Further to our post about elephants posted early this month, here are seven majestic images from Amboseli National Park in Kenya, showing matriarchal elephants, with their young. (Click on an image to view full size.)
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A Blue shark accompanied by pilot fish
Video captured by diving enthusiast Martijn Schouten, in Azorean waters, in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The eldest female elephant within an elephant group is regarded as its matriarch, and is the leader of her family, taking care of its well-being and survival. The other younger females are referred to as cows. An elephant family unit consists of a mother, her juvenile offspring, and occasionally sisters, aunts, and grandmothers. Family groupings often range in size from two to more than twenty elephants. Male adult elephants, on the other hand, typically form bachelor groups made up of an elder male and several younger bulls.
However, elephant families shift constantly. Whilst an elephant may start the day in a group of 12 to 15, it may join bigger herds around midday, graze with smaller groups in the afternoon, and spend the night with only its nearest progeny or parents. This sort of social dynamic is known as a fission-fusion society. In fact, it's very similar to how we humans commute to school or work during the day, and then return back home at night.
Little owl (Athene noctua), also known as the owl of Athena or owl of Minerva, in a wooded area near Düsseldorf in Germany (courtesy of Ralf Kistowski).
Whale sharks can grow over 40 feet (12 meters) in length and weigh up to 20 tons (20,000 kg), making them the largest fish on Earth — unlike whales, they’re not mammals. (See also related video here: zafoid.com/post/view/11962)
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A single litre of saltwater contains around one billion bacteria and ten billion viruses. If you weighed all living species in the ocean, microorganisms would account for 90% of the weight.
It may appear outrageous, but we live in a world ruled by viruses. The oceans alone contain around 10³⁰ viruses, which is almost a billion times more than the number of stars in the known universe. A virus is an infectious agent that requires a host cell (such as a bacterium) to reproduce. Once it infects a host, the virus hijacks the cell's reproductive mechanism, and transforms it into a viral replication factory.
On the other hand, while bacteria are frequently perceived as infectious agents, the majority of bacteria are actually quite harmless, and play an important role in global ecosystems. They are also extraordinarily abundant — a single drop of water can contain over 100 different types of bacteria. How do all of these organisms find the energy and nutrients they need to survive?
In the nutrient-rich waters at the ocean's surface, sunlight is the major energy source for micobes, driving photosynthesis, the conversion of light energy into chemical energy. Photosynthesis is limited in much of the open ocean due to nutritional deficiency, and it entirely impossible in the deep ocean due to lack of sunlight. Despite this, bacteria have discovered a means to survive in the huge, dark ocean, acquiring energy from two dissolved gases, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, in a process known as chemosynthesis.
Pictured here is a mixture of single-celled microbes – diatoms, dinoflagellates, radiolarians, and foraminifera (source: Christian Sardet, Plankton – Wonders of the Drifting World, Univ. Chicago Press 2015).
Following the incredible video of the glass frog last May (zafoid.com/post/view/11930), today we have colourful frogs from Indonesia, including two images of the endemic Javan tree frog, black-webbed tree frogs at play on a tree branch, and Wallace's flying frog.
Large female whale shark feeding on tuna eggs
Video captured last year, in the waters off St Helena Island, in the South Atlantic Ocean, courtesy of underwater photographer Martijn Schouten.
