World Wildlife Day!

... a day to celebrate what the wild brings to our lives...


This year's theme is "Listen to the Young Voices". Almost a quarter of the earth's population is between 10 and 24 years old. They will be the inheritors of our decisions, and the decision makers in the not-so-distant- future.
How do you want that to play out?

One thing.
If you have no time for anything more, today do ONE thing to help preserve, protect, and/or conserve wildlife and our wild lands.

What can YOU do today?

*talk with a young person about what they want for earth's wildlife and wild lands (encourage/ help them to take action),
*purchase a pass to a wild area,
*contact your government officials, expressing why it is important to protect wild life and wild lands (what benefits we get from protecting wildlife and wild lands) and what, specifically, you would like them to do (please vote yes/no on a particular bill, please fund "X" department, etc.),
*share/like/love! posts like this! ,
*donate to organizations that protect wild life and wild lands,
and, if you have *more* time ...
*start today, plan an event for next year!
*create your own posts/ blogs/ videos!
*participate in a clean-up (beach, park, roadside, trail, etc!)


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Giant Otter - Basics!

Giant Otter

(Pteronura brasiliensis)

The posts this week are brief overviews of EACH of the otter species, 

focusing on recent information about each species and a vid or 2... 

The Giant Otter is the largest (lengthwise) and oldest (evolutionarily) otter living today.

From nose to tail, Giant Otters can be up to 6ft long! Their tails are flattened and flanged, and very strong. Their ears are comparably small, and their eyes very large.  Giant Otters are at the top of their food chain. They eat fish, small caiman (basically alligators), crustaceans, snakes, and birds. Giant Otters are incredibly sociable, and often hunt in groups. They live in family groups of ten or more, sometimes up to twenty otters!

Status: Endangered and Decreasing


The Giant otter range (the area in which the Giant Otter lives) is the central area of South America, especially around the Amazon River Basin and the Pantanal Region.

There are loads of great YouTube videos of Giant Otters out there, but here are a few that we really enjoyed...

Giant Otter hunting...

Giant Otters and a Caiman...

Giant Otter pups at the Los Angeles Zoo

If you want more in-depth reading a few research articles you could explore on these otters includes:

>   Genetic diversity and population structure in the endangered giant otter, Pteronura brasiliensis

RSA Pickles, JJ Groombridge, VDZ Rojas… - … Genetics, 2012 - Springer

>   Conservation genetics of the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis (Zimmerman, 1780))(Carnivora, Mustelidae),DM Garcia, M Marmontel, FW Rosas… - Brazilian Journal of …, 2007 - SciELO Brasil
>   Social organization and territoriality of giant otters (Carnivora: Mustelidae) in a seasonally flooded savanna in Brazil,C Leuchtenberger, G Mourão - Sociobiology, 2008 -

Jellyfish Day presents Mastigias papua! (the spotted lagoon jelly)

The Spotted Lagoon Jelly, has multiple mouth openings on each of it's 4 oral arms (see those things that look like odd tentacles? those are oral arms), instead of a single central mouth opening.
The lagoon jelly is greenish brown in color due to the crop of symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) it grows in its tissues, which produces food for the jelly to harvest. It also catches about 30% of it's food with it's oral arms.
 Sometimes mall fish live inside of the jellies!

It is also known as "lagoon jelly", is found in bays and lagoons in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean.
This particular jelly was filmed at Seattle Aquarium.

These jellies live 3 to 4 months and are most active from summer to early fall.

The life cycle and anatomy of jellies will be discussed in another post!

For best viewing go to our YouTube channel and change video settings to 1080 HD.

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©Danaan DeNeve / Chiara DeNeve, 1999-current