Posts tagged ‘Sea’

How does coral grow?


Beneath the surface of the sea lie coral formations of many shapes and colors.  The formations may look like branching trees tinted green or lavender, lacy sea fans, or even like tiny organ pipes.  Coral is formed by millions of tiny sea animals called “coral polyps.”  Coral polyps look much like little flowers.

They wave food into their mouths with a circle of tiny tentacles.  Young coral polyps attach themselves to older ones and build limy, cup-like skeletons around their soft bodies.  When the polyps die, their hard skeletons remain as part of the growing coral formations. – Dick Rogers

What is a Grebe?


If you visited a pond or lake this summer, you may have seen a ducklike bird that quickly vanished underwater if you approached too closely, only to come up far away.

What you probably saw was a kind of waterbird know as a grebe (pronounce as greeb).

Grebes grow to be less than two feet long and have softly patterned plumage of white, gray, black or brown tones.  They feed on fish, crawfish, and water bugs.

Though expert swimmers, grebes are clumsy on land.  Their feet are placed so far back on their bodies that they can hardly walk.

Baby grebes are born on a raftlike nest woven of reeds and pond weeds.  They can swim and dive as soon as they are hatched.

In winter, grebes desert their reedy ponds and lakes for more open water and maybe found far out at sea. – Dick Rogers

What is a gooney bird?










What is an abalone?








What Kind Of Cat Is A Manx?


Manx cats are the only cats born without tails.  They run with a hopping, rabbit like gait, because of their long hind legs.

Have you ever seen a cat running with no tail and a sort of hopping like a rabbit?   Such a cat is the Manx.  The Manx cat is very strange one as it is the only cat born without a tail.

Its hind legs are longer than the front ones, giving it a hopping gait when running.  A Manx can run faster than most other kinds of cats.

The ancestors of the Manx can came from the Isle of Man, a British Island in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland.  The first cats on the Isle of Man swam ashore from sinking Spanish ships some 400 years ago.

Many says that the story of how they got to be tailless.  One says that these cats loitered on the way into the Ark, and Noah slammed the door on their tails.  Another says that a Manx is the result of a rabbit mating with a cat.

The truth is most likely that this cat lost their tails as a result of a quirk of nature. – Dick Rogers