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Baobab Tree
The Baobab tree is quite an unusual looking tree, as if its roots are upside down. While it may be ugly and unusual it has many adaptations which help it survive in the midst of the hottest of savannas. The Baobab is found in Africa and India, mostly around the equator. In wet months the baobab stores water in its thick and corky trunk. If Baobab did not keep water inside its trunk, then Baobab would dry because there are nine dry months ahead in the savanna. Fire is very usual in the savannas and for that reason Baobab has fire-resistant trunk.Once a Baobab gets big enough, its leaves are way out of reach of even the biggest animals, giraffes and elephants. Baobabs are useless for lumber or firewood, as they are very fibrous and spongy because they store lots of water in the trunk. When someone takes an ax at the tree in kind of bounces off and even saws get clogged up and stop dead, a good thing these days when so many other trees are used for building houses and carvings. The Baobab has also an extremely long lifetime, a minimum of a thousand years and a plausible two thousand years.
Prickly Pear
Prickly pear species are found in abundance in the West and Southwest of the United States and throughout much of Mexico. Prickly pears are also the only types of cactus natively found to grow in the eastern United States. Prickly Pears have many adaptations that allow them to live in dry areas, such as collecting water efficiently and conserving it for a long amount of time also conserves water by not having leaves. They have a thick, hard-walled stem, so that when it rains, more water is stored in the stem. The stems are photosynthetic, green and fleshy. A thick, waxy coating keeps the water inside the stem from evaporating easily. The Prickly Pear has very long, fibrous roots, which help it absorb much more moisture from the soil than other normal plants. It also has protective ‘spikes’ mostly over its body, while some animals still manage to eat its tasty fruit, they help by dispersing the seeds to other places.
Porcupine
A porcupine is any of 27 species of rodent belonging to the families Erethizontidae or Hystricidae. All defend themselves with hair modified into sharp spines. They mostly live in North America, Africa and South America. Porcupines have many adaptations to their way of life. They have strong, curved claws for climbing the trees they feed on and sometimes sleep in. They also have rough, pebbly soles on their feet to grip tree trunks and branches. The muscular tail is used for balancing in trees. Like all rodents, a porcupine's incisor teeth continuously grow and are kept sharp by continuous wear against each other. A porcupine's eyesight is poor but it has an excellent sense of smell and hearing. The porcupine has about 3,000 quills that are each 3 inches long. Some porcupines have hooked, barbed shaped quills that are difficult to remove. These quills can stick into the attacker's flesh. The quills of the porcupine could kill the attacker by the germs injected with the quills or by damage to vital organs.
Woodpecker
Woodpeckers are found worldwide, except for Australia, Madagascar and the extreme Polar Regions. Most species live in forests or woodland habitats, although a few are known to live in desert areas. They have strong beaks for drilling and drumming on trees and long sticky tongues for extracting food. Woodpecker beaks are very long, sharp and strong to aid them in finding food. Woodpeckers have long sticky tongues, which possess bristles, help these birds in grabbing and extracting insects deep within a hole of a tree. Woodpeckers posses zygodactyl feet. Zygodactyl feet consist of four toes, the first and the fourth facing frontward and the second and third facing back. This type of foot arrangement is good for holding onto the limbs and trunks of trees. The Woodpecker can walk vertically up a tree trunk, which is helpful for activities such as searching for food or digging in nests.
Preying Mantis
Preying Mantises are well known for their hunting abilities. They are exclusively predatory, and their diet consists of living insects, including flies and aphids. Most mantises are ambush predators, waiting for prey to come close so that they can attack. The mantis then attacks at extreme speeds. Prey are caught and held tightly with grasping, spiked legs. The Mantis is the only insect that can rotate its head up to 300 degrees sideways. The insects eyes are not too good at night but excellent at day, as it depends on its vision to attack. Mantises are masters of camouflage and are able to blend in with the foliage, both to avoid predators themselves, and to better prey on their victims. The Mantis also has the ability to mimic its appearance as either living or dead, like leaves, sticks, tree bark, and blades of grass, flowers, or even stones. Mantises can bite; they have no venom and are not dangerous to humans.
Why the fossil record is not complete
Many reasons conclude why the fossil record does not contain all the species that have ever lived. The main reason (at a specific place) is that not all species of animals live in one place, they are all scattered all over the world because of different adaptations and habitats. This causes fossil records to be different than other areas and makes putting them all together extremely difficult. Species especially which do not have bones such as jellyfish or insects makes it almost impossible to fossilize them and they cannot be included in the fossil records. At any given time, some portion of the earth is being eroded away. Mostly, high regions erode, and the resulting bits and pieces get washed downhill. Any creature which lives in an erosion area is extremely unlikely to get buried. There’s also the issue of scavengers and rot. Forests have both, plus forests tend to have acidic soil, which has bad effects on bones. Acid rain also deteriorates the quality of bones. Weathering plays a huge role in destroying bones so they then become fragments or completely destroyed and cannot be fossilized.
Natural Selection
Natural Selection is a process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms and species best adapted to their environment can best survive and transmits their genetic code or characteristics in more numbers to future generations while those less adapted are more likely to be eliminated. Natural selection is also the process that results in the evolution of organisms. It gives us the opportunity to observe and find out how animals adapt to their environment, step by step, because it just doesn’t happen over night or a few years. How different parts of animals change to better suite their needs and how many other changes occur in their anatomy, changing their physical appearance and making much more adapted species. Natural selection can produce amazing adaptations but it does not produce perfection. If your genes are "good enough" you'll get some offspring into the next generation and you don't have to be perfect. This can be seen in the populations around us, people may have genes for genetic diseases, plants may not have the genes to survive a drought, or a predator may not be quite fast enough to catch his prey every time he is hungry. No population or organism is perfectly naturally selected or adapted. Natural selection is the result of variation, differential reproduction and heredity; it has no goals. It does not want to produce or balance an ecosystem. Natural selection just selects among whatever variations exist in the population. The result is evolution.
Extinction of species
A species becomes extinct when the last existing member of that species dies. Species have become extinct throughout geological history, but never before were they endangered as they are now due to human activities. Overhunting and overfishing have threatened animal species since the dawn of man due to the need of human survival. Many large predators are killed because they compete with human hunters for wild animals like deer and elk, because they prey on domestic animals like sheep, or sometimes because they threaten humans. Many species have become extinct or endangered as their natural habitat has been converted for human land-use purposes. Deforestation also starves many species of their habitats in which they live in and get their food from. One of today’s biggest culprits of endangering all known species of earth, caused by mainly the burning of fossil fuels, is pollution and global warming.
Why Darwin didn't publish his book until 1959
Charles Darwin was a British scientist, who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection, in which he published in a book called Origin of Species.Darwin produced a 200 page summary in 1884 of the Origin of Speciesto be published only when. He had realized the importance of his theory (but was also worried that there would a lot of objection to the theory and how people would react to it) and wanted it preserved in case something happened to him. Many friends urged him to publish, but Darwin denied until 1857, when Alfred Wallace (friend) presented papers explaining the same theory of evolution to the society. Wallace had also been on a round-the-world tour as a naturalist, only his voyage had focused on the Amazon where Darwin had focused on the Galapagos Islands. The scientists of the society agreed that Darwin had thought of it first and so should get the right to publish first.
A very tall giraffe: Advantages & Disadvantages
The male giraffe may grow to be from about 5 to 6 meters tall. The female is somewhat shorter. A giraffe that is much taller than the rest of the other giraffe population would wield a couple of significant disadvantages but a few advantages would be present in the long run. It would be far too dangerous for the giraffe to venture out into the open wilderness as its height would reveal its presence to distant prey such as lions, so it would be in danger of getting killed every time it goes out looking for food. As far as food is concerned the giraffe will have no problem, because it is a herbivore it will be able to easily reach the highest of trees. Unfortunately the giraffe’s disadvantages are far more serious and outweigh its advantages, so in my prediction this giraffe would simply not survive in the wilderness.
History and Discovery of the Coelacanth
The coelacanth, presumed extinct for 75 million years…
A few days before Christmas in 1938, a Coelacanth was caught at the Chalumna River on the east coast of South Africa. The fish was caught in a shark gill net by Captain Goosen and his crew, who had no idea of the significance of their find. They thought the fish was strange, so they alerted the local museum in East London. The director of the museum at the time was Marjorie Courtney-Latimer. She alerted ichthyologist Dr J.L.B. Smith to this amazing discovery. When he examined the fish a few months later he confirmed his suspicions: it was a coelacanth. Dr. Smith named the new species Latimeria chalumnae and focused his work to find more specimens further north in the Indian Ocean around Madagascar, where he thought the coelacanth originated, because the taxidermist could not preserve the soft body parts of the specimen, Smith was determined that another specimen must be found to allow the creature to be properly observed and documented for science. He and his wife spread the word of their search on their scientific travels and it paid off, because in 1952, a coelacanth was caught off the coast of the Comoro Archipelago. On July 30 1998, an entire population of coelacanths was discovered by a fishing crew near Indonesia.
Since 1952 many scientists have extensively studied the coelacanth. Evolutionary biologists have long thought the species a close relative of the ancestor of all tetrapods (four-legged creatures), Homo sapiens (humans) included. The debate over the coelacanth's place in evolution is ongoing, but detailed anatomical study has left no doubt that this animal has a number of unique characteristics, including a joint in its braincase that divides it front and back and an organ in its snout thought to be electro-receptive. Live observation from a submersible in 1987 by a team of scientists led by Dr. Hans Fricke witnessed acrobatic behaviors unknown in the fish world.
All coelacanths, living and fossil are members of a group of fishes called Crossopterygians. It is this group that most evolutionists believe evolved into amphibians and all land vertebrates — including humans.
Humans & Modern Chimp evolution
Like all other organisms, humans have evolved over time from earlier species, and share a genetic relationship to all other forms of life on Earth. Modern humans belong to the group of mammals known as Primates. The evolution of the Primates started about 55 million years ago. Among all animals, humans and chimps are the most alike in brain and body form, by having a complex social life and in many other major and minor features. The fossil record of several ancient ape/chimp species shows that the split between the common ancestors of the old world monkeys and the apes happened at least 20 million years ago. Scientifically humans or any other species could not have evolved independently. While our singular ancestor evolved, they later had a split which resulted in two diverse species; the chimps and humans. Humans later had many minor changes such as to their height, size and brain developments, but not until this present day was there a major change leading to a different species.
Bibliography / References
· Question 1: Woodpecker: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodpecker
Porcupines: northern.edu/natsource/MAMMALS/Porcup1
: lsb.syr.edu/projects/cyberzoo/porcupine
Prickly Pear: coolwebschool.org/moodle/ file.php/2/presentations/adaptations3
:enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/types/cactus
Preying Mantis: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantodea#Conservation_status
· Question 2: don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/completeness
· Question 3: answers.com/topic/natural-selection
: evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/misconcep_02
· Question 4: science.jrank.org/pages/2467/Endangered-Species
· Question 5: skeptics.com.au/resources/darwinbio
· Question 7: austmus.gov.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/coela
: nature.ca/discover/treasures/anim/tr3/coe_e
Question 8: anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/ha/primate
Written and Edited by Khaider6
