http://evolution-of-man.info/speciation.

htm Speciation: the origin of species Speciation - the process by which new species are believed to come into existenc e - is at the heart of modern understanding of evolution. Unfortunately, most av ailable explanations of speciation are somewhat overloaded with technical langua ge. At the risk of some over-simplification, the explanation which follows tries to avoid this mistake. What is a Species? Modern biology teaches that animals divide into about ten phyla, of which the ph ylum of chordates includes the vertebrates and some others. The next main subdiv ision is that of class, followed by orders, families and genera. Finally we reac h the individual species, which may be divided into sub-species. The higher-level classifications of classes, orders and so on are of great impor tance to the biologist but for most of us they are of little practical significa nce. But the species distinction is vital to us. It doesn t matter much to us whet her we are primates or insectivores. It does matter profoundly to us that we are people and not chimpanzees. Whereas the other classifications belong to the world of science, the species d istinction is a fact of nature. Our own strong feeling that we are people rather than any other animals, leads us to behave quite differently in relation to any member of our own species from the way we behave in relation to other animals. We are not alone in this. All animals behave quite differently in relation to ot her members of their own species. In particular, they treat all members of the s ame species, but of the opposite sex, as potential mates. Mating within the spec ies is encouraged and outside the species is effectively prevented by behavioura l, visual, auditory and chemical (smell) signals which attract a potential mate but serve as isolating mechanisms, deterring members of other species, however c losely related, from attempting to mate. In our own case it may be significant t hat the human male, whilst strongly attracted in many ways to the receptive fema les of his own species, finds the visual signal given by our nearest relative the swollen sexual organs of the receptive female chimpanzee - particularly unin viting (see link). A species represents a breeding and genetic unity with isolating mechanisms whi ch separate it from other species. The need to mate binds all members of a parti cular species together into a breeding population which shares a common gene poo l. The basic characteristics of the species are determined by a genetic structur e which, despite limited individual variations, is common to all members of the pool. Within the limits of the common genetic structure of the species, small changes can occur easily - for example, external pigmentation often adapts to the enviro nment. Some members of a species may adopt white protective coloration in winter in places which have a great deal of snow. In warmer climates, other members of the same species may be the same colour at all times of the year. Size and othe r external characteristics can also change. Domestic dogs provide an extreme example of the variations in colour, size and s hape which can occur (though among wild species, they seldom if ever occur to th e same degree) within a single clearly defined species. But despite all their va riations, all dogs recognise all other dogs immediately as dogs and behave quite differently towards them from the way they behave towards all other animals. Al though each breed represents a partially (artificially) separated gene pool, the y are not yet very far apart genetically. All share a fundamental canine identit y which comes from the basic genetic structure common to all members of the spec ies. So that despite this external flexibility, the basic genetic structure of the sp ecies changes much less easily. For as long as they still belong to the same bre eding population, there appear to be strict limits in the extent to which indivi duals are able to vary from the common characteristics and structure of the spec ies. Divided Populations Nevertheless the conservative pull of the large gene pool no longer operates if

the pool is divided into two or more units by physical barriers. Gene pools divi ded by physical barriers tend to develop in different directions. The speed with which differentiation occurs once the breeding population (the g ene pool) is divided, is affected by differing ecological conditions, so that th e animals on the two sides of the barrier are subject to different competitive p ressures. Climates may be different, feeding habits may change as a result of di fferent foods becoming available; competition from other species may change beha viour, predation may be more or less important and may take different forms. When a barrier separates the gene pools of the two branches of an existing speci es, they will (particularly if conditions are different on the two sides of the barrier) gradually become differentiated. If differentiation has gone far enough , the removal of the geographical barrier will not reunite the species; the anim als coming from one side will be unable to mate successfully with those from the other. One species will have become two. The development of many different species over millions of years appears in fact to have been stimulated by the geological and climatic changes of the earth. An imal populations have been divided and reunited at various times as the continen ts have moved, as new land has been created by volcanic action and as land and s ea levels have risen and fallen. The divisions and reunions have enabled new spe cies to come into existence and to radiate over their potential territory. Geographic Speciation The effects of geographic barriers which break up the gene pool can be studied i n populations which have become cut off from their origins, frequently on island s. This is often found with land-dwelling birds which do not normally cross the sea but may occasionally be blown off course. Thus they may accidentally populat e an archipelago (like the Galapagos) off the coast of a continent. A small flock of continental birds arriving accidentally on an island - particul arly if they arrived there before people had boats - would have found themselves in a new environment in which there were both problems and opportunities not pr esent in their original home. Many islands contained no mammals except those whi ch had been able to fly or swim there (e.g. bats and seals). So it would have be en less dangerous for a bird to spend time on the ground. Far more fledgelings w ould perhaps initially have survived. But equally, the bird's most frequent food might not be easily available. Rapid population expansion in the absence of the usual predators might typically have soon led to an urgent need to adapt to oth er kinds of food. Perhaps only twenty or so birds would have formed the new island population; per haps fewer, the minimum number being a single fertilised hen. Thus the gene pool would have been small. Small gene pools are much less stable than big ones - th ey often produce eccentric variants. These eccentric variants are usually counte r-productive, resulting in the extinction of the eccentric line. But eccentricit y sometimes works. In the great majority of cases, the immigrant birds would hav e failed to adapt and soon have died out. But in a few cases, the new population would have survived and adapted. Thus the beginnings of a new species would hav e come into existence. Separated from the parent species of the mainland, it wou ld have started to develop new isolating mechanisms. These would steadily have r educed the forces of mutual attraction between the island colonists and the orig inal population. Any members of the island sub-species which accidentally found their way back to the continent would nevertheless initially have been re-absorb ed into the parent species. But as the new sub-species gradually developed furth er and further away from their original form, a point would be reached when cros s-mating with mainland birds would no longer occur. At that point a new species would exist. The new species on its island would probably have become less specialised than b efore, able to eat a wide variety of foods which happened to be available there - perhaps animal food as well as plant food. Let us now suppose that a few of th ese birds drifted to another island in the archipelago and founded a new populat ion on it. Whilst similar in many respects, the new island offered a slightly di fferent range of food, with perhaps less plant food but more animal food. The ne w population, whilst still eating plant food also when available, would have bec

ome slightly better adapted to eating animal food. Having passed through the long process of separate speciation, a few of the seco nd island's birds may have found their way back to the first island. Two populat ions would have been in competition there, one relatively a little better adapte d to animal food and the other to plant food. Over time, each would have become progressively more specialised in the food source where there was least competit ion, and the original stock would have given birth to two new species, a seed-ea ter and an insect-eater. Why do we think that this is what happens? The formation of new species (like th e formation of rocks) is a slow process and cannot be observed and recorded from start to finish in nature. But the separate stages of development have each bee n separately observed. Islands close to continents typically contain local varia nts of those continental bird species which had been able to cross in small numb ers, occasionally, from the mainland. Sometimes these island variants have reach ed the stage of being separate species, sometimes not. And the process of archip elago bird colonisation which I have described is more or less what is believed to have occurred on the Galapagos (see link). Varieties of finch, obviously clos ely related but separate species, have diversified through the Galapagos archipe lago to occupy ecological niches typical elsewhere not of finches but of warbler s, woodpeckers and others. The phenomenon of the Galapagos birds influenced Darw in in the thinking that led to The Origin of Species. Speciation on Islands Islands are probably the commonest environment in which a small population of an imals has been isolated and subjected to conditions demanding new adaptations. I slands have produced a very large number of unique and unusual species. On islan ds, adaptation to changing conditions is compulsory, if the species is to surviv e. On the continents, it is optional; there is often an easier option - migratio n. When the glaciations came and went, continental species well adapted to parti cular temperatures and vegetation patterns moved north and south with them. But a species isolated on an island which was becoming warmer or colder would have h ad to adapt to the new conditions or perish. Conversely (as Darwin pointed out) climatic change on an island can open up a range of new ecological niches to be filled by animals that can adapt to them. On the continents, these niches would be filled immediately by inward migrants. So for a number of reasons, islands have always been full of unusual animals. To give a single example: each of the major islands of the Mediterranean, islands off the coasts of California and Siberia and islands not too far from continents in other parts of the world all once possessed their own species or variety of dwarf elephant (see link). All must have evolved from animals which had occasion ally swum across from the mainlands (elephants can swim long distances) or (perh aps more likely) been left behind when sea levels rose. Most of the varied and unusual species living on islands - including the dwarf e lephants - have now disappeared. Since people began to visit and colonise island s in boats, hunting and bringing domestic animals and small rodents, very widesp read extinctions have occurred. But if we go back to the period before people be came able to cross the sea, we have to imagine a world in which every island had its own specialised animal life. Until people arrived in boats, the only opportunities which island species had o f colonising the continents arose from changes in sea levels or underlying geolo gy which destroyed their geographical isolation. These changes did not happen ve ry often. When an isolated island species became exposed to continental competit ion in this way, the result was probably most often the rapid extinction of the island species. But not always. Occasionally, an eccentric island variant turned out to have developed characteristics which enabled it to compete successfully elsewhere. The Importance of "Peripheral Isolates" Island origin answers a number of questions. It goes some distance towards expla ining why paleontology has so far seldom found the direct ancestors of modern fo rms. This would not be surprising if many new species - including perhaps our ow n - had first started to differentiate themselves in a micro-population on an is

land. The micro-population might be too small to leave much trace, and the islan d might now be under the sea. Of course not all new species appear on islands. Island location is only one pos sible form of geographic isolation. For fish, rivers and lakes perform a similar function. The crucial point is that new species typically appear, initially, as isolated small populations. In most cases, the reintegration of the isolated po pulation into a larger environment results in its extinction. But new species, w hen they do appear, spring from the small minority which survive and spread succ essfully in the larger environment. In the words of Ernst Mayr: "The widespread occurrence of geographic speciation is not now seriously questio ned by anyone....Most isolates are ephemeral; they become extinct before they ha ve had the opportunity to function as full species.. Peripheral isolates are pro duced 50 or 100 or 500 times as often as new species, but when a new species evo lves, it almost invariably evolves from a peripheral isolate." (Ernst Mayr Populations, Species and Evolution p294) Successful new species normally arise not from the gradual large-scale transform ation of successful existing species but from small-scale origins, from which th ey emerge to challenge the dominance of existing forms of life, sometimes expand ing very rapidly when the existing species fail to compete successfully with the m; and thus giving the impression of very abrupt change when we look at the foss il record. Abrupt change of this kind does not result from a sudden genetic muta tion in the continuing population, but from an incoming species displacing the p revious species from its ecological niche; in the way that the immigrant grey sq uirrel has recently and within less than a hundred years displaced the indigenou s red squirrel (see link) in the U.K. Life has evolved over very long periods of time, during which mountains and sea levels have risen and fallen many times, islands have separated from continents and been reconnected; and living populations have been ceaselessly divided up by natural barriers and later brought together again, perhaps in different combina tions. Geological and climatic change and the occasional dramatic meteorite arri val have served as the engines of evolution. Changes in the land and freshwater environments have over and over again exposed isolated populations to the challe nge of revolutionary adaptation to new conditions. Most have failed to adapt. Th ose who succeeded sometimes (very occasionally) later conquered the bigger areas . Responding to the new wealth of opportunities now available to them, they have increased in numbers, variety and perhaps in physical size. By contrast the oceans, the greatest and most stable environment in the world, c ontaining innumerable different forms of life but with very few natural barriers , have for a long time now produced relatively little which is new. The most imp ortant events in the evolution of the sea in the last two hundred million years have all come from the land: first the very successful marine reptiles; then the marine mammals and birds who displaced them; most recently the fisheries and po llution brought by man.The land and its rivers and lakes are where innovative ev olution has been happening. ....................... http://www.scienceclarified.com/everyday/Real-Life-Biology-Vol-2/Speciation-Real -life-applications.html T HE D IVERSITY OF M AMMALS One of the most interesting examples of speciation is that which has produced th e vast array of species, including humans, that fall within the mammalian class. Mammals began evolving before the dawn of the Cenozoic era about 65 million yea rs ago. The Cenozoic era, which started with a catastrophic event that brought a bout the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and the end of the Mesozoic era (see P aleontology), is truly the age of the mammal. Just as dinosaurs dominated the Me sozoic, today the world belongs to mammals as to no other class of creature. Since its humble beginnings in the shadow of the dinosaurs, class Mammalia has u ndergone a massive radiation to the point that today some 4,625 species of mamma l, in about 125 families and 24 orders, are recognized. (That number is changing , as noted later in the context of elephants.) This diversity is tied closely to mammals' enormous mobility, which facilitated their spread throughout the world . Aside from much less complex life-forms, such as arachnids and insects (see Pa

rasites and Parasitology), mammals are believed to be distributed more widely th roughout the world than any other comparable taxonomic grouping. Insects may be the most diverse of all animal classes, with numbers of species that may be many times greater than the number of mammals, but considering mammals' much-greater level of physical development and complexity, the diversity of their species is astounding. MAMMALS' EARLY EVOLUTION. In the next section we list the orders of mammals and give very brief descriptio ns of each. The purpose here is not to provide anything like a comprehensive dis cussion but rather to illustrate the enormous range of species in a class that i ncludes anteaters, dolphins, humans, elephants, and bats. The fact that all thes e diverse creatures, and many more, emerged from a common evolutionary lineage i s almost as amazing as the fact that this common ancestor was a reptile. Mammals are believed to have come from the reptilian order Therapsida, which eme rged during the Triassic period (from about 245 to 208 million years ago) in the early part of the Mesozoic era. Over the course of many millions of years, thes e creatures began to develop a number of mammal-like qualities in particular, endo thermy, or the ability to maintain internal temperature regardless of environmen tal conditions. In other words, these cold-blooded creatures became warm-blooded . This evolutionary process was as complex as it was lengthy. Nor was there a cl ean break with the past no moment when the therapsids faded away or when it would have been clear that mammals had taken the place of their reptilian ancestors. R ather, in what must have been a fascinating taxonomic situation, for many millio ns of years, species that combined aspects of both reptiles and mammals walked t he earth. M AMMALIAN O RDERS The listing of the 20 orders of living mammals that follows is arranged not alph abetically but in the probable order in which these groups evolved. (This is not to imply that the process was orderly or linear; it was not.) Very few dates ar e given, simply because there is much dispute in most cases. Numbers of species within each order are also a subject of debate among taxonomists, and therefore these numbers are not always precise. In the essay, Species, there is a taxonomic listing of the obligatory ranks for humans; included within that listing is a short description of the kingdom (Anim alia), phylum (Chordata), and subphylum (Vertebrata) to which mammals belong. Ma mmal itself is defined as a vertebrate (an animal with a spinal column) that fee ds its young from special milk-secreting glands, termed mammae, located on the m other's body. Mammals are warm-blooded or endothermic, meaning that their intern al temperatures remain relatively stable, and their bodies usually are covered w ith hair. They have other distinguishing characteristics as well, such as a rela tively large cranium (skull) with a hinged lower jaw attached to it. PRIMATES. The order of humans, Primates, falls approximately in the middle of the mammalia n class in terms of evolutionary order. This is an interesting aspect of speciat ion, evolution, and taxonomy: even though humans themselves are the most advance d of all creatures, it is not a logical necessity that we should come from the m ost recently evolved order. In fact, the opposite would seem to be the case. To produce a species whose intelligence dwarfs that of all other animals, the line of descent should be a long one. Where primates are concerned, that is certainly the case. The oldest primate samples date back some 75 million years, or long b efore the end of the Mesozoic. Because it is from primates that humans draw their lineage, more has been writte n about primate evolution than on that of all other mammalian orders combined. T he subject is such a vast one that we will not attempt to approach it here, exce pt to encourage the reader to study in more detail elsewhere the process by whic h the human lineage emerged from order Primates, family Hominidae, and genus Hom o. Primates consist of two broad groups, suborders Prosimii and Anthropoidea. The f irst, the prosimians, includes five families (or six, since tree shrews are some times included) of lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers. The other suborder, known as t

he higher primates, encompasses another six families: marmosets and tamarins; So uth American monkeys other than marmosets; African and Asian monkeys; lesser ape s, or siamangs and gibbons; great apes, or orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees ; and humans, both living and extinct. (Most orders contain extinct members, but for the most part they are not discussed here.) Most primates are tree dwellers, and among the approximately 230 species, there is enormous variation in eating habits. Many lemurs are insectivores, while grea t apes tend to be fruit eaters. Quite a few are omnivores, though no primate oth er than humans is known for eating large mammals, such as cows, sheep, and pigs. The pentadactyl limb (an appendage with five digits) is a significant feature f or primates, which alone have the advantage of the opposable thumb for grasping. Humans and a few other primate species are also the only animals with four limb s who are not only capable of standing upright but also function best in this wa y. CARNIVORES. As with insectivore , carnivore is a name both for an eating preference in this ca se, meat and for members of a primate order, Carnivora. Most members of this extra ordinarily varied group eat meat, including, in some cases, the "meat" of insect s. Bears and some other species are omnivorous, meaning that they also eat plant s, and hyenas and jackals are classic examples of detritivores, or animals who f eed on the remains of other creatures. The distinction between detritivore and carnivore relates not to the materials e ach consumes but to their place in the food web. Rather than consume live creatu res, hyenas and jackals feed on the carcasses of dead ones. Usually these creatu res are artiodactyls (discussed later), such as antelopes, which have been kille d by other carnivores big cats, such as the lion or cheetah. After the big cats ha ve fed on the fleshy parts of the prey, hyenas come to consume the flesh that re mains, and they are followed by jackals and vultures, swoop in to pick the bones . These detritivores help process the remains of formerly living things, which u ltimately return to the soil. (See Food Webs for more on this subject.) Clearly, all members of order Carnivora eat meat, though in different ways and s ometimes in combination with fruit or other vegetation. Natural selection has eq uipped them for this purpose with sharp claws and teeth. Carnivora includes some 270 species grouped into ten families, listed here: Canidae (dogs, wolves, jackals, and foxes) Felidae (cats) Hyaenidae (hyenas) Mustelidae (skunks, mink, weasels, badgers, and otters) Otariidae (eared seals) Odobenidae (walrus) Phocidae (earless seals) Procyonidae (raccoons) Ursidae (bears) Viverridae (mongooses and civets). Note that Felidae is a particularly varied family of some 36 species: lions, lyn xes, tigers, leopards, and even ordinary domesticated cats. Thirty-five species belong to a single subfamily, Felinae, which is native to most parts of the worl d other than Australia, Madagascar, most oceanic islands, and, of course, Antarc tica. The last species, the cheetah ( Acinonyx jubatus ), is segregated into ano ther subfamily, Acinonychinae, primarily because this cat, native to Africa and southwest Asia, is a daytime hunter, unlike its nocturnal cousins. CETACEANS AND SIRENIANS. Orders Cetacea and Sirenia include the majority of aquatic mammals, as opposed t o the many amphibious mammals, such as seals, sea lions, sea elephants, and walr uses, that belong variously to families Otariidae, Odobenidae, and Phocidae of t he order Carnivora. Cetaceans include whales, dolphins, and porpoises, while sir enians are made up of just three species of manatee and one of dugong. Sirenians are large, friendly creatures that inhabit the Atlantic coast and tributary riv ers (manatee) or the Indian and Pacific coastlines (dugong), but cetaceans are m uch more familiar.

With cetaceans, two questions, one specific and one general, often arise. The an swer to the first of these, "What is the difference between a dolphin and a porp oise?," is that a porpoise is smaller and more chubby and has a blunt snout, whe reas a dolphin has a beaklike snout. Some taxonomists and marine biologists put porpoises in the same family as dolphins, whereas others treat them as two diffe rent families. The more general, and much more important, question is "Why are t hese mammals living in the water?" In fact, life itself first appeared in the se a, so perhaps the question should be "Why or how did anything start living on la nd?" The transition from water to land took place long before the age of the din osaurs, much less the emergence of mammals, but later, some mammals began to ret urn to the water, probably about 70 million years ago. Certainly, there is no question that cetaceans are mammals, a fact first recogni zed by Aristotle (384-322 B.C. ), a Greek thinker who is noted not only as one o f the greatest philosophers of all time but also as the father of the biological sciences. (See Taxonomy for more about Aristotle's contributions.) As Aristotle observed, whales and dolphins bear live young and suckle them with milk-produci ng glands; their bodies have hair, albeit only very small strands; and they poss ess lungs, breathing air through a blowhole. As evidence of their terrestrial, or land-based, origins, consider that a whale fetus possesses the remnants of four limbs, each with five fingers (the pentadac tyl limb), like any land mammal. Adult whales and dolphins have the streamlined, fishlike morphological appearance that is necessary for life underwater, but th eir resemblance to fishes is of the superficial, analogous variety discussed in Taxonomy. They have maintained and modified key terrestrial features; for exampl e, a blowhole atop the head one in dolphins, two in whales replaces the nostrils, an d thus the passageways for food and air are completely separate. This differs fr om the situation with most terrestrial mammals, which take in food and air throu gh the same opening. PROBOSCIDEANS, PERISSODACTYLS, AND HYRAXES. Moving from the largest aquatic mammals, the whales, to the largest terrestrial variety, we come to the order Proboscidea, which includes elephants. Our discuss ions of most orders in class Mammalia have illustrated particular aspects of tax onomy and speciation, and so it is with proboscideans, which give evidence of th e many species from the past that are gone forever. The order is a large one, wi th three suborders and some 300 species, but anyone who searches for most of tho se species will search in vain. All but three species are extinct. These three a re the Asian elephant ( Elephas maximus ) and two varieties of African elephant ( Loxodonta africana or African savanna elephant and Loxodonta cyclotisare, the African forest elephant). Until 2001, taxonomists believed that there were only two living species of elephant. (See Taxonomy for more on this subject.) Another 16 species belong to the order Perissodactyla, herbivores whose hind fee t bear either one or three hoofed toes. Included among perissodactyls is another large animal from the grasslands of Africa and tropical Asia: the rhinoceros. T he group also encompasses donkeys, zebras, and tapirs, but by far the most impor tant in human terms is Equus caballus, the domesticated horse. Described by the French zoologist Comte Georges de Buffon (1707-1788) as "the proudest conquest o f man," the horse was domesticated (adapted so as to be useful and advantageous for humans) some 6,000 years ago. Nonetheless, feral or wild horses remain an im portant subspecies. Order Hyracoidea also consists of hoofed mammals: seven species of hyrax, a prim arily herbivorous creature native to Africa and the far southwestern extremities of Asia. Hyraxes are sometimes lumped in with pikas under the term rock rabbit, but, in fact, pikas are lagomorphs, a group we discuss later. To further the co nfusion, hyraxes are probably the animal called a coney in the Bible, even thoug h there is an animal called a cony (no "e") that is actually a lagomorph. This i s just one of many examples of confusion resulting from the complexities of the animal world and humans' attempts to name and classify its members. TUBULIDENTATES. For most orders, the lowercase adjectival name (e.g., primates, carnivores, inse ctivores, and so on) is commonly used. On the other hand, the names hyracoidean

and tubulidentate are seldom used for more obscure groups, such as Hyracoidea an d Tubulidentata. If any order of mammal is obscure, it is Tubulidentata, which e merged some 60 million years ago and which consists of a single species: the Afr ican ant bear ( Orycteropus afer ). The latter creature is better known by the n ame aardvark, which in the Afrikaans language means "earth pig." Aardvarks at first glance might seem to belong with anteaters, sloths, and armad illos in the order Edentata, and that is what taxonomists thought for a long tim e. The latter half of the name tubulidentate, however, suggests the area of diff erentiation: the teeth. Aardvarks' teeth are unique among those of all mammals. Viewed from the top, the aardvark's jawbone is V-shaped, with the teeth midway a long either side of the V. The teeth themselves are not fixed to the jaw but res t in the flesh attached to it, and instead of being covered with enamel, they ar e protected with a cementlike substance. The substance comes from tubules that r un under the teeth. ARTIODACTYLS. Like many other mammalian orders we have discussed, members of order Artiodactyl a are ungulates, or hoofed animals. Whereas perissodactyls have odd-numbered toe s, artiodactyls have even-numbered toes either two or four on each foot. This large group, consisting of some 220 species, comprises a wide variety of well-known sp ecies in nine families. Among them are cows, pigs, sheep, goats, deer, antelope, bison, camels, giraffes, hippopotamuses, and numerous less well known varieties , such as okapi, pronghorn, peccaries, and deerlike chevrotains. The camel family is particularly widespread geographically, including as it does many varieties the llama, alpaca, and vicua of South America whose home is far from the habitats in the Near East that are associated with the camel. In this family is what may be a previously undiscovered species, whose existence the British B roadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported in early 2001. Living on a former nuclear weapons testing range in a remote region of Chinese central Asia, these creatur es drink saltwater, which in itself is an unusual characteristic. Although it is extraordinarily hardy, even by the standards of camels, the centr al Asian camels are threatened; fewer than 1,000 remain. As the BBC reported, th is makes them more endangered than the more well known giant panda. The creature s survived nuclear testing in the area, which ceased in 1996, but they continue to be threatened by much less spectacular varieties of explosive: dynamite and l and mines, planted by hungry locals. John Hare of the Wild Camel Protection Foun dation told the BBC, "We found land mines put by the saltwater springs. So when the camels come to drink, they step on them. Bang! They are blown to pieces and picked up as meat." As to whether the camels constitute a separate species, the molecular geneticist Olivier Hanotte told the BBC: "There are two possibilities here. One is that th e domestic camel was bred from these wild ones some time back in history. The se cond is that the domestic camel we see today was bred from another species that has disappeared. This would mean that these wild camels are a totally separate s pecies." As of early 2002 the camels' fate, both practically and taxonomically, remained undecided. PHOLIDOTA/PANGOLINS. Order Pholidota consists of seven species of scaly anteater, or pangolin. Member s of this order are normally called pangolins, rather than an adjectival form of Pholidota. The word pangolin comes from a Malay term meaning "rolling over," a reference to the fact that when it is threatened, the animal curls into a little ball. As with the aardvark, members of this order once were grouped with Edenta ta but now are considered a separate order. Pangolins are also like aardvarks in thesense that their evolutionary relationship toother mammals is not clear. RODENTS, LAGOMORPHS, ANDMACROSCELIDEANS. Rodents, or members of order Rodentia, are familiar to us as both pests and pets as well as aids to research through their use as test subjects in laboratories. They are also the most abundant of all mammalian orders: about one-fourth of al l families, 35% of all genera, and 50% of all living species of mammal are roden ts. The group consists of some 2,205 species, among them mice, rats, squirrels, beavers, gophers, and porcupines. The name rodent comes from the Latin rodere, m

eaning "to gnaw," and, indeed, the defining characteristic of rodents is their c hisel-like upper front teeth. Whereas rats typically are despised creatures, mice (distinguished from rats sim ply because they are smaller) often are considered cute that is, if the mouse in q uestion is a pet or a laboratory mouse, rather than a pest chewing up the insula tion or electrical wiring in someone's house. The fact that rodents are so often pests and pets arises in part from rodents' close association with humans. This is a distinction in itself, since few mammal orders manage to live successfully in such close proximity to humans. Not only do squirrels often live around huma n dwellings, but other species (for better or worse) often enter structures wher e humans live or work. Particularly notorious in this regard are black rats ( Ra ttus rattus ) and Norway rats ( R. norvegicus ), which are just two of some 500 rat species. The two remaining orders of mammal also are composed of small, furry creatures. Lagomorphs, or members of the order Lagomorpha, are small mammals with large upp er incisors (front teeth) but no canines or eyeteeth and with molars that lack r oots. The 80-odd species of lagomorphs include rabbits, hares, and their lesserknown cousin the pika, or mouse-hare. The difference between rabbits and hares r elates to their conditions at birth: rabbits are furless, blind, and helpless, w hereas hares are furry, have open eyes, and are capable of hopping within minute s. Finally, 28 species of elephant shrew, or jumping shrew, make up the order Macro scelidea, a collection of species known for their long, flexible, sensitive snou ts. Some authorities group macroscelideans with order Insectivora, whereas other s place them in another order, Mentophyla, with tree shrews. The latter often ha ve been placed variously in orders Scandentia, Insectivora, or Primates, indicat ing that many areas of mammalian taxonomy remain in dispute. ............ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/360838/mammal/235400/Food-habits The earliest mammals, like their reptilian ancestors, were active predators. Fro m such a basal stock there has been a complex diversification (radiation) of tro phic adaptations. Modern mammals occupy a wide spectrum of feeding niches. In mo st terrestrial and some aquatic communities, carnivorous mammals are the top pre dators. Herbaceous mammals often serve as primary consumers in most ecosystems. The voracious shrews, smallest of mammals, sometimes prey on vertebrates larger than themselves. They may eat twice their weight in food each day to maintain th eir active metabolism and compensate for heat loss caused by an unfavourable sur face-to-volume ratio. On the other hand, the largest of vertebrates, the blue wh ale (Balaenoptera musculus), feeds on minute planktonic crustaceans called krill . Within a given lineage, the adaptive radiation of food habits may be broad. Some of the carnivores have become omnivorous (raccoons, bears) or herbivorous (gian t panda). Marsupials exhibit a great variety of feeding types, and in Australia marsupials have radiated to fill ecological niches highly analogous to those of placental mammals elsewhere; there are marsupial moles, anteaters, mice, rats, lves. Some bandicoots have ecological roles similar to those of rabbits, and womb ats are partially burrowing (semifossorial) herbivores analogous to marmots. In Australia the niche of large grazers and browsers is filled by a variety of kang aroos and wallabies. Within the bats there has also been a remarkable adaptive radiation of food habi ts. Early in the history of the order, there evidently was a divergence into ins ectivorous and frugivorous lines. The flying foxes (Megachiroptera) have general ly maintained a fruit-eating habit, although some have become rather specialized nectar feeders. Members of the other major group (Microchiroptera) have been le ss conservative and have undergone considerable divergence in feeding habits. A majority of living microchiropterans are insectivorous, but members of two diffe rent families have become fish eaters. Within the large Neotropical family Phyll ostomatidae, there are groups specialized to feed on fruit, nectar, insects, and small vertebrates (including other bats). Aberrant members of the family are th e vampire bats, with a specialized dentition to aid blood lapping.

cats,

Skin and hair The skin of mammals is constructed of two layers, a superficial nonvascular epid ermis and an inner layer, the dermis, or corium. The two layers interdigitate vi a fingerlike projections (dermal papillae), consisting of sensitive vascular der mis projecting into the epidermis. The outermost layers of the epidermis are cor nified (impregnated with various tough proteins), and their cells are enucleate (lacking cell nuclei). The epidermis is composed of flattened (squamous) cells i n layers and is the interface between the individual and the environment. Its pr imary function is defensive, and it is cornified to resist abrasion. The surface of the skin is coated with lipids and organic salts, the so-called acid mantle, t hought to have antifungal and antibacterial properties. Deep in the epidermis is an electronegative layer, a further deterrent to foreign organic or ionic agent s. The dermis lies beneath the epidermis and nourishes it. The circulation of the d ermis is variously developed in mammals, but it is typically extensive, out of p roportion to the nutritional needs of the tissue. Its major role is to moderate body temperature and blood pressure by forming a peripheral shunt, an alternate route for the blood. Also in the dermis are sensory nerve endings to alert the i ndividual to pressure (touch), heat, cold, and pain. In general, skin bearing ha irs has few or no specialized sensory endings. The sensation of touch on hairy s kin in humans depends on stimulation of the nerve fibres associated with the hai rs. However, hairless skin, such as the lips and fingertips, has specialized end ings. Hair is derived from an invagination (pocketing) of the epidermis termed a folli cle. Collectively, the hair is called the pelage. The individual hair is a rod o f keratinized cells that may be cylindrical or more or less flattened. Keratin i s a protein also found in claws and nails. The inner medulla of the hair is holl ow and contains air; in the outer cortex layer there are frequently pigment gran ules. Associated with the hair follicle are nerve endings and a muscle, the arre ctor pili. The latter allows the erection of individual hairs to alter the insul ative qualities of the pelage. The follicle also gives rise to sebaceous glands that produce sebum, a substance that lubricates the hair. Most mammals have three distinct kinds of hairs. Guard hairs protect the rest of the pelage from abrasion and frequently from moisture, and they usually lend a characteristic colour pattern. The thicker underfur is primarily insulative and may differ in colour from the guard hairs. The third common hair type is the vib rissa, or whisker, a stiff, typically elongate hair that functions in tactile se nsation. Hairs may be further modified to form rigid quills. The horn of the rhino ceros is composed of a fibrous keratin material derived from hair. Examples of k eratinized derivatives of the integument other than hair are horns, hooves, nail s, claws, and baleen. Even though the primary function of the skin is defensive, it has been modified in mammals to serve such diverse functions as thermoregulation and nourishment o f young. Secretions of sweat glands promote cooling due to evaporation at the su rface of the body, and mammary glands are thought to be derived from sweat gland s. In certain groups (primates in particular) the skin of the face is under intrica te muscular control, and movements of the skin express and communicate emotion. In many mammals the colour and pattern of the pelage are important in communicat ive behaviour. Patterns may be startling (dymantic), as seen in the mane of the male lion or hamadryas baboon, warning (sematic), as seen in the bold pattern of skunks, or concealing (cryptic), perhaps the most common adaptation of pelage c olour. Hair has been secondarily lost or considerably reduced in some kinds of mammals. In adult cetaceans insulation is provided by thick subcutaneous fat deposits, o r blubber, with hair limited to a few stiff vibrissae about the mouth. The bare skin is one of a number of features that contribute to the remarkably advanced h ydrodynamics of locomotion in the group. Some burrowing (fossorial) mammals also tend toward reduction of the hair. This is shown most strikingly by the sand ra ts of northeastern Africa, but considerable loss of hair has also occurred in so

me species of pocket gophers. Hair may also be lost on restricted areas of the s kin, as from the face in many monkeys or the buttocks of mandrills, and may be s parse on elephants and such highly modified species as pangolins and armadillos. Continuous growth of hair (indeterminate), as seen on the heads of humans, is ra re among mammals. Hairs with determinate growth are subject to wear and must be replaced periodically a process termed molt. The first coat of a young mammal is r eferred to as the juvenal pelage, which typically is of fine texture like the un derfur of adults and is replaced by a postjuvenile molt. Juvenal pelage is succe eded either directly by adult pelage or by the subadult pelage, which in some sp ecies is not markedly distinct from that of the adult. Once this pelage has been acquired, molting continues to recur at intervals, often annually or semiannual ly and sometimes more frequently. The pattern of molt typically is orderly, but it varies widely between species. Some mammals apparently molt continuously, wit h a few hairs at a time replaced throughout the year. ........................... http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123870 The feeding habits of mammals haven't always been what they are today, particula rly for omnivores. Some groups of mammals almost exclusively eat meat--take lions and tigers and ot her big cats as examples. Other mammals such as deer, cows and antelope are predominantly plant-eaters, li ving on a diet of leaves, shoots, fruits and bark. But particularly for omnivores that live on plant foods in addition to meat, the situation wasn't always that way, finds a new study by researchers working at t he National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. The results appear today in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The research links dietary strategy, a basic aspect of animal ecology, with mac roevolutionary diversification of mammals," said George Gilchrist, program direc tor in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology , which funded the research. "It's impressive that ecology has such a strong and clear influence on lineages stretching back millions of years. Darwin would be delighted with this paper." Past research shows that animals with similar diets tend to share certain charac teristics. But this study is the first of its kind to look across all mammal groups, includ ing omnivores, to reconstruct how evolutionary time changed mammal diets. To do that, the researchers compiled previously published diet data for more tha n 1,500 species representing more than one third of mammals alive today, includi ng primates, ungulates, bats, rabbits and rodents. By mapping that data onto the mammal family tree, the researchers were able to t race backward in time and infer what the ancestors of each species most likely a te. They found that while some groups of mammals maintained steady diets, others cha nged their feeding strategies over time. Today's omnivores in particular--a group that includes primates, bears, dogs and foxes--came from ancestors that primarily ate plants, or animals, but not both, said paper co-author Samantha Price of the University of California Davis. While omnivorous mammals weren't always that way, plant-eaters and meat-eaters h ave diversified within a more well-worn path. Radical shifts were unlikely for these animals. Mammals that eat meat for a livi ng, for example, didn't give up their taste for flesh without transitioning thro ugh an omnivorous stage first. "Direct transitions from carnivory to herbivory were essentially nonexistent," s aid co-author Louise Roth of Duke University. "It's an intuitive result because it takes very different kinds of equipment to have those kinds of diets." "Plant- and animal-based foods require different digestive chemistries and diffe

rent processing mechanisms in the mouth and stomach," said co-author Samantha Ho pkins of the University of Oregon. The kinds of teeth adapted for tearing and slicing meat are different than the l arge, flat-topped molars adapted for grinding nuts and roots. "It makes sense that you couldn't easily transition from one to the other in one step," Price said. The researchers also found that diet is linked to how fast mammals spawn new spe cies. As new species arise and others go extinct, the plant-eaters proliferate faster than their meat-eating counterparts, with omnivores lagging behind both groups. "If there was an evolutionary race to evolve 100 species, it would take three ti mes longer for omnivores compared to herbivores, and carnivores would be in the middle," Price said. .................. Food and Human Evolution Human Brain Evolution. Modern human brains are around 7 times larger than one would expect for a mammal of our size and around 3 times larger than expected for a primate of our size. The brains of hominids has steadily expanded and showed a particular expansion a round 30,000 years ago. The interpretation of encephalisation is difficult as br ains are costly to produce and expensive to run, the human brain, in waking or s leeping is very energy demanding as the brain at only 2& of body weight accounts for 20% of energy expenditure, this compares with 9% in macaques or chimpanzees , and 3% for elephants. Having a large brain must have produced an advantage it would not have been selected for. There are several explanations: 1. Living in Social Groups: Monkeys and humans appear to be selected for intelli gence because the environment in which they lived - open grasslands fostered the development of complex social groupings which required intelligence to cope wit h such living - co-operation, deception, representational understanding, communi cation (Environment Social complexity Intelligence). Dunbar (1992) pointed out t hat there is a direct correlation between group size and size of the neocortex a cross the primate order. There is also a clear positive correlation between the ability to engage in tactical deception and brain size. Byrne & Whitten (1998) argued that social living fosters the need for an individ ual to serve his own interest by interacting with others either co-operatively o r manipulatively without disturbing the social cohesion of the group. They refer red to this ability as 'Machiavellian intelligence'. According to Stanford (1999) a key element of group living is the ability to hun t cooperatively as a group, and then after the hunt there are many other social elements involved such as sharing, bartering etc. Stanford also points out that meat is highly valued (in human hunter-gatherer societies and in chimpanzee grou ps), partly because the possession of it allows the holder to gain political fav ours from males, and sexual favours from females it is a social resource. The co ntrol of such a valuable resource confers power and status. In human foraging so cieties women prefer successful hunters as mating partners. 2. Diet: Foley & Lee (1991), and Gibons (1998) have argued that the change in cr anial capacity during the course of hominid evolution required dietary and devel opmental strategies that would sustain the cost of a large brain. Milton (1993) discusses the behavioural and physiological adaptations concerned with plant-eat ing, fruit-eating and meat-eating diets. The latter two diets require the develo pment of mental skills such as memory for food locations and increased social co -operation for hunting and food sharing. The Australopithecine s (judging by the s ize of their dentition) were herbivores and small brained. As the early hominids moved from plant eating to fruit and meat eating their teeth became smaller and the brains increased in size. Comparative brain size is closely related to diet with leaf-eaters (folivores) h aving smaller brains with proportionally less neocortex in relation to body size than frugivores (fruit eaters). The guts of chimpanzees and gorillas are optimi sed for fruit eating and leaf eating respectively, the human gut is optimised fo r high energy diets (principally derived from eating meat).

Hibbeln (1998) pointed out that Palaeolithic nutrition was probably low in satur ated fats and high in polyunsaturated fats (the reverse is true today). Therefor e, our ancestors consumed more omega-3 fatty acids (arachidonic acid, docosahexa enoic acid) and these are the major determinants of synaptic membrane fluidity. Hibbeln proposed that the move from being vegetarian and scavenging for meat to eating fish (rich in these fatty acids) promoted the sudden burst in intellectua l/technological/cultural achievement about 35,000 years ago. Prior to that our a ncestors (who had larger brains) had achieved relatively little. Diet and Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is found in all known populations in all continents and has a simi lar prevalence and outcome in each. This indicates that genetic rather than envi ronmental factors are the principal cause, but if this is so we must ask the que stion what adaptive function does schizophrenia serve? Horrobin (1998) proposed that during the course of human evolution specific biochemical alterations led t o changes in metabolism which enabled the human brain to expand in size and func tion more efficiently. He points out that a large brain per se does not automati cally lead to creativity or intelligence as our ancestors did possess large brai ns, but for many millions of years showed no evidence of using them. Around 35-5 0,000 years ago there was a sudden burst of intellectual and creative achievemen t leading to religion, war, art, transport, complex culture and an agricultural revolution. If brain size was not the principal factor, then Horrobin argues tha t connectivity was the key. Neural connectivity is determined largely by the availability of phospholipids, which make up 60% of the brain, and in particular the connections between neuron s are made by phospholipid-rich axons and dendrites. These rely on a supply of t he essential fatty acids (arachidonic acid, and docosahexaenoic acid) and the es sential amino acids, which are vital for cell-function and neuronal signalling a nd can only be obtained from a diet rich in animal protein (meat, fish, eggs). Horrobin points out that the sudden rise in creativity paralleled dietary change s as hominids moved from eating vegetation and fruit, to eating meat and fish. W hile these changes led to improvements in brain function, they may also have had schizophrenia. This disorder is typically seen in families who we a side effect re distinguished in many other fields (art, leadership etc), families in which o ne member is schizophrenic clearly show other behaviours that are referred to as schizotypal : Excess of suspiciousness. Trace of paranoia. Difficulty in making social contact. Hearing voices. Increased interest in religion and mysticism. Eccentricity. Creative abilities. Interestingly, schizophrenics have been found to have reduced levels of phosphol ipids, there is increased activity of the phospholipases which removes the fatty acids from membranes. Membrane activity is thus affected and neuronal conductiv ity suppressed. This will not be a problem provided that the diet is rich in fat ty acids (as it was during that part of our evolution when creativity and intell igence boomed). However, modern diets are severely lacking in the essential fatt y acids and are replaced with saturated fatty acids, modern farming and agricult ural techniques and contributed to this. Horrobin proposes that biochemical alterations caused by dietary changes increas ed brain size, improved neural connectivity and led to creative intelligence, bu t also produced a series of behaviour patterns such as paranoia, visual artistic skills, mild sociopathy, religious experiences which were kept in check by suff icient dietary levels of the essential fatty acids. As these levels have dropped in modern society, the very behaviours that made us human are expressed in more extreme behaviours of schizophrenia and manic depression. Schizophrenia has cer tainly increased over the past few hundred years, it has a higher incidence in c ultures with a high rate of dietary non-essential fatty acids, and is reduced in patients who increase their intake of essential fatty acids.

3. Searching for Food: Early-human ancestors began to hunt and forage for food a nd this had a series of benefits: It took them away from the home range that required superior memory and tracking abilities to enable efficient food exploitation and to be able to find one s way home again. It also fostered communal social activities, as groups of hunters are always mor e successful than single ones. This form of food gathering also requires the development of tools to hunt, and carve up the food, and to extract insects. Our closest relative the chimpanzee h as also been known to use simple tools. Hunting and foraging in a group entails the development of some form of communic ation - even if very rudimentary such as simply pointing to the location of the prey. A small band of hunters may catch far more than they could eat at the time, the food could then be distributed amongst kin and non-kin, which needed social exch ange mechanisms and co-operation. 4. Bipedalism: There are several consequences of bipedalism: Physiological alterations were needed to adapt to the differing effects of gravi ty on blood flow. The blood flow system in and around the brain gradually altere d and had a cooling effect which then led to further expansion in brain size (Fa lk, 1990). A bipedal animal of a given weight can forage over a much greater area than one using four limbs. As much of early human evolution took place in the Savannah th is would have enabled successful hunting and gathering. An upright posture minimised the surface area of the body exposed to the sun so that our ancestors could have stayed in the sun longer and thus gathered more fo od and explored their environment. This also meant that humans could become hair less which took advantage of cooling by increased sweating. Instead of having the infant cling to the back of the mother, bipedalism meant t hat the mother would have to carry the infant in front of her - this is presumed to have greatly increased social interaction (observational learning and the de velopment of language). Bipedalism freed the hands for doing other things - holding and manipulating too ls. The regions of the brain that were concerned with foot control (grasping branche s) became free for other functions. It provides a survival advantage as it enables a better view of approaching pred ators. Bipedal posture and locomotion led to changes in the structure of the pelvis whi ch made the human birth process more difficult the babies head emerges in an ext ended backward-facing position and so human births require assistance thereby in creasing social cooperation. In the upright bipedal posture the head is balanced over the centre of the spine , and the tongue partially lowered down the throat. This permits the modulation of the oropharyngeal cavity thus allowing a wide range of speech sounds to be pr oduced. ............. http://www.kcby.com/news/health/122237074.html Diet Detective: How Do Animals Eat? (Part 1) I thought it would be interesting to find out more about the way animals eat, so I reached out to Bruce Rengers, Ph.D., R.D., a professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver and a former zoo employee, and Jennifer Watts, a nutritionist at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. Here's what I learned: What are common weight-gain issues that animals share with humans? Bruce Rengers: Some, but certainly not all animals, when they are sedentary and have easy access to food, such as in a zoo, definitely do become obese. The best example I have seen is orangutans. In the wild they are arboreal animals that m ove over large distances. It is hard to replicate that lifestyle in a zoo, so or angutans become obese and sometimes develop Type II diabetes. I did not observe this with gorillas, however, even though the zoo gorillas lived in exactly the s

ame type of environment and had the same food. There were other animals that wer e obese or overweight in the zoo, and we spent time making special diets to help them lose weight. There is a concern in zoos about what animals eat. People always want to feed zo o animals or pets the kinds of "seductive" foods we eat as humans. Feeding anima ls highly refined, sugary, fatty human foods (or natural foods that are high in fat) can cause them to start rejecting their normal foods. There is, for example , concern about giving birds nuts and seeds that are very high in fat because th ey will then start rejecting their normal seeds and other foods that are not so high in fat. How often do animals eat? I'm sure all animals are different, but is there an ov erall theme or pattern? Jennifer Watts: Most animals are fed twice a day. Animals with faster metabolism s (passerine birds, for example) must have food throughout the day, while animal s with slower metabolisms (snakes, alligators, etc.) eat only once or twice per week, or even every other week. Ruminants (camels, giraffes, bison, cattle, etc. ) cannot be offered one grain meal per day; it must be spread out to two or thre e meals to avoid rumen acidosis. They must also have access to hay or grass most of the day to maintain rumen health. For most carnivores we institute a fasting day or bone day when they don t get their normal amount of food. This strategy replic ates the way the animals would eat naturally. Most zoos, however, cannot duplica te true natural feeding i.e., feeding a lion 30 pounds of meat then letting it f ast for five to six days , because this would not provide consistent behavior fr om the animal for training and evacuating. We need most animals to evacuate reli ably so that keepers can clean the exhibit, remove the animal from the exhibit t o do a physical/visual check and examine the exhibit. Any animal that needs to m ove from its exhibit area to a behind-the-scenes holding area usually has the goo d stuff saved for its evening meal, because if the animal knows that it s going to get something good afterwards, it will be more compliant about moving inside. How much do animals eat? Jennifer Watts: For larger animals, it ranges between 2 and 5 percent of body we ight but can increase to upwards of 25 percent in smaller animals with fast meta bolisms. For example, poison dart frogs need to have fruit flies and inch cricke ts available at most times, while larger frogs and toads get full-size crickets every other day. Our Andean condors get a rat or rabbit three times a week. Humb oldt penguins, which weigh 7 to 8 pounds, get fed about to 1 pound of fish daily (supplemented with vitamin E and thiamin). Dwarf mongooses get 6 grams of dry d og food, 6 grams of wet cat food and about 3 grams of mealworms and/or crickets daily. They also get a mouse, fish, or rib bone once a week. The lions and tiger s (which weigh anywhere from 350 to 550 pounds) get fed about 4 to 8 pounds of c ommercial supplemented meat product six days a week; marine mammals weighing 300 to 450 pounds are offered between 10 and 15 pounds of fish daily; and the grizz ly bears (700 to 900 pounds) are offered between 7 and 40 pounds of food, depend ing on the time of year. Animals with hoofs eat the majority of their diet as ha y, but again, size is a huge factor. Small duikers (African forest deer) weigh a bout 4 pounds compared with bison or giraffes that are both around 1,400 pounds. Do animals eat for no reason? Out of boredom? Jennifer Watts: In the wild, no, but boredom is rarely an issue in the wild. Bes ides all of the non-diet reasons animals move and forage, food items come into s eason at different times and can be difficult to procure and/or open. In captivi ty, the presentation of the diet makes it easy to eat, and foraging time is grea tly reduced. To introduce variety, we try to offer diet items that are not peele d or husked so that the animals need to work for the food, and the animals seem to enjoy it. Watching gorillas and orangutans cracking coconuts is very entertai ning because they do it with such fervor and determination! Many animals will eat what is placed in front of them to the point of obesity be cause they have evolved to eat opportunistically whenever food presents itself. Some non-mammalian species, such as carnivorous birds and herbivorous reptiles, seem to have much more ability to self-regulate caloric intake, but it also depe nds on the species and the individual. There are small felids (various types of

carnivorous cats) at our zoo that will turn their noses up at food at a certain point while a certain large tortoise species will just eat and eat and eat. In m y position, it s difficult to say whether an animal would continue to eat if given unlimited food; I don t let that happen! Boredom usually manifests itself in unde sirable behaviors or social stress, so we use diet items spread out over the day to alleviate that stress, but the items offered are always within the animal s da ily caloric allotment. ........... http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/coldwarm.html Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment. To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-bloode d animals, to maintain a constant body temperature. Only a small amount of the f ood that a warm-blooded animal eats is converted into body mass. The rest is use d to fuel a constant body temperature. Cold-blooded creatures take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are h ot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold. In hot environments, cold-blooded animals can have blood that is much warmer than warm -blooded animals. Cold-blooded animals are much more active in warm environments and are very sluggish in cold environments. This is because their muscle activi ty depends on chemical reactions which run quickly when it is hot and slowly whe n it is cold. A cold-blooded animal can convert much more of its food into body mass compared with a warm-blooded animal. To stay cool, warm-blooded animals sweat or pant to loose heat by water evaporat ion. They can also cool off by moving into a shaded area or by getting wet. Only mammals can sweat. Primates, such as humans, apes and monkey, have sweat glands all over their bodies. Dogs and cats have sweat glands only on their feet. Whal es are mammals who have no sweat glands, but then since they live in the water, they don't really need them. Large mammals can have difficulty cooling down if t hey get overheated. This is why elephants, for example, have large, thin ears wh ich loose heat quickly. Mammals have hair, fur or blubber, and birds have feathe rs to help keep them warm. Many mammals have thick coats of fur which keep them warm in winter. They shed much of this fur in the summer to help them cool off a nd maintain their body temperature. Warm-blooded animals can also shiver to gene rate more heat when they get too cold. Some warm-blooded animals, especially bir ds, migrate from colder to warmer regions in the winter. Cold-blooded animals often like to bask in the sun to warm up and increase their metabolism. While basking, reptiles will lie perpendicular to the direction of the sun to maximize the amount of sunlight falling on their skin. They will also expand their rib cage to increase their surface area and will darken their skin to absorb more heat. When a reptile is too hot, it will lie parallel to the sun 's rays, go into a shady area, open its mouth wide, lighten its skin color or bu rrow into cool soil. Some cold-blooded animals, such as bees or dragonflies, shi ver to stay warm when in a cold environment. Fish who live in areas where the wi nters are cold move to deeper waters during the colder months or migrate to warm er waters. Some fish have a special protein in their blood which acts like antifreeze to help them survive very cold water temperatures. Snakes, lizards, toads , frogs, salamanders and most turtles will hibernate during cool winters. Some i nsects die when it gets too cold, however others survive by migrating to warmer areas or moving underground. Honeybees stay warm by crowding together and moving their wings to generate heat. There are many advantages to being warm-blooded. Warm-blooded animals can remain active in cold environments in which cold-blooded animals can hardly move. Warm -blooded animals can live in almost any surface environment on Earth, like in ar ctic regions or on high mountains where most cold-blooded animals would have dif ficulty surviving. Warm-blooded animals can remain active, seek food, and defend themselves in a wide range of outdoor temperatures. Cold-blooded animals can on ly do this when they are warm enough. A cold-blooded animal's level of activity

depends upon the temperature of its surroundings. A reptile, for example, will i ncrease its body temperature before hunting and is better able to escape predato rs when it is warm. Cold-blooded animals also need to be warm and active to find a mate and reproduce. Being cold-blooded, however, also has its advantages. Cold-blooded animals requi re much less energy to survive than warm-blooded animals do. Mammals and birds r equire much more food and energy than do cold-blooded animals of the same weight . This is because in warm-blooded animals, the heat loss from their bodies is pr oportional to the surface area of their bodies, while the heat created by their bodies is proportional to their mass. The ratio of a body's surface area to its mass is less the larger the animal is. This means that larger warm-blooded anima ls can generate more heat than they loose and more easily keep their body temper atures stable. Smaller warm-blooded animals loose heat more quickly. So, it is e asier to stay warm by being larger. Warm-blooded animals cannot be too small or else they will loose heat faster than they can produce it. Being large requires a greater food supply, but for mammals, being small also re quires a lot of food to generate more heat. Small mammals need to eat very often to survive because they need more energy to keep a constant body temperature. T hey also need to eat high energy foods such as fruit, seed, and insects and even other small mammals. Larger mammals can get by with eating lower energy foods o r eating less often. In an environment where food is scarce, such as in deserts, reptiles have an advantage. Since cold-blooded animals do not have to burn a lo t of food to maintain a constant body temperature, they are more energy efficien t and can survive longer periods without food. Many cold-blooded animals will tr y to keep their body temperatures as low as possible when food is scarce. Another disadvantage to being warm-blooded is that warm-blooded bodies provide a n nice warm environment for viruses, bacteria and parasites to live in. Mammals and birds tend to have more problems with these infections than do reptiles, who se constantly changing body temperatures make life more difficult for these inva ders. However, an advantage of this is that mammals and birds have developed a s tronger immune system than cold-blooded animals. A reptile's immune system is mo re efficient when the animals is warmer, however, since bacteria probably grow m ore slowly in lower temperatures, reptiles sometimes lower their body temperatur es when they have an infection. Some animals do not fall neatly into the categories of being warm or cold-bloode d. Bats, for example, are mammals who cannot maintain a constant body temperatur e and cool off when they are not active. Echidnas maintain a range of body tempe ratures which usually lies between 77 and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit and have diffi culty cooling down. Mole Rats are another group of mammals who are unable to reg ulate their body temperature, however, since they live underground, the temperat ure of their environment does not change much. Some warm-blooded animals, such a s bears, groundhogs, gophers and bats hibernate during the cold winter. During h ibernation these animals live off of stored body fat and can drop their body tem peratures by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The Hawk Moth is an insect which can raise its body temperature well above the temperature of its surroundings wh en it is flying because of its huge wing muscles which generate heat when in use . Bees are another example of insects that can raise their body temperatures abo ve that of their environment by moving their wings rapidly to generate heat.