Animals Directory

Posts Tagged ‘Vegetation’

Leopards hunt only at night and spend the day sleeping among the vegetation, in caves or other animals, often on the branch of a tree to climb with agility that despite the size they have.

The leopard is one of 4 cats in the Panthers group, along with the lion, tiger and jaguar, characterized by a modification of the hybrid bone that enables them to roar.

For the leopard, the tree is both a resting place, where hunting and where you store your food. From the top of the tree, the leopard can ambush their prey and also leave food out of reach of scavengers.

Their favorite prey are monkeys and some species of small to medium sized antelopes, zebras and cattle among others. No chance to catch this type of prey, also eat field mice, squirrels and other small animals, or even fruit. Usually fear the presence of human beings.

They are solitary animals except in breeding season. The gestation period lasts about three months and the female can have one to six cubs, but the most common are two or three.

Usually is often confused with the cheetah, with which it shares a very similar, but which differs greatly in both physical characteristics and in their character, the cheetah being distinctly less aggressive than the leopard.

Are peculiar to Africa. The word “zebra” or “zebra” is not a reality from the evolutionary standpoint, but artificially three species groups based on a character (scratch coat) that is not derivative but original.

The stripes also appear in greater or lesser extent in the legs and backs of donkeys and horses, and manifest themselves more strongly in the hybrids, although the parents are not using any Zebra (for mules), showing that the presence of stripes is an old character in the genus Equips and not itself a derivative of a subgroup within it. Zebras have simply gone one step further in the development of some lines that already possessed, while horses and donkeys have tended to lose or at least mask them.

Although the taxonomy of the zebras remains uncertain, studies, such as Debra K. Bennett (released under the eloquent title the stripes do not make the zebra), indicate that the plain zebra and Gravy’s zebra are sister species, but the zebras are more closely related to the horse with them. Within the current horses, the traditional group composed of African and Asian asses would be the only one with an evolutionary history behind it supports. It is smaller than its cousin, the horse, and very similar in appearance and habits of the wild ass.

Zebras are one of the best known animals of Africa, home to a variety of ecosystems including grassy plains, savannas, woodlands or shrubs, mountains and coastal hills. They are especially famous for their characteristic black and white stripes, which vary not only between species but also from one individual to another, and his mane erect. Unlike their closest relatives, horses and donkeys, zebras have never really been domesticated.

With the exception of some populations of plains zebra living in central Ethiopia, zebras live only in the southern half of Africa. Although the regions of two different species may overlap, do not cross due to different numbers of chromosomes, the Gravy’s zebras are forty-six, common zebras forty-four and mountain zebras thirty-two.

While black and white stripes that zebras have to be a common feature, the three zebra species have no closer relationship between them than they do with other animals of the genus Equips. In addition, the common feature of the lines is not so short, one of the subspecies of plains zebra, the extinct quake was only scratches on his neck. On the other hand, other Peristyle also have stripes on the legs.

Despite having morphology similar to that of the horses are smaller, with an average size of 2.3 meters long, 1.2 to 1.5 meters tall at the withers and weighing about 300 kilograms despite the Gravy’s zebra can weigh up to 450 kilograms. In the latter species, males and females have similar size, but in the plains zebras and mountain zebra’s males are slightly larger.

Zebras have a total of forty teeth: twelve incisors used for cutting and start bits of vegetation, four dogs, twelve premolars and twelve molars, all used to grind food before swallowing them.