The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Showing posts with label Dangerous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dangerous. Show all posts

Sungei Buloh - The Dark Dangerous Branch

12:41 AM  , , , ,  

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
North, Singapore
December 2013

A species of mangroves and coastal forests, the Cryptelytrops purpureomaculatus (Shore Pit Viper) has a reputation for being unpredictable and should be approached with caution. Giving no warning signs, this snake will strike readily and far at any threat, and its powerful haemotoxic venom can cause serious illness or even kill. 

This shy snake looks just like another branch in a mangrove tree where it usually coils motionless. A small snake with the typical broad triangular head of a viper, it has large red eyes on a rather angry looking face. It is more active at night.  By day it can be found resting on low branches one or two metres from the ground.


Its colour can vary from a uniform dark grey or purplish-brown to a weakly-patterned brown, with a white stripe along each flank, or even greenish-yellow with dark mottling. The scales are strongly keeled (i.e. ridged). Males grow to a total length of 66.5 centimetres (26.2 inches), females 90 centimetres (35 inches). The maximum tail lengths are then 12.5 centimetres (4.9 inches) and 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) respectively.


Feeding on lizards, frogs and other small animals, possibly small birds, similar to other vipers, it has heat-sensing pits on its lips to detect its prey.

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Bristleworms

9:15 PM  , ,  

Seashores
Singapore

Bristleworms are segmented worms belonging to Phylum Annelida like the more familiar Clitellata (earthworms and leeches). There are about 10,000 species of polychaete worms, making them the largest class of the segmented worms.

North-East Coast, Singapore, January 2013...
 
(Read about "Bristles That Sting")


They are abundant on our shores, but are rarely seen as they burrow in the ground or remain in other hiding places. In coral rubble, giant reef worms that grow to 1m long hide inside crevices. Others about 10cm long crawl about in sandy and muddy areas. Some beautiful ones swim about in the water. Others live in tubes. Countless microscopic ones too small to see live among the sand grains.

North-East Coast, Singapore, January 2014...

"Polychaeta" means "many bristles". These worms have bodies that are divided into segments (metameres). Except for the head and last segment, all the segments are generally similar. 

Each segment has a pair of flattened extensions called parapodia. These appendages are usually branched at the ends and covered with bristles, called setae. Parapodia show a vast diversity of form and function, serving purposes such as locomotion (moving like a centipede), burrowing, gas exchange, protection, attachment, controlling water flow within a tube, or can be reduced or lost altogether. 

More photos are available on Merlion Wayfarer Goes Green's Picasa at :

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A Fish Called Toad

7:15 PM  , ,  

North-East Coast
Singapore
January 2013
 
Toadfish (Batrachoididae) are really scary. The first you see of them in murky waters are their two red eyes gleaming back at you. But then, sometimes, you may not even see the two eyes. Maybe only one. Like a tiny red ruby.

Toadfishes are usually scaleless, with eyes set high on large heads. Their mouths are also large, and often decorated with barbels and skin flaps. They are generally drab in colour, and range in length from 7.5 cm to 57 cm. The ones found at our reefs are generally smaller, with a size of 5-15 cm for the ones spotted here in the sightings today...
Spot the Toadfish...

Because they exist in murky water and are often hidden under stones and rocks, there is a tendency to mistake them for other dangerous fish like Scorpionfish and Stonefish. A good guide to tell them apart can be found on Wild Singapore.

Toadfish are not venomous. However the spines on its back and its bite can be painful if inflicted.
A clearer look at the nasty spines on its back...

Males make nests, and then attract females by "singing", that is, by releasing air by contracting muscles on their swim bladder. The sound has been called a 'hum' or 'whistle', and can be loud enough to be clearly audible from the surface. This behaviour, and its look is probably how it got its name.

The Toadfish is an ambush predator. They tend to be omnivorous, eating sea worms, crustaceans, mollusks and other fish. It waits motionless for its prey to wander by. Prey that comes near enough is sucked into its expandable wide jaws and usually swallowed whole.

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Bizarre Encounters At Lower Peirce

9:43 AM  , , , , , ,  

Lower Peirce Reservoir
North, Singapore
September 2012
Cloudy

Today seemed to be a bad day for a nature walk. There were several zones along the track with sheets of stationary bees. The honey bees and carpenter bees also seemed more active than usual. Definitely not a time to be putting on your favourite perfume today!

After the recent newspaper reports about aggressive wild boars in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, Merlion Wayfarer was quite wary of them. The visible tracks at the edge of the water certainly didn't help to relieve her unease... 

Merlion Wayfarer had often spotted millipedes in the Central Catchment Area. Spotting this little one was no surprised. Unlike the brown ones that are often found in leaf litter, the ones here are more brightly-coloured.  

She was also surprised by the size of its droppings and little red bits which appeared to be legs which had dropped off!

(Merlion Wayfarer had another simliar encounter in March 2012 here.)

A few steps away, she was surprised to find a moss-covered mass. It looked like a pile of strands encrusted in some brown and green stuff. Almost seemed not alive. Just that it was moving And moving fast. And try as she might, she could not locate its head...
(Merlion Wayfarer had another simliar encounter in March 2012 here.)

Have you ever seen a woodcutter? A woodcutter is one who chops wood in the forest, piles it in a stack, and carries it back to his shack on his back. And... Have you ever seen a woodcutter bug - Errrm, doesn't this look just like a woodcutter? 

On a closer look, Merlion Wayfarer realized that it looked more like a caterpillar!

Next, a wriggley made its appearance. Its cartoon-like movements made it quite endearing to watch. Here's a video...

As she left the boardwalk, she had a strange feeling that she was being watched. A look across the calm waters with her binoculars, and there it was - A White-Bellied Sea Eagle in a barren tree. Phew, what a day!

Read Also : Merlion Wayfarer's "Those Captivating Round Eyes"...


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The Hairy Danger Of Tussocks

4:35 PM  , , ,  

Singapore Botanic Gardens
Central, Singapore
19 August 2012
Sunny

Merlion Wayfarer has been trying to figure out the identity of the mysterious yellow caterpillar since she saw it. (See "Defense Mechanisms Of The Moth Cat".) She asked quite a few of her nature-lover friends yet they were not able to provide an answer.  The only clue that she received was that it was definitely not a butterfly cat. That was why its photo could not be found on the Butterfly Circle website too.
 

She decided to venture further and posted on the NPSS  forum. Within 24 hours, kokhuitan has positively identified it as a Tussock Moth Caterpillar. (Thanks!)

Feeling curious about the name (“tussock” refers to a clump or tuft of hair, grass, leaves, etc.), Merlion Wayfarer decided to launch her own investigation.

She found some interesting facts about what Tussock Moths:
  • “Lymantriidae is a family of moths. Many of its component species are referred to as "Tussock moths" of one sort or another. The caterpillar, or larval, stage of these species often has a distinctive appearance of alternating bristles and haired projections. Like other families of moths, many Tussock Moth caterpillars have urticating hairs (often hidden among longer, softer hairs).”  (Wikipedia 2012)
    •       
  • "Lymantria means "defiler", and several species are important defoliators of forest trees."  (Wikipedia 2012)
       
  • “Adult moths of this family do not feed. They usually have muted colours (browns and greys), although some are white, and tend to be very hairy. Some females are flightless, and some have reduced wings. Usually the females have a large tuft at the end of the abdomen. The males, at least, have tympanal organs. They are mostly nocturnal.”  (Wikipedia 2012)
    •      
  • "The larvae are also hairy, often with hairs packed in tufts, and in many species the hairs break off very easily and are extremely irritating to the skin. This highly effective defence serves the moth throughout its life cycle as the hairs are incorporated into the cocoon, from where they are collected and stored by the emerging adult female at the tip of the abdomen and used to camouflage and protect the eggs as they are laid. In others, the eggs are covered by a froth that soon hardens, or are camouflaged by material the female collects and sticks to them."  (Wikipedia 2012)
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  • "They tend to have broader host plant ranges than most Lepidoptera. Most feed on trees and shrubs, but some are known from vines, herbs, grasses and lichens."  (Wikipedia 2012)
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  • Jennifer Viegas featured a few such cats with a video about a walk by Mark Fraser  (Discovery News, 2009)
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  • There’s even a little story about someone who observed a cat all the way to an adult!  (Jacqueline, 2012)   

  
She found mostly North American mentions. For a while she was wondering if Tussock Moths can be only there. Until…
   
An outbreak of acute pruritic rash occurred in March 1990 among 141 residents of a high-rise public housing estate in Bukit Panjang, Singapore. The typical rash consisted of urticarial lesions distributed over the limbs and trunk. The outbreak was associated with a transient increase in tussock moths in the residential estate following an unusual, short dry spell. The aetiology was established when patch tests with crude moth material produced similar eruptions in 5 out of 7 adult volunteers between 40 min and 12 h. Pharmacological experiments with an aqueous extract of moth hairs in isolated guinea pig ileum elicited a response similar to that induced by histamine.
(PubMed.gov, 1991)

Yes,  Tussock Moths Cats can be DANGEROUS! And they really do exist in Singapore! She is certainly glad she resisted the temptation to take up the cute furry little yellow cat... Phew!



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