Monthly Archives: March 2011

Sugar gliders mating

For humans the season of love might has passed. But for our animals the season of love has just begun.

Tonight we heard noises from the small mammals room and luckily found a pair of sugar gliders getting to mate. After a long rest since last year, two of the young adult males are mature now and started fighting for a girl. This is the dominant male who won the battle and then could not wait to start a vigorous mating, successfully.

Sugar gliders might look like rodent but they are just not as productive. They are actually marsupials from Australian forests. Litter size is usually only 1, or sometimes 2. Baby gliders are called joeys, like kangaroos and other marsupials. Joeys will stay in mothers pouch living and growing until they are completely weaned at 16 weeks.

Quake damges Japan, people and animals

This massive 8.9/9.0 magnitude Japanese earthquake shows once again how powerful natural disasters can be. I wish our friends and everyone in Japan all the best.

From the news we get an idea of how bad the damage is to people. There will probably be not much information about that of wildlife but I guess the damage to Japanese animals would not be any smaller.

Japanese wildlife might not be so well known as the Chinese or Australian ones, but from my knowledge Japan has a pretty good variety of species. Within those there are over 50 species of mammals and more than 70 species of reptiles and amphibians that are endemic to Japan. Here is one of them, the Japanese Pond Turtle (Mauremys japonica).

We all understand how important it is to protect endangered species. But on the other hand, species that are endemic to a small area are running the same risk, such as the Japanese Pond Turtle above, even though they are not yet considered a threatened species.

From the Japanese quake we realize how fragile endemic animals can be. Once that area is damaged, the entire species is gone, means extinction. Damage can easily be caused by natural disasters, wars, pollution, deforestation, just to name a few.

Protecting the environment is what we have to do, but this is never enough. Captive breeding should be a thing to do to complement each other. It might not be the most natural way but at least it saves the species in case if its natural habitat is damaged.

For instance our animals which were born in our farm are living a meaningful life not only to help strengthen its gang but as well to be an ambassador for its own species educating people.

I am a natural person myself but for the sake of animals lives I think we should practice extraordinary solution for extraordinary period.

Tarantulas eat alive

If you find having a tarantula crawling over your hand hair-raising, you’ve gotta see them eat to scale up your feeling.

Tarantulas are predators. In the wild when the hunger comes they will prey on almost everything smaller- insects, geckos, tree frogs, and even venomous snakes. The way they hunt is fascinating. Unlike other spiders tarantulas don’t spin web. Instead, they capture prey on their own by their speed and power. Fangs are located underneath so they will swiftly move on top of the prey, bite, and eat.

From the prey’s view it would be extremely scary. Imagine a huge hairy spider jumps on top of you, and you’re surrounded by 8 hairy legs getting a nasty bite on top of your head by 2 huge shape fangs. It’s kinda like you’re going to a salon for a perm and inside the machine there are 2 vertical swords waiting.. Finally venom is injected directly into your brain and you suffer gigantic pain before falling into a coma. Even after you die your body melts into bloody liquid turning into nutrition for another creature… Alright, luckily there’s not yet any tarantula found bigger than human 🙂

But everything has its good side if you will use some brain. Our tarantulas are mainly fed on insects. so no bloody scene during feeding. I always try to find interesting facts out of scary critters. Here is one now I can think of. Interesting to tell, unlike other animals, the smaller young tarantulas eat more than the bigger adults. Spiderlings can feed as much as everyday, while adults can fast for 3 months or more. Besides, tarantulas can smell. Without nostrils they smell by feet. Imagine you have to step on a cheesecake with barefoot to taste it. 🙂