Monday, January 09, 2006

The Beauty that is Mother Nature

As beautiful and fascinating as the opposite sex is, they cannot compare to the grandeur and splendor of Mother Nature. In simpler words, I've been watching a lot of animal planet, discovery channel and national geographic. Mostly the shows I have been watching were shows on animals. Monkeys fascinate me, not in that sick beastiality way or the King Kong woman love thing but its more of how much they are like us, fine, me. Recent scientific discoveries give strong evidence to the idea that the great apes have specific calls for each other, meaning they can name each other. Furthermore, we know clearly that they are self aware, only humans, great apes and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. check this: apes. All other animals cannot do that (some monkeys that aren't great apes can do it, like chimp and baboon), something as simple as recognizing yourself in the mirror isn't so simple to most animals, infact damn near impossible. They might not have the same level of self awareness we do but they do possess it. This brings into many moral and ethical considerations: if these beings can be aware of themselves, should we treat them more akin to us than other animals? This is a discussion I will pick up when I bring up consciousness and the brain, which is another fascinating topic as it deals with the notions of self, soul, God and human understanding.

Back to the topic, Nature has given each animal the ability to survive in their environment. The golden eagle of scotland can see a mouse in the grass from a mile away, its eyes have "tissue" windshield wipers to keep its eyes moist and from freezing. The pitt viper has an additional sense aside from sight, smell, taste, touch and "hearing", it can sense/see heat. Right below its nose is a heat sensor which allows the viper to see the world in heat signatures, allowing it to be ready for any warm blooded animal that comes around it. The blue whale which is the largest animal to ever live, yes even larger than the dinosaurs, weighs about 150 tons and is the length of 120 feet or length of 3-4 school buses. As the blue whale dives deeper and deeper it becomes more and more dense the oxygen in its body condenses to allow it to survive the pressure. It can even make sounds that travel thousands of miles allowing them to "communicate" with each other. Crazy huh? By the way, for those of you who are wondering is there really such a thing as a liger, yes there is. They are lion father and tiger mother's child, they are sterile and weigh up to 1000 lbs and oddly they are not sterile and can reproduce, it happens a lot in singapore. Only female ligers are fertile, the males are sterile. There is also a tigion, tiger male and lion female offspring but it weighs 350 lbs smaller than both a lion and tiger. so there you go.

2 comments:

anoop said...

will read more about you... stumbled across ur blog thru common interest of Karnatic music... read a few random posts here and there, quite impressive....

Anonymous said...

ok. this post, still too long and boring. but an improvement on your usual ramblings. though i heart you dearly, you really need to read them over before you publish. i mean..."they are sterile....and oddly they are not sterile"...