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Hildegarde's Tomb Bat
Hildegarde's tomb bat (''Taphozous hildegardeae'') is a species of sac-winged bat in the family Emballonuridae. It is found near the coast in Kenya and Tanzania where it feeds in tropical dry forests and roosts in caves. It is a diurnal species and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as "endangered". The specific name ''hildegardeae'' was given in honour of anthropologist Hildegarde Beatrice Hinde. Description Hildegarde's tomb bat is a moderate-sized, sac-winged bat. The head has a long, pointed snout and a deep hollow between the eyes, which are large. The lower lip has a grooved protuberance and the ears are triangular and backward-pointing. There is no nose-leaf nor throat pouches. The wings are long and narrow. There is fur over the whole body, the dorsal surface being pale greyish-brown and the ventral surface white. Fully-grown males have a black throat patch; glands in this patch secrete fluids which tend to stain the fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oldfield Thomas
Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appointed to the museum secretary's office in 1876, transferring to the zoological department in 1878. In 1891, Thomas married Mary Kane, daughter of Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Baronet, Sir Andrew Clark, heiress to a small fortune, which gave him the finances to hire mammal collectors and present their specimens to the museum. He also did field work himself in Western Europe and South America. His wife shared his interest in natural history, and accompanied him on collecting trips. In 1896, when William Henry Flower took control of the department, he hired Richard Lydekker to rearrange the exhibitions, allowing Thomas to concentrate on these new specimens. Thomas viewed his taxonomy efforts from the scope of British impe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diurnality
Diurnality is a form of plant and ethology, animal behavior characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night. The common adjective used for daytime activity is "diurnal". The timing of activity by an animal depends on a variety of environmental factors such as the temperature, the ability to gather food by sight, the risk of predation, and the time of year. Diurnality is a cycle of activity within a 24-hour period; cyclic activities called circadian rhythms are endogenous cycles not dependent on external cues or environmental factors except for a zeitgeber. Animals active during twilight are crepuscular, those active during the night are nocturnal and animals active at sporadic times during both night and day are cathemerality, cathemeral. Plants that open their flowers during the daytime are described as diurnal, while those that bloom during nighttime are nocturnal. The timing of flower opening is often related to the time at whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammals Described In 1909
A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which their ancestors diverged in the Carboniferous Period over 300 million years ago. Around 6,640 extant species of mammals have been described and divided into 27 orders. The study of mammals is called mammalogy. The largest orders of mammals, by number of species, are the rodents, bats, and eulipotyphlans (including hedgehogs, moles and shrews). The next three are the primates (including humans, monkeys and lemurs), the even-toed ungulates (including pigs, camels, and whales), and the Carnivora (including cats, dogs, and seals). Mammals are the only living members of Synapsida; this clade, together with Sauropsida (reptiles and birds), constitutes the larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bats Of Africa
Bats are flying mammals of the Order (biology), order Chiroptera (). With their forelimbs adapted as Bat wing development, wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained Bat flight, flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out digits covered with a thin membrane or patagium. The smallest bat, and arguably the Smallest organisms, smallest extant mammal, is Kitti's hog-nosed bat, which is in length, across the wings and in mass. The largest bats are the flying foxes, with the giant golden-crowned flying fox (''Acerodon jubatus'') reaching a weight of and having a wingspan of . The second largest order of mammals after rodents, bats comprise about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide, with over 1,400 species. These were traditionally divided into two suborders: the largely fruit-eating megabats, and the Animal echolocation, echolocating microbats. But more recent evidence has supported dividing the or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taphozous
''Taphozous'' is a genus of the family Emballonuridae. The wide distribution of the genus includes several regions of Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Africa. ''Taphozous'' comes from the Greek τάφος, meaning "a tomb". The common names for species include variants on sac-winged, sheathtail, or tomb bats. The genus is the type for a grouping within the family, subfamily Taphozoinae, and an arrangement that describes two subgenera is as follows: subgenus ''Taphozous'' (''Liponycteris'') * Hamilton's tomb bat (''Taphozous hamiltoni'') * Naked-rumped tomb bat (''Taphozous nudiventris'') subgenus ''Taphozous'' (''Taphozous''), * Indonesian tomb bat (''Taphozous achates'') * Coastal sheath-tailed bat (''Taphozous australis'') * Common sheath-tailed bat (''Taphozous georgianus'') * Hildegarde's tomb bat (''Taphozous hildegardeae'') * Hill's sheath-tailed bat Hill's sheath-tailed bat (''Taphozous hilli'') is a bat of the family Emballonuridae. They are found in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Sheath-tailed Bat
The African sheath-tailed bat (''Coleura afra'') is a species of sac-winged bat in the family Emballonuridae. Appearance and behavior The African sheath-tailed bat weighs , with females slightly larger than males. Forearm lengths range from . The fur is a deep brown, but slightly lighter on the belly. The nose is a pointed cone shape and the rhinarium is black and naked. It is insectivorous, feeding on a range of insects, but particularly beetles and lepidopterans. Feeding is strongly dependent on the season, with much greater feeding activity occurring during the rainy season. It lives in caverns in groups exceeding 50,000. Within colonies, the social structure consists of harems of around 20 females being attended usually by a single male. While female juveniles sometimes remain within the cluster into which they were born, young males disperse and join bachelor clusters. Distribution and habitat The African sheath-tailed bat is found in Angola, Benin, the Central African Repu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moth
Moths are a group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not Butterfly, butterflies. They were previously classified as suborder Heterocera, but the group is Paraphyly, paraphyletic with respect to butterflies (suborder Rhopalocera) and neither subordinate taxon is used in modern classifications. Moths make up the vast majority of the order. There are approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of which have yet to be described. Most species of moth are nocturnal, although there are also crepuscular and Diurnal animal, diurnal species. Differences between butterflies and moths While the Butterfly, butterflies form a monophyly, monophyletic group, the moths, comprising the rest of the Lepidoptera, do not. Many attempts have been made to group the superfamilies of the Lepidoptera into natural groups, most of which fail because one of the two groups is not monophyletic: Microlepidoptera and Macrolepidoptera, Heterocera and Rhopalocera, Jugatae a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly
Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossils have been dated to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago, though molecular evidence suggests that they likely originated in the Cretaceous. Butterflies have a four-stage life cycle, and like other holometabolous insects they undergo complete metamorphosis. Winged adults lay eggs on the food plant on which their larvae, known as caterpillars, will feed. The caterpillars grow, sometimes very rapidly, and when fully developed, pupate in a chrysalis. When metamorphosis is complete, the pupal skin splits, the adult insect climbs out, expands its wings to dry, and flies off. Some butterflies, especially in the tropics, have several generations in a year, while others have a single generation, and a few in cold locations may take s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grasshopper
Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are amongst what are possibly the most ancient living groups of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshoppers are typically ground-dwelling insects with powerful hind legs which allow them to escape from threats by leaping vigorously. Their front legs are shorter and used for grasping food. As hemimetabolous insects, they do not undergo complete metamorphosis; they hatch from an egg into a Nymph (biology), nymph or "hopper" which undergoes five moults, becoming more similar to the adult insect at each developmental stage. The grasshopper hears through the tympanal organ which can be found in the first segment of the abdomen attached to the thorax; while its sense of vision is in the compound eyes, a change in light intensity is perceived in the simple eyes (ocelli). At high population densities and under certain environmental conditions, som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zanzibar
Zanzibar is a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa. It is located in the Indian Ocean, and consists of many small Island, islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site. Zanzibar is also a Autonomous administrative divisions, semi-autonomous region that united with Tanganyika (1961–1964), Tanganyika in 1964, and formed the present-day Tanzania, United Republic of Tanzania. The archipelago's main Industry (economics), industries are spices, raffia palm, raffia, and tourism. The main spices produced are clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, coconut, and black pepper. The Zanzibar Archipelago, together with Tanzania's Mafia Island, are sometimes referred to locally as the "Spice Islands". Tourism in Zanzibar is a more recent activity, driven by government promotion that caused an increase from 19,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
