10 of World's Smallest Animals/Creatures

There is something neat about small animals. Even Hollywood's elite enjoy carrying around the diminutive Chihuahuas as a symbol of their status. Whether it's because they look like a baby version of their larger ancestor or because they are so odd, small creatures often attract attention from people.

1 - World’s Smallest Dog: 12.4 cm (4.9-inch) tall

At 1.4 pounds and 4.9 inches tall, Ducky, a yappy short-coat Chihuahua from Charlton (Massachusetts, USA), holds the Guinness World Record for the world's smallest living dog (by height). Ducky succeeds Danka Kordak of Slovakia, a Chihuahua who measured 5.4 inches tall. The smallest dog ever, according to Guinness, was a dwarf Yorkshire terrier who stood 2.8 inches tall.

2 - World's Smallest 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.

3 - World’s Smallest Fish: 7.9 mm (0.3-inch) long

On January 2006, the world's smallest 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.

The title, however, is contested by 6.2 mm (0.2 in) long male anglerfish Photocorynus spiniceps (not technically a fish but a sexual parasite) and the 7 mm (0.27 in) long male stout infantfish Schindleria brevipinguis.

4 - World’s Smallest 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.

5 - World’s Smallest 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.

6 - World's Smallest Hamster: 2.5 cm (0.9-inch) tall

Only slightly bigger than a 50p piece, PeeWee is the smallest hamster in the world. Weighing less than an ounce, the golden hamster stopped growing when he was three weeks old - his five brothers and sisters went on to measure between 4in and 5in.

7 - World's Smallest 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.

8 - World's Smallest 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.

9 - World’s Smallest 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.

10 - World's Smallest 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.

• Reference/Source: Oddee.com [10/30/2008]

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10 of World's Strongest Animals Compared to it's Body Weight

Meet the strongest animals in the wild. I found this article appealing... so I decided to add it in our list. thanks to nachocelebrity.blogspot.com for posting such great articles.

Here are the 10 of world's strongest animals.

10 - Grizzly Bear

The grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), also known as the silvertip bear or just the grizzly or North American brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear (Ursus arctos) that generally lives in the uplands of western North America. This subspecies is thought to descend from Ussuri brown bears which crossed to Alaska from eastern Russia 100,000 years ago, though they did not move south until 13,000 years ago.
Grizzlies are normally solitary, active animals, but in coastal areas, the grizzly congregates alongside streams, lakes, rivers, and ponds during the salmon spawn. Every other year, females (sows) produce one to four young (commonly two) which are small and weigh only about 500 grams (one pound). A sow is protective of her offspring and will attack if she thinks she or her cubs are threatened.

They are strongest mountain animal, can lift 0,8 times their body weight. Their weight is 1500 pounds and can lift until 1200 pounds.

9 - Mussel

The common name mussel is used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, which are often more or less rounded or oval.
The word "mussel" is most frequently used to mean the edible bivalves of the marine family Mytilidae, most of which live on exposed shores in the intertidal zone, attached by means of their strong byssal threads ("beard") to a firm substrate. A few species (in the genus Bathymodiolus) have colonised hydrothermal vents associated with deep ocean ridges.
In most marine mussels the shell is longer than it is wide, being wedge-shaped or asymmetrical. The external colour of the shell is often dark blue, blackish, or brown, while the interior is silvery and somewhat nacreous.
The word "mussel" is also used for many freshwater bivalves, including the freshwater pearl mussels. Freshwater mussel species inhabit lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks, canals, grouped in a different subclass, despite some very superficial similarities in appearance.
Freshwater Zebra mussels and their relatives in the family Dreissenidae are not related to previously mentioned groups, even though they resemble many Mytilus species in shape, and live attached to rocks and other hard surfaces in a similar manner, using a byssus. They are classified with the Heterodonta, the taxonomic group which includes most of the bivalves commonly referred to as "clams".

They can hold something two times their body weight. Their shell is very strong, compared to their small body size.

8 - Anaconda

An anaconda is a large, non-venomous snake found in tropical South America. Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the common or green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, which is one of the largest snakes in the world.

They can squeeze something same as their own body weight to death. Their weight can reach 550 pounds.

7 - Ox

An ox (plural oxen), also known as a bullock in Australia, New Zealand and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle (castration makes the animals more tractable), but cows (adult females) or bulls (intact males) may also be used in some areas.
Oxen are used for plowing, for transport (pulling carts, hauling wagons and even riding), for threshing grain by trampling, and for powering machines that grind grain or supply irrigation among other purposes. Oxen may be also used to skid logs in forests, particularly in low-impact, select-cut logging.
Oxen are usually yoked in pairs. Light work such as carting household items on good roads might require just one pair, while for heavier work, further pairs would be added as necessary. A team used for a heavy load over difficult ground might exceed nine or ten pairs.

They can pull and carry something 1,5 times their body weight across rugged terrain. Their weight is 1300 pounds and can pull and carry until 2000 pounds.

6 - Tiger

The tiger (Panthera tigris), a member of the Felidae family, is the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. The tiger is native to much of eastern and southern Asia, and is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. The larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids, reaching up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) in total length, weighing up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), and having canines up to 4 inches long. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognisable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The most numerous tiger subspecies is the Bengal tiger, while the largest is the Siberian tiger.

They can carry something two times their own body weight up a ten foot fence. Their weight is 600 pounds and can carry until 1200 pounds.

5 - Eagle

Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species (the Bald and Golden Eagles) can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in Central and South America, and three in Australia.

They are the strongest bird. They can lift something four times their own body weight during flight.

4 - Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest species of primates. Gorillas are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of a human, between 95 and 99% depending on what is counted, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the two chimpanzee species.

Gorillas' natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forests in Africa. Although their range covers a small percentage of Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. The Mountain Gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2,200–4,300 metres (7,200–14,100 ft). Lowland Gorillas live in dense forests and lowland swamps and marshes as low as sea level, with Western Lowland Gorillas living in Central West African countries and Eastern Lowland Gorillas living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo near its border with Rwanda.

They can lift something over 10 times their body weight. Their weight is 450 pounds and can lift up to 4600 pounds. Mean, they can lift as heavy as 30 adult humans.

3 - Leafcutter Ant

Leafcutter ants, a non-generic name, are any of 47 species of leaf-chewing ants belonging to the two genera Atta and Acromyrmex. These species of tropical, fungus-growing ants are all endemic to South and Central America and parts of the southern United States.
The Acromyrmex and Atta ants have much in common anatomically; however, the two can be identified by their external differences. Atta ants have 3 pairs of spines and a smooth exoskeleton on the upper surface of the thorax while Acromyrmex have 4 pairs and a rough exoskeleton.
Next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth. In a few years, the central mound of their underground nests can grow to more than 30 metres (98 ft) across with smaller, radiating mounds extending out to a radius of 80 metres (260 ft), taking up 30 to 600 square metres (320 to 6,500 sq ft) and containing eight million individuals.

They can lift something 50 times their own body weight. Imagine a person who can lift a truck.

2 - Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant (also known as the Indian elephant). All other species and genera of Elephantidae are extinct, some since the last ice age although dwarf forms of mammoths may have survived as late as 2,000 BCE. Elephants and other Elephantidae were once classified with other thick-skinned animals in a now invalid order, Pachydermata.

Elephants are the largest land animals now living. The elephant's gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 120 kilograms (260 lb). They typically live for 50 to 70 years, but the oldest recorded elephant lived for 82 years.[3] The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1956. This male weighed about 24,000 lb (11,000 kg), with a shoulder height of 3.96 metres (13.0 ft), a metre (yard) taller than the average male African elephant. The smallest elephants, about the size of a calf or a large pig, were a prehistoric species that lived on the island of Crete during the Pleistocene epoch.

Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence, where their intelligence level is thought to be equal to that of dolphins and primates. Aristotle once said the elephant was "the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind." The word "elephant" has its origins in the Greek ἐλέφας, meaning "ivory" or "elephant".
According to observations, healthy adult elephants have no natural predators,[15] although lions may take calves or weak individuals. They are, however, threatened by human intrusion and poaching.

They are the strongest mammals. Their weight is 12000 pounds and they can carry 20.000 pounds. They can carry as heavy as 130 adult humans.

1 - Rhinoceros Beetle

The rhinoceros beetles or rhino beetles are a subfamily (Dynastinae) of the scarab beetle family (Scarabaeidae). Other common names – some for particular groups of rhino beetles – are for example Hercules beetles, unicorn beetles or horn beetles. There are over 300 known species of rhino beetles.

Many rhino beetles are well-known for their bizarre shapes and large size. Famous species are for example the Atlas Beetle (Chalcosoma atlas), Common Rhinoceros Beetle (Xylotrupes ulysses), Elephant Beetle (Megasoma elephas), European Rhinoceros Beetle (Oryctes nasicornis), Hercules Beetle (Dynastes hercules), Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle or kabutomushi (Allomyrina dichotoma), Ox Beetle (Strategus aloeus) and the Unicorn Beetle (Dynastes tityus).

They are not only the strongest insect but also the strongest animal compared to body weight. They can lift something 850 times their own weight.

• Reference/Source: nachocelebrity.blogspot.com [Tuesday, January 18, 2011]
• Reference/Source: wikipedia.org

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Top 10 of the World's Fastest Land Animals

If wild animals could participate in the Olympics, the land animals of the wild would outrun any human. Most animals use their speed when overpowering prey or escaping a predator.

The following maximum speed measurements "are based on measurements recorded over approximately quarter-mile distances. Exceptions are the lion, which was clocked in the act of charging, and the cheetah, which was measured over a 100-yard distance," notes the TravelAlmanac.com.

1 - Cheetah

The world's fasted land animal is the cheetah. The cheetah has an "acceleration that would leave most automobiles in the dust; a cheetah can go from 0 to 60 mph in only 3 seconds," according to the National Geographic. This large cat has exceptional eyesight to scan for prey. The sleek and flexible spotted body of a cheetah provides camouflage for dry grasslands in Southern and East Africa, where about 12,000 endangered wild cheetahs exist.

2 - Pronghorn Antelope

For more than a million years, the pronghorn antelope has roamed North America. "The running gait of the pronghorn is beautifully smooth and their powerful legs can carry them at a remarkable pace across the roughest kind of terrain. Pronghorns can reach speeds of 60 mph," notes the National Park Service.

3 - Lion

Lions roam grassy plains and open woodlands of the sub-Saharan region. Lions may be as long as 48 inches and weigh up to 500 pounds. When looking for prey the lion can reach speeds as fast as 50 mph.

4 - Thomson's Gazelle

The Thomson's gazelle roams the grasslands and open plains of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. This gazelle weighs 35 to 55 pounds and is exceptionally alert to sounds and movements, and its fine sense of hearing, sight and smell balances its vulnerability on the open plains, according to the Out to Africa website. The Thomson's gazelle is able to run 50 mph.

5 - Wildebeest

The wildebeest belongs to the antelope family. The Afrikaans began calling the gnu the wildebeest because it had a shaggy mane, sharp horns, pointed beard and a huge head. Wildebeest can weigh as much as 600 pounds and run as fast as 50 mph. The wildebeest roams the woodlands and plains of sub-Saharan Africa.

6 - Springbok

A springbok may reach a speed of 50 mph. The springbok's main predators consist of leopards, lions, humans and lions. This reddish-brown, small antelope may leap up to 13 feet. This South African animal lives in semiarid and grassland regions.

7 - Quarter Horse

The quarter horse has heavy muscling, a stocky built and a compact appearance. This well-defined horse can sprint 47.5 mph. "Quarter horses are quick, balanced and agile. They are collected in action and stand at ease with their legs well under them. They are even-headed, kind, surefooted and steady," notes the Ultimate horse Site.

8 - Cape Hunting Dog

Identified by a distinctive coat of black, red, white and yellow, the Cape hunting dog reaches speeds of 45 mph. The Cape hunting dog travels in pack of six to 20 animals. A pack of these dogs may pursue large prey, such as antelope and wildebeest, especially if injured or sick.

9 - Elk

In North America, the elk is the largest deer. The wapiti is another name for the elk, which means "light-colored deer." The elk can go as fast as 45 mph when it needs to avoid danger. The elk is a massive animal; therefore most animals do not bother the elk. An elk's antlers may grow up to 4 feet, making the tip of the animal's horns as high as 9 feet off the ground.

10 - Coyote

The coyote runs up to 40 mph. Coyotes are able to adapt to North America's changing landscape. These clever animals eat rodents, fish, frogs, deer and snakes. With their keen sense of smell and strong vision, this member of the dog family typically forms a pack with other coyotes to hunt prey together in the fall and winter months.

• Reference/Source: nachocelebrity.blogspot.com [Tuesday, January 18, 2011]
• Reference/Source: nationalgeographic.com
• Reference/Source: TravelAlmanac.com

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