The Bovidae family is the largest of the ten extant families in the Artiodactyla order. The Bovidae family is divided up into eight subfamilies but all Bovids have some closely related traits. Bovids are all strictly herbivores that rely on a rumen to break down their cellulose rich diet. The rumen is a four compartment stomach that allows for the bacterial break down of the cellulose. Along with a rumen all Bovids have two toes on each foot and for the ones that have horns they are permanently attached with a keratin cover. The Bovidae family is wide spread and while the majority of the species are found in Africa, Bovids are native to all continents excluding Antarctica. The one hundred and forty species of Bovids are divided up into eight separate subfamilies; Aepycerotinae, Alcelaphinae, Antilopinae, Bovinae, Caprine, Cephalophinae, Hippotraginae, and Reduncinae.
One of the few species in the Bovidae family that are native to North America is the American Bison. The Bison in categorized in the Bovinae subfamily and is one of only two living species in its Genus. The American Bison is the heaviest land mammal in North American weighting in at just over one ton. On average they stand between five and six and a half feet tall, but despite their size Bison can reach speeds up to forty miles per hour. Both males (bulls) and females (cows) grow a single pair of curved horns that can grow up to two feet long. During the summer mating season is when the two genders come together to form massive herds, but for the majority of the year the males and females live in small separate bands. After a nine month gestation cows normally give birth to only one calf. At one point in time the Bison roamed all the Great Plains and much of the w...
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Atelerix albiventris, also commonly known as the four-toed hedgehog, is a fascinating organism with a plethora of intriguing characteristics. The hierarchical classification of this organism is as follows: Kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, order Insectivora, family Erinaceidae, genus Atelerix, and species albiventris. In the genus Atelerix, there are four other species. The members of this genus include the four-toed hedgehog (Atelerix albiventris), the Somali Hedgehog (Atelerix sclateri), the Southern African Hedgehog (Atelerix frontalis), and the North African hedgehog (Atelerix algirus) (Santana 2010).The two distinctive features of the class Mammalia are the presence of hair and mammary glands. The function of hair is to serve as an insulator while the mammary glands enable females to produce nutritious, calorie-rich milk and nurse their young. Members of the order Insectivora are insect-eating mammals that have a long snout and either covered in fur or spines. Insectivores are seen as primitive mammals because they lack certain advanced characteristics seen in complex mammals, such as the primates. Instead of a ridged brain they have a smooth brain and instead of two separate openings for the genitals and anus, they have a cloaca, which serves as the opening for both the urinary and reproductive tracts. Furthermore, three commonly known mammals in this order Insectivora are the hedgehog, mole, and the. The genus Atelerix contains the African hedgehogs, which are distinguishable spines covering their bodies, a white fur belly, and typically are between six to eight inches in length (Vaughan 1972)
The author provides information describing the deer population in parts of New Jersey; yet, he does not include any data regarding the population in the rest of the United States, nor does he include any sources of where this information was obtained. A reader may be more
Cavendish, M. (2011). North American Wildlife. (p. 109). New York: Marshall Cavendish Reference. DOI: www.marshallcavendish.us
Bison were considered a main part of the American economy. Prior to the Civil War, hunters would trade and sell buffalo hide. Although some were killed for meat, buffalo hide was in higher demand. However, after the Civil War, the extensions of the railroads made it easier to transport hides. The main desiccation of the bison came with the industrial revolution (Manning, WWW). Since machinery became a mainstay in factories, part of maintenance required belting. The demand of hide of bison, therefore, increased since buffalo hide could be used as belts that would drive the machines (Manning, WWW). Within a few decades only a thousand bison were left, after the slaughter of 50 million. The depletion of bison did however spark an interest in conservation and protec...
The Alaskan moose is the largest sub-specious of the deer family which is very closely related to the Elk in Europe. The adult bull weighing up to 760 kg and the females can weigh up to 360 kg. The moose can grow to seven and half feet high, the highest point being at its large shoulders. The shoulders support “the males bear racks of flattened antlers that sometimes have a spread of 6 feet or more” Their front legs are longer than their rear legs and their body is covered in thick fur which is shaded in many hues of brown. Their heads are long peninsular in shape which is completed with a large upper lip and nose. Under their neck lies a dewlap or dangling “bell “which is a flap of skin near the throat. They have short tails and small ears.
Despite giving disturbingly grotesque descriptions of the ingredient of toothpaste, we can see Bodanis using a flippant tone in this essay with his informal language and his light-hearted comments. If you had a serious tone, would you write “it’s the stuff bobbing around”, “ a host of other goodies”, or “zap any accidently intrudent bacteria into oblivion” (6, 8, 12)? No, you wouldn’t — but Bodanis did. Besides his casual language, he also takes unexpected turns with his tone. After describing the damage of “unduly, enlarged extra-abrasive chalk fragments” with horrifying imagery such as “cavernous pits”, “craters”, and “pits”, the grim mood which Bodanis established makes the reader expect him to address these teeth-wrecking problems with
Gould, Edwin, George McKay, and David Kirshner. Encyclopedia of Mammals. San Francisco, CA: Fog City, 2003. Print.
domestic horses (equus caballus). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(3), 947-951. doi:10.1073/pnas.0809127105
“They lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes, like grand armies in review, covering scores of square miles at once. They were so numerous they frequently stopped boats in the rivers, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed locomotives and cars, until railway engineers learned by experience the wisdom of stopping their trains whenever there were buffaloes crossing the track.
The Northern White-tailed deer have a polygynous mating system (fcps.edu, nd). Most white tails mate in their second year but it is possible for females to become sexually active after only seven months. The male species are polygamous but may develop an attachment to a doe for several days or weeks. The female species come into heat in November for only twenty-four hours. If the female is not mated she will have a second heat...
Numerous scientists have been researching on the Arctic Fox, to learn about the creature’s habits and unusual and unique adapt...
The “water bear” is a common name for a group of a little over 100 genera of protozoans grouped under the Phylum Tardigrada and is a relative of the Phylum Arthropoda. The phylum Tardigrada contains over 1000 species, and is grouped into three classes. There are two main classes the Heterotarigrada ad the Eutardigrada. The last is the Mesotardigrada and contains only one species, that was discovered in a sulfur spring in Japan 1937, and has not been seen since. “Water bears” are, as with most species, separated into groups by characteristics and more recently molecular genetic methods. The Heterotarigrada are known mainly for their hair like tufts on appendages and hard-undivided flattened scales. The Eutardigrada are known as “naked tardigrades” because they lack the hard scales or have several separate plates. Tardigrades are then divide further into orders by comparing groups for cuticle appearance, feeding tube, claws, and other defining features (Michalczyk, 2014).
It was a beautiful October afternoon as I climbed to the top of my tree stand. The sun was shining, and a slight breeze was blowing from the northwest. I knew that the deer frequented the area around my stand since my step-dad had shot a nice doe two days earlier from the same stand, and signs of deer were everywhere in the area. I had been sitting for close to two hours when I decided to stand up and stretch my legs as well as smoke a cigarette.