Ischnura elegans

Ischnura elegans is the scientific name of a dragonfly (odonato) European with the abdomen for the most part black in the one that emphasizes the intense sky blue color of the eighth segment. It is a question of a delicate insect, of slender body. His four wings, two previous ones and two later ones, are membranous, furrowed by a complicated veins network, and they stay supported on the body when the insect is in rest. It possesses big formed eyes, in turn, for more than 20.000 cocksure or small "lenses" that provide a visual field to him of approximately 270th.

The dragonflies deposit his eggs in the water, sometimes in the submerged vegetation, where the nymphs are born. These are carnivorous and they eat larvae of mosquitoes and other aquatic organisms.

Also known like dragonflies, these dragonflies have always had bad reputation in Occident. In Japan, nevertheless, these insects are venerated like mythological beings who symbolize the value, the force and the happiness.

Amoeba proteus

Amoeba proteus is the scientific name a species of giant amoeba of fresh water. It talks each other of an organism formed by only one cell eucariota that is characterized by his changeable form and by his locomotion by means of pseudópodos, that also it uses to capture food (fagocitosis). Amoeba derives from the Greek term amoib ē and means 'change'. The epithet proteus alludes to Proteo, the marine god of the Greek mythology that had the aptitude to transform and to change form.

Imitating the movement of this organism, American engineers of the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechanics of Polytechnic school Virginia TechSi have managed to develop a new locomotion model for robots that does not use paws you do not even roll, to that they have baptized ChIMERA (acronym of Chemically Induced Motion Everting Robotic Amoeba).

Incilius periglenes

Incilius periglenes is the scientific name of the golden toad. Or rather we should say “age“, because from 1989 only one has not been seen not model of this amphibian in the cloudy forest of Monteverde (Costa Rica), for what the IUCN considers to be extinct. It was measuring scarcely five centimeters and there was showing a color fluorescent gilding - orange so brilliant that his discoverer, Jay Savage, was confessing that, on having seen it for the first time, he believed that someone had immersed it in enameled painting, since it seemed impossible that it was a natural sheen. The ecologist Martha Crump, who was the last one to see specimens of this species and wrote the book In search of the golden frog, was describing them as “dazzling jewels in the soil of the forest”.

His extinction assumes to the climate change provoked by the global warming, to an epidemic of fungi, or to a combination of both.

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Macaque fuscata

Macaque fuscata is the name of the Japanese macaque or macaque of red face, a primate that lives in the forests of the islands of the archipelago of Japan and the islands Ryukyu. There is well adapted to the cold Japanese winter, with his body covered with a thick and woolly cloak of brown - greyish hair, with the exception of the face, buttocks, palm of the hands and feet, where there concentrate numerous blood glasses that give him a pink color. He lives in groups or “troops“ of 30 or more individuals. When the temperature descends below 0ºC it is habitual to see them taking a bath in smoky volcanic springs in the middle of the snow.

The scientists take years observing his behavior and have seen them, for example, playing at forming and throwing snowballs his partners just as a children's panda. Also there is popular the anecdote that happened in the island of Koshima in 1952, when a group of scientists began giving him to the monkeys sweet potatoes, which they were dropping in the sand of the beach. To the macaques they liked the flavor of those raw tubers, but not so much the sand. A female of 18 months of age, called Imo, discovered that it could solve the problem washing the potatoes in the sea. It taught the trick to his mother. His playmates also learned the new method and it was taught to his respective mothers. The cultural innovation was learned gradually by tens monkeys before the astonished look of the scientists.

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Crambe crambe

Crambe crambe is the scientific name of the red sponge, one of the most abundant marine macroinvertebrates in the Mediterranean, also present in the Atlantic Ocean. It forms colonies of intense red or orange color that they can occupy up to one square meter of surface. Normally he lives on rocky surfaces, sometimes at the caves entry. It is a sponge incrustante, what means that they can colonize cracks or vertical walls. Some of the substances that it produces are being studied by the scientists for his potential as antiviral and anticarcinogenic.

The sponges or poríferos they form a very ancient group of living beings that was already present in the Cambrian low one. Nevertheless, these animals were not recognized as such till the end of the XVIIIth century. The body of a sponge consists basically of an aggregation of different types of cells that, although they neither form organs are not even coordinated by means of a nervous system, yes they work to the unison.

Chelonia mydas

Chelonia mydas is the scientific name of a marine turtle more known as green turtle, or cahuama in the Caribbean Sea. This species has a shell of olive green color or brown smoothed enough and hydrodynamic, and fins with form of oar to move skillfully in the water. The adult green turtles, which are herbivorous, go so far as to measure up to 1,66 m long, reach a maximum weight 300 kilos and can live 100 years. His habitat spreads over the tropical and subtropical oceans of the whole world, and even in the Mediterranean. At present extinction danger is seriously.

The green turtles are born out of the water, in nests buried in the sand of the beach. When to the females it touches the turn to be mothers, big distances migrate between the places selected to feed and the beaches where they were born. It is known that some C. mydas has covered up to 2.600 kilometers to come to his spawning places. In every putting 100 eggs settle, since the possibilities that all the babies survive are quite remote. After two months of incubation, the "tortuguitas" break the shell and, in full night, they initiate a frenetic career towards the sea, where they will come instinctively for being the most brilliant place of the horizon.

Adansonia gregorii

For Engracia Madejón, Scientific Researcher of the CSIC in the IRNAS (Institute of Natural resources and Agrobiology of Seville) and hardened traveler.

Adansonia gregorii is the scientific name of the boab, a tree of the family of the Malvaceas. As other baobas it is recognized by his trunk, breadth in the base, which gives him bottle aspect. It is endemic of Australia and it grows in Kimberley (region of the west of Australia) and some areas of the Territory of North. It is the only Australian species, the others are located in Madagascar (6) and in the African continent (1). It can reach a height of between 9 and 12 meters and his trunks can have a diameter of more than 5 meters (they even were serving like jails once dry!). It is caducifolia, and it loses his sheets at the dry station and recovers them in the humid one.

During thousands of years the aboriginals have made use of all his parts: the crust to make ropes, his porous trunk to obtain the retained water, and the fruits and the sheets like food and with medicinal ends. The hard rinds of the fruits were used to do different types of receptacles. The fruit has a texture similar to that of a dry apple and acidic flavor, as that of the citrus fruits, and it is very rich in vitamin C and minerals.

The aboriginal legends tell that the God of the trees created the boab like the best of the trees of the universe, with the most beautiful flowers and the juiciest fruits. But as it was growing it lost splendor and his fruits acquired a horrible flavor. The God of the trees angered so much that started it all at once of the ground and planted it of the reverse. That's why when you see one of them it gives you the impression of which it grows with the roots to the air.