For the identification of insects and other fauna and flora of South Africa.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Close-up of a giraffes tongue

A giraffe's tongue is 18 to 20 inches (46 to 50 centimeters) and is purplish-black. This adaptation is thought to keep the tongue from sunburn during their all-day feed.
They eat the thorns and leaves of the Acacia trees.
In my trusted reference book, "Behavior Guide to African Mammals", Richard Estes explains how the giraffe is able to do this: "Horny papillae (small bumps) protect the lips and tongue against thorns. The narrow muzzle, extremely flexible upper lip, and long, prehensile tongue enable the giraffe to strip leaves off branches or select individual leaflets from between sharp thorns; thus it can both feed selectively and consume the quantity of foliage needed to sustain its bulk."

Monday, February 18, 2008

My beautiful elephant has died.....

It is with a great hole in my heart that I read about the death of one of my favorite elephants. This huge gentle beast has been know to me for many, many years and will be sorely missed by a lot of people. They estimate that he was in the region of about 50 years old which is still quite young for an elephant. I think he was a lot older as this picture was taken about 20 years ago and I reckon he was about 40-50 already. They think he died of a heart attack, but I somehow don't think so. It was just old age. What a sad moment in my life!!

Friday, February 8, 2008

Interestng idea

I passed this wall on my way somewhere and thought it was a very pretty idea.
Chicken wire was placed against the wall but not too tightly and the space inbetween was filled with moss covered by a layer of black plastic. Holes were then made in the plastic and the flowers planted through this. With the growth of the flowers you could eventually not see either the plastic nor the wire and made a very ugly wall attractive.