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31/01/2023

What Was Asia Like During Ice Age?

Asia. The largest continent on Earth. Covering roughly 30% of the earth's landmass and home to 2 thirds of the world's human population. This continent has a huge range of climates and habitats. From arctic and subarctic conditions in Siberia to tropical climates in southern India and Southeast Asia. It is wet across the southeast and dry across much of the interior. There are mountain ranges and valleys, deserts, and tundra. Today Asia has a rich biodiversity and a huge array of wildlife.
But what was it like during the last ice age?

30/01/2023

Could Komodo Dragons Survive In North America?

Komodo dragons are the largest lizards in the world. Growing up to 10 feet long and weighing up to 150 pounds, these lizards are renowned the world over for their formidable presence. It was once thought that their saliva was so toxic from all the bacteria living in their mouths that victims died from sepsis after a single bite. It has now been discovered that the Komodo dragon releases venom from glands in its mouth. This acts as an anticoagulant and causes excessive blood loss in their victims. They can attack and consume prey much larger than themselves, tearing flesh from a carcass or swallowing the animal whole. But could they survive in North America? To answer this question, let's look into some of the things required for these animals to survive and thrive. We can consider the habitat and climate in North America, as well as the prey species available to them and any threats such as those from predators or human activity.

29/01/2023

Why Are There No Bears In Australia?

Bears are mammals that belong to the family Ursidae. They are covered in thick fur and have long snouts, short tails, and non-retractable claws. Sizes between the different bear species are hugely variable.
The largest of the bears is the polar bear, along with the Kodiak bear which is a subspecies of Brown bear. These bears can measure almost 10 feet in length and weigh up to 1500 pounds. In comparison, the smallest of the bear species is the sun bear which grows up to 55 inches long and can weigh 140 pounds.
There are 8 species of bears in total. They inhabit wide and varied habitats across the globe but none is found in Australia. The wrongly named koala bear, unique to Australia, is not a bear at all but is a marsupial like kangaroos and opossums.
In fact, Australia has a unique mammalian fauna that doesn’t include any land predators larger than the dingo. And even the dingo was an introduced species brought to Australia thousands of years ago.
So why does Australia have such unique and fascinating wildlife and why doesn’t it have any bears?

28/01/2023

Could Leopards Survive In Amazon among Jaguars?

The Leopard is a medium-sized wildcat that is natively found in a variety of different habitats across sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. A member of the “Big Cat” family, the Leopard is an agile and opportunistic hunter that has been able to exploit habitats unused by other large felines as it spends a great deal of its time high in the tree branches. Seven different sub-species of Leopard differ in their appearance and geographic location, with the African Leopard being the most widespread and the others being the rare Amur Leopard, the Anatolian Leopard, the Barbary Leopard, the Sinai Leopard, the South Arabian Leopard, and the Zanzibar Leopard.
As you can see, leopards are great hunters and have amazing qualities. But can they cope in the Amazon rainforest?

27/01/2023

What Was South America Like During The Ice Age?

South America is a continent comprising 12 countries as well as 3 additional dependent territories. It is mostly in the southern and western hemispheres, with the far north situated in the northern hemisphere.
Its climate is wide and varied. A large part of the north and center is tropical, whilst parts of the south and west are arid or temperate.
The continent is quite simply breathtaking in its geography and ecology. Home to the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon, South America also boasts the Angel Falls as the world’s highest waterfalls; the Andes as the longest mountain range; the Atacama desert as the driest non-polar desert; and Lopez de Micay as the wettest place on Earth.
But what was South America like during the ice age? Did it always have such a varied existence?

26/01/2023

Are Barbary Lions Really Extinct?

Tracking the evolutionary relationships of the various subspecies of modern lions can be a tricky affair. As far as paleontologists can tell, the Barbary Lion evolved from a population of European Lions, which themselves descended from Asiatic Lions, which are still extant, albeit in dwindling numbers, in modern-day India. Whatever its ultimate heritage, the Barbary Lion shares one dubious honor with most lion subspecies, having been wiped off the face of the earth by human encroachment and the dwindling of its once-expansive habitat.
The Barbary Lion, also known as the Atlas Lion, is an African lion subspecies, formerly native to North Africa, including the Atlas Mountains. The Barbary lion was long considered one of the biggest lion subspecies, or even the largest of lions and African Felidae.

25/01/2023

Could Lions Survive In North America?

Today’s lions mostly live in Africa with a small population restricted to Gir National Park, India. However, they once roamed further afield. The Eurasian lion prowled mainland Europe and Asia 780,000 years ago until its extinction 10,000 years ago. North America also had its own lion, aptly named the American lion or cave lion. Some scientists believe this lion evolved from the Eurasian lions that crossed over from Eurasia via the Bering land bridge into North America. These first lions that established themselves in North America eventually gave rise to the American lions and then South America’s jaguar.
Although the American lion successfully inhabited North America for thousands of years, the continent during the Pleistocene was very different from today. Not only that, but the American lion was a different species from today’s African and Asian lions. Just because this prehistoric lion thrived in North America, doesn’t mean that modern lions would do the same.
Here, we look at this possibility and ask the question ‘could lions survive in North America?’

23/01/2023

What Was Australia Like During The Ice Age?

Some 180 million years ago, the supercontinent of Gondwana split. One of the breakaway landmasses from that separation contained what would become Australia and Antarctica. By 30 million years ago Australia had fully separated and journeyed north on its own. Since then, changes in land formation and climate, and the physical separation from the rest of the world, led to the unique flora and fauna that we know in Australia today. More than 80% of our plants, mammals, reptiles, and frogs are unique to Australia and are found nowhere else in the world.
Thousands of years ago, the inland region of eastern Australia was a far cry from the sere place it is today. During the Ice Age, this part of the Southern Hemisphere hosted its own array of big charismatic creatures—answers to the woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats up north—some of which roamed the then-forested regions of Queensland and Victoria. In a country famous today for its curious and sometimes venomous fauna, Australia’s prehistoric menagerie has proven just as weird, if not weirder.
Australia is so different from the rest of the world because it’s geographically isolated. It broke off from the supercontinent Gondwana 99 million years ago and has been doing its own thing ever since. That’s why it has so many marsupials compared to everywhere else. It was only in the Pleistocene that placental mammals were able to come over from Southeast Asia as the continent drew closer to Indonesia, and then, only bats and rats.
Most large mammals and birds went extinct at the end of the Ice Age, but Australia was the hardest hit of all the continents, with 90% going extinct. Uniformitarians try to explain this via two different hypotheses: either they went extinct because of climate change, or humans hunted them to extinction.

23/01/2023

Why Don't Any Big Cats Live in Europe?

A lot has been discussed about the majestic animals of the African safari or the unique fauna of the rainforests in South America that many wonder how animals live in other parts of the world. Civilization and progress may have driven their wildlife to more remote areas but with a plethora of natural and semi-natural habitats—from tundras to maquis—Europe is home to interesting fauna too.
Of the 270 species of mammals found in the continent, 78 are endemic. There are over 800 species of birds in Europe. 75 amphibian species including 56 endemic ones also call the continent their home. 344 species of fresh-water fish abound in Europe's water bodies. Of these, 200 are found only in the continent. Over 100,000 invertebrate species are also found there. Reptilians' diversity includes both venomous and non-venomous snakes, lizards, and turtles. Although there are very interesting animals in Europe, there is a niche that has no representation on this continent: big cats.
In this video, we will try to explain why there are no big cats in Europe.

22/01/2023

What Was The World Wildlife Like During The Ice Age?

For hundreds of millions of years, an abundance of large animals, the megafauna, was a prominent feature of the land and oceans. However, in the last few tens of thousands of years—a blink of an eye on many evolutionary and biogeochemical timescales—something dramatic happened to Earth’s ecology; megafauna largely disappeared from vast areas, rendered either actually or functionally extinct. Only in small parts of the world do megafauna exist at diversities anything close to their previous state, and, in many of these remaining regions, they are in a state of functional decline through population depletion and range contraction.
The last ice age peaked around 20,000 years ago. Glaciers covered huge areas of North America, Europe, South America, and Asia. The last ice age was during the Pleistocene epoch which was a geological period starting 2.6 million years ago and ending 11,700 years ago. This epoch saw many glacial and interglacial periods. When the climate was cooler, the glaciers advanced. When it was warmer, they retreated. During the last ice age, global temperatures were about 11 degrees Fahrenheit (or 6 degrees Celsius) cooler than today. This last ice age began 115,000 years ago and ended 11,700 years ago.
With cooler temperatures and a lot of ice cover, there was less precipitation and less rainfall. Snow and ice reflected more of the sun’s rays, only adding to the cold. In addition, sea levels were much lower as more of the oceans were locked up as ice. This resulted in land bridges that had previously been covered by the sea. These bridges allowed species to access islands from the mainland and even cross from one continent to another.

21/01/2023

What Was Africa Like During The Ice Age?

Out of the six inhabited continents of the world, Africa and its wildlife have been the least damaged by the end-Pleistocene extinction. This is likely because African fauna evolved alongside human hunter-gatherers, and, thus, prey animals were already adapted to coexisting with Homo sapiens. However, the Pleistocene lasted over 2 million years, and in that time, much has changed.
In the modern world, Africa has more large megafauna than any other region, this being the reason it’s such a popular safari destination. However, there are still plenty of interesting animals which lived there in the Pleistocene epoch but are now extinct.

20/01/2023

Why don't TIGERS Live in Groups Like LIONS?

The largest species of cat in the world, tigers are powerful hunters with sharp teeth, strong jaws, and agile bodies. They range across Asia from Russia to the Sumatra and Indochina. Researchers still have much to learn about these beautiful, critically endangered, solitary cats.
Tigers have reddish-orange coats with prominent black stripes, white bellies, and white spots on their ears. Like a human fingerprint, no two tigers have the same markings. Because of this, researchers can use stripe patterns to identify different individuals when studying tigers in the wild. Tigers are powerful hunters with sharp teeth, strong jaws, and agile bodies. They are the largest terrestrial mammal whose diet consists entirely of meat.
Tigers are the largest cat species in the world, and the Siberian Tiger is the largest subspecies with males weighing up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms) and measuring 10 feet (3 meters). Sumatran tigers are the smallest subspecies, maxing out at 310 pounds (140 kilograms) and 8 feet (2.4 meters). Female tigers of all subspecies tend to be smaller than their male counterparts.
Why do the tigers live alone, not in packs like the lions?

19/01/2023

Tigers are terrestrial mammals that belong to the genus “Panthera” a classification that groups the five species of big cats: lions, jaguars, leopards, snow leopards, and tigers. They are easily recognizable by their unique black striped pattern on a dark orange coat and because they are the largest species of the Felidae family. The tiger is the largest of the five big cats that belong to the genus “Panthera.”
Fiery and imposing. Aggressive and powerful. Tigers have aroused fascination in humans through millennia, but they have also experienced threats in their natural environment as a result of human activities.
The Tigers have anatomy with over 600 muscles and a strong bone structure that makes them apex predators in their natural habitat. They can leap more than 30 feet in a single jump which gives them an advantage when it comes to finding and attacking their prey, and they evolved from their ancestors for almost 2 million years continuously adapting to their environment.
All tigers are native to Asia and belong to a single species Panthera tigris, which has six subspecies: Bengal tiger, Siberian tiger, Indochinese tiger, Malayan tiger, South China tiger, and Sumatran tiger.
Tigers are ruthless and efficient hunters and lonely walkers. Around them, there is a mythology that puts these cats as symbols of positive values: strength, fierceness, tenacity, and power.
Their elegant gait, haughty demeanor, and their dynamic movements are an example of adapted anatomy for hunting. Since tigers are at the top of the food chain, they are considered super-predators.
Like the other big cats, tigers are skilled hunters who make use of different techniques to kill other animals, mainly ungulate herbivores, which are their primary food. When detecting prey, they move very stealthily as close as possible but at a distance to avoid being discovered. Then they slowly creep towards the prey and jump taking it by surprise, so it has a small chance to escape. When Tigers catch prey, they bite their neck between the vertebrae to break the spine and kill the animal.

Why do tigers live alone?
Lion vs Tiger
Tiger vs Lion
Could Tigers Survive In Africa?
Are Tigers in Africa?

18/01/2023

Why Doesn't Australia Have Its Own Big Cat?

Some 180 million years ago, the supercontinent of Gondwana split. One of the breakaway landmasses from that separation contained what would become Australia and Antarctica. By 30 million years ago Australia had fully separated and journeyed north on its own. Since then, changes in land formation and climate, and the physical separation from the rest of the world, led to the unique flora and fauna that we know in Australia today. More than 80% of our plants, mammals, reptiles, and frogs are unique to Australia and are found nowhere else in the world.
Some of our Australian animals are very well known like kangaroos, dingos, wallabies, and wombats, and of course the koala, platypus, and echidna. But, there is still so much we don’t know about Australia’s native animals.
Many people wonder why, despite the continent's natural diversity, Australia does not have a big cat of its own. In this video, we will try to answer this question.

17/01/2023

Why Are There No Predators With Hooves?

Hoofed mammals include some of the largest and most impressive land mammals. Rhinoceroses, horses, giraffes, deer, and antelopes are all examples of hoofed mammals. These animals all have a hard nail-like case called a hoof covering each toe on their feet. There are some animals in which the hooves do not fully cover the toe and are more like nails, such as in camels and hippopotamuses. Hoofed mammals are divided into two groups: even-toed hoofed mammals, such as deer, giraffes, pigs, and cattle, and odd-toed hoofed mammals, which include horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs. Odd-toed hoofed mammals stand on one or three toes, while even-toed hoofed mammals stand on two or four toes. The hooves on their feet make these animals fast runners. Most hoofed mammals are plant-eaters. Hoofed mammals are mostly found in open habitats, such as grasslands.
There had been hooved carnivores, but they are all extinct.

16/01/2023

TOP 10 Most Powerful Wild Cats in The World

Felines, generally known as cats, are mammals in the family Felidae of the order Carnivora. There are around 40 species of cats in this family, and they vary in size from the small domestic cat to the imposing lion.
Cats are the most carnivorous of all meat-eating animals. The predatory instinct in wild cats can be seen in the domestic cats, for even well-fed domestic cats will hunt mice and birds. Members of the cat family occur naturally in all parts of the world, except Australia and Antarctica.
The big cats in this family, like the lion, tiger, jaguar, and leopard, can roar, but they can't purr. The small cats in this family, along with the pumas and the cheetah, can purr, but they can't roar.

In this video, I will present to you the top ten most powerful species of cats.

15/01/2023

How STRONG is a GORILLA? - All about Gorillas!

Ever since King Kong first gave Fay Wray that unexpected lift to the top of the Empire State Building in 1933, Hollywood has gone ape depicting the gorilla as perfect monster material. They seem to be forever typecast as the heavy. But the truth is, they’re peaceful, family-oriented, plant-eating animals that live in complex social groups. They are the largest of all primates.
No primate exceeds in size and magnificence to these animals. They are bigger than chimpanzees, orangutans, and gibbons, therefore, they have the title of “the largest primates in the world”. They also are very close relatives to humans, as millions of years ago they shared, along with chimpanzees, a common ancestor, and that is why they have some similar characteristics to us, such as a relatively large brain compared to its body and opposable thumbs.
Biologists recognize two species, the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, each of which has two subspecies. All gorilla species are listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
So, how strong is a Gorilla?

13/01/2023

Why isn't TIGER the KING OF THE JUNGLE? - LION VS TIGER

Of course, when you ask anyone who is the king of the jungle, he answers fastly saying the lion, because this is the truth that we learned it in the child, but did you ever think why the lion is the king of the jungle and not any other animal?
Many other powerful animals possess qualities that enable them to obtain the title of King of the Beasts and if we put them in comparison with the lion we will find that the closest of them is the tiger, so why the tiger is not the king of the jungle?
Lion and tiger are species of wild cats. They are the most famous for their body size: tiger is the largest, while lion is the second largest cat on the planet. Together with jaguar, leopard and snow leopard, they are classified as "big cats".

13/01/2023

TOP 10 Most Powerful Prehistoric Wild Cats

Before man became a hunter and made his way to the top of the food chain, the Felidae, or cats, were the most successful, powerful predators in most of the world. Even today, big cats such as tigers, lions, jaguars, and leopards draw admiration and fear, but some of their extinct relatives dwarf these magnificent beasts.
In this video, we’ll be looking at ten of prehistory’s largest, mightiest cats, some of which were seen by humans only a few thousand years ago.

12/01/2023

What Is Stronger, an Alligator or a Crocodile? - ALLIGATOR VS CROCODILE

To most people, alligators and crocodiles look similar. While they do share many of the same features, they couldn’t be any more different for a trained professional. Typically, crocodiles are more aggressive than alligators, which makes crocodiles more dangerous than alligators. Alligators are opportunistic feeders, meaning that they’re not likely to chase you down unless they’re provoked.

What's the Difference Between Alligators and Crocodiles?

11/01/2023

There are 8 species of bear alive in the world today: the American Black bear, the Asiatic Black bear, the Brown Bear, the Giant Panda, the Polar Bear, the Sloth Bear, the Andean Spectacled Bear, and the Sun Bear. They are found across the globe from North and South America to Europe, Asia, and the Arctic. But none is found in Africa.
Polar bears and Kodiak bears (a subspecies of brown bears) are the two largest in the world. Weighing in at 1200 pounds and standing up to 10 feet tall on their hind legs, they are an impressive sight. In comparison, the smallest bear is the sun bear. Found in southeast Asia, these bears weigh less than 145 pounds and grow to a maximum length of 4 feet.
There is an abundance of both vegetation and prey animals for bears in Africa, not to mention a vast array of habitats that would suit many of the bear species. So why aren’t there any bears currently living in Africa?

10/01/2023

If There Are Big Cats, Why Are There No Big Dogs?

There are many remarkable, gigantic dogs in the world. But all these mega-breed giant dogs are breeds. Hence, created by man, from a much smaller, naturally existing canine species. And they are all of the same species. The Big Cats are all of their individual species and created by evolution. They gained their size to be the most successful predators possible in their hunting style to survive. There are no natural canines that fit that description, to the same extent that the Big Cats do.

09/01/2023

Why Are There No Elephants In North America?

Today, there are no elephants living in North America. They are currently only found in Africa and Asia but they did once roam America.
So, what happened to them and how did they get to North America in the first place?
If we could travel back millions of years, then we would see the development and evolution of the proboscideans or elephant-related animals. These developed in a world with a significantly different climate and geography from today.
The proboscideans were incredibly adaptable and evolved along with the transformation of the planet. Elephant evolution began some 50 or 60 million years ago. The first creature was a small pig-sized herbivore with a long flexible nose.
With the appearance of open landscapes, came significant evolution of the elephants’ ancestors. Changes in atmospheric gases led to changes in vegetation and grasses. In turn, the dentition of many herbivores, including early elephant-like species, evolved to enable the animals to consume these plants.
About 3.2 million years ago, there was a big dispersal of elephant-like ancestors from Africa. Mammoths traveled to northern Eurasia and Elephas planifrons traveled to the Indian subcontinent.
2.6 million years ago, glaciation occurred in the northern continents and sea levels dropped. This enabled animals to cross intercontinentally between Europe and North America. The mammoths migrated from Europe to North America around this time.

07/01/2023

Have Lions and Tigers Ever Met In The Wild? - Lion Vs Tiger

One of the most wondrous and iconic animals to walk the Earth, Bengal tigers are majestic and rare. They’re also one of the biggest cat species in the world.The Bengal tiger, or Royal Bengal tiger, roams a wide range of habitats including high altitudes, tropical and subtropical rainforests, mangroves, and grasslands. They are primarily found in parts of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Asiatic lions once prowled from the Middle East to India. Now, only a fraction of these magnificent animals survives in the wild. The Gir Forest's dry teak woods were once a royal hunting ground. Today they are a reserve where these at-risk big cats are heavily protected. According to our information, there must have been conflicts between Bengal tigers and Asiatic lions.

06/01/2023

Could Smilodons Survive Nowadays?

Smilodons are more commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger. Powerful and ferocious, these prehistoric cats once populated North and South America. They were carnivorous predators, hunting large prey such as the woolly mammoth and bison.
There were 3 species of Smilodon that lived from 2 and a half million years ago until 10,000 years ago. Smilodon gracilis and Smilodon populator were found in South America and Smilodon fatalis was found in North America. They all belonged to an extinct subfamily of Felidae. Their characteristic feature was the elongated canine teeth giving them the well-known name of the saber-toothed cats.
For such a fearsome and ferocious beast, the Smilodon didn’t appear to be very adaptable to climatic changes. The current environmental conditions of the earth are similar to those during the interglacial periods in the Pleistocene. This suggests that, from an environmental and climatic point of view, Smilodon could survive today.
Finding prey, however, could be difficult. The exceptionally large prey species that Smilodon once hunted, such as the woolly mammoth, no longer roam the earth. Smaller animals, like bison and elk, however, can still be found on the North American plains, albeit in much smaller numbers.

05/01/2023

Could American Lions Survive Nowadays?

During the last ice age, lions covered an enormous geographical range. Not only did they inhabit Africa and Asia like they do today, but they were also found in Europe and North America. The lions living in North America were called American lions, Panthera leo atrox.
There is debate regarding the ancestral lineage of the American lions. Genetic analysis of their fossils suggests that they evolved from Eurasian cave lions that crossed the Beringia land bridge into North America. Morphological characteristics from the skull and dentistry reveal that the American lion was more closely related to the African lion and tiger than it was to the jaguar.We also know from fossil evidence that American lions were a formidable predator that roamed during the Pleistocene epoch. But the question is could they survive today?

04/01/2023

Why Are There No Hyenas In North America?

Why are there no hyenas in North America? The simple answer is “there used to be.”
Hyenas belong to the smallest family of carnivores, the Hyaenidae. This family includes 4 species alive today. In Africa, there are the spotted hyena, the brown hyena, and the aardwolf. In both Africa and west Asia, there is also the striped hyena.
Although they have distinct dog-like features, particularly their snouts, they are more closely related to cats. They are largely brown and beige in color. Depending on the species, some have distinctive markings such as spots or stripes and shaggy fur.
They are renowned scavengers, often eating carcasses that have been killed by lions or lone leopards. But they are also excellent and skilled hunters. A clan of hyenas can work together to take down wildebeest and antelope. They also eat birds, lizards, snakes, and insects. They are highly adaptable and opportunistic animals, living in matriarchal clans.
They are also the most common large carnivore in Africa today.
There are currently no hyenas living in the Americas but once upon a time they did roam there.
What we want to know is: How did they get there? What happened to them? And why did they disappear?

03/01/2023

Why Are There No Horned Predators?

When we think of animals with horns, we usually think of rhinos or antelopes. Maybe even cattle, bison, and wildebeest. But none of these is a predator. To find a horned predator that exists today, we may have to set our sights a little smaller. It seems that some predators possess horns. However, these appear to only be found on smaller animals. The horns are predominantly used for defense. Usually, they are there to help defend them against predators or rivals from the same species. Although these animals are predatory, they are not at the top of the food chain which is why they need to deploy significant defense tactics as well as predatory ones. For larger predatory animals, however, such as the big cats, wolves, wild dogs, and bears, they are often at the top of the food chain and therefore do not need to invest in such defensive measures.

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