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Charles Paddock Zoo
The Charles Paddock Zoo is a community zoo located in San Luis Obispo County, California, in the City of Atascadero on the Central Coast. It is home to an endangered male Malayan tiger named Menderu. Accredited since 1991, the zoo is one of the smallest zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). History The Charles Paddock Zoo was started by Charles "Chuck" Paddock, a county park ranger, in the county animal shelter in 1955. Paddock would nurse wild animals back to health, and by 1959 his menagerie contained over 125 birds and mammals. In 1963 the animals were moved to the current location adjacent to the Atascadero Lake Park, just off State Route 41, and the new zoo was named Atascadero Children's Zoo. In 1979, the City of Atascadero took over management of the zoo after it was incorporated. The name was changed to Charles Paddock Zoo in honor of its founder in 1980. In 2010, while the zoo was under review for re-accreditation, it started a series of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meerkat
MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Radio Telescope in Africa, and the locally designed and built MeerKAT was incorporated into the first phase of the SKA. MeerKAT was launched in 2018. Along with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), also in South Africa, and two radio telescopes in Western Australia, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), the MeerKAT is one of four precursors to the final SKA. History MeerKAT is a precursor for the SKA-mid array, as are the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). Description It is located on the SKA site in the Karoo, and is a pathfinder for SKA-mid technologies and science. It was design ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red-necked Wallaby
The red-necked wallaby or Bennett's wallaby (''Notamacropus rufogriseus'') is a medium-sized macropod marsupial (wallaby), common in the more temperate and fertile parts of eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Red-necked wallabies have been introduced to several other countries, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom (in England and Scotland), Ireland, the Isle of Man, France and Germany. Description Red-necked wallabies are distinguished by their black nose and paws, white stripe on the upper lip, and grizzled medium grey coat with a reddish wash across the shoulders. They can weigh and attain a head-body length of , although males are generally bigger than females. Red-necked wallabies are very similar in appearance to the black-striped wallaby (''Notamacropus dorsalis''), the only difference being that red-necked wallabies are larger, lack a black stripe down the back, and have softer fur. Red-necked wallabies may live up to nine years. Distribution and habitat Red-ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crested Porcupine
The crested porcupine (''Hystrix cristata''), also known as the African crested porcupine, is a species of rodent in the family Hystricidae native to Italy, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Characteristics The adult crested porcupine has an average head and body length around long, discounting the tail, and weighs from . It is one of the largest rodents in the world. Almost the entire body is covered with bristles which are either dark brown or black and rather coarse. This mammal is recognizable by the quills that run along the head, nape, and back that can be raised into a crest, hence the name crested porcupine. Also, some sturdier quills which are about in length run along the sides and back half of the body. These sturdier quills are used, for the most part, for defense and are usually marked with light and dark bands which alternate; these are not firmly attached. This porcupine has a short tail which has rattle quills at the end. The rattle quills broaden at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White-eared Titi
The white-eared titi monkey (''Plecturocebus donacophilus'') also known as the Bolivian titi or Bolivian gray titi, is a species of titi monkey, a type of New World monkey, from eastern Bolivia and an area of western Brazil. The species has a range that extends east from the Manique River in Beni Department, Bolivia to southern Rondônia in Brazil. The southern end of its range includes forests around the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. It is a medium-sized monkey with a grey back, orange underside and distinctive white ear tufts. It has an omnivorous diet, eating fruits, other plant materials and invertebrates. It is predated upon primarily by raptors, though felids and other monkey species have been known to attack the species. It is a monogamous species and lives in small groups of two to seven members consisting of the pair and their offspring. The family group has a home range of and the adults have a complex vocal repertoire to maintain their territory. It is also kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacob (sheep)
The Jacob is a British breed of domestic sheep. It combines two characteristics unusual in sheep: it is piebald—dark-coloured with areas of white wool—and it is often polycerate or multi-horned. It most commonly has four horns. The origin of the breed is not known; broken-coloured polycerate sheep were present in England by the middle of the seventeenth century, and were widespread a century later. A breed society was formed in 1969, and a flock book was published from 1972. The Jacob was kept for centuries as a "park sheep", to ornament the large estates of landowners. In modern times it is reared mainly for wool, meat and skins. History The origins of the Jacob are not known. It has been bred in the British Isles for several hundred years. Sheep of this kind, little different from the modern breed, were shown in paintings from about 1760 at Tabley House in Cheshire, and – by George Stubbs – at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire. In the de Tabley family, the trad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Horned Owl
The great horned owl (''Bubo virginianus''), also known as the tiger owl (originally derived from early naturalists' description as the "winged tiger" or "tiger of the air"), or the hoot owl, is a large owl native to the Americas. It is an extremely adaptable bird with a vast range and is the most widely distributed true owl in the Americas. Its primary diet is rabbits and hares, rats and mice, and voles, although it freely hunts any animal it can overtake, including rodents and other small mammals, larger mid-sized mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates. In ornithological study, the great horned owl is often compared to the Eurasian eagle-owl (''Bubo bubo''), a closely related species, which despite the latter's notably larger size, occupies the same ecological niche in Eurasia, and the red-tailed hawk (''Buteo jamaicensis''), with which it often shares similar habitat, prey, and nesting habits by day, thus is something of a diurnal ecological equivalent. The gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Flamingo
The American flamingo (''Phoenicopterus ruber'') is a large species of flamingo closely related to the greater flamingo and Chilean flamingo native to the Neotropics. It was formerly considered conspecific with the greater flamingo, but that treatment is now widely viewed (e.g. by the American and British Ornithologists' Unions) as incorrect due to a lack of evidence. It is also known as the Caribbean flamingo, although it is also present in the Galápagos Islands. It is the only flamingo that naturally inhabits North America. Distribution The American flamingo breeds in South America (in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, coastal Colombia and Venezuela, and northern Brazil), in the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), The Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands), and tropical areas of continental North America (along the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, and Cameron Parish, Louis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burrowing Owl
The burrowing owl (''Athene cunicularia''), also called the shoco, is a small, long-legged owl found throughout open landscapes of North and South America. Burrowing owls can be found in grasslands, rangelands, agricultural areas, deserts, or any other open, dry area with low vegetation. They nest and roost in burrows, such as those excavated by prairie dogs (''Cynomys'' spp.). Unlike most owls, burrowing owls are often active during the day, although they tend to avoid the midday heat. Like many other kinds of owls, though, burrowing owls do most of their hunting during dusk and dawn, when they can use their night vision and hearing to their advantage. Living in open grasslands as opposed to forests, the burrowing owl has developed longer legs that enable it to sprint, as well as fly, when hunting. Taxonomy The burrowing owl was formally described by Spanish naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina in 1782 under the binomial name ''Strix cunicularia'' from a specimen collected in Chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scarlet Macaw
The scarlet macaw (''Ara macao'') is a large red, yellow, and blue Central and South American parrot, a member of a large group of Neotropical parrots called macaws. It is native to humid evergreen forests of the Neotropics. Its range extends from south-eastern Mexico to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil in lowlands of (at least formerly) up to , the Caribbean island of Trinidad, as well as the Pacific island of Coiba. Formerly, it ranged north to southern Tamaulipas. In some areas, it has suffered local extinction because of habitat destruction, or capture for the parrot trade, but in other areas, it remains fairly common. It is the national bird of Honduras. Like its relative the blue-and-yellow macaw, the scarlet macaw is a popular bird in aviculture as a result of its striking plumage. Taxonomy The scarlet macaw was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' under the binomial name ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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