Magazine Ils Final.pdf

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Lodge, T.S. (2017) 5 facts about elephant shrew. Retrieved from https://africageographic.com/blog/5-facts-elephant-shrews/

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Elephant shrews face habitat fragmentation. Retrieved from https:// www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/elephant-shrew

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Haiman, A.N.K (2015) Creature Feature: Panda Ant. Retrieved from https://theethogram.com/2015/06/01/featured-creature-panda-ant/

God created everything including living and non-living things. This made up a complex relationship between human and animals. Animals are used for variety of purposes such as providing food, acting as companion and using for scientific research. As humans developed their skills, they started to domesticate animals. Livestock are domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor.

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Mystery creature revealed – the panda ant. Retrieved from http:// sciencewows.ie/blog/panda-ant/

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Bernes, A. Panda Ants may look cute but they’re poisonous enough to kill cows. Retrieved from http://boredomtherapy.com/panda-pandapanda-panda/

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10 steps to save mother earth. Retrieved from https:// www.krautsource.com/blogs/news/10-steps-to-save-mother-earth

As you go through the pages of this issue, be amaze with different species that are rare, and weird but special. Other exciting articles also await you inside!

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Lanese, N. (2019) Lionfish: Beautiful and Dangerous Invaders. Retrieved from

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https://www.livescience.com/64533-lionfish.html

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Pappas, S. (2013) Phallus Worm fossils may be evolutionary missing link, scientist say. Retrieved from https:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/phallus-wormfossils_n_2868828.html

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Frontier Gap. (2018) 16 Unique facts about 16 unique animals. Retrieved from https://www.thedodo.com/16-amazing-animal-facts1094218100.html

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Smith, B. (2018) Ancient butchered rhino suggest human lived in the Philippines 700,000 years ago . Retrived from https:// www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-05-03/ancient-rhinoceroshumans-philippines-palaeontology-archaeology/9714634

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Laubscher, Dr. T. (2015) Basic Facts about rhinoceroses. Retrieved from https://defenders.org/rhinoceros/basic-facts

EDITORIAL STUFF

Editor-in-Chief Contributors / Logistics

BASIC FACTS ABOUT RHINOCEROSES Rhinoceroses are the largest land mammals after the elephant. There are five species of rhinos, two African and three Asian. The African species are the white and black rhinoceroses, and both species have two horns. Asian rhinos include the Indian (or great one-horned rhinoceros) and the Javan, each with one horn, and the Sumatran, which has two.

IN THIS ISSUE

DIET Rhinos are herbivores, meaning they eat only plants. White rhinos, with their square-shaped lips, are ideally suited to graze on grass. Other rhinos prefer to eat the foliage of trees or bushes.

4

Amazing Rare Animals You Need to Know

8

REPRODUCTION Males and females frequently fight during courtship, sometimes leading to serious wounds inflicted by their horns. After mating, the pair go their separate ways. A calf is born 14 to 18 months later. Although they nurse for a year, calves are able to begin eating vegetation one week after birth.

Rhinos use their horns not only in battles for territory or females, but also to defend themselves from lions, tigers and hyenas.

Rhino horns are made of keratin – the same substance that makes up human hair and fingernails

14

12

Incredible Fossils Ever Unearthed

16

18 19

Elephant Shrew The new fossil haul isn't the first to be found on Luzon: a US team found animal bones and stone tools back in the 1950s. The four-toed elephant shrew is one of the most widespread of the species, occurring from Central and Eastern Africa to the Northeastern corner of South Africa. covered by leaf litter. The checkered elephant shrew is found in Central Africa; the golden-rumped elephant shrew is endemic to Kenya; the grey-faced shrew is confined to two forests in Tanzania, and the black and rufous elephant shrew is found in East Africa. Smaller elephant shrew species can be found in the uplands of southern, eastern, and northwestern Africa, in dry forests, scrub, savannas, and open country covered by sparse shrubs of grass. Scientific Name Rhynchocyon cirnei Weight

25 to 700 grams depending on the species

Size

22 to 30 centimeters long

Life Span

2 to 4 years

Habitat

Dense forest to open plains

Diet

Insectivorous

Gestation

45 to 60 days

Predators

Snakes, birds of prey, various carnivores

From these, palaeontologists suspected humans colonised the Philippines back in the Middle Pleistocene, between around 780,000 and 120,000 years ago. But without accurate dating, they couldn't be sure. So the firmest earliest date for the human occupation in the Philippines was pegged at around 67,000 years ago, thanks to a foot bone belonging to a Homo species found in a cave in Luzon's north. In 2013, a team of palaeontologists including Dr van den Bergh, knowing that fossils had been found in the area before, started excavating in a valley in the neighbouring Kalinga province. Three-quarters, in fact — the most intact skeleton found of the nowextinct Rhinoceros philippinensis. Intriguingly, 13 of its bones showed clear cut marks. Two leg bones looked like they had been smashed — one was completely shattered — presumably to get at the marrow inside. The team also found other animal remains alongside stone tools, including an extinct elephant called the stegodon, deer and monitor lizards. To find out how old their finds were, the researchers enlisted the help of labs to deduce the age of the sediment surrounding the artefacts, as well as directly dating a rhino tooth. Volcanic minerals gave a maximum age of 1 million years. The tooth and sediment grains turned up dates of around 700,000 years, plus or minus 70,000.

Early humans called the Philippines home as far back as 700,000 years ago — and it appears they had an appetite for rhinoceros, according to newly discovered fossils. A nearly complete fossilised rhinoceros skeleton was unearthed, with some bones showing signs of butchering. (Supplied: George Lyras)

Hundreds of stone tools and animal bones, including the best part of a rhino skeleton showing signs of butchering, were unearthed on the island of Luzon. Published in the journal Nature today, they push the date of human occupation in the archipelago back hundreds of thousands of years. Precisely who these rhino-eating colonisers were remains a mystery, said study co-author Gert van den Bergh, a palaeontologist at the University of Wollongong, but there's little chance they were of our species, Homo sapiens. "This remains speculative because we don't have fossils yet, but the dates pre-date modern humans," he said. Even without fossils of the toolmakers themselves, the work fits in with evidence of early humans on nearby South-East Asian islands of Flores — home of Homo floresiensis or the Hobbit — and Sulawesi, according to Gilbert Price, a palaeontologist at the University of Queensland who was not involved with the study.

Elephant Shrew Elephant shrews are not, in fact, shrews. Recent evidence suggests that they are more closely related to a group of African mammals that includes elephants, sea cows, and aardvarks. Elephant shrews (also called sengis) are represented by a single family, the Macroscelididae, including four genera and 19 living species.

They take their name from their long pointed head and very long, mobile, trunk-like nose. They have rather long, legs for their size, which move in a hopping fashion like rabbits. They have a hunchbacked posture and a long, scaly tail. A gland on the underside of the tail produces a strong scent used to mark territories. This musky smell serves as a deterrent against many carnivores.

RHINOCEROS PHILIPPINESIS

1.

Elephant shrews are

4.

Ancient butchered rhino suggests humans lived in the Philippines 700,000 years ago Females have a

only found in Africa, where similar menstrual cycle they are widespread though to humans, though gesnot particularly common anywhere.

2.

They are so-called

because of their rather long and flexible noses looking superficially

tation is only 45-60 days. Litters are quite

They’re also known as

sengis and aren’t in fact related to shrews at all, but are a species on their own.

Stone tools and animal remains, including a nearly a complete ancient rhino skeleton, were found on the island of Luzon in the Philippines

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The fossils were dated to around 700,000 years old, which pre-dates modern humans

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How these early humans and animals arrived at the island is unknown, but they may have been carried across by a tsunami

small with between one and three youngsters.

5.

As well as eating in-

vertebrates and sundowner similar to an elephant’s snacks, elephant shrews altrunk. so eat fruits, seeds and

3.



leaves. Females carry food in their cheek pouches when their young are weaned after around five days.

5 Unique Facts About 5 Unique Animals 1. The heart of a shrimp is located in its head. 3. The fingerprints of a koala are so indistinguishable from humans that they have on occasion been confused at a crime scene.

5. Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.

2. A snail can sleep for three years.

Why is the golden rumped elephant shrew endangered? The golden-rumped elephant shrew is classified as endangered largely due to a fragmented forest environment and anthropogenic factors. Their most notable population is in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest in Kenya. They are subject to being caught in traps, but are not targeted for a source of food because of its poor taste

4. Slugs have four noses.

The mating period for elephant shrewslasts for several days. After a pregnancy gestation period (the time the babies remain in the mother's body), varying from 45 to 60 days, females give birth to a litter of one to three young. She may have litters several times a year.

‘Phallus’ Worm Fossils May Be Evolutionary Missing Link, There are some really cute insects out there, and one genus of especially cute insects is the genus Euspinolia, called the Panda Ants. Panda Ants are actually not ants at all, but instead are wasps of the family Mutillidae, commonly called the Velvet Ants. The Panda Ant was first described to science in 1938 and is found in dry coastal regions of Chile. Like many wasp species, and unlike true ants, Panda Ants do not live in colonies and also do not have queens and drones and workers. Panda Ants get their name from the dramatic black and white coloration of the females. However, don’t get too comfortable around a Panda Ant because they get their other common name of Cow Killer Ants from the incredibly painful sting they can deliver from their unusually long and maneuverable stinger.

Scientists Say An overlooked link The links between these two groups are mysterious, but now scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Cambridge and the University of Montreal say they may have found the connection in the Burgess shale. This formation in the Canadian Rockies holds fossils from the middle Cambrian Period, about 505 million years ago. Previously, the oldest acorn worms, or enteropneusts, dated back about 300 million years, said study researcher Jean-Bernard Caron, the curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. But the 505-million-year-old Burgess shale held enteropneusts much older than that.

A modern pterobranch, Rhabdopleura normani. Each of these tube-dwelling worms is only 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) long.

In fact, the specimen, now named Spartobranchus tenuis, is one of the most common fossils found in the Burgess shale, Caron told LiveScience. Smithsonian Institution paleontologist Charles Walcott first reported the discovery of the worms in 1911. [See Photos of the Phallic Worm] “He just wrote three lines about this worm,” Caron said. “He was not sure what it was. And basically nothing was done since.”

PHALLUS– SHAPED WORM FOSSIL The fossils, more than 9,000 specimens in all, reveal a wormlike animal with an “elongate posterior trunk ending in a bulbous unit,” as researchers describe it in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. The animal appears to be a transition in the evolution of wormlike tube feeders known as pterobranches. A fossilized Spartobranchus tenuis from the Burgess shale in Canada. The animal contains features of modern acorn worms and modern tube worms called pterobranches

Pterobranches are part of a group called the hemichordates, along with another bunch of wormy sea creatures called enteropneusts, or acorn worms. But while pterobranches are tiny and stay in one place, filterfeeding from colonies of tubes on the seafloor, solitary acorn worms move about in burrows, feeding on organic material that drifts down to the ocean floor.

Pterobranches are part of a group called the hemichordates, along with another bunch of wormy sea creatures called enteropneusts, or acorn worms. But while pterobranches are tiny and stay in one place, filter-feeding from colonies of tubes on the seafloor, solitary acorn worms move about in burrows, feeding on organic material that drifts down to the ocean floor. Acorn worms range in size from a few millimeters to a few meters long.

Only females can sting since the stinger in these wasps is a modification of the ovipositor. These wasps have a lot of really cool and interesting adaptations. One is their extreme sexual dimorphism. Females have the stingers mentioned above, but they have no wings. The males are larger and while they lack stingers, they have wings. The differences between the sexes are so dramatic that it is often very difficult to determine what the two sexes of a given species are unless the two are actually seen mating.

A female Panda Ant found in a garden in Santiago, Chile. Photograph by Christian Lukhaup.

The males are in many species are so much larger than the females that they actually pick the females up and carry them in flight during mating. After mating, the male sets the female down and she then crawls into the underground burrow of other bee or wasp species. The larva of these other ground -nesting bees and wasps will become the hosts for the growing Panda Ant larva. What happens is the female Panda Ant will lay a single egg beside each host larva or pupae she finds. These eggs hatch and the Panda Ant larva eats its way into the host larva. The Panda Ant grows inside of the host larva, feeding off its tissue, eventually killing it. Once the larva Panda Ant matures into an adult it only feeds on nectar.

Five Panda Ant Facts 1.

Firstly the Panda Ant

is a misnomer, as it is not an ant at all, but a wasp of

the family Mutilidae.

2.

It is sometimes

called the “cow killer” because of the strength of its sting, which, it

and also only the females that have stingers.

4.

Panda ants feed

mainly on nectar.

5.

Despite the fact that

the female lays about 2000 eggs a year the species is consid-

has been said, can

ered endangered. The ma-

take down an animal

jority of the young ants are

the size of a cow.

eaten by ant eaters. Those

3.

that do survive have a typi-

The Panda Ant exhib- cal life span of 2 years. its sexual dimorphism – the male is a lot bigger

than the female and is predominantly nocturnal. The female is more active during the day. It is only the females that are wingless

Incredible FOSSILS Ever Unearthed

Lionfish: Beautiful and Dangerous Invaders By Nicoletta Lanese, Live Science Contributor | January 17, 2019 03:09pm ET Lionfish hail from the South Pacific and Indian oceans, their habitat stretching from Australia up to Japan and South Korea. Twelve different lionfish species swim through this region, feasting on shrimp and smaller fish. Lionfish corner their prey against reefs and rocks, then strike suddenly to swallow the prey whole. A voracious species, lionfishes' stomachs can expand to up to 30 times their normal size after a meal, according to Smithsonian magazine, leaving the fish plenty of room for seconds.

Lionfish not only have huge appetites, but also breed with similar gusto. They reproduce year-round, meaning a mature female can release about 2 million eggs per year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Juveniles measure less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) long and grow to about 13 to 15 inches (33 to 38 cm) long as adults. Unusually large lionfishhave been found swimming at depths of up to 300 feet (91 meters), and these megaspecimens breed and eat even more than their smaller counterparts do. Lionfish can survive for up to 15 years in the wild, according to National Geographic.

Panda Ants May Look Cute But They’re Poisonous Enough To Kill Cows In the animal world, looks can be deceiving, and often the creatures with the most beautiful coloration or stunning adaptations are actually the most deadly. Whether it’s poison frogs or mantis shrimp, an appealing appearance can be a huge red flag. Just take these hairy insects known as panda ants for instance. At first glance they seem like cute little bugs that actually do sort of resemble panda bears! Panda ants, however, can not only be deadly, but they’re not even really ants at all! They may well look like harmless little hairballs on the surface, but these nasty little creatures have earned a reputation in their native Chile as “cow killers” and shouldn’t be underestimated

This allows them to lay their eggs in other insects’ nests, and their hatched larvae then feed on the other bugs’ eggs.

Maybe worst of all, these nasty little critters have earned a reputation as “cow killers” due to one terrifying ability

Panda ants may look like cute little bugs, but they’re actually very dangerous wasps in the mutillidae family that are native to the Chile’s coastal regions.

The males and females of this species exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism, meaning the males look like regular old wasps, but the females don’t at all

10 STEPS TO SAVE MOTHER EARTH 6. Conserve Energy 1. Start an urban garden and grow your own food.

7. Stop Junk Mail 8. Drive Wisely

2. Help bees by improving your local habitat with pollinator friendly plants.

3. Become a citizen scientist and help researchers study the effects of climate change on plants and animals. 4. Consume less

5. Share more.

9. Voice your concern 10. Nourish Yourself