Episode 1: Everything About Animals: Show Notes

Episode 1: Everything About Animals: Show Notes

 

Mirror Self Recognition Test (MSR)

Like many animals, until a child is about 18 months, they don’t understand that the image in the mirror is a reflection.

Magpies are one of the few animals that seems to pass the MSR test. The bird in this vidoe has a yellow sticker placed under it’s beak on the chest. It can only see the sticker in the mirror.

 

A little more in depth of Dr, GG. Gallup Jr. article and self recognition in chimpanzees:Nature magazine

 

Featherless Chickens

Researchers, led by Avigdor Cahaner bred the featherless chicken at the genetics faculty of the Rehovot Agronomy Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.

  • 50 years of breeding
  • Not genetically modified
  • Taste the same
  • Same nutritional value
  • Advantages:

    • Faster growth
    • Their meat is lower in fat
    • They are energy efficient and require less food to produce the same amount of meat
    • They can adapt better in hot climates
    • The breed is more ecofriendly, as there is no need for plucking, a process that contaminates large quantities of water with feathers and fat tissues.
  • Disadvantages

    • Hard time surviving in cool and cold areas
    • More prone to parasites, mosquitoes and sunburns
    • Males sometimes fail to mate,
      • as the feathers are required in certain mating rituals (flapping wings, showing them off etc.)
    • Females are routinely injured during mating
      • by the rooster’s nails and beak, as they have no feathers to protect their skin. For this reason, breeders commonly remove the male’s nails.

A number of other hairless, featherless animals:

  • Hairless guinea pigs called skinny pigs
  • Crossbreed of hairless lab animal and regular guinea pig created hairless mutation
  • Hairless Hamster
  • Genetic mutation
  • Hairless Cats
  • Featherless birds
    • Can pluck out feathers due to stress

 

Goliath Bird Eating Spider

GIANT SPIDER!!!!!!!  AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I gotta go lay down.

AKA giant bird-eating spider,

giant bird-eating tarantula,

giant tarantula,

Size- One Hand, two hands
Heaviest
Second Larget-Huntsman largest
Doesn’t actually usually eat birds.
Largely insects, invertebrates such as earth worm.
Will also catch small vertebrates like lizards and frogs
Poor eyesight
mostly nocturnal
hunts close to burrow
NOT GOOD BIRD HABITAT
What it’s got going for it:
2 centimeter fang, but bite only a bit worse than a wasp for humans.
  • scare off an attacker by rubbing together bristles on its first and second pair of legs, producing a hissing sound
  • barbed, irritating hairs on its abdomen,
    • can flick at an attacker,
      • potentially causing severe irritation to the skin, eyes, nose and mouth
  • may also rear up on its hind legs, showing its large fangs
  • the female has been known to add irritating hairs from its abdomen to the egg sac.
  • Wicked strong fangs can puncture a mouse skull
  • secretes venom into punctures to liquefy, then it eats.
  • Will attack whatever they encounter pretty much.

Platypus: Who Needs a Stomach Anyway?

National Geographic and the loss of the stomach

Related image

image: Duck-Billed Platypus by R. Bruce Horsfall. From “College Zoology,” by Robert W. Hegner. Published by MacMillan, 1951.

Some places you can go for more info:

https://mrsgrensp.weebly.com/nutrition.html

https://theglyptodon.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-platypus-has-no-stomach/

https://www.livescience.com/41661-why-platypus-wont-regain-stomach.html