Ducklings at Wimbledon

Kids and Pets Relationships

Beaver Taking a Shower

Pygmy Marmoset

About

Range: 

Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and northern Bolivia in South America

Habitat: 

Along rivers, lowland forests, and bamboo thickets

Mini monkeys

High in the rain forest canopy of South America lives a tiny animal. It dodges behind tree trunks and branches, freezing and dashing, just like a squirrel. It also has brown fur and a long tail like a squirrel—but it's a pygmy marmoset, the world's smallest monkey!

Marmosets and their cousins, the tamarins, are some of the tiniest primates around. Yet pygmy marmosets are different enough for scientists to group them apart from other marmoset species

An amazing tail

A full-grown pygmy marmoset could fit in an adult human's hand, and it weighs about as much as a stick of butter. But there is nothing tiny about a pygmy marmoset's tail: it's longer than its body! The tail is not prehensile, but it helps the little monkey keep its balance as it gallops through the treetops.

HideLittle lions

Both male and female pygmy marmosets are orange-brown. Each hair has stripes of brown and black, called agouti coloring. This coloration gives them good camouflage. A mane of hair covers the pygmy marmoset's ears. Most primates have flat nails on the ends of their fingers, along with opposable thumbs that allow them to grasp objects. Pygmy marmoset fingernails are like claws to help them climb up and down tree trunks. They do not have opposable thumbs.

HideLarge trees for small monkeys

Pygmy marmosets live in the Amazon region of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and northern Bolivia. They make their home and living in forest trees or bamboo thickets near or alongside rivers and floodplains. Pygmy marmosets prefer living in dense rain forests where there are lots of hiding places among the plants. Each marmoset group has a small home range of less than half an acre. They feed from just a few trees.

HideBeing tiny can be dangerous

Because they are so small, pygmy marmosets can become prey for cats, harpy eagles, hawks, and snakes. That is why they dash from one safe spot to the next. Their neck is flexible, and they can turn their head backward to spot predators. They are deliberate about their movements to avoid drawing the attention of predators. But when they need to move, pygmy marmosets are fast, leaping several feet to avoid the animals that would like to make a meal out of them.

HideSipping sap

The ability to climb is important for pygmy marmosets, as tree sap is their favorite food. They scamper up and down trees and thick vines headfirst and gouge a hole in the bark or vine with their sharp lower teeth, using an up-and-down sawing motion. When the sap puddles up in the hole, they lap it up with their tongue. Pygmy marmosets have certain trees they like within their territory; they can make up to 1,300 holes in each tree! Sometimes they lie in wait for insects, especially butterflies, which feed at the sap holes. The marmosets also eat somenectar and fruit.

At the San Diego Zoo, pygmy marmosets eat veggies, fruit, a specialized commercial diet forNew World monkeys, crickets, mealworms, wax worms, and hard-boiled eggs.

HideChatterboxes

Pygmy marmosets communicate with each other by chattering and trilling in high-pitched voices. They can make sounds so high in pitch that humans can’t hear them. Certain squeaks and calls express danger or other urgent monkey messages. They also make faces to express emotions like contentment, surprise, or fear by moving their lips, eyelids, ears, and the hair around their face. We humans do that, too! These mini monkeys groom one another, and that helps establish social bond. They are fussy about keeping their fur in good shape. Pygmy marmoset families have territories marked by scent. This signals neighboring troops to leave each other alone.

HideSmall monkey, big family

Pygmy marmosets live in extended families, called troops, of up to nine monkeys but with an average of five members. Usually the troop has a breeding pair, their babies, and any of their adult children. The parents stay together for life. Living in a group is useful for pygmy marmosets. There are more pairs of eyes to spot predators, and everyone helps take care of the little ones. For added safety, the troop spends the night among thick vines or in a tree hole.

HideReally tiny babies

A mother pygmy marmoset's gestation period is about 4.5 months, and she can give birth every 5 to 7 months. She almost always has two babies, but in zoos, pygmy marmosets have had three or even four babies in one litter. Each newborn is about the size of a human thumb! The father helps deliver the babies, cleans them up, and then takes over their care. He carries the newborns piggyback style for their first two weeks, bringing them back to the mother to nurse. Older siblings may help, too. When they are a bit older, the babies hide while the rest of their family looks for food until they are strong enough to travel with the group.

Usually the young marmosets are weaned and can follow the troop by three months of age. It takes them about two years to grow as large as the adults. They may leave the troop at this point to start a family of their own, or they may stay to help raise the newest babies.

Fun Facts

The word marmoset comes from the French word “marmouset,” meaning shrimp or dwarf.

The pygmy marmoset is the smallest monkey but not the smallest primate—that title belongs to the mouse lemur.

The pygmy marmoset's claw-like nails are called tegulae. The flat nails that other primates have are called ungulae.

http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/pygmy-marmoset

LE DÉCALOGUE DE LA SOCIÉTÉ

 1- Le pauvre :................il travaille
2- Le riche :...................il exploite le 1
3- Le soldat :................il défend les deux
4- Le contribuable :….il paye pour les trois
5- Le vagabond :..........il se repose sur les quatre
6- Les enfants :............ils s'accrochent aux cinq
7- Le banquier :...........il escroque les six
8- L'avocat :................il trompe les sept
9- Le médecin :...........il tue les huit
10- Le croque mort :...il enterre les neuf
11- Et le politicien :....se fout des dix 

The Beauty of Eyes

Eyes – We all have them, and they are unique instruments that we take for granted, different and special every each and one of them. Here are some really close-up pictures of how the eye looks. Eye doctors and opticians are probably used to see eyes this close-up every day, but for other people this is something that it so amazing that you can call it art. It can almost remind of volcanoes or some other sort of bold landscape with a huge black hole in the middle.

The photographer is Suren Manvelyan, and she called this project “Your beautiful eyes”, and that is definitely true; the eyes are an amazingly beautiful part of the human body. She has managed to get such close-up pictures because of the camera function Macro. Anyways, they are certainly an impressive selection of photos.  

Beautiful Friendship

State Darwin Museum

1. The State Darwin Museum is a natural history museum in Moscow. The museum was founded in 1907 by Alexander Kohts and was the first world's museum of evolution explaining the work of Charles Darwin as a causal explanation of nature.  
3. Address: ulitsa Vavilova, 57, Moscow, Russia
4. http://www.darwinmuseum.ru/eng/

The Darwin museum is a great place in Moscow with wonderful exhibits. Here each detail is important and it seems that animals will revive in your eyes.

The Corinth Canal

The Corinth Canal is a unique place where you can see the two seas at once, and the Aegean Ionicheskoe. Mysl to build a canal was a long time: the project seriously engaged in such famous people as Alexander of Macedon, the Roman emperor Julius Caesar and Caligula, and Nero in 67 AD proceeded to its practical implementation.

The Corinth Canal (Greek: Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου, Dhioryga tis Korinthou) is a canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in theAegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnese from the Greek mainland, thus effectively making the former peninsula an island. The builders dug the canal through the Isthmus at sea level; no locks are employed. It is 6.4 kilometres (4.0 mi) in length and only 21.4 metres (70 ft) wide at its base, making it impassable for most modern ships. It now has little economic importance.

The canal was mooted in classical times and an abortive effort was made to build it in the 1st century AD. Construction finally got underway in 1881 but was hampered by geological and financial problems that bankrupted the original builders. It was completed in 1893, but due to the canal's narrowness, navigational problems and periodic closures to repair landslides from its steep walls, it failed to attract the level of traffic anticipated by its operators. It is now used mainly for tourist traffic.

History

Ancient attempts

The Diadoch Demetrius Poliorcetes (336–283 BC) planned to construct a canal as a means to improve his communication lines, but dropped the plan after his surveyors, miscalculating the levels of the adjacent seas, feared heavy floods.^[7][10]Several rulers in antiquity dreamed of digging a cutting through the Isthmus. The first to propose such an undertaking was the tyrant Periander in the 7th century BC. The project was abandoned and Periander instead constructed a simpler and less costly overland portage road, named the Diolkos or stone carriageway, along which ships could be towed from one side of the isthmus to the other.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Periander's change of heart is attributed variously to the great expense of the project, a lack of labour or a fear that a canal would have robbed Corinth of its dominant role as an entrepôt for goods.^[7] Remnants of the Diolkos still exist next to the modern canal.^[8][9][7]

The philosopher Apollonius of Tyana prophesied that ill would befall anyone who proposed to dig a Corinthian canal. Three Roman rulers considered the idea but all suffered violent deaths; the historian Suetonius tells us that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar considered digging a canal through the isthmus but was assassinated before he could commence the project.^[11] Caligula, his successor as the third Roman Emperor, commissioned a study in AD 40 from Egyptian experts who claimed incorrectly that the Corinthian Gulf was higher than the Saronic Gulf. As a result, they concluded, if a canal was dug the island of Aegina would be inundated. Caligula's interest in the idea got no further as he too was assassinated.^[12]

The emperor Nero was the first to actually attempt to construct the canal, personally breaking the ground with a pickaxe and removing the first basket-load of soil in AD 67,^[13] but the project was abandoned when he died shortly afterwards. The Roman workforce, consisting of 6,000 Jewish prisoners of war, started digging 40–50 m (130–160 ft) wide trenches from both sides, while a third group at the ridge drilled deep shafts for probing the quality of the rock (which were reused in 1881 for the same purpose).^[10] According to Suetonius, the canal was dug to a distance of four stades(approximately 700 metres (2,300 ft), in other words about a tenth of the total distance across the isthmus). A memorial of the attempt in the form of a relief of Hercules was left by Nero's workers and can still be seen in the canal cutting today.^[14] Other than this, as the modern canal follows the same course as Nero's, no remains have survived.^[7]

The philosopher and Roman senator Herodes Atticus is also known to have considered digging a canal in the 2nd century AD, but did not manage to get a project under way.^[15] The Venetians also considered it in 1687 after their conquest of the Peloponnese but likewise did not initiate a project.^[16]

Remains of Nero's canal project in 1881

1.  Facaros, Dana; Theodorou, Linda (2003-05-01). Greece. New Holland Publishers. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-86011-898-2. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
2. Jump up^ Verdelis, Nikolaos: "Le diolkos de L'Isthme", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 81 (1957), pp. 526–529 (526)
3. Jump up^ Cook, R. M.: "Archaic Greek Trade: Three Conjectures 1. The Diolkos", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 99 (1979), pp. 152–155 (152)
4. Jump up^ Drijvers, J.W.: "Strabo VIII 2,1 (C335): Porthmeia and the Diolkos", Mnemosyne, Vol. 45 (1992), pp. 75–76 (75)
5. Jump up^ Raepsaet, G. & Tolley, M.: "Le Diolkos de l’Isthme à Corinthe: son tracé, son fonctionnement", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 117 (1993), pp. 233–261 (256)
6. Jump up^ Lewis, M. J. T., "Railways in the Greek and Roman world", in Guy, A. / Rees, J. (eds), Early Railways. A Selection of Papers from the First International Early Railways Conference (2001), pp. 8–19 (11)
7. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Werner, Walter: "The largest ship trackway in ancient times: the Diolkos of the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece, and early attempts to build a canal", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1997), pp. 98–119
8. Jump up^ Verdelis, Nikolaos: "Le diolkos de L'Isthme", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique (1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963)
9. Jump up^ Raepsaet, G. & Tolley, M.: "Le Diolkos de l’Isthme à Corinthe: son tracé, son fonctionnement", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 117 (1993), pp. 233–261
10. ^ Jump up to:^a b Gerster, Bela, "L'Isthme de Corinthe: tentatives de percement dans l'antiquité", Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (1884), Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 225–232
11. Jump up^ Suetonius, "Lives of the Caesars: Julius Caesar", 44.3
12. Jump up^ Facaros, Dana; Theodorou, Linda (2008). Peloponnese & Athens. New Holland Publishers. pp. 155–156. ISBN 978-1-86011-396-3.
13. Jump up^ Suetonius, "Lives of the Caesars: Nero", 19.2
14. Jump up^ Arafat, K. W. (2004). Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge University Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-521-60418-5.
15. Jump up^ Wiseman, James (1978). The land of the ancient Corinthians. P. Åström. p. 50. ISBN 978-91-85058-78-5.
16. Jump up^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1991). Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the seventeenth century. American Philosophical Society. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-87169-192-7.