September 23, 2012
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TALES FROM THE BRAT FARM
I love watching documentaries on the Animal Planet Channel and Discovery Channel. They show some amazing things. Like showing coral reefs growing, fighting for space, fish behavior in those areas. On Discovery, they showed some fantastic looking fish that live in the lower regions of the ocean. Some look like escapees from a horror movie. Others look like they aren't real like this octopus with short arms but ears that allow them to move around. All I could think of was Dumbo the flying elephant...LOL. There are plants that are gorgeous and are actually a kind of worm that lives in colonies. In water hot enough to cook them live shrimp and crabs that thrive in the area around black vents in the ocean's bottom. The heat is actually from magma underneath them. The shrimp and crab move back and forth between the hot water surrounding the vents and the ocean beyond.
There was an epaulet shark that is often stranded on reefs that are exposed during low tide. It can actually walk and it shuts down unnecessary functions so that it can be out of water for a long time. It finds pools of water and breathes then continues while it looks for food. It has no teeth but sucks in it's prey that often hides under the sand in the small pools of water. Fantastic to watch.
I didn't know that hammerhead sharks are extremely fond of sting rays. The sting rays use it's poisonous barb to try to get away but the shark is immune to that. They found one shark with 96 barbs imbedded in it's skin.
The decorator crab is incredibly beautiful with it's furry looking texture that is quite colorful. The pearl fish looks like a snake and it actually hides itself in the anus of a sea cucumber when it isn't feeding. Sometimes there are two or three of these fish hiding there at the same time. It has to be uncomfortable for the poor sea cucumber. His only relief is when the fish leave to feed.
There are just so many interesting things you can see that you will probably never see otherwise. I have been watching *Escape to Chimp Eden* which is about chimps that have been saved from captivity by abusive or badly informed people. The men who save them attempt to rehabilitate them so they can be released into the wild again. They are released on an island, owned by the government, that has the perfect habitat for chimps. It has an immense forest full of trees good for them to rest in and lots of food trees also. I've learned a lot from that show about how their societies work and how you can actually learn their body language.
There is also a show called *Orangutan Island* which is about orangutans that have also been saved. Many are babies that were orphaned by poachers or their mothers were killed while the forest they lived in was stripped of their trees. Many are killed by the trees they are in hitting the forest floor. Orangutans normally live solitary lives, only getting together briefly when the female is in heat. But on orangutan island, they are learning to live in colonies for survival. It's an amazing chronicle to watch and see when various ones are set free on the REAL orangutan islands. There are now two because of the amount of saved babies that are now ready to be released. The woman responsible for them has saved such an incredible amount of them she may single handedly have saved the species.
Big Cat Diary chronicles various species of cats such as lions, leopards and cheetahs. They tend to track lion prides and the same individuals of leopards and cheetahs. It's not easy at times explains one or the other of the brothers responsible for tracking them. They have teams of people with cameramen on each vehicle that scour the habitats that are common for whomever they are scouting for on any given day. You see new babies, watch them grow and learn to hunt. There was an episode where cape buffalo attacked baby lions that were hidden in some long grass and they headed for thickets nearby. The buffalo did kill a couple of the babies. It was so sad but showed the harshness of life in the wild for these animals.
As you can tell, I love these type of documentaries and they touch me in many ways. Sometimes I wish I was rich so I could travel and see some of these areas. I would love to travel to Australia to see the land and the animals that are native to it. My son, Mustachio, spent a lot of time there when he was in the Navy. If they weren't docked there, he would fly there when he had leave because he loved the land and the people. If he could, he would love to find work there and live there.
Well, let me get this posted. I hope you are having a nice Sunday. The Beast told me not to cook anything for when he gets home from church. He's going to stop and pick us up shrimp dinners from a nearby restaurant we like. My mouth started watering almost immediately. They have wonderful cole slaw and hush puppies. I just hope the Beast doesn't get me okra like he did last time. I'm just not fond of it unless it's in soup, tyvm! Love you all. Have a great day!
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