My Science School

Cobra is a species of highly venomous snakes, which expand the neck ribs to form a hood. These snakes are prevalent in India. It is believed that the Portuguese colonists in India gave the snakes their name. Cobra de capello is Portuguese for serpent of the hood or hooded serpent. Its genus name Naja has Indian origins, and may have derived from the Sanskrit word for snake Naga.

The world’s largest venomous snake is the king cobra, or hamadryad (Ophiophagus hannah). Found predominantly in forests from India through Southeast Asia to the Philippines and Indonesia, it preys chiefly on other snakes. Maximum confirmed length is 5.6 metres (18 feet), but most do not exceed 3.6 metres (12 feet). King cobras guard a nest of 20 to 40 eggs, which are laid in a mound of leaves gathered by the female. The guarding parent will strike if a predator or a person approaches too closely. Not all cobras are egg layers.

The Indian cobra (or Indian spectacled cobra, Naja naja) was formerly considered a single species with much the same distribution as the king cobra. Recently, however, biologists have discovered that nearly a dozen species exist in Asia, some being venom spitters and others not. They vary both in size (most ranging between 1.25 and 1.75 metres) and in the toxicity of their venom. Spitters propel venom through the fangs by muscular contraction of the venom ducts and by forcing air out of the single lung.

Credit : Britannica

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Cormorants are large water birds that live in coastal areas or near lakes and rivers, and are usually black, brown, or greyish. Cormorant comes from two Latin words: corvus meaning crow and marinus meaning marine. So, cormorant is another way of saying sea-crow. It may have had its origin in Cornish mythology. In the Comish tale of Jack the Giant Killer, Cormoran is a sea giant. Though cormorants have little in common with crows except for their black plumage, the birds were erroneously thought to be related to ravens till the 16th Century.

Cormorants inhabit seacoasts, lakes, and some rivers. The nest may be made of seaweed and guano on a cliff or of sticks in a bush or tree. The two to four chalky eggs, pale blue when fresh, hatch in three to five weeks, and the young mature in the third year.

Cormorants have a long hook-tipped bill, patches of bare skin on the face, and a small gular sac (throat pouch). The largest and most widespread species is the common, or great, cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo; white-cheeked, and up to 100 cm (40 inches) long, it breeds from eastern Canada to Iceland, across Eurasia to Australia and New Zealand, and in parts of Africa. It and the slightly smaller Japanese cormorant, P. capillatus, are the species trained for fishing. The most important guano producers are the Peruvian cormorant, or guanay, P. bougainvillii, and the Cape cormorant, P. capensis, of coastal southern Africa.

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Hippopotamuses are large, round, water-loving animals that are native to Africa. Greek writer Herodotus is credited with naming this unusual creature. In Greek, the word hippo means horse and potamos means river. But hippos are not related to horses, they are in fact related to pigs, whales, and dolphins!

Hippo is often attributed to terms related to horse. For instance, hippodrome is a stadium for racing horses (and not hippos). Seahorses belong to a genus called hippocampus

(Hippocampus is Greek for seamonster, and it originally referred to a mythological creature that resembled a horse with wings).

Do you know why our brain area hippocampus is called so? Because the part resembles a seahorse.

Hippos live in sub-Saharan Africa. They live in areas with abundant water, as they spend most of their time submerged to keep their skin cool and moist. Considered amphibious animals, hippos spend up to 16 hours per day in the water, according to National Geographic.

Hippos are social beasts, hanging out in groups called schools, bloats, pods or sieges. Schools of hippos usually consist of 10 to 30 members, including both females and males, although some groups have as many as 200 individuals. No matter the size, the school is usually led by a dominant male.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the common hippo isn't endangered, but it is vulnerable to extinction. The IUCN estimates that between 125,000 and 148,000 hippos remain in the wild. Poaching and habitat loss reduced the hippo's global numbers during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the population has since plateaued thanks to stricter law enforcement, according to the IUCN.

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Rhinoceros is a giant horn-bearing herbivore that's among the largest living land mammals. It derives its names from its most pronounced feature: the horn. The term stems from the Latin word rhinoceros and Greek word rhinokeros, both of which take root in rhinos, which means nose, and keras, meaning horn. (Keras is also the origin of keratin, the protein that is the main substance of hair, nails, horns, and feathers).

Rhinoceroses are characterized by the possession of one or two horns on the upper surface of the snout; these horns are not true horns but are composed of keratin, a fibrous protein found in hair. Modern rhinoceroses are large animals, ranging from 2.5 metres (8 feet) long and 1.5 metres (5 feet) high at the shoulder in the Sumatran rhinoceros to about 4 metres (13 feet) long and nearly 2 metres (7 feet) high in the white rhinoceros. Adults of larger species weigh 3–5 tons. Rhinoceroses are noted for their thick skin, which forms platelike folds, especially at the shoulders and thighs. All rhinos are gray or brown in colour, including the white rhinoceros, which tends to be paler than the others. Aside from the Sumatran rhinoceros, they are nearly or completely hairless, except for the tail tip and ear fringes, but some fossil species were covered with dense fur. The feet of the modern species have three short toes, tipped with broad, blunt nails.

In rhinoceroses, females do not conceive until about six years of age; gestation is long (16 months in most species), and they give birth to only one calf at a time. The period of birth between calves can range from 2 to 4.5 years. Thus, the loss of a number of breeding-age females to poachers can greatly slow the recovery of rhinoceros populations.

Credit : Britannica

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Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. The name orangutan is derived from two Malay words - orang, meaning person and hutan meaning forest. So orangutan means person of the forest. Humans and orangutans share approximately 97% of the DNA and 28 physical traits. Orangutans laugh, recognise faces, 'talk about the past learn from each other, and pass on the knowledge to the next generation. Hence, it is only fitting that we call the animal the 'person of the forest.

Orangutans are not as powerfully built as the gorilla but are larger than the chimpanzee. The adult male is typically twice the size of the female and may attain a height of 1.3 metres (4.3 feet) and a weight of 130 kg (285 pounds) in the wild; females weigh 37 kg (82 pounds) or less. Older males develop wide cheek pads, a unique feature among primates. The typically dark tan or brownish skin is covered with relatively coarse and usually sparse red hair. Adult males and some older adult females may have partially or entirely bare backs, but the hair on a male can be so long as to look like a cape when he moves his arms.

Orangutans are predominantly ripe-fruit eaters, although they consume more than 400 different types of food, including invertebrates and, on rare and opportunistic occasions, meat. Almost every night orangutans construct a sleeping platform in the trees by bending and breaking branches, leaves, and twigs. Unlike the African apes, orangutans frequently use vegetation to protect themselves from the rain.

Credit : Britannica

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