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Showing posts with label Interesting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interesting. Show all posts

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Largest Deserts in the World

There are largest deserts in the world. A desert is a landscape
or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts can also be described as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration
than falls as precipitation.

Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico

The Chihuahuan Desert is a largest deserts that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border in the central and northern portions of the Mexican Plateau, bordered on the west by the extensive Sierra Madre Occidental range, and overlaying northern portions of the east range, the Sierra Madre Oriental. This largest deserts has an area of about 140,000 square miles. It is the third largest desert of the Western Hemisphere and is second largest in North America, after the Great Basin Desert.



Great Basin Desert, USA

The basin extends into Mexico and covers most of Nevada and over half of Utah, as well as parts of California, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming. The majority of the watershed is in the North American Desert ecoregion, but includes areas of the Forested Mountain and Mediterranean California ecoregions. The Great Basin includes several metropolitan areas and Shoshone  Great Basin tribes.

Great Victoria Desert, Australia

The Great Victoria Desert is a barren, arid, and sparsely populated desert  ecoregion  in southern Australia. It falls inside the states of South Australia and Western Australia and consists of many small sandhills, grasslands  and salt lakes. It is over 700 kilometres (430 mi) wide (from west to east) and covers an area of 424,400 square kilometres (163,900 sq mi).

Patagonia Desert, Argentina

The Patagonian Desert, also known as the Patagonia Desert or the Patagonian Steppe, is the largest desert in America and is the 7th largest desert in the world by area, occupying 260,000 square miles (673,000 km). It is located primarily in Argentina with small parts in Chile and is bounded by the Andes, to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, in the region of Patagonia, southern Argentina.

 Kalahari Desert, Southern Africa

The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid sandy area in Southern Africa extending 900,000 square kilometers (350,000 sq), covering much of Botswana  and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari Desert is the southern part of Africa, and the geography is a portion of desert and a plateau. The Kalahari supports some animals and plants because most of it is not a true desert.



Gobi Desert, Mongolia / N.E China

This largest deserts covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. he Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road.

Arabian Desert, peninsula

Arabian Desert or Eastern Desert, c.86,000 sq mi (222,740 sq km), E Egypt, bordered by the Nile valley in the west and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez in the east. It extends along most of Egypt’s eastern border and merges into the Nubian Desert in the south. The Arabian Desert is sparsely populated; most of its inhabitants are based around wells and springs.

Sahara Desert, North Africa

The Sahara is the world’s largest deserts. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers (3,500,000 sq mi), it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean. To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel: a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna that comprises the northern region of central and western Sub-Saharan Africa.

Largest Deserts The Arctic

The Arctic is a polar region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada,Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treelesspermafrost. The area can be defined as north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33′N), the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night.

Largest Deserts Antarctica

Antarctica is Earth’s southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in theAntarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in thickness. Antarctica is the largest deserts in the world.

The Largest Deer in the World

Moose are the largest deer of all the deer species. Males are immediately recognizable by their huge antlers, which can spread 6 feet (1.8 meters) from end to end. Moose have long faces and muzzles that dangle over their chins. A flap of skin known as a bell sways beneath each moose’s throat.
Moose are distinguished by the palmateantlers
of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a dendritic (“twig-like”) configuration. Moose typically inhabit boreal and mixed deciduous forests of the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to subarctic climates. This largest deer used to have a much wider range but hunting and other human activities greatly reduced it over the years.



Moose as the largest deer have been re-introduced to some of their former habitats. Their diet consists of both terrestrial and aquatic vegetation. The most common moose predators are wolves, bears, and humans. Unlike most other deer species, this largest deer are solitary animals and do not form herds. Although generally slow-moving and sedentary, moose can become aggressive and move surprisingly fast if angered or startled. Their mating season in the autumn can lead to spectacular fights between males competing for the right to mate with a particular female.


Moose are so tall that they prefer to browse higher grasses and shrubs because lowering their heads to ground level can be difficult. In winter the largest deer eat shrubs and pinecones, but they also scrape snow with their large hooves to clear areas for browsing on mosses and lichens. These hooves also act as snowshoes to support the heavy animals in soft snow and in muddy or marshy ground.

Moose are similarly nimble on land. They can run up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour over short distances, and trot steadily at 20 miles (32 kilometers) an hour. Females give birth to one or two calves in the spring, each weighing some 30 pounds (14 kilograms). These calves grow quickly and can outrun a person by the time they are just five days old. Young of the largest deer or moose stay with their mothers until the following mating season.

Smallest Animals in the World

Small Animals make excellent pets and companions for people of all ages. They entertain us for hours, surprise us with their intelligence and connect us with nature.Below is list of 10 smallest animals in the world.

Cat: 15.5 cm (6.1-inch) high and 49 cm (19.2-inch) long

Meet Mr. Peebles. He lives in central Illinois, is two years old, weighs about three pounds and is the world’s smallest cat! The cat’s small stature was verified by the Guinness Book of World Records on 2004.

10. Cattle: 81 cm (31-inch) height

The world’s smallest cattle is a rare breed of an Indian zebu called the Vechur cow. The average height of this breed of cattle is 31 to 35 inches (81 to 91 cm). The photo above shows a 16 year old Vechur cattle as compared to a 6 year old HF cross-breed cow.



Horse: 43.18 cm (17-inch) tall

The little horse was born to Paul and Kay Goessling, who specialize in breeding miniature horses, but even for the breed Thumbelina is particularly small: she is thought to be a dwarf-version of the breed. At just 60 lb and 17-inch tall, the five-year-old Thumbelina is the world’s smallest horse.

Lizard: 16 mm (0.6-inch) long

So small it can curl up on a dime or stretch out on a quarter, a typical adult of the species, whose scientific name is Sphaerodactylus ariasae is only about 16 millimeters long, or about three quarters of an inch, from the tip of the snout to the base of the tail. It shares the title of “smallest” with another lizard species named Sphaerodactylus parthenopion, discovered in 1965 in the British Virgin Islands.

Seahorse: 16 mm (0.6-inch) long

The creature, known as Hippocampus denise, is typically just 16 millimetres long – smaller than most fingernails. Some were found to be just 13 mm long. H. denise lives in the tropical waters of the western Pacific Ocean, between 13 and 90 metres beneath the surface.



Chameleon: 1.2 cm (0.5-inch) long

The Brookesia Minima is the world’s smallest species of chameleon. This one is just half an inch. Found on the rainforest floor of Nosy Be Island off the north-west coast of Madagascar, females tend to be larger than males.

Fish: 7.9 mm (0.3-inch) long

On January 2006, the world’s smallest animal, fish was discovered on the Indonesian island of Sumatra: a member of the carp family of fish, the Paedocypris progenetica. It is the world’s smallest vertebrate or backboned animal; only 7.9 mm (0.3 inches) long.

Snake: 10.1 cm (4-inch) long

Leptotyphlops carlae is the world’s smallest species of snake, with adults averaging just under four inches in length. Found on the Caribbean island of Barbados, the species –which is as thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to rest comfortably on a U.S. quarter– was discovered by Blair Hedges.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

The Biggest Whale In The World


By considerable measure, the largest known animal on Earth is the blue whale. Mature blue whales can measure anywhere from 75 feet (23 m) to 100 feet (30.5 m) from head to tail, and can weigh as much as 150 tons (136 metric tons). That's as long as an 8- to 10-story building and as heavy as about 112 adult male giraffes! These days, most adult blue whales are only 75 to 80 feet long; whalers hunted down most of the super giants. Female blue whales generally weigh more than the males. The largest blue whale to date is a female that weighed 389,760 pounds (176,792 kg).


















The Biggest Dog In The World


















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