Insite Into The most Unknown

Each state has it’s own set of laws and regulations for veterinary medicine. The laws are called Veterinary Practice Acts. Although the Practice Acts vary by state all practice acts define licensing and educational requirements for each state.

State legislators guided by the Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners set up these regulations. The Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners are a group of veterinarians appointed by the Governor to oversee veterinary medicine.

There are many aspects of the animal Field that are regulated by the law. The animal health industry it’s self is governed by a branch of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) called the Center of Veterinary Medicine. Veterinary practices are watched over by the EPA. Environmental Protection Agency. OSHA ( Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Labor protect the rights of workers in the veterinary field. Animals used for biomedical research are protected by agencies like the Public Health Service (PHS), and national Institute of Health (NIH). While laboratory animals are protected by the Animal Welfare Act. The Animal Welfare Act is enforced by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS.  The DEA or Drug Enforcement Administration, a division of the Department of Justice, enforces the Controlled Substance Act in which controls certain medications in the veterinary medical field.

All veterinarians must graduate from and AVMA or American Veterinary Medical Association, approved school. Most students complete 4 years and receive a college science degree followed by four more years of veterinary school.The AVMA also accredits college training programs for veterinarians, and veterinary technicians.

Wolftrap Angler.

With most kinds of animals the males are larger than the females, but not the anglerfish. The females are always larger, some grow as large as three feet, while the average male is less than 5 cm long. The male fish attaches himself to the female like a parasite. Her skin grows around him and some of his organs disappear making him completely dependant on her. He will never leave her, but he does still play a very important role. He fertilizes the eggs so that there will be more anglerfish.

The lights are used for other reasons, too. Some scientists believe that the fish can recognize each other by the different light patterns, and so are drawn to each other when it’s time to mate. Scientists also think the lights and the creatures enormous eyes allow it to see. Another reason for the light is that the anglerfish migrates closer to the surface each night. As the fish gets to parts of the water where sunlight filters down it would be an easy target for predators because animals looking up would see the perfect outline of its body. The lights help camouflage the fish be resembling the flickers of light from the sun.

If you are ever out on the ocean you will never see these fish. They are used to living in the deep, deep water at least 400 meters below the surface. There is a lot of pressure in this deep water from all the water above the fish. Because of this pressure the deep sea fish can not survive if brought to the surface.

A 10,000 dollar reward has been issued for a rare female Pinta Island Tortoise. There is only one Pinta Island Tortoise left to exsistance so far and he is a male named Lonesome George.

Up until 1971 it was thought that this species was exstinct until a snail scientist spotted the lone turtle. He now resides in the Charles Darwin Research Station. It is possible another of his species is out there but has yet to be found. But he has mated with another of his subspiecies and produced four eggs but yet have not hatched it will take four months. Although they will not be pure bred pinta island but something is better than nothing.

The Toast of Botswana

The Toast of Botswana is a hybrid goat sheep cross. It is the product of a ram left to house with a nanny goat that due to there stay together gave a live birth. The Difference between the two you ask. Well, the ram has 60 chromosomes and the nanny goat has 54. Usually in cases of hybrids where the chromosomes are not matched the babies are still born. In the case of The Toast of Botswana this baby lived. 

The Toast of Botswana could not reproduce, but do to the fact it would not stop mounting other sheep and nannys around it; it still was castrated.  It has a very course outer coast and very whooly inner coat. Very long legs and heavy body.

Now for little on the lost guys. Our world has said good bye to a great many animals. We have taken over and greedily taken so much from the earth and are only giving back too little. We take and crush everything around us until there is nothing left. There are very few of us left in the world that can see the beauty that is being taken from the earth.  And not just the animals. Their habitats too. Not many people know the beauty of the rain forests or jungles or at the bottom of the oceans. But there is beauty there. A kind of raw natural beauty that cannot even be described.

Venezuela

So now I would like to donate this area of my blog to some of the most amazing lost animals that no one stood up for.

Pre Modern

Camarasaurus. Meaning chamber lizard. Due to the holes in its vertibrae. A herbavor found in North Amarica. They traveled in herds or “Family” groups. Camarasaurus eggs have been uncoved in a neat line unlike other dinosaurs in which they have neat and tidy nests. In which tells us they they did not tend to there young.

Modern extinction

The Elephant Bird. A native to Madagascar. Was the worlds largest flightless bird.

A day Gecko. Was native to Africa.  Inhabitted forests and lived in trees. It fed on insects and nectar.

Native to Europe. The Dwarf Elephant is only a fraction of the size as it’s modern relatives. Insular dwarfism is a biological phenomenon by which the size of animals isolated on an island shrinks dramatically over time.

These are just a few of the examples of the loss this world has suffered.

Featherless Chickens. Hybrid chicken genetically engineered so that it has no feathers. Scientists say they would be lower in calories and faster growing and more likely to survive in warmer climates. They are said to save money in processing to remove feathers.

Critics say this isn’t worth the trouble. These chickens would lead a rough miserable life.  The males would most likely be unable to mate.  And these birds would be more susceptible to parasites mosquitoes and sun burn. The baby chicks would struggle to make it to adult hood.

To me this is just waist of money experiment. There are lots of more logical experiments that could be done then to genetically alter an animal. Darwin states the theory of evolution. Which is understandable but it is unnatural for the human species to play god in these cases. How are we to know what makes an animal survive the best. Natural selection does that for us so why would we need to intervene other than to say we did so?

The liger is a cat born from the breeding of a male lion and a female tiger. This combination produces an offspring with more lionistic features than if the reverse pairing had occured. That would produce a more tigeristic creature known as a tigon. Both are members of genus Panthera.There is no scientific name assigned to this animal because of it’s human assisted ancestory.

The large size of the liger and small size of the tigon is due to “genomic imprinting” – the unequal expression of genes depending on parent of origin i.e. whether certain growth genes are inherited from the male or the female. This is linked to the species’ lifestyle and breeding strategy – whether the female mates with only one male while in heat (non-competitive) or whether she mates with many males (competitive). This results in “growth dysplasia”. The following explanation is greatly simplified as a number of other genes are contributed unequally by the male and female parents and also affect the general health and longevity of the offspring. Lions live in prides led by several adult males. The lionesses mate with each of those males. Each male wants his offspring to be the ones to survive, but the female’s genes want multiple offspring to survive. The father’s genes promote size of the offspring to ensure that his offspring out-compete any other offspring in the womb at the same time. Genes from the female inhibit growth to ensure that as many offspring as possible survive and that they all have an equal chance. By contrast, tigers are largely solitary and a female on heat normally only mates with one male. There is no competition for space in the womb so the male tiger’s genes do not need to promote larger offspring. There is therefore no need for the female to compensate, so the offspring’s growth goes uninhibited.

When a male tiger mates with a lioness, his genes are not promoting large growth of the offspring because he is adapted to a non-competitive breeding strategy. However, the lioness is adapted to a competitive strategy and her genes inhibit the growth of the offspring. This uneven match means that the offspring (tigons) are often smaller and less robust than either parent.

When a male lion mates with a tigress, his genes promote large offspring because lions are adapted to a competitive breeding strategy. The tigress does not inhibit the growth because she is adapted to a non-competitive strategy. Therefore the offspring (liger) grows larger and stronger than either parent because the effects do not cancel each other out. Ligers take several years to reach full adult size, but it is a myth that ligers never stop growing.

Growth dysplasia has other effects: the size of the placenta may be affected (causing miscarriage), the embryo may be aborted at an early stage due to abnormal growth, the cub may be stillborn or may only survive a few days. In some rodents, mating Species A males with Species B females produces offspring half normal size, but mating Species B males with Species A females cause the offspring to be aborted as they try to grow to several times the normal size.

Because of the impossibility of a gene being inherited from only females, there is a competing hypothesis. This hypothesis (allthough not tested) is that the Lion’s sperm is damaged somehow during fertilization and that a growth inhibiting gene is typically destroyed. It is impossible for a gene carried on a chromosomes to be passed along only from the mother. The reason for this is there are no chromosomes that only a female can have. Female Tigons and Female Ligers both possess a tiger X chromosme and a lion X chromosome, yet only the female Ligers will grow large, this means something must happen to either alter the genes or that the cause of the growth dysplasia lies at least partially outside of the genes.

Another possible hypothesis is that the growth dysplasia results from the interaction between lion genes and tiger womb enviroment. The tiger produces a hormone that sets the fetal Liger on a pattern of growth that does not end throughout his life. The hormonal hypothesis is that the cause of the male Liger’s growth is his sterility – essentially, the male liger remains in the pre-pubertal growth phase. This is not upheld by behavioural evidence – despite being sterile, many male ligers become sexually mature and mate with females. In addition, female ligers also attain great size but are fertile.

The two headed snake. Not as rare as some may think. They have been found in several countries and live in serveral zoos and research centers. It is difficult for them to live in the wild because of there decision making problems. They tend to fight over food and when aproached die from hesitation from one head wanting to go one way and the other another.

This snake lives at the Sandiego Zoo.