reaching 122 tons (25 elephants). There is still little evidence of their exi stence and some experts still agree that the Argentinosaurus (in blue) is the la rgest at 100 tons. Cows have been found to have an innate ability to detect the north and south mag netic poles. A student examining Google Earth found pictures of cows grazing, s leeping and standing facing magnetic north. This quality is shared by birds, tu rtles and salmon. Red squirrels have been found to adopt orphan pups. By calling to one another, mothers know whether family members live in their neighbourhood. If the communi cation stops they'll investigate and, if necessary, adopt one pup. This boosts the likelihood of her genes getting into the next generation. Matriarch elephants are the herd's memory bank and determining friends from foes . It is this importance in old age that potentially explains why elephants are one of the only animals (aside from humans) who undergo menopause. The kiwi is a bird that lives in holes underground in New Zealand. While it has weakened eyesight and sense of touch, it has a heightened sense of smell (rare in birds) and the only bird with nostrils in their beak. They also have, propor tionally, the largest egg and only lay one egg per year. You are more likely to die from an attacking cow than an attacking shark. After bananas, a gorilla's favourite food is celery. The bush cricket has the largest testes relative to its body size. They account for 14% of the insect's bodyweight. If applied to a man, each testicle would w eigh 6 bags of sugar each!