Bolivia
Bolivia the Plurinational State of Bolivia is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. The capital is Sucre; the largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales a flat region in the east of Bolivia. The sovereign state of Bolivia is a constitutionally unitary state, divided into nine departments, its geography varies from the peaks of the Andes in the West, to the Eastern Lowlands, situated within the Amazon Basin. It is bordered to the north and east by Brazil, to the southeast by Paraguay, to the south by Argentina, to the southwest by Chile, to the northwest by Peru. One-third of the country is within the Andean mountain range. With 1,098,581 km2 of area, Bolivia is the fifth largest country in South America, the 27th largest in the world and the largest landlocked country in the Southern Hemisphere; the country's population, estimated at 11 million, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans and Africans.
The racial and social segregation that arose from Spanish colonialism has continued to the modern era. Spanish is the official and predominant language, although 36 indigenous languages have official status, of which the most spoken are Guarani and Quechua languages. Before Spanish colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was part of the Inca Empire, while the northern and eastern lowlands were inhabited by independent tribes. Spanish conquistadors arriving from Cuzco and Asunción took control of the region in the 16th century. During the Spanish colonial period Bolivia was administered by the Royal Audiencia of Charcas. Spain built its empire in large part upon the silver, extracted from Bolivia's mines. After the first call for independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century Bolivia lost control of several peripheral territories to neighboring countries including the seizure of its coastline by Chile in 1879.
Bolivia remained politically stable until 1971, when Hugo Banzer led a coup d'état which replaced the socialist government of Juan José Torres with a military dictatorship headed by Banzer. Banzer's regime cracked down on leftist and socialist opposition and other forms of dissent, resulting in the torture and deaths of a number of Bolivian citizens. Banzer was ousted in 1978 and returned as the democratically elected president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001. Modern Bolivia is a charter member of the UN, IMF, NAM, OAS, ACTO, Bank of the South, ALBA and USAN. For over a decade Bolivia has had one of the highest economic growth rates in Latin America, it is a developing country, with a medium ranking in the Human Development Index, a poverty level of 38.6%, one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America. Its main economic activities include agriculture, fishing and manufacturing goods such as textiles, refined metals, refined petroleum. Bolivia is rich in minerals, including tin and lithium. Bolivia is named after Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan leader in the Spanish American wars of independence.
The leader of Venezuela, Antonio José de Sucre, had been given the option by Bolívar to either unite Charcas with the newly formed Republic of Peru, to unite with the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, or to formally declare its independence from Spain as a wholly independent state. Sucre opted to create a brand new state and on 6 August 1825, with local support, named it in honor of Simón Bolívar; the original name was Republic of Bolívar. Some days congressman Manuel Martín Cruz proposed: "If from Romulus comes Rome from Bolívar comes Bolivia"; the name was approved by the Republic on 3 October 1825. In 2009, a new constitution changed the country's official name to "Plurinational State of Bolivia" in recognition of the multi-ethnic nature of the country and the enhanced position of Bolivia's indigenous peoples under the new constitution; the region now known as Bolivia had been occupied for over 2,500 years. However, present-day Aymara associate themselves with the ancient civilization of the Tiwanaku culture which had its capital at Tiwanaku, in Western Bolivia.
The capital city of Tiwanaku dates from as early as 1500 BC when it was a small, agriculturally based village. The community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. According to early estimates, the city covered 6.5 square kilometers at its maximum extent and had between 15,000 and 30,000 inhabitants. In 1996 satellite imaging was used to map the extent of fossilized suka kollus across the three primary valleys of Tiwanaku, arriving at population-carrying capacity estimates of anywhere between 285,000 and 1,482,000 people. Around AD 400, Tiwanaku went from being a locally dominant force to a predatory state. Tiwanaku expanded its reaches into the Yungas and brought its culture and way of life to many other cultures in Peru and Chile. Tiwanaku was not a violent culture in many respects. In order to expand its reach, Tiwanaku exercised great political astuteness, creating colonies, fostering trade agree
South America
South America is a continent in the Western Hemisphere in the Southern Hemisphere, with a small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It may be considered a subcontinent of the Americas, how it is viewed in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions of the Americas; the reference to South America instead of other regions has increased in the last decades due to changing geopolitical dynamics. It is bordered on the west on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean, it includes twelve sovereign states, a part of France, a non-sovereign area. In addition to this, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Tobago, Panama may be considered part of South America. South America has an area of 17,840,000 square kilometers, its population as of 2016 has been estimated at more than 420 million. South America ranks fourth in fifth in population. Brazil is by far the most populous South American country, with more than half of the continent's population, followed by Colombia, Argentina and Peru. In recent decades Brazil has concentrated half of the region's GDP and has become a first regional power.
Most of the population lives near the continent's western or eastern coasts while the interior and the far south are sparsely populated. The geography of western South America is dominated by the Andes mountains. Most of the continent lies in the tropics; the continent's cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin with the interaction of indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Given a long history of colonialism, the overwhelming majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish, societies and states reflect Western traditions. South America occupies the southern portion of the Americas; the continent is delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border, although some may consider the border instead to be the Panama Canal. Geopolitically and geographically all of Panama – including the segment east of the Panama Canal in the isthmus – is included in North America alone and among the countries of Central America.
All of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate. South America is home to Angel Falls in Venezuela. South America's major mineral resources are gold, copper, iron ore and petroleum; these resources found in South America have brought high income to its countries in times of war or of rapid economic growth by industrialized countries elsewhere. However, the concentration in producing one major export commodity has hindered the development of diversified economies; the fluctuation in the price of commodities in the international markets has led to major highs and lows in the economies of South American states causing extreme political instability. This is leading to efforts to diversify production to drive away from staying as economies dedicated to one major export. South America is one of the most biodiverse continents on earth. South America is home to many interesting and unique species of animals including the llama, piranha, vicuña, tapir; the Amazon rainforests possess high biodiversity, containing a major proportion of the Earth's species.
Brazil is the largest country in South America, encompassing around half of the continent's land area and population. The remaining countries and territories are divided among three regions: The Andean States, the Guianas and the Southern Cone. Traditionally, South America includes some of the nearby islands. Aruba, Curaçao, Trinidad and the federal dependencies of Venezuela sit on the northerly South American continental shelf and are considered part of the continent. Geo-politically, the island states and overseas territories of the Caribbean are grouped as a part or subregion of North America, since they are more distant on the Caribbean Plate though San Andres and Providencia are politically part of Colombia and Aves Island is controlled by Venezuela. Other islands that are included with South America are the Galápagos Islands that belong to Ecuador and Easter Island, Robinson Crusoe Island, Chiloé and Tierra del Fuego. In the Atlantic, Brazil owns Fernando de Noronha and Martim Vaz, the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago, while the Falkland Islands are governed by the United Kingdom, whose sovereignty over the islands is disputed by Argentina.
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands may be associate
Colombia
Colombia the Republic of Colombia, is a sovereign state situated in the northwest of South America, with territories in Central America. Colombia shares a border to the northwest with Panama, to the east with Venezuela and Brazil and to the south with Ecuador and Peru, it shares its maritime limits with Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Colombia is a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments, with the capital in Bogota. Colombia has been inhabited by various indigenous peoples since 12,000 BCE, including the Muisca and the Tairona, along with the Inca Empire that expanded to the southwest of the country; the Spanish arrived in 1499 and by the mid-16th century conquered and colonized much of the region, establishing the New Kingdom of Granada, with Santafé de Bogotá as its capital. Independence from Spain was achieved in 1819, but by 1830 the "Gran Colombia" Federation was dissolved, with what is now Colombia and Panama emerging as the Republic of New Granada.
The new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation, the United States of Colombia, before the Republic of Colombia was declared in 1886. Panama seceded in 1903. Beginning in the 1960s, the country suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict and rampant political violence, both of which escalated in the 1990s. Since 2005, there has been significant improvement in security and rule of law. Colombia is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world, with its rich cultural heritage reflecting influences by indigenous peoples, European settlement, forced African migration, immigration from Europe and the Middle East. Urban centres are located in the highlands of the Andes mountains and the Caribbean coast. Colombia is among the world's 17 megadiverse countries, the most densely biodiverse per square kilometer. Colombia is a middle power and regional actor in Latin America, it is part of the CIVETS group of six leading emerging markets and a member of the UN, the WTO, the OAS, the Pacific Alliance, other international organizations.
Colombia's diversified economy is the fourth largest in Latin America, with macroeconomic stability and favorable long-term growth prospects. The name "Colombia" is derived from the last name of Christopher Columbus, it was conceived by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to all the New World, but to those portions under Spanish rule. The name was adopted by the Republic of Colombia of 1819, formed from the territories of the old Viceroyalty of New Granada; when Venezuela and Cundinamarca came to exist as independent states, the former Department of Cundinamarca adopted the name "Republic of New Granada". New Granada changed its name in 1858 to the Granadine Confederation. In 1863 the name was again changed, this time to United States of Colombia, before adopting its present name – the Republic of Colombia – in 1886. To refer to this country, the Colombian government uses the terms Colombia and República de Colombia. Owing to its location, the present territory of Colombia was a corridor of early human migration from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to the Andes and Amazon basin.
The oldest archaeological finds are from the Pubenza and El Totumo sites in the Magdalena Valley 100 kilometres southwest of Bogotá. These sites date from the Paleoindian period. At Puerto Hormiga and other sites, traces from the Archaic Period have been found. Vestiges indicate that there was early occupation in the regions of El Abra and Tequendama in Cundinamarca; the oldest pottery discovered in the Americas, found at San Jacinto, dates to 5000–4000 BCE. Indigenous people inhabited the territory, now Colombia by 12,500 BCE. Nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes at the El Abra, Tibitó and Tequendama sites near present-day Bogotá traded with one another and with other cultures from the Magdalena River Valley. Between 5000 and 1000 BCE, hunter-gatherer tribes transitioned to agrarian societies. Beginning in the 1st millennium BCE, groups of Amerindians including the Muisca, Zenú, Tairona developed the political system of cacicazgos with a pyramidal structure of power headed by caciques; the Muisca inhabited the area of what is now the Departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca high plateau where they formed the Muisca Confederation.
They farmed maize, potato and cotton, traded gold, blankets, ceramic handicrafts and rock salt with neighboring nations. The Tairona inhabited northern Colombia in the isolated mountain range of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; the Quimbaya inhabited regions of the Cauca River Valley between the Western and Central Ranges of the Colombian Andes. Most of the Amerindians practiced agriculture and the social structure of each indigenous community was different; some groups of indigenous people such as the Caribs lived in a state of permanent war, but others had less bellicose attitudes. The Incas expanded their empire onto the southwest part of the country. Alonso de Ojeda reached the Guajira Peninsula in 1499. Spanish explorers, led by Rodrigo de Bastidas, made the first exploration
Morphology (biology)
Morphology is a branch of biology dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. This includes aspects of the outward appearance, i.e. external morphology, as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs, i.e. internal morphology. This is in contrast to physiology, which deals with function. Morphology is a branch of life science dealing with the study of gross structure of an organism or taxon and its component parts; the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek μορφή, morphé, meaning "form", λόγος, lógos, meaning "word, research". While the concept of form in biology, opposed to function, dates back to Aristotle, the field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and independently by the German anatomist and physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach. Among other important theorists of morphology are Lorenz Oken, Georges Cuvier, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Richard Owen, Karl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel.
In 1830, Cuvier and E. G. Saint-Hilaire engaged in a famous debate, said to exemplify the two major deviations in biological thinking at the time – whether animal structure was due to function or evolution. Comparative morphology is analysis of the patterns of the locus of structures within the body plan of an organism, forms the basis of taxonomical categorization. Functional morphology is the study of the relationship between the structure and function of morphological features. Experimental morphology is the study of the effects of external factors upon the morphology of organisms under experimental conditions, such as the effect of genetic mutation. "Anatomy" is a "branch of morphology that deals with the structure of organisms". Molecular Morphology is a term used in English-speaking countries for describing the structure of compound molecules, such as polymers and ribonucleic acid. Gross Morphology refers to the collective structures of an organism as a whole as a general description of the form and structure of an organism, taking into account all of its structures without specifying an individual structure.
Most taxa differ morphologically from other taxa. Related taxa differ much less than more distantly related ones, but there are exceptions to this. Cryptic species are species which look similar, or even outwardly identical, but are reproductively isolated. Conversely, sometimes unrelated taxa acquire a similar appearance as a result of convergent evolution or mimicry. In addition, there can be morphological differences within a species, such as in Apoica flavissima where queens are smaller than workers. A further problem with relying on morphological data is that what may appear, morphologically speaking, to be two distinct species, may in fact be shown by DNA analysis to be a single species; the significance of these differences can be examined through the use of allometric engineering in which one or both species are manipulated to phenocopy the other species. A step relevant to the evaluation of morphology between traits/features within species, includes an assessment of the terms: homology and homoplasy.
Homology between features indicate. Alternatively, homoplasy between features describes those that can resemble each other, but derive independently via parallel or convergent evolution. Invention and development of microscopy enable the observation of 3-D cell morphology with both high spatial and temporal resolution; the dynamic processes of these cell morphology which are controlled by a complex system play an important role in varied important biological process, such as immune and invasive responses. Comparative anatomy Insect morphology Morphometrics Neuromorphology Phenetics Phenotype Phenotypic plasticity Plant morphology Media related to Morphology at Wikimedia Commons
Costa Rica
Costa Rica the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around 5 million in a land area of 51,060 square kilometers. An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José with around 2 million people in the surrounding metropolitan area; the sovereign state of Costa Rica is a unitary presidential constitutional republic. It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, for its educated workforce, most of whom speak English; the country spends 6.9% of its budget on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, corporate services for foreign companies and ecotourism. Many foreign manufacturing and services companies operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.
Costa Rica was facing a market liquidity crisis in 2017 due to a growing budget deficit. By August 2017, the Treasury was having difficulty paying its obligations. Other challenges facing the country in its attempts to improve the economy by increasing foreign investment include a poor infrastructure and a need to improve public sector efficiency. Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by indigenous peoples before coming under Spanish rule in the 16th century, it remained a peripheral colony of the empire until independence as part of the First Mexican Empire, followed by membership in the United Provinces of Central America, from which it formally declared independence in 1847. Since Costa Rica has remained among the most stable and progressive nations in Latin America. Following the brief Costa Rican Civil War, it permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming one of only a few sovereign nations without a standing army; the country has performed favorably in the Human Development Index, placing 69th in the world as of 2015, among the highest of any Latin American nation.
It has been cited by the United Nations Development Programme as having attained much higher human development than other countries at the same income levels, with a better record on human development and inequality than the median of the region. Costa Rica has progressive environmental policies, it is the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability. It was ranked 42nd in the world, third in the Americas, in the 2016 Environmental Performance Index, was twice ranked the best performing country in the New Economics Foundation's Happy Planet Index, which measures environmental sustainability, was identified by the NEF as the greenest country in the world in 2009. Costa Rica plans to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021. By 2016, 98.1% of its electricity was generated from green sources hydro, solar and biomass. Historians have classified the indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped.
More pre-Columbian Costa Rica has been described as part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Stone tools, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Costa Rica, are associated with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000 years BCE in the Turrialba Valley; the presence of Clovis culture type spearheads and arrows from South America opens the possibility that, in this area, two different cultures coexisted. Agriculture became evident in the populations, they grew tubers and roots. For the first and second millennia BCE there were settled farming communities; these were small and scattered, although the timing of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as the main livelihood in the territory is still unknown. The earliest use of pottery appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE. Shards of pots, cylindrical vases, platters and other forms of vases decorated with grooves and some modelled after animals have been found; the impact of indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been small compared to other nations, since the country lacked a strong native civilization to begin with.
Most of the native population was absorbed into the Spanish-speaking colonial society through inter-marriage, except for some small remnants, the most significant of which are the Bribri and Boruca tribes who still inhabit the mountains of the Cordillera de Talamanca, in the southeastern part of Costa Rica, near the frontier with Panama. The name la costa rica, meaning "rich coast" in the Spanish language, was in some accounts first applied by Christopher Columbus, who sailed to the eastern shores of Costa Rica during his final voyage in 1502, reported vast quantities of gold jewelry worn by natives; the name may have come from conquistador Gil González Dávila, who landed on the west coast in 1522, encountered natives, appropriated some of their gold. During most of the colonial period, Costa Rica was the southernmost province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, nominally part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In practice, the captaincy general was a autonomous entity within the Spanish Empire.
Costa Rica's distance from the capital of the captaincy in Guatemala, its legal prohibition under Spanish law from trade with its southern neighbor Panama part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, lack of r
Rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with annual rainfall in the case of tropical rainforests between 250 and 450 centimetres, definitions varying by region for temperate rainforests. The monsoon trough, alternatively known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating the climatic conditions necessary for the Earth's tropical rainforests. Around 40% to 75% of all biotic species are indigenous to the rainforests. There may be many millions of species of plants and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. Rainforests are responsible for 28% of the world's oxygen turnover, sometimes misnamed oxygen production, processing it through photosynthesis from carbon dioxide and consuming it through respiration; the undergrowth in some areas of a rainforest can be restricted by poor penetration of sunlight to ground level.
If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines and small trees, called a jungle. The term jungle is sometimes applied to tropical rainforests generally. Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere. Tropical rainforests are characterized by a warm and wet climate with no substantial dry season: found within 10 degrees north and south of the equator. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C during all months of the year. Average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm and can exceed 1,000 cm although it lies between 175 cm and 200 cm. Many of the world's tropical forests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough known as the intertropical convergence zone; the broader category of tropical moist forests are located in the equatorial zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Tropical rainforests exist in Southeast Asia to the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka.
Tropical forests have been called the "Earth's lungs", although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Tropical forests cover a large part of the globe, but temperate rainforests only occur in few regions around the world. Temperate rainforests are rainforests in temperate regions, they occur in North America, in Europe, in East Asia, in South America and in Australia and New Zealand. A tropical rainforest has a number of layers, each with different plants and animals adapted for life in that particular area. Examples include the emergent, canopy and forest floor layers; the emergent layer contains a small number of large trees called emergents, which grow above the general canopy, reaching heights of 45–55 m, although on occasion a few species will grow to 70–80 m tall. They need to be able to withstand the hot temperatures and strong winds that occur above the canopy in some areas. Eagles, butterflies and certain monkeys inhabit this layer.
The canopy layer contains the majority of the largest trees 30 metres to 45 metres tall. The densest areas of biodiversity are found in the forest canopy, a more or less continuous cover of foliage formed by adjacent treetops; the canopy, by some estimates, is home to 50 percent of all plant species. Epiphytic plants attach to trunks and branches, obtain water and minerals from rain and debris that collects on the supporting plants; the fauna is similar to that found in the emergent layer, but more diverse. A quarter of all insect species are believed to exist in the rainforest canopy. Scientists have long suspected the richness of the canopy as a habitat, but have only developed practical methods of exploring it; as long ago as 1917, naturalist William Beebe declared that "another continent of life remains to be discovered, not upon the Earth, but one to two hundred feet above it, extending over thousands of square miles." True exploration of this habitat only began in the 1980s, when scientists developed methods to reach the canopy, such as firing ropes into the trees using crossbows.
Exploration of the canopy is still in its infancy, but other methods include the use of balloons and airships to float above the highest branches and the building of cranes and walkways planted on the forest floor. The science of accessing tropical forest canopy using airships or similar aerial platforms is called dendronautics; the understory or understorey layer lies between the forest floor. It is home to a number of birds and lizards, as well as predators such as jaguars, boa constrictors and leopards; the leaves are much larger at this level and insect life is abundant. Many seedlings that will grow to the canopy level are present in the understory. Only about 5% of the sunlight s
Projectile use by non-human organisms
Although projectiles are used in human conflict, projectile use by organisms other than humans is rare. Most projectiles used by animals are liquids. Among invertebrates there are a number of examples. Velvet worms can fire a sticky fluid; the fluid is fired from glands on the sides of their head. The spitting spiders Scytodes can spit a venomous and sticky fluid that traps its victims and poisons them; the bombardier beetle is unusual by using a violent exothermic chemical reaction to launch a boiling noxious chemical spray in a rapid burst of pulses from special glands in its abdomen, accompanied with a popping sound. The Anthia will fire formic acid at attackers extracting the formic acid from the ants that it eats; the devil-rider stick insects can fire terpenes from glands on the metathorax that can cause an intense burning irritation of the eyes and mouth of potential predators. Wood ants will spray acid at attackers. A type of planthopper of Madagascar is able to flick small balls of honeydew, this attracts day geckos that feed on the honeydew and whose presence may deter predators from approaching the sap-sucking insect.
Termites of the North American termite subfamily Nasutitermitinae can project a sticky fluid from a nozzle on their heads. They can use this fontanellar gun over a range of many centimeters though the termite is blind using auditory or olfactory cues instead. A number of vertebrates use liquid projectiles; the archerfish will squirt water from its mouth to dislodge invertebrates from overhanging branches. Some diptodactyline geckos can fire a black or pale yellow sticky fluid out of glands in their tail for a distance of about a meter, with good aim; this fluid has a musky unpleasant odour and although it is not toxic it may discourage predators, in particular the big arthropods that prey on these geckos. The spitting cobra can squirt venom from forward-facing holes in its fangs, it aims for its victim's eyes, spitting up to 1.5 m. The venom may cause blindness; the Mangshan pitviper is reported to spit venom. A bird that uses liquid projectiles in defense is the southern giant petrel which produces a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides that are stored in the proventriculus and can be projectile vomited on predators.
Other petrels such as the fulmar can squirt oils from their mouths as a defense. They can squirt oils with accuracy up to a distance of 1 to 2 meters; the oil mats the feathers of birds together and destroys their waterproofing abilities, so oiled birds may die from chilling or drowning, although fulmars seem able to remove the oil from themselves by preening. Birds ranging from gulls to sea-eagles have died after being squirted by fulmars; some species of penguin expel liquid feces in a projectile manner, to a distance of up to about 50 cm. They are believed to do this because during the brooding season, when penguins are sitting on their nests, they avoid leaving their nests and thereby leaving their eggs open to predation and thus to maintain a clean nest they evolved the ability to project their feces. Among mammals, skunks can eject a noxious fluid from glands near their anus, it is not only foul smelling, but can cause skin irritation and, if it gets in the eyes, temporary blindness. When it feels threatened a camel will bring up their stomach contents, along with saliva, project it out towards the threat to distract, surprise, or bother the threat.
Some New World tarantulas have a dense covering of hairs called urticating hairs on the abdomen that they sometimes use as protection against enemies. Species with urticating hairs can kick these hairs off; these fine hairs are barbed and designed to irritate and can be lethal to small animals such as rodents. The symptoms range from a burning itch to a minor rash, from being lethal to being a deterrent. With humans, they can cause irritation to the eyes and skin, more dangerously, the lungs and airways, if inhaled. In some cases, tarantula hairs have caused permanent damage to human eyes. Urticating hairs are replaced with each moult. Another invertebrate, the antlion makes use of solid projectiles; the antlion lies at the bottom of a sloping pit. Small prey slip into the pit on the loose substrate. If the prey crawls up the slopes of the pit, the antlion throws sand at the prey, which may dislodge it and send it back down the pit. In gastropods, cone snails have modified radula tooth, stored in the radular sac and at the end of proboscis, acting like a harpoon.
Their "harpoon" is venomous, which assists cone snail to kill the prey before eating it. A number of vertebrate species make use of solid projectiles. Among birds the hornbill uses projectile motion to eat food; the hornbill's beak only contacts at the tip, it has a short tongue. To swallow food the hornbill instead throws the food from the tip of its long bill backwards into the throat. One example of solid projectile use among mammals is the California ground squirrel, known to distract predators such as the rattlesnake and gopher snake from locating their nest burrows by kicking sand into their eyes. A wild female African elephant has been observed to throw various materials at an interfering rhino. Orcas have been observed to throw seal prey using their tail flukes in apparent play behavior; some primates, including humans, can throw objects such as rocks and feces as projectiles. Primates that are known to throw are humans, chimpanzees, orang-utans, certain gibbons and some baboons and Japanese macaques (although not rhesus mac
Data related to Bassaricyon at Wikispecies
Media related to Bassaricyon at Wikimedia Commons
