Habit of sumatran elephant

A. Social Habit

A.1. Living in herd
In natural habitat, elephant lives in herd (gregarius). Living in group is a social habit that pays important role in protecting the herd members. Number of members in one herd is varied depending on weather and resources condition in the habitat in particular the availability of food and extent of home range. One group elephant comprises about 20-35 elephants or some say about 3-23 elephants

Each Sumatran Elephant herd is led by the biggest adult cow, while the adult bull only lives periodically for breeding with some cows in that group. Old bull will live in solitaire since he is unable to follow his group. Young bull, reaching his adolescence is pushed to leave the group or voluntarily join other bull group. Meanwhile, young cow keep staying in the group and acts as the "nanny" in the group.

A.2. Roaming
Naturaly elephants roam in group following permanent paricular paths within one year period of travel. Elephant home range can reach 7 km in one night, even it can reach 15 km per day in dry season or fruit season. Elephant's speed to walk and run in forest and in swamp exceed that of human being's in the same area. Elephant can also swim to cross deep river using their trunk as the snorkel gear or breathing pipe.

When roaming, elephant herd will communicate each other to keep the group integrity. Elephants communicate using soft sound produced by the vibration of its upper trunk. It has been discoverred recently that elephants can communicate through subsonic sound that can reach 5 km. This finding has unveiled the mystery of coordination of elephant herd in search of food in far split up distance while they don't see each other.

A.3. Breeding
Elephants do not have breeding season, they can breed along the year ,however breeding occurs more often when rainy season reaches its top frequence in the area. Bull often behaves outrageously called musht which is indicated by secretion of temporal gland which drips onto its cheek between eyes and ears in black color and with stimulating smell. This habit occurs 3-5 times within 1-4 weeks and is often related with lust periode, however strong evidences 
this matter are still not available.

 
B. Individual Habit

B.1. Eating habit
Elephant is terrestrial mammal which is active at day and night, however most of them are active from 2 hours before late afternoon till 2 hours before dawn to search for food. Elephants often search for food while walking at night for 16-18 hours per day. They are not thrifty toward food thus they tend to leave much food leftover if there is better food available.

B.2. Drinking 
When bathing in river, elephants drink with their mouth while when bathing in shallow river or swamp they suck the the water with their trunks. Elephants are able to suck water to 9 litter in once suck.

B.3. Wallowing
Elephant often wallows in the mud at day light and afternoon when it searches for food. Wallowing habit is important to protect their skin from extoparacyte insect bite besides for cooling down its body.

B.4. Mineral lick 
Elephant search for salt by licking things or other objects containing salt with its trunk. Elephants also often hurt themselves to brush their blood that contains salt.

B.5. Resting
Elephants sleep twice in a day; at midnight, and day light. At night, elephants often sleep by lying down their body to the side using pillow made from grasses. In exhausted condition, they will snore. Meanwhile, at day light elephants sleep while standing under shady trees.

THE SUMATRAN ELEPHANT

The Sumatran elephant's habitat is in Sumatra, Indonesia. The average male elephant reaches eight feet high and weighs up to six tons. A baby elephant can weigh up to one ton! The males are always larger than the females. They're bulky and gargantuan. They are massive creatures and docile when they are in the untamed world and even when they are domesticated.

Sumatran elephants have enough strength to knock down a tree. They can also pick up a log using just their trunk and their tusks. A baby elephant is called a calf; the females are called cows.

Elephants have a trunk, two tusks, two eyes, two ears and two lumps on their head. They are known to be clever animals. When an elephant is hot, they fan themselves by flapping their ears back and forth. When an elephant herd wants to move they use their ears as a guide. They can hear infrasonic sounds. Their hearing range is very large. Elephants hear some noises that can not be heard by a human ear.

Sumatran elephants are smaller than the African elephants and so these elephants also have smaller ears. Their eyes are always very watery. They have a very poor sight and depend on their well-developed ears and their sense of smell to aid them in times of need. Their trunk is their nose. They also use it like a hand.

Their trunk has over 40,000 muscles that enables them to move it. Their trunk is the most flexible body part that they have. Just below their trunk they have their tusks. Only male Sumatra elephants have tusks. Elephants are hunted for their tusks and people use it for ivory to make decorative structures.

We need to stop the poaching or else the population of elephants will dissapear at a rapid rate. Soon they will become extinct if we do not help protect them.

Reproduction and Life Cycle

Similar to other elephants, the bulls of Sumatran Elephants also engage in fighting for getting access to receptive or estrous females. Sexual maturity among bulls usually takes place between 12 and 15 years. Sexually mature bulls under the age of 20 often go through an annual phase of heightened sexual excitement known as ‘musth.’ During this period of musth, the testosterone level in their body increases to such extent that it makes the bull extremely aggressive. Secretions containing pheromones can then be seen discharging from the bull’s paired temporal glands located between their eye and ear.

The gestation period of all the subspecies of Asian Elephant, including the Sumatran Elephant, ranges from 18 to 22 months. The female Sumatran Elephants usually give birth to a single calf while twins are rare. The parturition lasts only for about 10 seconds and occurs at night. Similar to other herbivores, the infant of Sumatran Elephants becomes able to stand on its own within 10 – 30 minutes after birth. At the time of birth, the newborn calf weighs around 100 kg (220 lb).


The calf suckles for about 3 years and is weaned till 4 or 5 years of age. A female Sumatran Elephant with a calf does not breed until her first calf is completely weaned in order to make sure that her offspring is fully tended before it becomes semi-independent. The female calves usually stay with their mother’s herd for the rest of their lives, while male calves are chased away after attaining sexual maturity. Moreover, the female elephants of this species stop reproducing after the age of 60.

Protecting the Sumatran Rhino

t was a stiflingly hot and humid afternoon in the dense rainforests on the island of Sumatra when I saw something white. White is not a color you see much in the rainforest; it becomes highlighted against the dark green of the forest.

At first I did not know what it was, then I realized it was a skeleton. I became excited by what I may find, but as I got closer, the reality of the situation crystalized and my head started to spin. It was a full skeleton of a Sumatran rhino laying in a clearing along an animal trail. The vegetation had been flattened in a wide circle, the center of which was a solid branch dug deep into the ground with a thick wire snare dangling from it.

This critically endangered species had captured my imagination growing up a world away in England. I’d always dreamt of catching a glimpse of one—but not like this. This Sumatran rhino had been poached for its horn.

Changing paths
I had just turned 19. It was my second summer in Indonesia on what can only be described as my dream internship studying primates and tigers with Fauna & Flora International. I wanted to study animals in the rainforest, but the moment I saw the Sumatran rhino skeleton, I knew I had to change course and fight for the very survival of the species and places that intrigue and captivate me. I like to fight for species little known to the general public like the Sumatran rhino and the saola. The Sumatran rhino will always be at the pinnacle of my goals; I will do all I can to ensure it thrives in the wild once again.

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s an uphill battle. But it’s not an impossible one.

Protecting a species
I co-authored the most-recent scientific assessment of the current conservation responses to save the species. In brief, we are falling short. Given that there are only around 100 left in the wild, it is clear that the survival of the Sumatran rhino now lies entirely within the hands of the government of Indonesia. WWF and partners like the International Rhino Foundation, Rhino Foundation of Indonesia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society stand ready to assist in all ways possible.

The good news is that we know the key actions required to save the Sumatran rhino:

Consolidate all Sumatran rhinos into no more than three sites. This will allow the remaining animals to find each other and breed.Establish intensive protection zones in these three sites with strict regulations, patrolling infrastructure, increasing ranger presence and closely monitoring individual animals.Enhance the captive population so we have a viable population.Mange the entire population as one so animals will have to be moved between sites and to and from captivity to ensure genetic and population viability.

The plight of Sumatran rhinos needs global attention and commitments of conservation to succeed. Significant financial support for implementing the above priority actions are being provided by the US and German governments as well as the Disney Conservation Fund. More is needed. And nothing can be achieved without rapid decision making and the highest level of political blessing in Indonesia.

The science is telling us that we can’t put off mounting a serious, concerted effort to save Sumatran rhinos. We have pulled three species of rhino back from the brink so we know we can do the same for the Sumatran rhino. I’m going to do my best. And with your support, I know we can not only save the Sumatran rhino from the edge of extinction, but we can recover its numbers across Sumatra.

The greater one-horned rhino

The greater one-horned rhino is the largest of the rhino species. Once found across the entire northern part of the Indian sub-continent, rhino populations were severely depleted as they were hunted for sport and killed as agricultural pests. This pushed the species very close to extinction in the early 20th century and by 1975 there were only 600 individuals surviving in the wild.

Thanks to rigorous conservation efforts, their numbers have increased dramatically since 1975. By 2015, conservation efforts saw the population grow to 3,555 in the Terai Arc Landscape of India and Nepal, and the grasslands of Assam and north Bengal in northeast India.

The greater one-horned rhino is identified by a single black horn about 8-25 inches long and a grey-brown hide with skin folds, which give it an armor-plated appearance. Greater one-horned rhinos are solitary creatures, except when sub-adults or adult males gather at wallows or to graze. Males have loosely defined home ranges that are not well defended and often overlap. They are primarily grazers, with a diet consisting almost entirely of grasses as well as leaves, branches of shrubs and trees, fruit and aquatic plants.

HABITAT LOSS

The enormous reduction in the range of rhinos was mainly caused by the disappearance of alluvial plain grasslands. Today, the need for land by the growing human population is a threat to the species. Many of the protected areas with rhinos have now reached the limit of the number of individuals they can support. This leads to human-rhino conflict as rhinos leave the boundaries of the protected areas to forage in the surrounding villages. Rhinos, mainly females, reportedly kill several people each year in India and Nepal.

Buffalo population of Yogyakarta drops to 1,208

The population of buffalo (Buballus buballis) in Yogyakarta province is decreasing year after year despite the superiority that the animals offer in terms of meat and dairy products.

Data at the provincial Agriculture Agency shows that there were 4,990 buffalos in the province in 2006 before decreasing to only 1,208 in 2011. 

The figure was far below the population of cows, which reached over 375,000 as of June 2011.

“This has happened not only here but also across Indonesia,” buffalo researcher Tridjoko Wisnu Murti of Gadjah Mada University’s School of Husbandry told The Jakarta Post, earlier this week.

He said that of the five regencies in the province, Sleman regency recorded the highest buffalo population of 678. The lowest population was found in Yogyakarta municipality, with only six.

According to Tridjoko, nationally the figure had decreased from 3.5 million to 1.3 million for the same period. This, he said, raised concern, especially at the time when the need for meat consumption in the country had been significantly increasing.

“Unfortunately, the government prefers importing cows to breeding buffalos,” he said, adding that Indonesia had an abundant population of the animal in the early 20th century.

He blamed the condition on the lack of the government’s attention to the animal despite what it offered.

Tridjoko, who is also a nutritionist and an expert in dairy technology, said that in terms of quality, buffalo meat was better than cow because the former contained less fat.

Reports said that not only did the buffalo have 70 to 90 percent less fat compared to beef, it also had 50 percent less cholesterol. And on top of that, it was higher in protein, iron and all omega and amino acids. 

“The nutrition value of 5 liters of buffalo milk equals to that of 10 liters of cow milk,” Tridjoko said.

Other factors blamed for the decrease in the buffalo population include the use of motorized tractors instead of buffalo-ridden ploughs to cultivate rice fields and increasing consumption of buffalo meat, especially among coastal communities.

Tridjoko expressed concern that if nothing was done by the government to increase the population, buffalos faced extinction in Indonesia. 

By growing buffalos the government would be implementing pro-poor, pro-growth, pro-health, pro-job and pro-environment policies, he said.

Buffalos are said to be able to adapt easily to the environment and easy to feed because they can eat agricultural waste while cows require complicated food supplies

Social Structure, Reproduction, and Sleep Habit of Komodo Dragon

Social Structure

Because large Komodos cannibalize young ones, the young often roll in fecal material, thereby assuming a scent that the large dragons are programmed to avoid. Young dragons also undergo rituals of appeasement, with the smaller lizards pacing around a feeding circle in a stately ritualized walk. Their tail is stuck straight out and they throw their body from side to side with exaggerated convulsions.

Reproduction and Development

Most mating occurs between May and August. With a group assembled around the carrion, the opportunity for courtship arrives. Dominant males can become embroiled in ritual combat in their quest for females. Using their tails for support, they wrestle in upright postures, grabbing each other with their forelegs as they attempt to throw the opponent to the ground. Blood is usually drawn and the loser either runs or remains prone and motionless.

The female Komodo lays about 30 eggs. A delay in laying may serve to help the clutch avoid the brutally hot months of the dry season. In addition, unfertilized eggs may have a second chance with a subsequent mating. The female lays her eggs in depressions dug on hill slopes or within the pilfered nests of megapodes—large, chicken-like birds that make nests of heaped earth mixed with twigs that may reach 3 feet (1 meter) in height and 10 feet (3 meters) across. While the eggs are incubating—about nine months—females may lie on the nests, protecting their future offspring. No evidence exists, however, for parental care of newly hatched Komodos.

The hatchlings weigh less than 3.5 ounces (100 grams) and average 16 inches (40 centimeters) in length. Their early years are precarious, and they often fall victim to predators, including their fellow Komodos. They feed on a diverse diet of insects, small lizards, snakes and birds. Should they live five years, they can weigh 55 pounds (25 kilograms) and stretch 6.5 feet (2 meters) long. By this time, they have moved on to bigger prey such as rodents, monkeys, goats, wild boars and the most popular Komodo food, deer. Slow growth continues throughout their lives, which may last more than 30 years

Sleep Habits

They escape the heat of the day and seek refuge at night in burrows that are just barely bigger than they are.

Lifespan

Dragons live about 30 years in the wild, but scientists are still studying this.