Hopping Rabbits

Hi everyone! As usual, let's start off with some updates before diving (or should I say, “hopping”) into my topic of the week.

Days Till

It is: 25 days till St. Patrick's Day

In the Spotlight

This week, another production photo has been shown to the public from the set of the upcoming movie Jurassic World! Since Universal hasn't revealed what the set is for, and since it isn't anywhere near finished with construction, we can only guess what this set will become. Personally, I think it's an animal paddock. What do you think?

What is this set for in Jurassic World?

Topic of the Week by Christian Ryan

Spring is finally around the corner, and that's a likely time to find an animal loved (and hated) by millions – members of the Leporidae family, otherwise known simply as rabbits. There are around 40-60 species of these fluffy, hopping mammals all over the world. They are found on almost every continent and live in a variety of different habitats. You can't help but wonder who couldn't possibly love these animals . . . yet some folks do.

It's actually quite obvious why rabbits are loved by just about everyone . . . they're so CUTE!!!

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, rabbits can be found on every continent, except for Antarctica. As with other creatures of the land, it says in the Bible that God created rabbits on the sixth day of the creation week, just before He created mankind (Gen. 1:24-25). We all know what rabbits look like, but what exactly are they? Despite their similar appearance and large buckteeth at the front of the mouth, rabbits are not rodents (they used to be classified as rodents until 1912). One key difference that separates rabbits from rodents is that rabbits have two sets of incisor teeth, one behind of the other. Speaking of what a rabbit is and what it isn't, did you know that hares are also not rabbits.

Did you know that rabbits were once classified as rodents?

There are many different kinds of rabbits, but they all share similar features and body designs. They can grow anywhere between eight to twenty inches in length and weigh 0.4-2 kilograms. These mammals aren't very large at all! The characteristic ears of a rabbit can grow four inches long! Their size makes them perfect for hearing what's going on around them. Have you ever wondered why rabbits have eyes on the sides of their heads, rather than pointing forwards as in humans? Well, this is because they need to have all-around vision to spot predators from afar. We humans have eyes at the front of our heads because we need to be able to judge distance (think of what might happen if we had eyes on the sides of our heads while driving!), something rabbits have no need for.

A rabbit's eyes are on the sides of its head so that it can see in almost all directions at once.

Rabbits are herbivorous and will eat just about any plant-based food they can find, including grass forbs, and leafy weeds. A problem many animals have as herbivores is that though plentiful, plants in general are very hard to digest due to the amount of cellulose their food contains (and that also means the nutrients the animals need is harder to digest as well). Some creatures deal with this by having a strong digestive system, others, like cows, chew the cud – they eat their food, swallow it, then regurgitate it later to chew and re-swallow. Other animals, such as rabbits, have another solution – instead of chewing the cud, they wait until they've defecated and . . . yes, they eat their own feces! This behavior is known in many animals, from monkeys to elephants, and is called “coprophagy”. This way, the rabbit gets to re-digest its food and therefore gets to extract the nutrients it needs. So what happens after the rabbit eats its droppings? That's why rabbits have two types of dung – one, which they re-eat, and another type which has already been re-eaten and is simply left to disintegrate.

Because they aren't often found in the wild, carrots aren't normally consumed by rabbits. But if you offer a rabbit one, you can bet it will chomp it down in a heartbeat!

Rabbits can be found in just about any habitat on earth, but more than half of the population of rabbits is found in North America. One of the most common rabbit species found in both North and South America is the cottontail rabbit, and this species has many different subspecies that dwell in various habitats. Some of which include the Desert cottontail, Swamp rabbit, Marsh rabbit, Venezuelan lowland rabbit and the most famous of them all, the Eastern cottontail. Another well-known rabbit species is the European or common rabbit. Despite its name, it has been reintroduced to many locations on the planet, from the Americas to Australia.

Rabbits can be found in just about any habitat on earth, from the hot ones like where this Desert Cottontail is . . .

. . . to the cold ones.

You can't really talk about rabbits without including the topic of their reproduction! As we all can testify, rabbits breed like . . . well, as the saying goes, “like rabbits”. In fact, when 24 European rabbits were first released into Australia in 1859, their numbers zoomed up to over 600 million in less than a century! After a male rabbit (called a buck), has mated with a female rabbit (called a doe), the doe will have a gestation period of around 31 days – sometimes as few as 29 days or as high as 35 days. Another reason they breed so fast is because they have so many young at one time: litter sizes generally vary from just two to 12 baby rabbits. Since male rabbits are called bucks and female rabbits are called does (that's “doe” with an “s”, not “duz”), the baby rabbits are called fawns, right? WRONG! They're actually called kits or kittens! Go figure! After the doe has kittens in her burrow, the young are born bare and blind. Within four weeks, they're finished with suckling milk from their mother and can have kittens of their own at three to four months of age! One doe rabbit can have up to around 40 kittens per year and can be continuously for up to eight months. No wonder they breed fast!

Baby rabbits are called "kittens"!

Rabbits and humans have a long history going back at least 3,000 years and we've loved and hated them ever since. To many, the rabbit is considered a pest, and with good reason! In 1859, 24 European rabbits were released into the wilds of Australia. This was a BIG mistake! Pretty soon, their numbers rose into the hundreds of millions and they ate so much food, that they began to out-compete native animals like the biliby, also known as the Macrotis (which are making a comeback thanks to government protection). Initially, people tried placing rabbit-proof fences to keep the rabbits from invading more and more of Australia. This was a good way to keep the rabbits from hopping to new areas, but since the rabbits could dig, the fences were useless. In the 1950's, we finally found a way to keep the Australian rabbit number down with the use of a virus called Myxomatosis cuniiculi, but most rabbits today have grown immune to that and so they're now using the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus, which has been declared as a safe way to keep the numbers of those Australian-invading rabbits down. This is a good thing for the biliby!

If not for conservation, bilibies might have been pushed into extinction by rabbits.

Despite the fact that many people view them as pests, rabbits are still loved by many as pets and, more bizarrely food. It's often prepared in many of the same ways chicken is; it might be interesting to know that chef Mark Bittman declares that rabbits taste like chicken.

So there you have it: you've probably learned many new facts about rabbits in this article. Now that we know rabbits better, get “hopping” outside this spring to see what species of rabbits live near you!

PS 1: To post a comment (this is highly encouraged), please simply click the post you wish to comment on, scroll to the bottom of the page and put what you wish to say or ask in the comment box. Then in the box below the comment box choose who you’re going to comment as. And then click preview or publish. If you aren’t signed into Google, you’ll be asked to type in a word and a number in the space provided. Type the word, put a space and then put the number. Then your comment is on the blog!

PS 2: Have a puzzling question about animals (including dinosaurs), myself, my latest book, my stop-motion movies, Creation or etc? Please post your question as a comment or send me an email at animaladventures@aol.com.

PS 3: What’s the new in the news? Check it out at SMILEY’S NEWS.

The Elephant's Call for Love

I can't believe it's already the middle of February! Where has the “new” year gone? Oh well. Today, we've got a lot of good things to go through in this blog post that I know if you are like me, you'll enjoy. Not only is there some information on the upcoming Jurassic World movie, but I've also oriented today's non-fiction article toward the upcoming holiday, Valentine's Day – the loveliest day of the year, if you get my pun.

Days Till

It is: 1 day till Valentine's Day

It is: 4 days till Washington's Birthday

It is: 32 days till St. Patrick's Day

It is: 66 days till Easter

In the Spotlight

Great news today concerning the upcoming movie Jurassic World, the third sequel to the Jurassic Park franchise! As I've mentioned before, there isn't always much to say concerning this film because it's been under wraps. However, recently, one of the film's main actors, Chris Pratt has not only told us how excited he is to get the role of “Owen”, an ex-military type of guy in the film, but also that he really loves the original Jurassic Park. To him, it's been “his Star Wars”. He also revealed some information regarding the film's plot; it isn't much, but according to Pratt, the plot reveals why on earth they'd go back to a dinosaur-infested island in the first place after what happened in the last three films.

Also, as if this wasn't cool enough, some photographs were recently posted on Twitter regarding set building for the new film! Much of Jurassic World is going to be filmed in the same overall location of the first JP movie, in Hawaii. Click this link to see the pictures of the set building.

I'm not quite sure what exactly this set is, but it looks like it could turn out really cool! Jurassic World is going to be filming in Hawaii this April, so be expecting some production photos, more cast news and perhaps even some information on what dinosaurs we can expect in the film! (Aside from Velociraptor and T. rex, of course!)

Topic of the Week by Christian Ryan

Elephants, while nowhere near the largest animals ever to exist, they are the largest land animals on earth today. It's no wonder so many people adore elephants! I mean, they're just awesome! Being my favorite animal, I love learning more and more about these great creatures God created on the sixth day of the Creation week as recorded in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. (You might recall that the Bible says God created the beasts of the field on Day Six, and elephants would have been included) The largest of the three species of the elephants is the African bush elephant (the other two species are the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant); males, or bulls, of this species can grow 13 feet tall at the shoulders! But did you know that elephants are amazing in other aspects of their lives to, such as reproduction? As Valentine's Day draws near, I thought it would be a great time to discuss just what happens when elephants are in the mood for love (without getting into too much detail, if you know what I mean!). Today, we'll stick to the reproductive habits of the African bush elephant.

The tale of African elephant love starts when a female elephant goes into heat. A common time for elephants to mate is in the peak of the wet season. When a female elephant's ready for a mate, there are a couple of things she'll do to let the males know she's interested; one of thing she'll do is release chemical signals known as pheromones. The other technique is really cool: they'll send noises into the ground that originate from the creature’s stomach called infrasound. Infrasound is to low for humans to hear, but elephants hear them just fine. No, believe it or not, the elephants don't use their large ears to do this. Instead, these low frequency sounds travel through the ground for miles in the savanna and bull elephants pick up this sound through their padded feet! When male elephants smell the female's pheromones and/or pick up her infrasound, they begin to get excited and will start making their way toward the female.

Female elephants typically go into heat at the peak of the wet season.

Male elephants also go through behavioral changes – they enter musth. Musth happens when a bull's testosterone levels increase to ready them for mating. When an elephant is in musth, a wet fluid oozes from the elephant's cheeks and they become extremely aggressive! A word of precaution: never under any circumstances should you approach a male elephant in musth! They're so aggressive that they'll attack literally anything that gets too close, including harmless animals such as giraffes and zebras. African elephants start going into musth when they get about 24 years of age and the older they get, the more often they do so! Now they must track down the cows (yes, female elephants are also known as “cows”).

You can tell when an elephant goes into musth because it will secrete fluid from its cheek.

Something you should know about elephant social structures is that females live in herds consisting of grandmothers, daughters, aunts, female cousins, mothers and their young. Males on the other hand normally live alone or in small groups of other bachelor males and they are normally pretty placid animals unless provoked. When they enter musth, however, everything changes! Male elephants follow the scent of a female's pheromones and infrasound until they reach the herd where the elephant they've been tracking is located. Then they go on the rampage.

African elephant females live in herds consisting of mothers and their young, sisters, aunts, grandmothers and nieces.

Once they've reached a herd, bulls will often “puppy-guard” (or is it “elephant-guard”?) the females from other bulls. Many bulls are deterred by these “puppy-guarding techniques”, but sometimes, a bull won't back down and the two males clash. They ram their heads and tusks together in a sort of ultimate sumo-wrestling match, except pushing the other opponent to the ground isn't the goal. Sometimes, these fights can go on for hours and elephant bulls can be seriously injured or killed. Fortunately, most times the stronger of the two bulls merely ends up driving the weaker one away with no major injuries inflicted. Once a bull has a herd of females to himself, he turns his attention to them in a . . . not-so romantic fashion.

Elephant bulls can have ferocious fights when dueling over females.

Now again using his sense of smell, he picks out a female in heat, but the tiny problem is that the female doesn't often seem ready to mate and flees. The male then chases after her until she finally succumbs and allows him to be her mate. The reason why this fleeing is important is because the female wants the toughest and strongest males to mate with her so that she'll produce offspring with those qualities. Then, after fighting other males AND chasing down a hesitant cow, the two elephants mate and go their separate ways – the cow will most likely continue doing whatever she was doing before the bull began the chase, and the bull will seek yet another mate. Male elephants play no part in rearing young.

A baby elephant weighs around 200 pounds at birth!

So now you know what elephants do when they're in the mood for romance. But that's not where the story ends. The female elephant will have to wait an astounding 22 months before her baby is born (they weigh around 200 pounds at birth, and yes, when in the mother's womb, they kick . . . hard!). This is one of the longest gestation periods in the animal kingdom. With a gestation period that long, you can bet the mother is relieved when birthing is over with!

PS 1: To post a comment (this is highly encouraged), please simply click the post you wish to comment on, scroll to the bottom of the page and put what you wish to say or ask in the comment box. Then in the box below the comment box choose who you’re going to comment as. And then click preview or publish. If you aren’t signed into Google, you’ll be asked to type in a word and a number in the space provided. Type the word, put a space and then put the number. Then your comment is on the blog!

PS 2: Have a puzzling question about animals (including dinosaurs), myself, my latest book, my stop-motion movies, Creation or etc? Please post your question as a comment or send me an email at animaladventures@aol.com.

PS 3: What’s the new in the news? Check it out at SMILEY’S NEWS.

The Good, the Bad and the Dreamy

As we all know, Groundhog Day was just last Sunday and Punxsutawney Phil (determined) whether or not we'd be getting six more weeks of winter weather. So what was his prediction for 2014? Well, drum roll please . . .

SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER!!! (Photo Credits)

Of course, this is only just something fun we look forward to every year; no animal, not even a groundhog, can tell when spring is coming up. Now let's get started with our usuals!

Days Till

It is: 6 days till Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

It is: 8 days till Valentine's Day.

In the Spotlight 
Last week, I mentioned that the creation/evolution debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham was taking place at the Creation Museum. If you weren't able to see it, here's the whole debate on YouTube:

Topic of the Week by Joy Hammond

Dreams are my favorite things to have since I am writer. Some dreams are better than others when that happens, I instantly right them down so I can use them later. What exactly is a dream? Did you know that you could control one? A dream is a bunch of images, emotions, ideas, and sensations wrapped up together to make a mini show or movie. Well that's how I would put it. Dreams have existed since the beginning of mankind. Dreams occur during s certain state of sleep and are mostly created while the mind is in motion and reviewing events that had happened that day or week ago. Dreams are also commonly used it prophecies, success, and sometimes used to put together Déjà vu. Three examples would be visions from God recordered in the Bible, Albert Einstein's famous E= MC2 formula, and sleepwalking.

Joseph saved Egypt from starving during a famine when God allowed him to understand the Pharaoh's warning via a dream.

Several dream/visions are mentioned throughout the Bible One famous account was Genesis 37. Joseph had dreams and could interpret them. Thought the dreams seem absurd at the time there was a message within them, such as the sheaves of grain gathered by the brothers bowing down to Joseph's sheaf or the sun, moon, and stars bowing down to him. Joseph's brothers got jealous of him and eventually Joseph ended up sold into slavery where he soon worked for one of Pharaoh's officials. Because of the officials disloyal wife, Joseph was soon enough thrown into the king's prison (Genesis 39). Eventually Joseph was released after interpret Pharaoh's disturbing dreams about a famine that would last seven years. (Genesis 40-41) Luckily, Egypt was prepared and had gathered up all the grain they could to survive the famine. Joseph became the second in command of all of Egypt. Because of the widespread famine, Joseph's brothers were sent to Egypt for some food. Joseph's dreams came true as his family bowed down to him. Joseph tested his brothers in few ways to see if they had changed (Genesis 42-44). After revealing his identity, Joseph's whole family moved to Egypt where they stayed...thus history went on leading to the Exodus with Moses as several years had past.

  

Albert Einstein, a a famous scientist, came up with his famous theory/ formula E=mc2 through a dream. He stated that he was hurtling down a mountainside. He sped, faster and faster and looked up at the sky and saw the stars change in appearance. He has reached the speed of light. As strange as that a dream sounds it makes total sense...well not everyone can be a genius and understand what that means but anyway dreams have often become great success.

 

Sleepwalking is another example of dreams. Dream walking can be very dangerous or funny depending on the situation. It's very dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker however it is possible to take a certain treatment or medication to help prevent it from happening again. As terrible as it seems, the person sleepwalking are mostly unaware of what their doing. People have been known for cooking, cleaning, or committing homicides while sleepwalking. 

Dreams are like little adventures we have while we sleep.

Dreams are a strange mysterious place that can be emotional and intense. However there are people who have been able to control their dreams and use them to their will. It is called Lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is aware that they are in fact in a dream. I am a lucid dreamer. As I dream I can decide where I go and what will happen next. To me, that is pretty cool. Nightmares are common for both young and old, however escaping it is easier than you think. For me, I'm aware of that fact that it is all just a dream. Most of my nightmares end up with someone trying to kill me. Before that happens, I manage to force myself to wake up by literally opening up my eyes. Sure my heart will still be pounding but at least I hadn't died.

Dream are full of mystery and wonder, both for terror and enjoyment. Dreams are visions, illusions, and creations. Every night you can get up to three or seven dreams although you rarely remember even just one. However if you want to remember one, write it down as best and fast as you can in a journal or something. Dreams are fleeting thoughts and it's hard to remember it vividly. So when you go to bed tonight remember that dreams, good or bad, are just as important as watching a movie or a tv show.

 

 

 

". . . dreams, good or bad, are just as important as watching a movie or TV show," Joy Hammond.

PS 1: To post a comment (this is highly encouraged), please simply click the post you wish to comment on, scroll to the bottom of the page and put what you wish to say or ask in the comment box. Then in the box below the comment box choose who you’re going to comment as. And then click preview or publish. If you aren’t signed into Google, you’ll be asked to type in a word and a number in the space provided. Type the word, put a space and then put the number. Then your comment is on the blog!

PS 2: Have a puzzling question about animals (including dinosaurs), myself, my latest book, my stop-motion movies, Creation or etc? Please post your question as a comment or send me an email at animaladventures@aol.com.

PS 3: What’s the new in the news? Check it out at SMILEY’S NEWS.