Genets are usually solitary and nocturnal by nature, with the males more active than females. The amount of range for females is slightly over one hundred seventy acres, with the range for the males double. The gestation period is usually around eleven weeks, with peaks in the population occurring twice a year, in the spring during April and May and the autumn, from August to October.  Adult genets weigh an average of 4 pounds. The young are primarily raised by the mother and the genets can reproduce at two years of age.

Except for the common genet, all others live in Africa. The range of habitat will vary as the geographic location, with the woodlands, savannas and forests being favored for living in. The genet is a predator, feeding on both plants and animals, with animals being preferred.  There are other animals that prefer to feed on the genets, among them being owls, pythons, foxes and goshawks. It is thought that the first genet was brought to the Mediterranean areas over one thousand years ago.
The common species of genet is not endangered and are kept as pets. Like cats, they can be trained to use a litter-box. Playful and curious, they will get along with other animals except birds, hamsters or gerbils which are considered prey.

Genets – Related To Cats – Genets Move Quickly

The family unit is composed of pairs, with the offspring that is not mature yet. They use scent marking with vocal calls to defend territorial boundaries.  The unusual aspect of the pairing is that the night monkey offspring are raised by the male and usually one offspring is born per year.  This is different from most other types of primates where the female is the primary caregiver.

The variety of calls, whistles, hoots and other verbal communication is limited to about eight main types. The reason these are important is for use in defining territory, bounds and as warning about predators. The range of elevation these monkeys can be found at is large, and as a result, the amount of fur is greater among those living in higher forested elevations.

One of the reasons why the night monkeys are valued by humans is for medical research purposes. These are some of the species that are susceptible to the malaria virus that humans have, so they are used as test animals for vaccines. There are a variety of opinions as to the correct classification of the population of the owl monkey, with the most preferred classification being in one or two main groups. There are differences in chromosome varieties that lead more modern thinking naturalists to break up the species into a variety of classifications.  There are fossil species that are considered to be of a different species but the extant species are part of this classification. It is certain, however with a large range of forested areas in remote areas the night or owl monkey will remain alive and well for a number of years.

Night Monkey – South American Owl Monkey

Physical Characteristics

Badgers are short and fat and have short legs, small ears, long heads and a short tail. Their faces are black and white and their bodies are grey with white stripes. They get to around 35 inches long and weight an average of around 20 to 24 pounds. The ones in Eurasia, however, can get twice that size.

Habitat and Location

Badgers live in underground tunnels called setts that may even be hundreds of years old. They live in groups with rooms for sleeping, latrines, breeding and for taking care of the young.  Badgers live in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK and in Asia.

Diet

Most badgers eat worms, insects, grubs, small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and sometimes fruits. Some kinds also eat snakes or honey. They dig up great amounts of dirt at times with their sharp claws to get to their foods and can do this very quickly. They are particularly partial to peanuts and peanut butter sandwiches spread with a layer of honey on top.

Breeding Facts

Badgers are able to mate any month, but mostly do it in February or later in the year. They can have their first litter of cubs by the time they are a year old. The female’s body can take in the sperm and have a delayed implantation and the body will not start the growth of the fetuses until later on when the time is goo and food is plentiful.

Cubs are kept underground until about five weeks old when they open their eyes. After three months of age they are fed by the mother through regurgitated insects or worms and are finding their own foods a couples months later.

Physical Characteristics

Macaques range from light grey to dark brown in color, with the animals featuring nearly every shade between. Some have tails, such as the long-tailed macaque, while other species are tailless. Adult male macaques reach nearly two feet in height while females are shorter in stature at 18 inches. There is a significant weight variance between the genders as well, with full-grown males weighing as much as 38 pounds in comparison to 24 pounds for females.

Habitat and Location

Most species live in undisturbed forests, swamps and similar territory in the Asian region. The endangered Barbary macaque is the only species not found in Asia, instead residing Morocco. Macaques gravitate to areas bordering a reliable water source such as islands, riverbanks and high-density growth. Ideally, the monkeys select a region that is near a human settlement that provides easy access to gardens and crops for produce and sustainability. There is a large colony of macaques on Gibraltar.

Diet

The traditional diet of a macaque in the wild consists heavily of fruits, berries, leaves and twigs. Macaques that live near settlements will raid farms for fresh fruits and other crops. In the winter months and dry seasons when fruits are not as plentiful, the animals eat mushrooms, flowers, bird eggs and seeds.

Breeding Facts

Female macaques reach sexual maturity a full year before males. Mating season in the wild falls in the late fall and early winter months, typically occurring between October and January. In direct response to the winter mating season, new animals are born in the late spring and early summer, from the end of March through June. Groups of macaques vary in gender distribution with a common distribution of just under or just over one female per male.

Barbary Macaque Apes – Gibraltar Vacations – Macaques

The gannet is the largest sea bird in the North Atlantic. They can dive from 30 meters and go speeds of 100 km/h as they hit the water, thus diving quite deep to catch their prey.

Physical Characteristics

Gannets have a black and white body and a yellow head. They also have two meter long pointed wings and long bills.  They are quite unusual as they have no external nostrils, air sacs in the face and under the skin to soften their body hitting the water when they dive for food, plus they have eyes that are set far forward on their face so they can judge distance with binocular vision.

Habitat and Location

Northern gannets live in the North Atlantic, and two other kinds of gannets live in Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Gannets are also found in Iceland, Canada, Scotland, UK, Ireland, France, Faroe Islands, Shetland Isles, Norway, and nearly 20 percent of them live in St Kilda in Scotland.

Diet

Gannets eat fish and squid that they dive deep into the ocean to catch.

Breeding Facts

Gannets breed in colonies on the coast of islands in the thousands together. They lay one chalky colored blue egg. Gannets are unusual because it takes the young bird a full five years to mature.  The immature birds are fed by their parents regurgitating their meals for them to eat.

Gannet – Largest North Atlantic Seabird

The Red Kite is a fairly large sized bird of prey that comes from the Accipitridae family of birds.

Physical Characteristics

The Red Kite gets between 24 and 27 inches long and has a wingspan of  between 175 and 195 cm. It weighs between 800 and 1300 grams and the female is slightly larger than the male. It has a long forked shaped tail, and a red and white body.

Habitat and Location

Red Kites are known to live in Europe, Africa, Turkey, and even have appeared in Finland, Israel and Libya.

Diet

The Red Kite eats little mammals like mice, shrews, voles, rabbits and hares. It also will eat carrion, sometimes finding dead sheep or game birds. They also have been known to eat birds, reptiles, amphibians and earthworms.

Breeding Facts

The adult red kites prefer to live alone except during breeding season.  They are migratory and breed in the UK, or Spain to name a couple of places. They may maintain as many as five alternate nest sites. Male and female both help to build the nest, which is made of sticks and grass and lined with sheep’s wool or vegetation. The nest is built high up in a tree on a limb or in a fork.
Red Kites mate when they are two or three years old and they mate for life.

The nest is built in March or April. The female lays two to four eggs at intervals of one every three days. The female sits on the eggs and the male brings her food. They hatch in about a month.

Since the eggs are laid so far apart, it is common for some chicks to be bigger and stronger, which can result in the smaller one dying for lack of food or being killed by the stronger one.

Polar bears are related to brown bears, but are specialized to live in the freezing cold waters and lands of the Arctic. It is an endangered species.

Physical Characteristics

The polar bear is the world’s biggest meat eater on land and is the world’s biggest bear, although it may share that honor with the Kodiak Bear, which is about the same size. Adult polar bears weight up to about 1,500 pounds and the females are half as big as the males. Its body has been adapted to living in frigid areas and its paws are made to walk on ice and snow, as well as survive in open, freezing waters and with sharp claws to hunt with.

It has 42 teeth, and its paw pads have dermal bumps to give them traction when they walk over the ice. Their claws are shorter and stockier than other bears since they must handle heavy prey on the ice, plus they work well to dig in the ice. Its fur has both an under layer and an outer layer and they molt May through August.  An interesting fact is that the fur may turn green in captivity due to algae growing in the fur.

Polar bears can smell prey a mile away and can swim very fast.

Habitat and Location

The polar bear lives mainly in the Arctic Circle region around the Arctic Ocean. It stays mostly in the water and the land masses in and around it. The polar bear is many times called a marine mammal due to the fact it stays at sea for several months without going on permanent land masses. It prefers to live on the sea ice that covers the Arctic waters over the continental shelf areas.

Diet

Polar bears eat seals and live off their own fat reserves when hunting is lean. Grown polar bears normally only eat the seal’s skin and blubber, but younger bears eat the meat as well.

Breeding Facts

Polar bears have their mating and courtship rituals in April and May while on the sea ice. Males follow the females sometimes for more than 60 miles and may fight other males for the right to breed. The male and female remain together for about a week.  After mating, the egg is fertilized, but doesn’t start developing until August or September. The female tries to eat as much as possible until then and may double her weight.

The baby cubs are born sometime in-between November and February and are blind and their weight is less than two pounds. There are usually two of them.

The cubs and mother stay den bound until around Feb to April and the cubs nurse during that time. Cubs stay with the mother for about two years.

Polar Bear – The World’s Biggest Bear – Kodiak Bear

Some of these involve fish in the family “Alestiidae,” which includes the Goliath Tigerfish, and the Tigerfish. The Goliath Tigerfish has actually been known to attack humans and several real attacks are on record.
Some varieties of African cichlids are also called Tigerfish, as well as some types of Datniodides from Southeast Asia. Another tigerfish is the big South American Characins from the family of Erythrinidae.

Physical Characteristics

The Goliath Tigerfish is silver with big teeth and can reach 50kg in weight. The next largest in this family is the Tigerfish, which weighs in at 15kg. The African cichlid tigerfish are huge, silver colored fish with a black strip down their body. They have been known to get up to more than six and a half feet long and weigh up to 105 pounds. Even so, they are not known to eat or attack people.

The Datnioides tigerfish are big, deep body fish with long black vertical stripes and grey, white or brown bodies.
Tigerfish are very ferocious fish and not unlike the piranha of South America. Besides their sharp teeth, they are vicious hunters and very speedy. The younger ones hunt in packs and if there isn’t enough food, they sometimes attack and eat each other.

They will attack just about any animal, and sometimes people.  A tigerfish is equipped with a unique organ that is a gas filled sack it uses to receive sound waves to help it find its prey.

Habitat and Location

Alesttidae are found in African rivers and lakes such as the Congo, the Okavango and Zambezi rivers and Lake Tanganyika, Lake Kariba and Cabora Bassa. The African cichlid tigerfish is in Lake Malawi. The Datnioides tigerfish are in Southeast Asia and live in both fresh and brackish water.

Diet

Tiger fish are all hunters and they stalk, circle and attack their prey and kill and eat other fish or even animals that get close to shore or swim out onto the water. They mainly eat snakes, fish, birds, frogs, mice and even small baby crocodiles.

Breeding Facts

Tiger fish spawn in the spring and may spawn twice if the water is hot enough in the early spring. They then make, and head up the river to lay their eggs in the shallow water.

Tiger Fish – World Of Nature – Alestiidae

Physical Characteristics

The Red Panda is nocturnal and solitary except during breeding season. It gets about 22 to 25 inches long and weighs between eight and 14 lbs. They have long reddish colored fur with a white colored face that resembles a raccoon. They have a round head, black nose and black eyes with a bushy tail. Their fur insulates them in the winter as well as concealing their scent glands.

They also have long sharp and curved claws and a false thumb. When climbing down from a tree, they are capable of rotating around, which is an unusual ability in animals.

Habitat and Location

The red panda lives in the forests of Himalayas from Nepal to China and has also been found in India. Some reports also place it in Tibet.

Diet

The red panda eats bamboo, eggs, birds, insects and small mammals.

Breeding Facts

Red pandas can breed at 18 months old and may mate with more than one partner during a breeding season. They breed from January to March. The females build nests in hollow trees or crevices in rocks. They are pregnant between 112 to 158 days and have one to four cubs, which are born blind and deaf. She is known to move the cubs around frequently and can recognize them by smell.

They open their eyes at 18 days old and by three months old they look like the adults in coloring and by eight months old they are eating solid foods are weaned.  However, they stay with the mother until she has cubs the next breeding season. Males don’t help raise the cubs.

Red Panda – Nocturnal Animals -Vulnerable To Extinction

Its poison causes vomiting, fever and sweating in people and has been known to cause death in at least a few cases. In animals its poison depresses the blood pressure. Despite being poisonous, the lionfish is also eaten by people, but the cook has to be very skilled to cook it so that the poison doesn’t affect the eater.

Physical Characteristics

Lionfish can grow from about six to up to 42 cm, with an average of about 38 cm for most adults. They weigh on average about 480 grams. They have long poisonous spines and tentacles. It also has red, white and black stripes on its body.

Habitat and Location

The lionfish lives in the Indo-Pacific region, but since the 1990s it has been an invasive species in the Atlantic Ocean after they were accidently introduced. They prefer to make their homes near the edge of reefs and coral, as well as in lagoons and near rocky areas down to 50 meters. They also live in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.

Diet

Lionfish eat smaller fish and invertebrates. They are considered to be are excellent hunters.

Breeding Facts

Lionfish have very complicated breeding and courtship activities. After mating, the females lay up to 15,000 eggs, which are inside of mucus filled egg clusters.

Lionfish – Poisonous Saltwater Fish – Pterois – Indo-Pacific