Because animals living in the city can find food 24-7, and have been doing so for more than ten generations, do these new city born animals know how to hibernate? If you take a city racoon and dump him in the middle of the woods, would he survive?
131205
In theory they should, as hibernation (and most other circannual cycles) is controlled from within my 'biological clocks' (just a bunch of hormones and other stuff).\nAs long as the animal builds up to the time of hibernation properly (ie feeds lots etc) it should be ok....
32193
No, animals grow hair in response to temperature and daylength. They don't watch the calendar and decide that it;s time to grow a winter coat. Day length shortens and temperatures fall in Autumn in the southern hemisphere just as it does in the North. The names humans give to the months dont; alter those things.\n\n>>>>In the southern hemisphere Jan.-March are summer and\n>>>> July-Sept. are winter.\n\nMore commonly Dec-Feb are summer and Jun-Aug are winter.\n\n\n>>>>It can't be the temperature if he's an indoor cat and it's 70 degrees year round. \n\nIt can be if the temperature fluctuates at all between seasons. Animals usually respond to temperature changes, not to specific temperatures. Unless your house is heated to a constant 70 all winter and cooled to a constant 70 all summer, 24 hours a day, the cat could easily detect the differences.
394150
They lower their metabolism and live off the fat that they have accumulated.  They don't excrete waste while they are in hibernation, so they don't require much water.  I would bet that they're pretty thirsty when they wake up.
494118
Very interesting question that I wish I had an answer for. I was always wondering the opposite sort of speak. How did the Anglo  survive in those caves up in the mountains in the earlier days? I mean they show all of this history on TV with the African man and the early stages of the white man. I'm just glad they discovered how to start a fire so that they could stay warm and could cook their food. I mean could you imagine eating raw meat 24-7?
589204
I believe in the possibility of such an animal existing. There have been reports of similar animals in North America (San Francisco and Lake Champlain).
378311
Well the sun is forever burning,I don't think it would cool down at any point in time.\nI think thats how it is I'm not really sure,ether way they'll burn to a crisp.\nFried monkey!Thats a new one.lol
420222
Even if they did crossbreed and produced offspring that were black, it wouldn't be able to get fixed into the population and produce more black cats since the hybrids would probably be sterile. There would have to be a constant cycle of leopards/jaguars (cougars have so far only been crossed with leopards) escaping, carrying the mutant gene, finding and breeding with a cougar, and then producing black instead of lightly spotted cubs.   I disagree that it is impossible for cougars to be melanistic. Melanism is most common in jungle dwelling cats (it may provide better camouflage and not get weeded out), but individuals of other species such as bobcats have been found melanistic or partially melanistic.  I do agree, though, that if we do find our first melanistic specimen of cougar it won't be in a scenario like this. The Florida panther population is pretty small and probably well studied. If a melanistic panther cub survived to adulthood it would probably be more likely to be found then if it turned up in another cougar population.
370210
I have absolutely no problems with this at all. It must be understood that the animals are all hatched and reared in the zoo and are not taken from the wild population. Living in the near ideal conditions of the zoo the survival rate of hatch-lings is close to 100% and without predators of any sort they will all grow to adulthood. This means that the zoo is producing far more crocodiles than it can possibly accommodate. You would not expect a chicken farm to keep all the birds it rears would you, and this is no different, there has to be a balance between how many animals are being born and how many can be looked after. If the surplus animals can provide an income to protect the main group then all well and good.
523367
I caught the tail end of that show.  I did not know you could adopt one.  I thought the point of people not being able to keep them...was a good point also.  I did not know they lived so long.  Also the poor chimp that they took one of his vertebra's out.
243058
Wow loss of meat. But i would be hapy.  I mean not for me but for the animals. They wud be somewhere where they weren't being hunted for their furs or tusks. They could rome freely the way God intended for it to be.
580728
A dog can maul a possum so badly that you'll swear the critter is deader than a door nail.  But you walk away only to find it gone when you come back a few minutes later.  It got up and meandered away while you weren't looking.  Possums really do play dead.  Their metabolism almost comes to a stop, naturally.  It's a self protective device that is so effective it fools almost every single animal that attacks it, and they seldom get eaten after an attack.  They can play dead for hours if they need to.  I once carried one home from a hunt when I was a boy.  I walked, carrying it alternately by its tail and its hind feet until I got home.  The hike was probably about forty-five minutes.  Not once during the entire hike did I see or detect any sign of life in the animal.  I got home and laid it on the porch while I went inside to get a knife with which to butcher and skin it.  I was going to cook it for supper that evening or the next.  The possum was gone when I returned to the porch.\n\nSo, the answer is that they really do play dead.  And very well too.
437848
There was a meteor shower the last few days, but those happen about once a month or so, with varying intensities, so nothing new there really.  I think there's no reason to think there's a correlation between your animal's behaviour and cosmic events (since there has never been shown to have a correlation before, except during solar eclipses).  Check their food or any stressful factors instead before trying to blame the universe.
216903
Perhaps... the weather during the early part of the Cretaceous was warmer than today (and more uniform.)  I'm actually in the process of writing a paper exploring the possibility of hadrosaur hibernation in northern Alaska.\n\nI took a tour of a dinosaur resource center today.  The tour guide said that ability to adapt is what saved KT survivors.  Crocodiles can go months without eating.  Birds migrate.  Fish could swim to deeper water.\n\nIt is still highly debated to what caused the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction.
252861
Reminder: 5n Theory, all continents used to be attached to one another- so in theory this is highly possible- if two of every species has moved from place to place. Also remember, animals have a good sense of unusual events happening, like earthquakes and things, so they might have had the sense to know where to go. Then you might ask about the unicorns, but it is said that they were too stubborn to get on the ship... dragons and pegasuses... I have no idea about.
117200
All animals prior to birds and mammals are cold-blooded, thus cold-bloodedness is the norm, not worm-bloodedness.  The greatest advantage is that, ounce for ounce, cold blooded animals need approximately 1/10th the amount of food.  Thus, during times of famine, when there is little food around, these animals can survive much better than mammals.  There is another advantage that isnt commonly discussed, and thats that cold-blooded animals can function at many different blood temperatures, while even a small change in blood temperature in mammals will cause severe loss of function.  One other advantage is that cold-blooded animals are nearly invisible to predators that can detect body heat, such as snakes.  Thus rattlesnakes, which are very sensitive to infrared, primarily prey on mice and other small animals, and only on other snakes or lizards when they are close enough to see clearly.  Also, in chilly conditions, above freezing, adapted cold-blooded animals can survive with very little loss of energy, while mammals and birds must expend *more* energy than normal to maintain heat.  Therefore, as long as the temperature doesnt drop below freezing, reptiles are actually at an advantage.  The advantages to being warm-blooded arent as powerful as we might think.  When Komodo island was discovered, and the large predatory lizards were a pest, Europeans brought in hundreds of hunting dogs and released them, quite sure that the dogs would clear the island of the evil lizards. When the Europeans came back years later, they found no dogs, and lots of fat and happy lizards....
134687
Yes a big problem. Ever hear of the "boiling frog"? If you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water it will freak out, try to escape, and eventually die. BUT... if you put a frog into a cool pot of water turn the burner on and let it reach a boil, the frog will fall asleep in the warming water and then die as it boils. Wake up everybody, we're warming up, don't fall asleep! P.S. all you literal jerks out there.. this is a metaphor. Frogs biologically will respond. If they are able to jump from the container when it heats up, they will. Where are we gonna jump?
465386
Well..this could be very interesting...take for example the cute little deer that live in the woods....they mate and make more little deer...for as long as there are nuts, berries and twigs to eat....when the food starts to run low...the deer begin to starve....they then get sick...many die if not from illness then from weakness when the snow falls.....add a policy of no hunting and you have a recipe for tragedy...carefully managed hunting thins out the herd and makes it healthy....the option is to introduce wolfs and bears ...of course...when they get hungry they will eat any available protein.......balance in a nutshell....good luck