WOW!!!!!  You must have heard of the popular WHALE SHARK!! Here are facts about it.

Gentle giants, whale sharks filter-feed, swimming with their wide mouths open, collecting plankton and small fish.

Photograph by Brian J. Skerry

Map

Whale Shark Range

Fast Facts

Type:

Fish

Diet:

Carnivore

Size:

18 to 32.8 ft (5.5 to 10 m)

Weight:

Average, 20.6 tons (18.7 tonnes)

Group name:

School

Protection status:

Threatened

Did you know?

The largest whale shark ever measured was 40 feet (12.2 meters) long; however, the species is thought to grow even bigger.

Size relative to a bus:

As the largest fish in the sea, reaching lengths of 40 feet (12 meters) or more, whale sharks have an enormous menu from which to choose. Fortunately for most sea-dwellers—and us!—their favorite meal is plankton. They scoop these tiny plants and animals up, along with any small fish that happen to be around, with their colossal gaping mouths while swimming close to the water's surface.
The whale shark, like the world's second largest fish, the basking shark, is a filter feeder. In order to eat, the beast juts out its formidably sized jaws and passively filters everything in its path.  The mechanism is theorized to be a technique called “cross-flow filtration,” similar to some bony fish and baleen whales.
The whale shark's flattened head sports a blunt snout above its mouth with short barbels protruding from its nostrils. Its back and sides are gray to brown with white spots among pale vertical and horizontal stripes, and its belly is white. Its two dorsal fins are set rearward on its body, which ends in a large dual-lobbed caudal fin (or tail).
Preferring warm waters, whale sharks populate all tropical seas. They are known to migrate every spring to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia. The coral spawning of the area's Ningaloo Reef provides the whale shark with an abundant supply of plankton.
Although massive, whale sharks are docile fish and sometimes allow swimmers to hitch a ride. They are currently listed as a vulnerable species; however, they continue to be hunted in parts of Asia, such as the Philippines.

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A National Research Council report says we're far from ready.

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SOURCE :National Geographic

As sea ice melts and the oil industry prepares to exploit the Arctic's vast resources, the United States faces big gaps in its preparedness for an oil spill in the region, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research Council (NRC).

The 183-page report marks the first time in more than ten years that the NRC, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has taken a comprehensive look at the impact of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. In the intervening decade, sea ice cover hit a record low, shipping traffic increased dramatically, and the price of oil rose sharply, prompting such companies as Shell,* ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips to acquire new leases for oil and gas. (Related: "Ice-Breaking: U.S. Oil Drilling Starts as Nations Mull Changed Arctic.")

The Arctic contains an estimated 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, and one-third of that oil lies within U.S. territory. Shell's attempt to drill into it in 2012 illustrated the challenge of working in the Arctic: The campaign ended with the drilling rig, the Kulluk, running aground and needing to be rescued. (See: "Coast Guard Blames Shell Risk-Taking in Kulluk Rig Accident.")

Shell and other companies have suspended Arctic drilling plans for 2014, but there is little doubt the push to develop the region's energy resources will continue. (Read more Arctic coverage from the Great Energy Challenge.)

The NRC report invokes the Kulluk incident, as well as the BP Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez disasters, as cautionary tales. It was authored by a committee that included representatives from academia, research and environmental organizations, and the energy industry. (Related: "Summer Arctic Sea Ice Recovers From 2012, But Trend 'Decidedly' Down.")

Here are five of the gaps that the panel says need to be addressed for the U.S. to be ready for an oil spill in the Arctic:

1. We need to spill some oil (on purpose).

Much of the existing research on oil properties and spill response has been done for temperate regions, the report notes. More research is needed to understand how oil behaves in an Arctic environment—and unfortunately, the best way to find out is to spill some in a controlled way.

Research facilities such as the Ohmsett test center in New Jersey have simulated spills in icy conditions. But permits to deliberately release oil into U.S. waters for research have become harder to obtain in the United States in the past 15 years. The NRC advocates a streamlined permit process. (Related: "As Arctic Melts, a Race to Test Oil Spill Cleanup Technology.")

2. We need to know more about the Arctic.

The technology available for monitoring and mapping the Arctic has improved markedly over the last decade, but there are significant holes. "A decade ago, I think there was hope we might have filled some of these data gaps," says Mark Myers of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who contributed to the report. "Fundamental, high-resolution data that we need sometimes just isn't there."

Existing nautical charts for the Arctic shoreline are "mostly obsolete," the NRC says, with many of them last updated in the 1950s. Less than 10 percent of the coastline, some 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers), has adequate data on seafloor topography, Myers says. That increases the chance a vessel could run aground and spill oil, according to the report, and it could hamper a cleanup too.

So could ice and stormy seas, of course. The report points to a need for better real-time data and forecasts of sea ice coverage and thickness. Though energy companies target late summer and early fall for exploration activity, "ice-free regions can transition to ice-covered conditions in a matter of days at the start of a fall freeze-up," the report says.

Sea ice does offer one advantage, though, according to the report: It could help contain spilled oil in a way that would make it easier to set fire to and burn off.

3. We need more U.S. Coast Guard presence.

"The U.S. Coast Guard has a low level of presence in the Arctic, especially during the winter," the NRC warns. Its closest station to the Arctic, in Kodiak, is more than 900 air miles (1,448 kilometers) south of Alaska's North Slope, limiting its ability to respond to a spill quickly.

"A 'presence' is bodies, but it is also vessels or platforms, and aerial capability for airlift in the event of an oil spill response," says Martha Grabowski, who chaired the NRC report committee. "The transportation infrastructure that the rest of us would presuppose to be existing as it is in the lower 48 simply doesn't exist up north."

But "the Coast Guard can't do this alone," Grabowski says; it doesn't have the budget. The NRC report stresses the need for public-private partnerships and community engagement to address the challenges of dealing with an Arctic spill.

4. We need to work with the Russians.

Last year, the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe saw many firsts: the first transit for a container ship, the first voyages for Chinese and South Korean vessels—and the first tanker accident. Russia has promoted use of the route, where its state-operated icebreaker fleet offers mandatory escort in exchange for a fee. Among the ships traveling the Northern Sea Route last year, the NRC says, were oil tankers carrying more than 800,000 barrels of oil. (Related: "Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy.")

The expansion of the Northern Sea Route has in turn led to increased traffic through U.S. waters in the Bering Strait. This points to the need for better traffic management—the U.S. doesn't have a system for monitoring ships in the Arctic. But "the international demarcation line [between Russian and U.S. waters] runs right down the middle of the Bering Strait, so we can't make a unilateral determination with respect to what to do for vessel traffic monitoring," Grabowski says.

The United States should also conduct joint oil spill response exercises with Russia, the report says. Such planning has already taken place with Canada, but even though the U.S. has an oil spill response agreement with Russia, it has not conducted formal exercises or hammered out any contingency plans.

5. We need a plan for wildlife.

The Arctic is home to endangered species such as bowhead whales, polar bears, and ringed seals. Rehabilitating wildlife affected by an oil spill in the Arctic is complicated by remote locations, adverse conditions, the use of marine mammals for subsistence by indigenous people, and safety concerns (dealing with an injured walrus or polar bear is more hazardous than dealing with, say, an oiled pelican).

What's more, there's no plan for keeping animals out of harm's way in the Arctic. "There is a general lack of scientific study, approved protocols, and consensus" on how best to deter wildlife from entering a spill zone, the report says. (Take the quiz: "What You Don't Know About Energy in the Changing Arctic.")

* Shell is the sponsor of National Geographic's Great Energy Challenge initiative. National Geographic maintains autonomy over content.

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Major concepts about the African Wild Dog Range

Known as African wild, painted, or Cape hunting dogs, these endangered canines closely resemble wolves in their pack-oriented social structure.

Photograph by Chris Johns

Fast Facts

Type:

Mammal

Diet:

Carnivore

Average life span in the wild:

Up to 11 years

Size:

29.5 to 43 in (75 to 110 cm)

Weight:

39.5 to 79 lbs (18 to 36 kg)

Group name:

Pack

Protection status:

Endangered

Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man:

The African wild dog, also called Cape hunting dog or painted dog, typically roams the open plains and sparse woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa.
These long-legged canines have only four toes per foot, unlike other dogs, which have five toes on their forefeet. The dog's Latin name means "painted wolf," referring to the animal's irregular, mottled coat, which features patches of red, black, brown, white, and yellow fur. Each animal has its own unique coat pattern, and all have big, rounded ears.
African wild dogs live in packs that are usually dominated by a monogamous breeding pair. The female has a litter of 2 to 20 pups, which are cared for by the entire pack. These dogs are very social, and packs have been known to share food and to assist weak or ill members. Social interactions are common, and the dogs communicate by touch, actions, and vocalizations.
African wild dogs hunt in formidable, cooperative packs of 6 to 20 (or more) animals. Larger packs were more common before the dogs became endangered. Packs hunt antelopes and will also tackle much larger prey, such as wildebeests, particularly if their quarry is ill or injured. The dogs supplement their diet with rodents and birds. As human settlements expand, the dogs have sometimes developed a taste for livestock, though significant damage is rare. Unfortunately, they are often hunted and killed by farmers who fear for their domestic animals.
African hunting dogs are endangered. They are faced with shrinking room to roam in their African home. They are also quite susceptible to diseases spread by domestic animals.




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Last December, passengers on a boat trip down Costa Rica‘s Puerto Viejo River were treated to a strange sight: a butterfly and a bee drinking the tears from a crocodile’s eyes.
The encounter between the insects, a Julia butterfly (Dryas iulia) and a bee (Centris sp.), and the spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) lasted more than 15 minutes, as the reptile placidly permitted the insects to sip from its eyes as it basked on a log. (Also see “Crocodiles Really Shed Tears While Eating, Study Says.”)

A Julia butterfly and a bee drink the tears of a spectacled caiman in northeastern Costa Rica’s Puerto Viejo River in 2013. Photograph by Carlos de la Rosa, Organization for Tropical Studies Carlos de la Rosa, an aquatic ecologist and director of the La Selva Biological Station in San Pedro, Costa Rica, led the group and photographed the occurrence. He reported his observations in a peer-reviewed letter in the May edition of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
The chance encounter yielded a remarkable photograph. It also raised questions about “tear-feeding,” a phenomenon otherwise known as lachryphagy, which has been well documented but remains poorly understood.

Why Feed on Tears?
A number of insect species including moths, butterflies, and bees are known to tear-feed, usually on mammals and in some cases even humans.
Tear-feeding on reptiles is less well documented, but in every case the insect seems to be in pursuit of nutrients and minerals—chiefly salt. (See more butterfly pictures.)
“Sodium and some of those other micronutrients are hard to find in nature,” said de la Rosa. “Butterflies and bees consume nectar, and nectar does not have a lot of salt. But they still need salt for egg production and for their metabolism.”




To scavenge the vital mineral, insects look for tears, sweat, feces, urine, and—among hematophagous insects like mosquitos—blood. Those that drink tears are referred to as “lacryphagous,” from lacrima, the Latin word for “tear.” (See “Mouse Tears Are Aphrodisiacs.”)
A similar, and better studied, insect behavior that seems to serve a similar purpose is called “mud-puddling.” Butterflies and other species that employ this strategy will congregate around and drink from puddles containing mineral deposits.

“You see the butterflies down on the [ground], and they drink water, usually to gain salt,” explained Jérôme Casas, an ecology professor at the University of Tours in France. “[The] salt [is] either used for biological purposes or it’s transmitted through the sperm as a gift to the female. So it’s really a valuable item.”
Benefits and Amenities
Whether tear-feeding behavior can be deemed symbiotic depends on your definition. Does symbiosis require mutualism, in which both animals benefit? Or merely a relationship between two organisms in which at least one benefits?
De la Rosa subscribes to the latter definition. While there’s no clear benefit to the animals providing the tears, he says, the behavior doesn’t seem to hurt them either. According to de la Rosa, some species are less bothered by tear-drinkers than others.
“From my few observations, the caimans don’t seem to be bothered at all by all this attention. The river turtles, however, are less tolerant to the bees buzzing close to their eyes. I’ve seen them shaking their heads at the bees and eventually even jumping back in the water.”
Casas speculates that crocodiles and turtles—along with large mammals like cows—are likely targeted by salt-seeking insects due to their placid nature. (See National Geographic’s pictures of alligators and crocodiles.)
“Crocodiles and turtles are very stationary,” he said. “When they sit somewhere, they sit for hours.”
De la Rosa estimates he’s seen the phenomenon at least four or five times in the past two years.
But, he says, it’s hard to quantify how common tear-feeding behavior really is, because it’s so ephemeral. And it would be harder still to reproduce such spontaneous interactions in a lab setting. Yet a wealth of photographic evidence suggests that the phenomenon could be fairly common.
In 2009, Casas and his colleague Olivier Dangles observed a bee drinking the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Yasuní National Park, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. They documented their observations in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment in 2012.
Casas says the phenomenon could help shed light on “the surprising world of insect-vertebrate interactions. We always think about mosquitos biting us, but there is way more than [that].”

A Closer Look
How important is such behavior to a given ecosystem?
“That’s one of the bigger questions,” said de la Rosa. “We don’t know how essential these relationships are to the survival of those species. It could be that it’s just an occasional, fortuitous, or opportunistic source of salt. Or it could be absolutely essential.”
To find the answer, de la Rosa and Casas both stressed the importance of  traditional field research—without which such serendipitous observations wouldn’t be possible—in a world of increasingly computerized research methods.
“The scientific community has drifted very strongly toward high-tech types of studies [like] genomics,” said de la Rosa.
“And natural history itself, which is simple observations of events and phenomena in nature, has [been on the decline]. I’m all for technology, but it doesn’t replace the observations of phenomena in the field.”

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Is Venus really the earth twin??? Though this might sound funny.. but there are some hidden facts about  Venus, which we don’t know like

1.      Though  Venus really is the Earth’s twin.
Well, perhaps you could consider it the Earth’s evil twin. Earth and Venus have very similar size and mass, and they orbit the Sun close to the Sun in very similar orbits. The size of Venus is only 650 km less than the size of Earth, and the mass of Venus is 81.5% the mass of the Earth.

 But that’s where the similarities end. The atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with a runaway greenhouse effect that raises temperatures to 461° C. The intense pressure would crush you if you tried to walk on the surface of the planet.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is the second brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus is the second largest terrestrial planet and is sometimes referred to as the Earth’s sister planet due the their similar size and mass. The surface of the planet is obscured by an opaque layer of clouds made up of sulfuric acid.

Planet Profile

Mass: 4,867,320,000,000,000 billion kg (0.815 x Earth)
Equatorial Diameter: 12,104 km
Polar Diameter: 12,104 km
Equatorial Circumference: 38,025 km
Known Satellites: none
Notable Satellites: none
Orbit Distance: 108,209,475 km (0.73 AU)
Orbit Period: 224.70 Earth days
Surface Temperature: 462 °C
First Record: 17^th century BC
Recorded By: Babylonian astronomers

Size of Venus Compared to the Earth

Facts about Venus

A day on Venus lasts longer than a year:

It takes 243 Earth days to rotate once on its axis. The planet’s orbit around the Sun takes 225 Earth days, compared to the Earth’s 365.
Venus is often called the Earth’s sister planet:
Earth and Venus are very similar in size with only a 638 km difference in diameter, Venus having 81.5% of the Earth’s mass. Both also have a central core, a molten mantle and a crust.
Venus rotates counter-clockwise:
Also known as retrograde rotation. A possible reason might be a collision in the past with an asteroid or other object that caused the planet to alter its rotational path. It also differs from most other planets in our solar system by having no natural satellites.
Venus is the second brightest object in the night sky:
Only the Moon is brighter. With a magnitude of between -3.8 to -4.6 Venus is so bright it can be seen during daytime on a clear day.
Atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92 times greater than the Earth’s:
While its size and mass are similar to Earth, the small asteroids are crushed when entering its atmosphere, meaning no small craters lie on the surface of the planet. The pressure felt by a human on the surface would be equivalent to that experienced deep beneath the sea on Earth.
Venus is also known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star:
Early civilisations thought Venus was two different bodies, called Phosphorus and Hesperus by the Greeks, and Lucifer and Vesper by the Romans. This is because when its orbit around the Sun overtakes Earth’s orbit, it changes from being visible after sunset to being visible before sunrise. Mayan astronomers made detailed observations of Venus as early as 650 AD.
Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system:
The average surface temperature is 462 °C, and because Venus does not tilt on its axis, there is no seasonal variation. The dense atmosphere of around 96.5 percent carbon dioxide traps heat and causes a greenhouse effect.
A detailed study of Venus is currently underway:
In 2006, the Venus Express space shuttle was sent into orbit around Venus by the European Space Agency, and is sending back information about the planet. Originally planned to last five hundred Earth days, the mission has been extended several times. More than 1,000 volcanoes or volcanic centres larger than 20 km have been found on the surface of Venus.
The Russians sent the first mission to Venus:
The Venera 1 space probe was launched in 1961, but lost contact with base. The USA also lost their first probe to Venus, Mariner 1, although Mariner 2 was able to take measurements of the planet in 1962. The Soviet Union’s Venera 3 was the first man-made craft to land on Venus in 1966.
At one point it was thought Venus might be a tropical paradise:

The dense clouds of sulphuric acid surrounding Venus make it impossible to view its surface from outside its atmosphere. It was only when radio mapping was developed in the 1960s that scientists were able to observe and measure the extreme temperatures and hostile environment. It is thought Venus did once have oceans but these evaporated as the planets temperature increased

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