Weekly Facts on Nature 5

The Highest Flying Bird

The birds are most expert migratory animal on earth and they can overcome any obstacles on their way even it is the highest obstacle on earth, the Everest. Yes, it is very true for one migratory bird, Bar-headed Goose. This Asian goose is now considered as the highest flying bird in the world.

The Pretty Bar Headed Goose - Photo Wikipedia

A recent GPS survey reveals that the bar-headed Goose starts migrating from their breeding home at central Asia (Mongolia) and covers  more than 5000 km in two months to reach the low lands in India. These low lands are grazing grounds for the birds in winter as the grass on the high altitude dry up. The total migration takes around two months, as they take frequent stop.

The most interesting and puzzling thing about their migration is that they cross the highest mountain range on Earth, the Himalayan, in a single flight within eight hours. They choose the toughest and highest route of the Himalayan crossing the Everest to reach their destination. The GPS study records that the geese fly over 6,500 meter (22000 feet) in the Himalayan range. But there are reports of the birds flying over the mount Everest at around 30000 feet.

The Highest Flying Bird - Photo BBC

Another very contrasting fact about the Bar-headed bird is that unlike other high flying birds that reach high altitude by soaring and gliding up, the Bar-headed goose reaches the extra-ordinary height by smartly flapping their wings. This is the reason why these geese don’t depend on the tail-wind on the Himalayan range, in fact they deny the winds and starts climbing up high altitude when the wind blows out. The bird’s body is specially made to meet this exceptional capability.  More red-blood cells and more capillaries than normal birds deliver their muscles more oxygen than others.

Though their flying and migration nature is confirmed, yet it is still not known clearly why these birds take such a hard route. There are lower passes available in the Himalayan range, that could have given them easy passage.  A hypothesis suggests that the geese choose to fly over rather than around the Himalaya is that the birds have been doing so for millions of years—long before the mountains reached their current heights.

Weekly facts on Nature 4

Amphibian Fish

When we refer to ‘Fish’, we always mean a aquatic living being. It’s difficult to imagine fish without water. But in reality, there are significant number of fish, that are considered as amphibian than aquatic. These fish spend considerable amount of their lifetime without water.

Mudskipper  is a very well known example of amphibian fish which can spend days out of water in wet mud. They are found in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions, mostly in the mangrove swamps of Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic coast of Africa. The modskipper has the ability to breathe through skin, lining of the mouth and throat in wet conditions. They also another special way that enhance their breathing outside water.  They have a special cavity behind their ears where sea water is stored. As they rotate their eyes, pressure is applied to that cavity and this reoxygenates the stored water, lubricates the gill flaps and restores the gills to their normal function. The mudskippers can survive upto 4 days out of water! While outside water, they can walk with their pectoral fins, eat food and also fight for their territory.

Lung Fish can burrow in land upto two years

Another expert amphibian fish is called Lungfish. It is a fresh water fish found in Africa, South America and Australia.  Currently there are six surviving species of Lungfishes found around the world. The Lungfishes have limb like fins. They can breathe air with their lungs.  African and South American lungfish are capable of surviving seasonal drying out of their habitats by burrowing into mud throughout the dry season upto two years.

The Power of Reproduction

In human society, the King and his army conquer to build a kingdom. But in an another society King and Queen just reproduce to the extreme to build a whole colony and empire to rule! This nothing but our very known ‘Termite’ colony.

When a mature  male and female termite form a pair, they land and break off their wings that they used to swarm.  The couple first find a shelter together. Their dream homes are normally a small hole or depression that’s near both soil and wood. The couple work together to seal this nest with saliva, soil and their own waste. Then in that sealed chamber, they mate. The female starts laying eggs. Everyday she lays thousands of eggs creating a colony in just few days.

The Termite Queen with enlarged abdomen

The termite couple takes care for the first generation of the new colony on their own until they’ve raised enough workers to take over the job. Workers expand the nest, and the queen’s abdomen enlarges so she can lay more eggs. At this stage she becomes many times bigger than the males. The king grows only slightly larger after initial mating and continues to mate with the queen for life. The colony started with just pair of termite grows to thousands in number. The male and female becomes the King and the Queen of the kingdom and they keep on expanding their population. It takes two to four years for the colony to mature, and then the cycle starts again with a new set of alates swarming to form new colonies.

The King and Queen not only reproduces they also take full control of their kingdom. They produce a chemical substance, pheromones,  that helps regulating the life in the kingdom. These pheromones determine how many larvae become workers, soldiers and alates (future king/queen). If the king or queen dies, these pheromones disappear. Then, one of the secondary or tertiary reproductive becomes the new primary reproductive, sometimes after killing off the competition. Queens can live up to 25 years, while most workers live between two and five years.

The Animal Race

If a race of all the animals in the world is held, do you know who will win?

The answer is Peregrine Falcon.

Peregrine Falcon - The Fastest

Photo Courtesy Flickr THE Holy Hand Grenade

Yes, Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal in the world. It can reach upto 325 km/hr during its hunting. It is widely distributed birds of prey found across all the continents except Antarctica. It’s maximum speed is almost thrice of the fastest mammal, Cheetah.

Relative to their body size, Hummingbirds are the fastest. An Anna’s hummingbirds performing dives as part of their courtship ritual can reach up to 385 body lengths per second (blps). It is almost twice of Peregrine Falcon (200 blps). In terms of absolute speed the Falcon still stands taller at around 90 meters/second against 27.3 metres per second

The Most Traveling Mammal

Gray Whale (Baleen Whale) is probably the most traveling mammal on the world in terms of distance. Every year it travels or migrates from breeding grounds in low latitude warm waters during winter to feeding areas in higher latitudes, cool waters during summer. They  cover 20000-22000 km every year for this migration. Traveling day and night, the gray (grey) whales average approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles) per day with a average speed of around 8 km/hour (5 mph). The gray whales can live up to 70 years. During the whole lifetime a gray whale almost travels 1.5 million kms!

1.5 million Kilometer is equivalent to around 38 round trip of the earth by the equator or close to two return trips to the Moon from Earth!

Grey Whales - Source www.magazine.noaa.gov