School Projects (Post PSLE) -_-||

My school took us to the Singapore Zoological Gardens and we were supposed to come up with a documentary based on a selected animal. My group just did the animal (in this case, it was the Orangutan) which we had the most pictures of. What I have here is just the slideshow and I will provide the script for the documentary later in this post (we have uploaded it on youtube but it was made private, sorry! -_-|| ) Hope you enjoy the presentation and may the information provided here come to good use for you!

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Dark brown eyes help protect their eyes from sunlight as darker eye colors have more pigmentation to absorb sunlight before damaging Ultra-Violet light can penetrate to the back of the eyes. 

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Their coloration is well adapted for forests. Sunlight that filters through the canopy shines down on vegetation, which absorbs reddish- orange light of the color spectrum, before reaching the forest floor. Thus when sunlight reaches the ground, most of these light is filtered out, making it tough to detect these colors in the forest. Light absorption enables them to virtually disappear, blending into their environment.

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They eat a wide variety of food, thus, if one of their sources of food runs out, they still have other sources of food to rely on.  

Slide 10: 

Do you know the differences between Bornean and Sumatran Orangutans?

Slide 11: 

Arboreal means living in trees. Male Orangutans would go down to the forest floor occasionally to clear their waste, as they are larger in size than the females and thus have better chances of surviving if attacked.

Slide 12: 

The Orangutans need YOUR help! Do YOUR best to save them!

Slide 13:

Thank you for your support!

Animal Xploration-Issue 5

Perishing Polar Icecaps and Polar Bears 

I am a Polar Bear. I live in the Arctic, and the Polar Bear capital of the world- the town of Churchill in Manitoba, Canada.

ABOUT ME:

I'm Pete Polar Bear. I have a white fur coat, no, actually not white. It's transparent with black fur underneath. My white transparent fur reflects heat while the black fur absorbs heat so my body can keep warm in the fr-free-freezing Arctic. I have a thick coat of fur that traps air very well. As you science geeks know, air is an insulator a poor conductor of heat (don't use insulator. Insulator means that it totally 100% cannot conduct heat. However, everything, even you and I can conduct heat, so the word 'insulator' in this context cannot be used. 'Poor conductor' would be better. BUT! Remember that you should only use this when you are Singaporean.) Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. So because air is a poor conductor of heat, heat from my body cannot be conducted the the c-c-cold surroundings quickly, so I can keep warm for a longer period of time.

Here's a simple diagram to explain this process:

              Heat              Heat
MY BODY-------->AIR-------->SURROUNDINGS (ARCTIC)

Fun Facts about me:
Have you ever had a toothache? Well, I did. And it sure was terrible. Worse that your human kinda toothache. You MUST remember: Like humans, Polar Bears feel pain too, have emotions and can be afraid. We're not perfect, you know. When we have toothaches, we are in a darn pretty bad mood. You'll never know how painful it is. Never. But I'm telling ya, never touch or disturb a Polar Bear with a toothache! You'll regret if you ever did!

How am I different from my cousins, like the Grizzly Bear, or the Sun Bear etc.? Did you ever wonder? Your answer: The colour of my fur coat. Yes, indeed. Other bears' fur coats are usually brown/black but my fur coat is white/cream coloured. Other than that? Any other differences? Well, I'm different in one BIG way. I am a marine mammal. Like seals and walruses (my favourite meal), we Polar Bears spend most of our lives on the ocean. You see, our scientific name, Ursus Maritimus, means "Sea Bear", so we obviously live in the SEA!

Here's a step-by-step guide of how to get a delicious meal of seals:

1. Find a nice little hole in the ice all for yourself
2. Lie flat on the icy flat ground
3. Keep still! Hold your breath!
4. Wait till a seal's head bobs up from the water (Poor seal has done so in order to get some air!)
5. Lunge forward. Bare your teeth and grab the seal's head
6. Drag it onto the ice
7. Tear up all the meat with your paws
8. Ta Da! Enough to fill your tummy!
9. (Not related to hunting) Remember to clean up after that. I have to. Mom wouldn't be pleased seeing bloody reddish paws. 

Actually, I eat other stuff, like Caribou or Walruses. But in my personal opinion, seal meat is my favourite. Seal meat is the best! Oh yeah. And here's another tip should you ever go hunting for seals: To conceal yourself well among the icy Arctic background, cup your white furry paw over your black nose. Oops! I almost forgot, you're a human, not a bear. But that's a bonus hunting tip for you.

Family moments:
When I was born, my Dad wasn't around. I never met him. Ever. My mom took care of 4 of us, 2 girls and 2 boys. That's me (Pete), Patty (my eldest sister), Penny (my youngest sister) and Peter (my younger brother). Usually, female Polar Bears give birth to twins. But for us, we are quadruplets!

Haha... That's Peter and me fooling around

AND...

This is Mom, Patty and Penny

How did Mom take care of us? How were we able to survive? Here's how Mom did it: She dug a den.

A simple picture to show how the den looked like:

It sure was warm inside the den. :)

We Polar Bears definitely are serious swimmers. In fact, we can swim distances of more than 100 MILES! A HUNDRED MILES! Can you beat that?! I have swum with Mom during our weekly swimming practices through the freezing waters of Wager Bay.

I do hope to see you soon in the Arctic, or maybe when you travel to Churchill in Manitoba, Canada (Polar Bear Capital of the world), visit me! I'll be utterly glad to see you. I wish I can see all of you before everything of me disappears. You see, the Arctic is disappearing. the place which I can call home is disappearing. We, Polar Bears are on thin ice. We are on the verge of extinction, disappearing off the face of the Earth forever due to global warming. Now, only YOU can help us. 

• STOP releasing so much CO2 and other horrid gases into the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It traps heat in the atmosphere and melts the Arctic.
• STOP wasting electricity. Electricity may run out too in the foreseeable future.
• And many more.......

Do YOUR part to save the Earth today. Otherwise, you might lose your home too.

Smilies,

Pete Polar Bear
 

PS: Remember to save our precious Earth. And don't forget me! Hope to see y'all soon! 

If lost, please send mail to:

The Arctic

Den Number 104

Pete Polar Bear

Thank you!

Information about Polar Bears taken from:

National Geographic book- Face to face with Polar Bears

by Norbert Rosing (Photographer) & Elizabeth Carney

Cool videos

Hi everyone! I'm uploading a bunch of youtube videos... Hope ya like them.

Wings Of Life

Floral Bliss

Fungi

The beauty of pollination

Earth Hour- In 2 weeks' time

The Earth Hour Logo

Woohoo! Earth Hour's just round the corner! Here's the Youtube video- Earth Hour's official video this year

Remember the WWF (World Wildlife Funds)? Yeah, it was the organisation which launched the Earth Hour project, encouraging everyone round the world to switch off the lights just for one hour.

Guess how Earth Hour all started out?

Well, it all started in 2007, in a single city in Australia, Sydney, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. And following Sydney's lead in the year 2008, many other cities around the world adopted the event. 


In February, Earth Hour launched its 2012 campaign, “I Will If You Will”, with the intention of engaging its growing global community to go beyond the hour. Using a dedicated YouTube platform, IWIYW asks Earth Hour's digital community to inspire people from all corners of the globe to take sustainability actions, and to share their commitment to the environment with their own social media networks. [This bit was taken from Wikipedia] 



So this year,  March 31 [saturday], 2012 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm, turn off all non-essential lights everywhere. If you are going out, maybe to your friends' house or something, don't think you aren't playing a role on this special day- you are already playing a big role when you turn off the lights and fans at home! But of course, it's not only during these 60 minutes of Earth Hour that you do your part in saving the Earth- in fact, if you conserve electricity everyday, isn't it that every single day of your life is the special-est Earth Hour from you to Mother Earth? 


So count down to Earth Hour from now...

Recycled Basket

Hi dudes! Sorry for moment, we haven't been posting much (actually nothing at all) due to our exams. But now they are all HISTORY, so let us have some green FUN!

What you need:

• Lots of newspaper (NO! Not the newspaper that shows the date today!)
• Scissors
• Ruler
  
  OK, lets get started.
  
  Before that, you need to take a piece  of newspaper and fold it up nicely so that it is not too flimsy.
  
  Step 1:
  Cut 8 OR 10 long strips from newspaper. (Look at picture on the right, showing 32cm by 2cm) It need not be 32cm, though.
  
  

  Step 2:

  Lay 4 OR 5 of the strips side be side (parallel) on a flat surface and weave in the remaining 4 OR 5. (whatever it is, you should form a square) Make sure that the woven square is as tight as possible so that it is VERY firm and that it is exactly in the middle of the strips.

  
  (Sorry! Please click on picture to enlarge it!)
  
  
  
  Step 3:

  Now, fold all the ends up to make the side spokes of the basket (they should be of same height).  Please fold them nicely and neatly, other wise it may not look exactly like a basket.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  (Sorry! Please click on picture to enlarge it!)

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  Step 4:

  Cut 4 more strips 34 cm by 2 cm (or near the length of your strips were just now) and weave them in and out of the upright spokes. you may use paper clips to clip the strips to the upright spokes to make your job easier. =D
  Start weaving each new strip at a different corner.
  
  Step 5:
  To make the upright weaving easier, you can fold each strip into quarters and place them over the spokes one at a time.
  
  
  

  (Sorry! Please click on picture to enlarge it!)

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Step 6:

  When all 4 strips have been woven in, fold down the ends of the upright spokes and fold them under the weaving beneath, on the outside of the basket.

  
  

  (Sorry! Please click on picture to enlarge it!)

  Preferably: You may tape/glue it nicely and cut the extra paper out.

  
  
  
  
  
  Step 7: (the very super last step)
  Now, you can add a handle. Cut another long strip, same length as each strip was (the ones you used to make the basket),you may just glue it nicely.
  

  OR you can

  
  

  insert one end into the 2nd square on one side of the basket and the other end into the 3rd square on the other side of the basket, then fold round the ends until the handle is very secure.
  
  
  

  (Sorry! Please click on picture to enlarge it!)

  
  

  
  

  ~END~

  Hope you have enjoyed!

  Idea and images from: http://www.jamboree.freedom-in-education.co.uk/w's%20craft%20corner/paper_woven_basket.htm

  
  

For Animals around the world,......

HAPPY WORLD ANIMAL DAY! October 4th is World Animal Day, a day that all animals celebrate! Show all the animals round the world that you CARE for them! World Animal Day all started in 1931, in Florence, Italy at a convention Of ecologists. Some 2000 animal lovers got together on Sunday, at East Coast Park (Singapore), to celebrate World Animal Day. Wishing a HAPPY WORLD ANIMAL DAY to all animals on Earth, including creatures under the sea! Remember that all these started at Florence, Italy? Well, October 4th was chosen as the date for this special day as it was the feast day of Francis of Assis : a true nature and animal lover! So all nature lovers, everybody, come celebrate this special WORLD ANIMAL DAY OF THE YEAR 2011! Show all animals that YOU CARE!*\(^o^)/*

Animal Xploration- Issue 4

Ants in Action!

This guy's Atom Ant.

G'day mates! I'm Annie the Ant, and I live in some-person-who-loves-candies' house. Everyday, my whole entire colony would just sneak-, I meant PART of my colony, and I, a worker ant would sneak out of the cupboard (Our home) and grab a bunch of crumbs and run. My favourite sweet is the strawberry flavoured lollipop which the house's owner buys every week. Ants live EVERYWHERE. Ok, maybe not exactly EVERYWHERE, except on glaciers, in mountains and at the poles. Guess what? There are ten MILLION BILLION ants on Earth! There are about 10, 000 known ant species round the world. Ants' sizes range from 0.1cm to 5cm, which is really a big difference.      

                                 
Now, let's get started on how the entire colony of ants work. All the ants in the ants' nest need each other and are all ready to give up their lives for their colony. They only can survive as a group. Here are a bunch of cool fun facts about us ants. When 2 ants meet, they actually tap each other's legs and antennae. They also recognise shapes and scents of each other, the way they know they know they are from the same colony. Nope. Ants don't speak, but the meaning of this action is, "Hey, are you actually one of us?" 

When a worker ant comes back to its home (well, the nest), the other hungry worker ants left in the nest would stroke the worker ant's head. Then it opens its mandibles, the 'fancy way' of saying jaws, and regurgitates (uh, vomit??? Meaning bringing back the food up into its mouth) a drop of liquid from its 'first stomach', which also can be called crop. This means something like, "Give me some food, please!" This regurgitated liquid is partly made of food that the ant had collected from outside the nest. One drop of this weird liquid actually contains lots, and lots, and lots (x10) of information! Each and every ant which receives this liquid analyses its chemical composition. This is one of the ways a message is passed through the colony.

When I feels under attack,  I shoot a jet of formic acid which can shoot out to a height of 50cm! Other ants pick up the scent of the formic acid with their antennae, then they rush to the rescue, meanwhile also shooting out their own jets of acid. 

Hope you have learnt more about us! 

Annie Ant.

Sungei Buloh Powerpoint Slides

Greetings to everyone. I have just uploaded the 'Sungei Buloh Powerpoint slide'. 

Animal Xploration- Issue 3

Reliable news about the Red panda

Greetings, everyone! I'm Renee the Red panda and I'm here to bring you all on an INCREDIBLE adventure to the animal world right now, well today. I am red (my name says so) and I am dwarfed by the black and white giant that lives in China (the Giant panda). Us, Red pandas typically grow to the size of a house cat, though our great, big, bushy tails add an additional eighteen inches. We have a taste for bamboo but, unlike our larger relatives, we eat many other foods as well, like fruit, acorns, roots, and eggs. Like giant pandas, we have an extended wrist bone that functions almost like a thumb and greatly aids our grip. We are distantly related to the larger, better-known black-and-white giant panda. We are solitary creatures found in the mountains of Nepal, Myanmar, and central China. Unlike the giant panda, we are NOT bears. Scientists, in fact, believe that we are more closely related to raccoons and skunks. That was what I heard from a scientist one day when he was taking photographs of me. Speaking of bears, do you know that bears belong to the CAT family? Interesting, ain't it?

We are not really erm, well what you say, 'well- known' round the world like our relatives the giant panda, but people still know us. You would know us if you watch 'Kung fu Panda'. The Red panda's 'Master Shifu', supposedly the giant panda Po's master if you know the movie. 


Whoa, about the movie. Get back to the fun facts about us. Talking about the movie was just a little bit of fun from all those fun facts. 
Is the Red panda ENDANGERED?
If you think the answer is no, then you are really wrong about that. The red panda has been classified as vulnerable by IUCN because its population is estimated at fewer than 10,000 mature individuals. Though red pandas are protected by national laws in their range countries, their numbers in the wild continue to decline mainly due to habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and inbreeding depression. Poor us. :( But there's still good news! During a survey in the 1970s, signs of red pandas were found in Nepal's Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve. Their presence was confirmed in spring, only in the year 2007 when four red pandas were sighted at elevations ranging from 3,220 to 3,610 m (10,560 to 11,840 ft). The species' westernmost limit is in Rara National Park located farther west of the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve. Their presence was confirmed only in the year 2008.

I do hope that the humans would save us from being endangered. Please stop destroying our habitats.

From RENEE The Red Panda :)

Animal Xploration- Issue 2

Panda Packed Knowledge

I have black rings round my eyes. I love bamboo. its very obvious now- I'm a PANDA! Pandas are ENDANGERED. Bamboo produces new canes (culms) in the Spring. These shoots emerge out of the ground and grow in height and diameter for around 60 days. During this 60 day period it will produce limbs and leaves. After the 60 day period of growth, this bamboo cane does not grow in height or diameter again. It will put on new foliage every year, and typically a cane last for 10 years. Guess how tall a bamboo can grow in just a single day? It can grow up to 1-50 METERS!


I am a bear, native to central- western and south western China. I also can be found in Hong Kong's Ocean Park! I am easily recognised by people by my humongous, really distinctive black patches round my eyes, over my ears and right across my tubby fat body. Although I am supposed to belong to the order Carnivora, my diet is 99% bamboo! Due to farming, deforestation and other development, we, the pandas has been driven out of the lowland areas where we once lived. We can be found in China, the Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces.

Some of my family members are moving to Singapore too! I don't know much chinese, but I know Singapore in chinese is 新加坡(xin jia po). They have been really fussy about the bamboo in Singapore, so I have not a single idea when their enclosure in the 'Singapore Zoo' is opening. 

NEW UPDATE: (5th Nov 2012)

My Panda cousins have arrived at Singapore!!! They're Jia Jia (the female) and Kai Kai (the male)! 

They're open to the public once the Giant Panda Preview (at the River Safari) opens, on 29 November 2012! 

Aww, you know we Pandas are just IRRESISTIBLE! 
So, well, if you haven't seen the extent of Kai Kai and Jia Jia's cuteness, here you go...

Oops, wrong, these are stuffed toys. Anyway...

Argh! Wrong again! It's cartoon! Yeah, so...

Well, this is Kai Kai...

This is Jia Jia. 

How to differentiate both of them? Kai Kai is an "onion- head", while Jia Jia isn't.

Well, we are all very fussy about what kind of bamboo we eat, so MY favourite bamboo is found in Sichuan, where I live. I am a wild panda. I do NOT want to live in zoos, like a few of my cousins are doing now. There's almost no freedom in the Zoo! I like having the whole entire area to myself, roaming around whenever I want to.

The first panda came to the United States in 1936 – a cub to a zoo in Chicago. It took another 50 years before the States would see another of the pandas. When I was a newborn panda cub, I was only 1/900th the size of my mother and was comparable to the length of a stick of butter! Who knew that a newborn panda cub would be that tiny!

The WWF logo was inspired by Chi-Chi, a giant panda brought to the London Zoo in 1961, when WWF was being created. The man who sketched the first logo, Sir Peter Scott, says, “We wanted an animal that is beautiful, is endangered and one loved by many people in the world for its appealing qualities. We also wanted an animal that had an impact in black and white to save money on printing costs.”

Approximately 99 percent of a us, pandas' diet – bamboo leaves and shoots – is void of much nutritional value. Our carnivore-adapted digestive system cannot digest cellulose well, thus it lives a low-energy, sedentary lifestyle but persists in eating some 60 species of bamboo. We must eat upwards of 30 pounds of bamboo daily just to stay full. Some people, well humans eat bamboo like us! Be sure to try a little bit of well, 'bamboo delicacies' when you have a little trip to Taiwan!

-Help Save the World's Wildlife

Your contribution will help to save the world's wildlife and wild places.

Sincerely, Penny Giant Panda