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Showing posts from January, 2022

Includedmoney

Includedmoney

Will New Aqua Feed Save Ocean Life From Extinction?

 If you are a social media animal, you could not have missed the obituary to the Great Barrier Reef, which went viral in October 2016 . Since then, scientists have confirmed that a large part of it is dead from two consecutive world-level coral bleaching events. What was most striking about the extinction event is that it is not caused by any direct human intervention. Instead, one can think of the reef as a sensor to the health of Earth's oceans. The reef is dying not because someone is killing it, but because oceans are chronically and perhaps terminally ill. What ails our oceans? Many things, including the almost intractable problem of global warming, but one practice does stick out: the practice of destructive ocean fishing. Since our inception, we have captured fish and aquatic life mostly from the wild. But with the population explosion and growing demand, the ocean and the rivers cannot satiate our hunger any more. Since the mid-1980s, the share of wild capture in global f...

Bull Frogging

 In the summer, just around dusk, a chorus of frogs begin to vocalize on Webster Lake. In our cove, a deep bass voice, much like the roar of a bull, chimes in after the others are in full voice. This singer is the American bullfrog or simply bullfrog, as most of us call it. A familiar amphibious frog found in the United States and Canada is a member of the family Ranidae , or "true frogs". Native to eastern North America its natural range extends from the Atlantic seacoast to as far west as Oklahoma and Kansas. Recently it was introduced to Nantucket Island, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, California, Washington, and Hawaii. It is considered an invasive species in these states, as it may outcompete native amphibian species, upsetting the local ecological balance. In some foreign countries such as Mexico, China, South Korea, and Argentina the bullfrog was intentionally released, either as a food source or as biological control agents of sorts. So how do you spot a ...

Information About Carnivores and Bears

 Also known as the grizzly, Kodiak, and Kamchatkan bear, the brown bear Ursus arctos, with a head and body length of 2 to 3 meters (6½ to 10 feet) and weight 110 to 450 kilograms (240 to 990 pounds), is one of the largest ursids. Along with the Asian black bear Ursus thibetanus and American black bear Ursus americanus , they feed on tubers, berries, fish, and carrion. Polar bears live in an extremely harsh environment without such food resources, and they are adapted to feed almost exclusively on marine mammals, especially seals. Polar bears have large, long heads, and their skulls closely resemble those of their neared relatives, the eared seals. They range in length from 2.5 to 3 meters (8 to 10 feet), and in weight from 175 to 650 kilograms (375 to 1,430 pounds). Polar bears may travel on ice floes as much as 65 to 80 kilometers (40 to 50 miles) in a day in search of seals. The females do not breed until they reach five years of age. When pregnant they isolate themselves in a d...