babies

Showing 34 posts tagged babies

Watch the miraculous journey of infant sea turtles as these tiny animals run the gauntlet of predators and harsh conditions. Then, in numbers, see how human behavior has made their tough lives even more challenging.

Has the kid seen The Survival of the Sea Turtle, for TEDEd, by Scott Gass? Animated by Veronica Wallenberg and Johan Sonestedt.

Previously: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle hatchlings.

Observing a six month old baby girl orangutan, an eight year old son and their mother as they spend family time together in the Sumatran jungle in Indonesia. From the cameraman for this Earth-Touch video: 

“Our interaction with the mother via our close observation of her behaviour is more cognitive than anything I have experienced with another animal. It is rather startling to look into her eyes and see her looking back with the same self-awareness and awareness of another.”

A great ape that we share 96.4% of our genetic makeup with, there are two species of Orangutans: Bornean and Sumatran. The Sumatran Orangutan is one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates. They have lost 80% of their habitat in the last 20 years. 

In the Malay language, Orang means “person” and hutan means “forest” — people of the forest. 

From the BBC’s Life series, two weedy seadragons dance into the night: 

Living off the coast of south Australia, weedy seadragons (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) are the only known species along with sea horses and pipefish - where the male carries the eggs. Although the eggs start out in the female, she lays about 120 of them onto the tail of the male where they are then fertilized and develop until they hatch. 

Feeding on plankton, larval fishes and small shrimp-like crustaceans, seadragons resemble swaying seaweed making them difficult to find in their natural habitats, even though they can grow to about 46 cm in length.

This small creature is called a puggle. It’s a baby echidna, is just 40 days old and lives at the Taronga Wildlife Hospital:

Annabelle a Taronga Vet Nurse and surrogate Mum to ‘Beau’,  has not seen a puggle at such a young age in over 15 years of caring for sick and injured wildlife at the Zoo. The rarity of seeing an Echidna at this age is due to the habit of the adult females which stash their young in a burrow from about 50 days old. The puggle remains in the burrow for some months, with the female going out to feed, returning every few days to feed it milk.

Both Echidna and Platypus feed their young in an unusual way. Instead of having teats like other mammals, they have milk patches which excrete milk for their young to lap up. This is why Annabelle has to feed Beau from the palm of her hand, so it can lap milk as it would do in the wild. Once feeding, Beau resembles a mini vacuum cleaner, going back and forth making sure every drop of milk is sucked up – contributing to its ever growing belly.  

via BoingBoing.