King Cobra Defences

When confronted, this species will quickly attempt to escape and avoid any sort of confrontation. However, if continuously provoked, the king cobra can be highly aggressive.

When concerned, it rears up the anterior portion (usually one-third) of its body when extending the neck, showing the fangs and hissing loudly. It can be easily irritated by closely approaching objects or sudden movements. When raising its body, the king cobra can still move forward to strike with a long distance and people may misjudge the safe zone. This snake may deliver multiple bites in a single attack  but adults are known to bite and hold on. It is secretive and tends to inhabit less-populated forested regions and dense jungle, and thus many victims bitten by king cobras are actually snake charmers.

Some scientists believe that the temperament of this species has been grossly exaggerated. In most of the local encounters with live, wild king cobras, the snakes appear to be of rather placid disposition, and they usually end up being killed or subdued with hardly any hysterics. These support the view that wild king cobras generally have a mild temperament, and despite their frequent occurrence in disturbed and built-up areas, are adept at avoiding humans. Naturalist Michael Wilmer Forbes Tweedie felt that "this notion is based on the general tendency to dramatise all attributes of snakes with little regard for the truth about them. A moment’s reflection shows that this must be so, for the species is not uncommon, even in populated areas, and consciously or unconsciously, people must encounter king cobras quite frequently. If the snake were really habitually aggressive records of its bite would be frequent; as it is they are extremely rare."

If a king cobra encounters a natural predator, such as the mongoose, which has resistance to the neurotoxins, the snake generally tries to flee. If unable to do so, it forms the distinctive cobra hoodand emits a hiss, sometimes with feigned closed-mouth strikes. These efforts usually prove to be very effective, especially since it is much more dangerous than other mongoose prey, as well as being much too large for the small mammal to kill with ease.

The king cobra, in defense of itself is able to kill an elephant with a single bite. Except for one documented black mamba snake bite killing an elephant, all other documented cases in the scientific literature have been of elephants being killed due to king cobra bites.

A good defence against a cobra for anyone who accidentally encounters this snake is to slowly remove a shirt or hat and toss it to the ground while backing away.

The biggest Indian King Cobra from kerala

Indian Cobra master training with a big King Cobra

Indian Cobra master training with a big King Cobra while his friend is watching.

The king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is the world's longest venomous snake, with a length up to 18.5 to 18.8 ft (5.6 to 5.7 m). This species, which preys chiefly on other snakes, is found predominantly in forests from India through Southeast Asia. Despite the word "cobra" in its name, this snake is not a member of Naja ("true cobras") but belongs to its own genus. The king cobra is considered to be a dangerous snake and has a fearsome reputation in its range, although it typically avoids confrontation with humans if possible. It is also considered culturally significant and has many superstitions around it

Baboons predators are humans, the Nile Crocodile, the lion, both the spotted and striped hyena, and the leopard

Baboons are terrestrial (ground dwelling) and are found in open savannah, open woodland and hills across Africa. Their diets are omnivorous, but mostly herbivorous, yet they eat insects and occasionally prey on fish, shellfish, hares, birds, vervet monkeys, and small antelopes.^[6] They are foragers and are active at irregular times throughout the day and night. They can raid human dwellings, and in South Africa, they have been known to prey on sheep and goats.

Baboons in captivity have been known to live up to 45 years, while in the wild their life expectancy is about 30 years.

Baboons are able to acquire orthographic processing skills, which form part of the ability to read.

Predators

Their principal predators are humans, the Nile Crocodile, the lion, both the spotted and striped hyena, and the leopard.^[8] They are considered a difficult prey for the leopard, though, which is mostly a threat to young baboons. Large males will often confront them by flashing their eyelids, showing their teeth by yawning, making gestures, and chasing after the intruder/predator. Although they obviously are not a prey species, Baboons have been killed by the black mamba. This usually occurs when a baboon accidentally rouses the snake

Hummingbirds can cross 800 km on a nonstop flight

With the exception of insects, hummingbirds while in flight have the highest metabolism of all animals, a necessity in order to support the rapid beating of their wings during hovering and fast forward flight. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute, a rate once measured in a Blue-throated Hummingbird.They also consume more than their own weight in nectar each day, and to do so they must visit hundreds of flowers daily. Hummingbirds are continuously hours away from starving to death and are able to store just enough energy to survive overnight.

Hummingbirds are capable of slowing down their metabolism at night or at any other time food is not readily available. They enter a hibernation-like state known as torpor. During torpor, the heart rate and rate of breathing are both slowed dramatically (the heart rate to roughly 50 to 180 beats per minute), reducing the need for food.

Hummingbirds are rare among vertebrates in their ability to rapidly make use of ingested sugars to fuel energetically expensive hovering flight, powering up to 100% of their metabolic needs with the sugars they drink (in comparison, humans athletes max out at around 30%). One study showed that hummingbirds can use newly ingested sugars to fuel hovering flight within 30-45 minutes of consumption. These data suggest that hummingbirds are able to oxidize sugar in flight muscles at rates high enough to satisfy their extreme metabolic demands. By relying on newly ingested sugars to fuel flight, hummingbirds can reserve their limited fat stores to sustain overnight fasting or to power migratory flights.

The dynamic range of metabolic rates in hummingbirds requires a corresponding dynamic range in kidney function. The glomerulus is a cluster of capillaries in the nephrons of the kidney that removes certain substances from the blood, like a filtration mechanism. The rate at which blood is processed is called the glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Most often these fluids are reabsorbed by the kidneys. During torpor, to prevent dehydration, the GFR slows, preserving necessities for the body such as glucose, water and salts. GFR also slows when a bird is undergoing water deprivation. The interruption of GFR is a survival and physiological mechanism unique to hummingbirds.

Studies of hummingbirds' metabolisms are highly relevant to the question of how a migrating Ruby-throated Hummingbird can cross 800 km (500 mi) of the Gulf of Mexico on a nonstop flight. This hummingbird, like other birds preparing to migrate, stores up fat to serve as fuel, thereby augmenting its weight by as much as 100 percent and hence increasing the bird's potential flying time.

Reference

There is a species of snake called bird snakes

The twig or bird snakes of the genus Thelotornis are a group of back-fanged snakes in the family Colubridae. All species have slender and elongated profiles, long tails, narrow heads, and pointed snouts. The eyes of each species have horizontal pupils, shaped like keyholes, which give twig snakes binocular vision. Twig snakes are greyish-brown with faint light and dark markings. When threatened, they inflate their throats to display bold black markings between the scales.
The twig snake is one of the several back-fanged colubrids whose bite is highly venomous and potentially fatal. The venom is hemotoxic, and although its effects are very slow, and bites are rare, no antivenom has been developed and several fatalities (such as Robert Mertens) have occurred.
The African twig snakes are distinctive in appearance and unlikely on that continent to be mistaken for any other snake, if indeed the observer notices them. Preying on lizards, frogs, and sometimes birds, they conceal themselves in trees, but often at a low enough level to be able to also strike at terrestrial prey, which they may swallow upwards after killing. Their cryptic coloration and apparent ability to freeze or sway gently, as chameleons do, like a twig on a tree (hence the name), makes them hard to spot. Indeed, they may be more abundant in areas than is immediately obvious.
Thelotornis is characterised by a depressed and flat head, keyhole-shaped pupils, and in T. kirtlandii, a projecting canthus rostralis which forms a shallow loreal groove on each side of the head. This allows a certain amount of binocular vision to the snake. In appearance, the head at least is unlikely to be mistaken for any other African snake. Other characteristics include a very long tail and large back fangs. The iris in T. capensis and T. kirtlandii is yellow, and presumably therefore also in T. usambaricus. The subspecies of T. capensis, T. c. mossambicanus is sometimes considered a distinct species.

Anaconda refers to a snake found only in South America

Although the name refers to a snake found only in South America, the name commonly used in Brazil is sucuri, sucuriju or sucuriuba. The South American names anacauchoa and anacaona were suggested in an account by Peter Martyr d'Anghiera but the idea of a South American origin was questioned by Henry Walter Bates who, in his travels in South America, failed to find any similar name in use. The word anaconda is derived from the name of a snake from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) that John Ray described in Latin in his Synopsis Methodica Animalium (1693) as serpens indicus bubalinus anacandaia zeylonibus, ides bubalorum aliorumque jumentorum membra conterens. Ray used a catalogue of snakes from the Leyden museum supplied by Dr. Tancred Robinson but the description of its habit was based on Andreas Cleyer who in 1684 described a gigantic snake that crushed large animals by coiling and crushing their bones. Henry Yule in his Hobson-Jobson notes that the word became more popular due to a piece of fiction published in 1768 in the Scots Magazine by a certain R. Edwin. Edwin described a tyger being crushed and killed by an anaconda when in fact tigers never occurred in Sri Lanka. Yule and Frank Wall noted that the snake was in fact a python and suggested a Tamil origin anai-kondrameaning elephant killer. A Sinhalese origin was suggested by Donald Ferguson who pointed out that the word Henakandaya (hena lightning and kanda stem/trunk) was used in Sri Lanka for the small whip snake (Ahaetulla pulverulenta) and somehow got misapplied to the python before myths were created.

Giraffes have few strong social bonds

While giraffes are usually found in groups, the composition of these groups tends to be open and ever-changing. They have few strong social bonds, and aggregations usually chang members every few hours. For research purposes, a "group" has been defined as "a collection of individuals that are less than a kilometre apart and moving in the same general direction." The number of giraffes in a group can range up to 32 individuals. The most stable giraffe groups are those made of mothers and their young, which can last weeks or months.[58] Social cohesion in these groups is maintained by the bonds formed between calves. Mixed-sex groups made of adult females and young males are also known to occur. Subadult males are particularly social and will engage in playfights. However, as they get older males become more solitary. Giraffes are not territorial, but they have home ranges. Male giraffes occasionally wander far from areas that they normally frequent
Reproduction is broadly polygamous: a few older males mate with the fertile females. Male giraffes assess female fertility by tasting the female's urine to detect estrus, in a multi-step process known as the flehmen response.Males prefer young adult females over juveniles and older adults. Once an estrous female is detected, the male will attempt to court her. When courting, dominant males will keep subordinate ones at bay. During copulation, the male stands on his hind legs with his head held up and his front legs resting on the female's sides
Although generally quiet and non-vocal, giraffes have been heard to communicate using various sounds. During courtship, males emit loud coughs. Females call their young by bellowing. Calves will emit snorts, bleats, mooing and mewing sounds. Giraffes also snore, hiss, moan and make flute-like sounds and they communicate over long distances using infrasound.

Did You know that?
male giraffes mount and climax other males more frequently than they have sex with female giraffes.

A giraffe can go without water longer than camel?
Reference

Some Interesting facts about whales

Killer whales  been observed preying on terrestrial mammals, such as deer and moose swimming between islands off the northwest coast of North America. 

Killer whales generally choose to attack young or weak animals

killer whales have never been observed to eat other marine mammals, they occasionally harass and kill porpoises and seals for no apparent reason.

Killer whale swim in groups to create waves that wash over the floe This washes the prey into the water, where other killer whales lie in wait

The 52-hertz whale is an individual of unidentified whale species, which has been regularly detected in many locations since the 1980s, they call him the World loneliest whate.

Osedax japonicus is a species of bathypelagic polychaete tube worm that lives at great depths on the seabed and is able to sustain itself on the bones of a dead whale. 

When a whale dies and its carcass falls into the Bathyal or Abyssal zone of the ocean floor, it can sustain a complex localized ecosystem of deep-sea organisms for decades. This is called a “whale fall”.

An elephant weighs less than a blue whale’s tongue: Read More

The blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have lived. The largest known dinosaur of the Mesozoic Era was Argentinosaurus, which is estimated to have weighed up to 90 metric tons (99 short tons).

Whales milk is similar in constancy as toothpaste; it must be thick, or else it will dissipate into the surrounding water.

Blue whale calves are born weighing 3 tons, gain 8 lbs an hour and grow 1.5 inches per day! and their father’s nuts are the size of a midsize car.

Some interesting stories and Facts about Bears

• Residents of Churchill, Canada leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape from Polar Bears on Main Street. Read More

•  bears can drastically reduce their heart rate when injured as a defense mechanism against blood loss. Read More

• The allies had an alcoholic Nazi-hating bear to help them in WWII: Read More

• The Spirit Bear survived, in part, because the Native Americans never spoke of them to fur trappers The Kermode bear also known as a "spirit bear": Read More

• The biggest bear ever found was 3,500 lb's and 11 feet tall A prehistoric South American giant short-faced bear tipped the scales at up to 3,500 pounds: Read More
  

• It was common in North America and North Eurasian to Bear worship practices which includes capturing and raising in a corral for several years by local women treating the bear like a child. Read More

Interesting facts about sharks

Sharks are a group of fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. 

Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorpha (or Selachii) and are the sister group to the rays. However, the term "shark" has also been used for extinct members of the subclass Elasmobranchii outside the Selachimorpha, such as Cladoselache and Xenacanthus. Under this broader definition, the earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago.

Since then, sharks have diversified into over 470 species. They range in size from the small dwarf lanternshark (Etmopterus perryi), a deep sea species of only 17 centimetres (6.7 in) in length, to the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the largest fish in the world, which reaches approximately 12 metres (39 ft). Sharks are found in all seas and are common to depths of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft). They generally do not live in freshwater although there are a few known exceptions, such as the bull shark and the river shark, which can survive in both seawater and freshwater. They breathe through five to seven gill slits. Sharks have a covering of dermal denticles that protects their skin from damage and parasites in addition to improving their fluid dynamics. They have several sets of replaceable teeth.
Well-known species such as the great white shark, tiger shark,

blue shark, mako shark, and the hammerhead shark are apex predators—organisms at the top of their underwater food chain.

Many shark populations are threatened by human activities.
Here are some interesting facts about sharks:

•  Baby Great White Sharks are known to eat each other while still in their mother’s womb and that when born they escape quickly as their mother often sees them as prey!
• 16-foot-long, 3500 pound, female Great White shark named Mary Lee being tracked while she swims up and down the East coast
• Great White Sharks congregate in the middle of the pacific ocean in an area known as the White Shark Cafe