 |
:: The brave pig
 JoAnne Altsman, 57, of Beaver Falls, Pittsburgh, began having a heart attack in her holiday trailer on Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, on 4 August 1998. Her American Eskimo dog, Bear, did nothing but bark and break a bedroom window; but LuLu, her Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, rose to the occasion.
:: The doe is patroling
 Mopsy The Rabbit, a two-year-old Orange Rex doe, landed a burglar in court after raising the alarm by frantically thumping with her foot during a break-in at her owners' house in Fetcham, Surrey, on 30 June.
:: Strucked by lightning
 Viewers watching the last 12 minutes of a televised Castle Premiership football match between the Moroka Swallows and Jomo Cosmos in the George Gogh Stadium, Johannesburg, saw a group of players collapse suddenly after being struck by lightning.
:: Frog shower
 An unnamed pensioner called the Meteorological Office at Bracknell on 4 March to inform them that an early-morning shower over her house in Shirley, Croydon, south London, had been accompanied by a large number of dead frogs, which were scattered over her garden, her neighbour's house, and nearby streets.
:: The Crocodiles
 Whatever devastated the terrestrial environments 65 million years ago and exterminated the dinosaurs, it failed to force into extinction the ultimate survivors, the Crocodiles.
:: Shark Attack!
 The first sharks appeared on earth about 400 million years ago. Today there are more than 360 known species of sharks.
|
|
 |
The Crocodiles
by
Marianna Kommata
Whatever devastated the terrestrial environments 65 million years ago and exterminated the dinosaurs, it failed to force into extinction the ultimate survivors, the Crocodiles.
Until today we don't know exactly how crocodiles survived when the dinosaurs went extinct. If we really want to find the answer then we have to look at their basic design and concede that it's a good way of being an amphibious predator. They can sustain the most frightful injuries even the most traumatic events. In territorial fights they commonly tear each other's legs off, something that for another animal should be considered a very serious
injury for the crocodiles is just an unlucky event, they go away, sulk for awhile and seem to heal up. Their toughness is incredible but it's not the only reason of their survival. The adaptability of their behavior is also something very important. We haven't lost a species of crocodile to extinction since humans have been dominant on the planet and the reason appears to be in large part because crocodiles learn quickly and adapt to changes in their situation.
They particularly learn to avoid dangerous situations very quickly and that's why it's very hard to catch them with the same trick twice. For research purposes, we find that we often have to change capture techniques.
We believe that crocodiles know individual people and that they learn simple routines very readily. If you don't believe it, a doctor who lived in Colombia could convince you. He had a large housetrained female crocodile about 10 feet long in his house. That really huge crocodile played with the family dog and with his children! This story could be a good justification for those who would like to offer as a gift something different. Just think of your boss with a cute crocodile in his house...
|
|
