Revision History: Addo National Park Experience

On: 2012-12-06 12:09:58 Sarah Hanton changed content of section yjnxxl7045xb976m2d to

I will be describing how a lion looks like. First I'll be describing the male lion afterwards then the general features of a lion and then the looks of a female lion. I'll also describe the lion cubs and I'll be informing you a little about the lions' habits. The male lion is bivery big. It has a huge fluffy mane that goes around its face and neck. A lion is like a giant cat. It has a flat face with a flat nose , whiskers and round golden eyes and they are round.The ears on the side of its head are not very big, thet're about the size of a baby's fist. When a lion walks the muscular shoulder blades come up. All lions are short. their height is about the same as a maa couch. A lion's fur is thin and smooth Their mane is fluffy.the fluffiness is the texture of the mane. The shape of a lion's mane is like a ragged water droplet, A water droplet is round at the top and pointy at the bottom. The female lion is cakked a lioness, it does not have a mane, It's smaller than the male lion. Lion cubs, male and female are born without manes. They are the size of a 2 months old human baby. They have tiny paws, almost the size of a human baby's foot. A cub's teeth are sharp yet harmless. The adult lion's paws have claws that are pointy, sharp and dangerous. The female's teeth are sharper because they do the hunting, whilr the male lon babysit's the cubs. Lions stay together, A group o flion' sis called a prode of lions. A lion could easily blend in a savanna region because of its colour. It is a beigish golden colour. Lions are carnivores, meaning that the eat other animals such as a zebra.

On: 2012-10-04 15:47:42 Meagan Koffie created new section

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On: 2012-09-28 08:32:29 Lilitha Mankuntsu changed content of section yjnxxl7045xb976m2d to

I will be describing how a lion looks like. First I'll be describing the male lion afterwards then the general features of a lion and then the looks of a female lion. I'll also describe the lion cubs and I'll be informing you a little about the lions' habits. The male lion is bivery big. It has a huge fluffy mane that goes around its face and neck. A lion is like a giant cat. It has a flat face with a flat nose , whiskers and round golden eyes and they are round.The ears on the side of its head are not very big, thet're about the size of a baby's fist. When a lion walks the muscular shoulder blades come up. All lions are short. their height is about the same as a maa couch. A lion's fur is thin and smooth Their mane is fluffy.the fluffiness is the texture of the mane. The shape of a lion's mane is like a ragged water droplet, A water droplet is round at the top and pointy at the bottom. The female lion is cakked a lioness, it does not have a mane, It's smaller than the male lion. Lion cubs, male and female are born without manes. They are the size of a 2 months old human baby. They have tiny paws, almost the size of a human baby's foot. A cub's teeth are sharp yet harmless. The adult lion's paws have claws that are pointy, sharp and dangerous. The female's teeth are sharper because they do the hunting, whilr the male lon babysit's the cubs. Lions stay together, A group o flion' sis called a prode of lions. A lion could easily blend in a savanna region because of its colour. It is a beigish golden colour. Lions are carnivores, meaning that the eat other animals such as a zebra.

On: 2012-09-28 08:07:18 Ilse De Vos changed title of section zjco3yl4ov6b5gh4by to

Biomimicry-by Ilse de Vos

On: 2012-09-28 08:07:18 Ilse De Vos created new section

zjco3yl4ov6b5gh4by

On: 2012-09-26 21:28:57 Milagre Lang changed content of section 9onf9n7gmyd8w47eu4 to

The Thorny Devil

For those of you that don't know, the thorny devil lizard is perhaps one of the strangest looking lizards today. It is a small, desert lizard that makes its home in Australia.

Now, one of this odd little reptile's fantastic adaptions to desert life, is how it can drink water. If you were to place a very thirsty thorny devil next to a dish containing water, all it would have to do would to place a single foot in the liquid. If you looked closely, you would notice that it gulped as if drinking, and that the water in the dish was slowly depleting. Confused? Well, some might think that it was actually absorbing the water through its foot. Incorrect. The water actually, miraculous as though it may seem, would be travelling up its leg, over its body, to its mouth.

Still perplexed? As any normal person would be! It is common knowledge that water does not run uphill! However, if you were to look very closely at the skin of this reptile, you would notice a complex system of tiny grooves, or more appropriately in this case, channels that run between the scales. All of these miniscule channels run straight to the corner of the thorny devil's mouth. These channels absorb water using an interesting process, called capillary action (yes, it sounds like the tiny blood systems in the human body. Can you see where this is going . . . ?).

Another excellent example of capillary action would be when you put an extremely thin straw into water, you notice some of the water will begin to rise in the straw above water level.

As an added bonus, when travelling through the desert vegetation, this lizard can actually drink dew drops as it passes by, using the capillary action grooves.

It's all very good marvelling at this creature, and rightly so, but the real reason for excitement is that this method involves the gathering of water! And water - as we know, despite making up the majority of the Earth's surface as well as our bodies - is quickly becoming very scarce.

Think about it: a method of "harvesting" water . . . Let's start simple when implementing this new method. First, what is a good example of a large, previously unused body of water, hard to collect? Well. Fog certainly comes to mind. We could use the structure of the lizard's skin as an example, and create vessels covered with the same pattern of grooves. Then, during those foggy days, one could simpy place this object outside and wait patiently. Similarly, we could use it in the desert, like its inspiration. At night, the desert becomes very cool, and water condensation occurs. These vessels or objects could collect the newly formed drops of water efficiently and effectively.

These ideas may not appear extremely revolutionary, but consider the water collecting prospects, the room for improvement, and of course the fact that the process requires no input of energy.

Another future prospect (and I mean far, FAR future), that is being considered by bio-engineers, is the possibility of engineering the human skin to work the same way, so that we could "drink" fog simply by walking through it. However, I don't think that that particular concept will be usable currently, quite obviously due to the fact that we don't yet have that kind of technology.

Undeterred by this, we have to start somewhere (or sometime, to be more exact), and the earlier we start the faster it will be developed. Using this reasoning, it's hard to see why not to start now.

On: 2012-09-26 21:23:53 Milagre Lang changed content of section 9onf9n7gmyd8w47eu4 to

The Thorny Devil

For those of you that don't know, the thorny devil lizard is perhaps one of the strangest looking lizards today. It is a small, desert lizard that makes its home in Australia.

Now, one of this odd little reptile's fantastic adaptions to desert life, is how it can drink water. If you were to place a very thirsty thorny devil next to a dish containing water, all it would have to do would to place a single foot in the liquid. If you looked closely, you would notice that it gulped as if drinking, and that the water in the dish was slowly depleting. Confused? Well, some might think that it was actually absorbing the water through its foot. Incorrect. The water actually, miraculous as though it may seem, would be travelling up its leg, over its body, to its mouth.

Still perplexed? As any normal person would be! It is common knowledge that water does not run uphill! However, if you were to look very closely at the skin of this reptile, you would notice a complex system of tiny grooves, or more appropriately in this case, channels that run between the scales. All of these miniscule channels run straight to the corner of the thorny devil's mouth. These channels absorb water using an interesting process, called capillary action (yes, it sounds like the tiny blood systems in the human body. Can you see where this is going . . . ?).

Another excellent example of capillary action would be when you put an extremely thin straw into water, you notice some of the water will begin to rise in the straw above water level.

As an added bonus, when travelling through the desert vegetation, this lizard can actually drink dew drops as it passes by, using the capillary action grooves.

It's all very good marvelling at this creature, and rightly so, but the real reason for excitement is that this method involves the gathering of water! And water - as we know, despite making up the majority of the Earth's surface as well as our bodies - is quickly becoming very scarce.

Think about it: a method of "harvesting" water . . . Let's start simple when implementing this new method. First, what is a good example of a large, previously unused body of water, hard to collect? Well. Fog certainly comes to mind. We could use the structure of the lizard's skin as an example, and create vessels covered with the same pattern of grooves. Then, during those foggy days, one could simpy place this object outside and wait patiently. Similarly, we could use it in the desert, like its inspiration. At night, the desert becomes very cool, and water condensation occurs. These vessels or objects could collect the newly formed drops of water efficiently and effectively.

These ideas may not appear extremely revolutionary, but consider the water collecting prospects, the room for improvement, and of course the fact that the process requires no input of energy.

Another future prospect (and I mean far, FAR future), that is being considered by bio-engineers, is the possibility of engineering the human skin to work the same way, so that we could "drink" fog simply by walking through it. However, I don't think that that particular concept will be usable currently, quite obviously due to the fact that we don't yet have that kind of technology.

Undeterred by this, we have to start somewhere (or sometime, to be more exact), and the earlier we start the faster it will be developed. Using this reasoning, it's hard to see why not to start now.

On: 2012-09-26 20:36:09 Milagre Lang changed title of section 9onf9n7gmyd8w47eu4 to

Biomimicry - Kyra Davies