A peacock is a male peafowl, whilst a peahen is a female peafowl. Peafowl incorporates the Indian peafowl (since the species originated in India) and the closely related Congo peafowl, native only to the Congo Basin. The Indian male peafowl has probably the most extravagant plumage of any bird, which includes an incredibly large train of iridescent feathers on its tail.



An interested peahen will typically halt right in front of the peacock during a courtship display, to evaluate the male's plumage at a 90-degree angle to the feather's surface. The male will then spin and show off his feathers around 45° to the right of the sun's azimuth, allowing the sunlight to highlight his train's iridescence. The male will turn to face the female and shiver his train to initiate mating if she choose to engage with him.



(Note that in one of the images herewith posted, the peacock is striding at Sant'Anton Gardens, in Malta. Can you spot which one from the above images is it?)



For other posts in this group related to iridescence, please view:



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Servals are a species of wild small cat native to African. They have crazy good hearing. They can pick up high frequency sounds up to 100 kHz( we stop around 20 KHz), which lets them hear rodents chewing or moving through underground. With ears that big and able to move separately up to 180 degrees, it missed nothing. As soon as the photographer's camera shutter went off, this serval looked directly at the source of the noise. (Credit due to the photographer, namely Jo Mburu.)



(Click on image to view full size.)

The classification of living things into animals and plants is an ancient one, and goes back to Aristotlean (384–322 BC) times. Closer to our era, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), who laid the foundations for modern biological nomenclature in 1735, also distinguished betwen two kingdoms of living things, namely the animal kingdom, and the plant kingdom. Carl Linnaeus originally grouped fungi with plants because both are rooted, generally immobile, and have similarities in general morphology and growth habit.



However, with the advent of molecular analysis, scientists discovered that the cell walls of fungi were made up of chitin rather than cellulose, and additionally fungi did not carry out photosynthesis. Subsequently, Robert Whittaker proposed, in a landmark paper published n 1969, that there are actually five separate kingdoms of living things (Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia). The biological community was quick to adopt this proposal, and by the 1970s, it had become the standard organizational tree of life taught in textbooks worldwide, completely overturning the traditional Linnaean two-kingdom (plant vs. animal) model that had prevailed for centuries. Consequentially, fungi are now considered as a biological kingdom that is entirely separate from the plant kingdom, though the common misconception that fungi are plants still persists among the general public .



The biological kingdom Fungi incorporates yeasts, moulds and mushrooms. Whilst in the past, mycology was regarded as a branch of botany, it is now known that fungi are actually genetically more closely related to animals than to plants. Abundant worldwide, most fungi are however inconspicuous owing to their small size.

This sequence of images shows a Hawaiian bobtail squid capturing a shrimp, whilst the final image shows the Hawaiian bobtail squid resting during the day. These images were taken by wildlife photographer Brandon Hannan off the coast of Oʻahu, Hawaii.



In the wild, the Hawaiian bobtail squid can only be found in the shallow coastal waters off the Hawaiian Islands and Midway Island. It is smallish, only about 3 cm when fully grown. The squid houses bioluminescent bacteria in its mantle, within a special "light organ". When the squid leaves the safety of the seafloor to hunt at night, the bacteria hide the squid’s silhouette by matching the amount of moonlight and starlight hitting the top of its mantle, hiding their silhouette from predators below in a process called counterillumination — making it virtually invisible in moonlit waters when viewed from below. In return, the small squid provides the bacteria with food (a sugar and amino acid solution). Then, during the day, it buries itself in sand or muddy areas near sea grass beds — even gluing sand grains to its body to form camouflage.



The Hawaiian bobtail squid hatchling isn’t born with this bioluminescent bacteria; it secretes a mucus around its light organs to capture it. Less than a day after hatching, a juvenile is able to “disappear” from predators just like its elders.



This squid lives for only three to 10 months, but grows quickly. It’s able to reproduce just two months after hatching and breeds only once. The female lays eggs on the underside of coral ledges in shallows and dies shortly thereafter.



Each morning a squid vents 90% of its bioluminescent bacteria back into the seawater. The bacteria replenish during the day when the squid is buried in the sand. By evening, when it’s time to feed, the squid has a new crop of bacteria in its light organ that will help it evade predators.



Whilst researchers have long known the squid recruits bacteria (scientifically known as 'Vibrio fischeri') from the ocean to provide bioluminescent camouflage, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed that the benefit of the partnership extend far beyond light-production: the bacteria were found to play a vital role in the healthy development of the squid. “In addition to contributing light-production capabilities, Vibrio fischeri are prompting the squid’s development of organs and healthy expression of genes that are involved in a wide range of functions,” says Jill (Kuwabara) Smith, lead author of the study, who was a postdoctoral researcher at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center (PBRC) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the time of this research.

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Japanese macaque (snow monkey) juvenile yawning — in a very human-like manner — at the Jigokudani Monkey Park, in Nagano, Japan.



Let us take this opportunity to revisit a Japanese macaques (snow monkeys) post made last January, namely: zafoid.com/post/view/12272



That post featured some Japanese macaques (snow monkeys) enjoying a hot bath at a hot spring, at the same Jigokudani Monkey Park, in Nagano, Japan. However, it turns out that this world-famous practice of soaking in hot springs by the Japanese "snow monkeys", isn't actually an ancient survival instinct. Indeed, before 1963, no macaque had ever set foot in a hot spring!



The practice actually owes its origins at a traditional guesthouse in the Jigokudani valley, where staff and visitors had been leaving apples to feed the local monkey troop, when a bold young female macaque decided to venture into the guesthouse's outdoor onsen (hot spring) to retrieve an apple that had fallen into the water.



Whilst retrieving her food, she discovered that the warm water of the Japanese onsen offered a much comfortable relief from the biting winter cold. Soon, other juvenile monkeys began to copy her, and later the adults followed. Because wild primates sharing baths with human guests created hygiene and safety issues, the locals eventually built a separate, monkey-only hot spring nearby, in 1964 .... and this site evolved into the famous Jigokudani Monkey Park.



This bathing practice is a clear example of animal cultural transmission. The original macaques taught their offspring to bathe, and today, generations of snow monkeys who have never known a time before the baths, continue this endearing tradition. Scientists studying the Jigokudani monkey troop have analyzed their feces and confirmed that bathing significantly lowers their glucocorticoid (stress hormone) levels during the winter — it is indeed a highly effective coping mechanism against the winter cold. Yet, without human provisioning, a dropped apple, and a man-made stone pool, the famous snow monkeys would still be shivering in the trees!



Information source: www.quora.com/What-animal-behavior-first-thought-to-be-natural-is-later-discovered-to-be-the-result-of-interaction-with-humans/answer/NovaPrism-1

Despite their very firm, unambiguous sounding name, red foxes actually come in a variety of colours. The main morph (i.e. colour variation) of the red fox is indeed primarily red/orange in colour, and this is the most common type of red fox. However other morphs include black, as well as platinum grey, as can be seen in these images.



For another post in this group, about morphs, please view: zafoid.com/post/view/11843



For other posts about foxes, please view:



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The Tasmanian Devil, which is about the size of a small dog when fully grown, owes its name due to its terrifying hunting scream and imposing jaw — it is the largest carnivorous marsupial (following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936). However, it is now itself in danger of extinction.



This marsupial was formerly present across mainland Australia, but became extinct there around 3,500 years ago; it is now confined to the island of Tasmania. Tasmanian Devils have been a protected species since 1941, but the current threat to the species is an uncurable cancerous tumor — the population has dwindled by 70% since the 1990s, when this cancer became an issue.

Wild Bengal tigers roaming freely within national parks of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. By keeping prey populations like deer and wild boar in check, tigers help maintain healthy vegetation patterns, and so directly support the overall biodiversity of their environments. It's also worth noting that the Bengal tiger is the national animal of both India and Bangladesh.

You have undoubtedly heard of China's giant panda. Indeed, this species was featured in this group on multiple occassions, such as:



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But have you ever heard of the Chinese red panda? The one pictured here also hails, like many of the giant pandas in the above mentioned posts, from the Sichuan Province in China.



Indeed, Chinese red pandas are mainly found in the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, and live within coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forests, or evergreen broad-leaved bamboo forests, at altitudes below 3,000 meters. Chinese red pandas like to eat bamboo shoots, arrow bamboo shoot leaves, various wild fruits, leaves, and moss, and they also prey on small birds or bird eggs and other small animals, insects, etc. They especially like to eat sweet food. They are similar in appearance to the Himalayan red panda, but are slightly larger.