Archiwum kategorii: Ksiazka

Tytuł: Blue Planet II
Autor(zy): James Honeyborne, Mark Brownlow
Rok wydania: 2017
Wydawnictwo: BBC Books

Dlaczego w bazie: Książkowy dodatek do serii przyrodniczej o takim samym tytule, bardzo żółwi! W środku znaleźliśmy aż 12 obrazków z żółwimi elementami oraz dużo, dużo fragmentów w tekście. Wszystkie cytujemy poniżej:

Pierwszy fragment jest spory, dotyczy przybywania żółwi na plażę by składać jaja:

The Arrival
During the course of the day, dark, round shadows appear in the shallow inshore waters off beaches on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. They are not inanimate rocks but living Olive Ridley sea turtles, and for several hours they sit motionless on the seabed, resting, maybe even asleep, conserving nergy prior to a coming event that will require a herculean effort.
By early evening, they begin to stir. They swim parallel to the shore, their small heads bobbing above the surface to catch a breath, before submerging for five minutes or so at a time as if preparing for the big moment. Then, at some unknown signal, they start to emerge from the sea. changing from animals that are totally at home in the water to animals that are very uncomfortable on land.
At first, there are just twenty or thirty hauling their heavy bodies out of the surf, but gradually numbers increase until the beach resembles a moving conveyor belt of round, grey boulders. Many thousands of turtles will be crossing the beach and throughout the night they will just keep coming because they have to. Sea turtles are an ancient group of reptiles that are still bound to the land for this one vital purpose-to lay their eggs- so mothers must cross the frontier between land and sea and, for several exhausting hours, leave the confines of the ocean. It’s a huge challenge, but despite the hardships, the rewards are worth it.
It is the rainy season on a dark night a few days before the three-quarter moon, and these female sea turtles have come to deposit their eggs in the black volcanic sand. It is known locally as the arribada („arrival”), and it is rely one of the most traumatic thing female sea turtle has to do during her life. More used to being supported by the water, her heavy body pushes down painfully on her internal organs, including her lungs. She wheezes and coughs, and glutinous tears ooze down from the corners of her eyes.
She sniffs at the sand, and when it is the right consistency and dampness she starts to dig. Using her spade-like hind limbs, she excavates a pit the shape of a teardrop. Manoeuvring her bulk over the hollow, she lets out a huge sigh, and slowly and deliberately she deposits up to 100 eggs, each the size of a ping-pong ball. Then, using her front flippers, she covers them and, with one last gargantuan effort, hauls her body back to the sea.
If she was the only turtle on the beach, her clutch would be undisturbed and probably many of her embryos would develop successfully and later hatch out, but she is not alone. Thousands of other mothers are excavating the same stretch of sand, the late arrivals inadvertently digging up the eggs of the early birds. It is just what the egg thieves have been waiting for.
Black vultures, wood storks and great-tailed grackles are in the vanguard, and this is their moment. They squabble for the exposed nests, some even snatching the soft-shelled eggs at the very moment they are laid. Coatis, recognised by their erect, striped tails and long snouts, dig up buried eggs, Stray dogs and feral pigs join them, rooting around in the sand, yet there is plenty for all. During the course of a single arribada over several days, hundreds of thousands of females emerge from the sea, and they deposit tens of millions of eggs safely beyond the reach of the tide. With so many eggs, predator swamping’ means that the thieves cannot eat them all, and nesting at night reduces the risk of nest predation. Some babies will have a chance to grow.
When the mothers go back to the sea, they all head off their separate ways. Olive Ridley sea turtles are more at home in the open ocean alone than on the shore with thousands of others of their own kind, but before they hit deep water they must run a gauntlet of sharks and American crocodiles from a nearby estuary. Even if they get past and survive, the fishing nets are another danger. In the past, thousands of turtles were caught in fine-meshed shrimp nets dragged by trawlers; many were drowned, and the population dwindled. Now local fishermen must by law have nets with turtle-excluder devices that enable the turtles to escape. It means a few more will return to join the next arribada.

Cztery kolejne to opisy grafik z żółwiami:

THE WAIT (opposite) Olive Ridley sea turtles are a solitary, open-ocean species. During the day, they wait just offshore, as if preparing for the transition from water to land.

ARRIBADA (below and overleaf) Thousands of female Olive Ridley sea turtles emerge from the ocean to deposit their eggs in the sand of a Costa Rican beach.

BEACH TRAVELLATOR (opposite) Latecomers arrive just as the early birds leave, the former often digging up the eggs of the latter.

MOB RULE (below) Despite the superabundance of turtle eggs, two black vultures still fight over possession. They steal eggs even before the mother turtle has had time to finish depositing and burying her clutch.

Dwa kolejne żółwie kawałki są zdecydowanie skromniejsze:

The Olive Ridley sea turtles are short-term visitors to the coast, but at Roebuck Bay on the west side of the Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia there are animals that take advantage of high tides over vast mud flats, rich in food.

While the fish and shrimps are exchanging audible brickbats, the local sea turtles are just waking up and getting ready to do battle.

Kolejny spory fragment dotyczy „stacji czyszczących” gdzie żółwie morskie pozwalają innym zwierzakom czyścić im skorupy:

Turtle Rock Health Spa
In any great city, the morning rush hour sees commuters racing to their destinations, and the coral reef metropolis is no exception. Time wasted is feeding time lost, but for some the first appointment of the day is a visit to the health spa.
An old female green sea turtle emerges from the coral overhang under which she has spent most of the night asleep, lodged firmly in place to prevent her from floating up to the surface between breaths. While inactive she can hold her breath for several hours, but now it is time to move, and move fast. She wants to be first at the spa, and for the moment there’s not another turtle in sight.
A sea turtle with algae covering its carapace and parasites on the softer parts of its body is going to be slower, less healthy and at a disadvantage compared to one without, so she heads for the wash-and-brush-up service provided by local cleaner fish. It would have been better to saunter. The disturbance has other turtles, and they’ve noticed she’s making a break for it. There is only room for one turtle at a time at the spa, so the race is on.
On the reef at Sipadan, off the coast of Malaysian Borneo, Turtle Rock is a world-famous cleaning station. It is an unusual undersea landmark because the rocky outcrop has a well-worn hollow in the top that has been eroded by countless generations of sea turtles checking in to be cleaned. The first to arrive receives the five-star treatment, so the queue can involve a bit of argy-bargy, as underwater cameraman Roger Munns found out:
'Green turtles have a well-deserved reputation for being very docile, but they are not so friendly when they want their shells cleaned at Turtle Rock. They bite and headbutt each other in order to get the best spot. They’re very aggressive.”
When the other turtles catch up and crowd in, they bite the lead female’s flippers and generally make life difficult for her, but it’s all to no avail: the first in is the first to be spruced up. Bicolour blennies appear from their burrows in the coral, and dark surgeonfish hover expectantly, ready to service the first customer of the day. The blennies deal with the parasites and dead skin, while the surgeonfish nibble on the algae covering the turtle’s shell. With this arrangement, the fish get an easy meal and the turtle a smoother shell and clean skin, the symbiotic relationship between them known as 'mutualism’, meaning both parties benefit. It’s another way for them both to gain an advantage in the city.

Dwa kolejne fragmenty to ponownie, opisy zdjęć:

LATE ARRIVALS (above) On one occasion, the film crew had to wait for over four hours for the turtles to turn up and settle into the cleaning station, and all for a 20-second shot!

TURTLE ROCK (opposite) Normally docile green sea turtles become very aggressive towards competitors for acces to this often used cleaning station

Mała wzmianka o tym co jedzą żółwie morskie:

In fact, scientists now think that some of the larger animals feeding on the seagrass, such as green sea turtles and dugongs, actually obtain much of their nutrients, not from the seagrass leaves themselves, but from the 'micro-forest’ of epiphytic algae.

Kolejny fragment dotyczy faktu, że żółwie pomagają nasionom traw morskich się rozprzestrzeniać:

Seed-Spreading Turtles
Green sea turtles are carnivorous for the first part of their lives. As juveniles they feed on sponges, jellyfish, fish eggs, molluscs, worms, and crustaceans, but when they reach adulthood, they switch to a predominantly herbivorous diet, chomping on seagrass and algae, and that’s not all. Aside from regularly trimming the seagrass meadow, they appear to have an important role in spreading it. It was once thought that only ocean currents dispersed seagrass seeds, but evidence is accumulating that turtles, and some of the other seagrass consumers, are at least partly responsible. The average green turtle eats about 2 kilograms of leaves and defecates about 25 seeds a day, and turtles tend to return to areas where seagrass traditionally grows, so they reseed old grounds as well as starting new ones.
Furthermore, in the laboratory, seeds germinate faster after having passed through the turtle’s gut. Seagrasses evolved about 100 million years ago and turtles have been eating seagrass for close to 50 million years, so it is possible the two species have co-evolved.
There is always the danger, of course, that an overly large population of turtles would strip out all of the seagrass, whether they replant it or not, but nature has an answer for that too. Tiger sharks protect the seedlings by keeping turtles in check!

Opis obrazka:

UNDERWATER MOWER (above) An adult green sea turtle chomps on seagrass. It bites off the tips of the blades of grass with its serrated jaw, which, like a well-mown lawn, keeps the meadow healthy.

Wzmianka o tym,że rekiny polują na żółwie:

The shark patrol the lush parts of the seagrass meadows because that is where they expect the turtles and dugongs to be feeding, but the prey is smarter than that.

Wzmianka o wypadku z rozmaitymi gumowymi zabawkami, w tym z żółwikami:

One was filled with 28,800 bathroom toys – plastic yellow ducks, green frogs, blue turtles and red beavers – but it burst apart, spilling its contents into the sea.

Wzmianka o tym jak długie wędówki żółwie skórzaste odbywają:

In the Pacific, a jellyfish-eating leatherback sea turtle embarked on the longest turtle migration ever recorded. It travelled 20,558 kilometres from its nesting beach on Papua in the southwest Pacific to jellyfish-rich feeding areas off the coast of Oregon in the northeast Pacific, and was on its way back when its tracking signal was lost. Like all marine reptiles, they must surface to breathe and so a turtle’s head popping out of the water might well be the source of many 'sea serpent’ sightings in northern waters.

Spory kawałek o tym gdzie żółwie morskie spędzają „młodość”:

Lost Years and a Log
The fallen bough, washed into the sea by a river or toppled from coastal cliffs, becomes encrusted with barnacles and algae, and young sea turtles come to feed on them. The log is their temporary life raft, and their presence here has solved a long-standing biological mystery. When turtle hatchlings leave their beach, they head out into the open ocean and are probably faced with the most challenging times of their life, what scientists have dubbed the 'lost years’ because nobody knew where they went until they returned to lay eggs five years later. Now we know.
'We stumbled on the answer without fully realising it, John Ruthven reveals. 'More than 160 kilometres off the coast of eastern Australia, with 3 kilometres of clear water below, we spotted a floating log. Diving below it, we found many creatures hiding, including a young hawksbill sea turtle not little, not large, but middle-sized. This is probably where it spends its so-called 'lost years’.
'Scientists can trace the paths of small turtles like this using miniature satellite tags. They show that hatchling turtles go far out to sea, and temperature sensors on the tags reveal that the little reptiles keep warm and develop faster by staying close to the surface, sheltered by floating objects.
'After hatching, a baby turtle faces a daunting gauntlet of predators near the coast, and so it takes its chances on the high sea. When some inquisitive oceanic whitetip sharks came by, I wondered if this wasn’t much of a choice, but anything a turtle can do to improve its one-in-a-thousand odds of reaching adulthood must be useful,’
The young sea turtles ride the ocean currents, like many young marine creatures, hiding beneath flotsam, jetsam, logs and rafts of floating seaweeds, such as those found in the Sargasso Sea, part of the North Atlantic Gyre. Here, drift lines of Sargassum, a type of brown seaweed kept afloat by airbladders, are host to their own specialist community of animals, like the sargassum crab and the exquisitely camouflaged sargassum fish. These are the preferred hiding places for young turtles, but these miniature hotspots also attract unwelcome guests, and the predators of the open ocean are amongst the most inquisitive, none more so than the oceanic whitetip shark, which John had seen prowling.
At the slightest hint of food, the oceanic whitetip swims in directly and without fear. It may not have fed for weeks, so it wastes no time. It prefers fish to turtles, so an attack would be an exception, but there is another large and dangerous species with chainsaw-like teeth that would make easy work of a young sea turtle’s shell, and it deliberately targets these ocean drifters. It’s the tiger shark, thought until recently to be mainly a coastal species. However, tagging studies have shown that tiger sharks from the Caribbean head out a short distance into the Atlantic each summer in search of young, naïve and easy-to-catch loggerhead turtles.

Ponownie, opis obrazka:

OCEAN HIDING PLACE (below) A young sea turtle finds refuge amongst a floating mat of sargassum.

Fragment o problemie zanieczyszczonych plastikiem oceanów:

Garbage Patch Ocean
At one time, the debris in which young sea turtles hide was mainly natural, but nowadays a flood of plastics dominates. It is thought that the equivalent of a large garbage-truck-load of plastic is dumped into the sea every minute of every day. The effects are an ecological nightmare.
Thousands of sea turtles are either strangled by discarded nylon fishing gear or choke on plastic bags, mistaking them for jellyfish. It is estimated that over half of living turtles have eaten plastic at some time in their life, and about 90 per cent of seabirds have consumed plastic particles that they have mistaken for food.

Opis grafiki:

PLASTIC JELLYFISH (opposite top) A green sea turtle mistakes a clear plastic bag for a jellyfish off the coast of Tenerife.

Wzmianka o dawno wymarłych żółwiach:

Lo and behold, the fossil skeletons of plesiosaurs and ancient sea turtles that lived about 100 million years ago have been found with the tell-tale excavations of zombie worms.

Ostatni kawałek, znów o problemie plastiku:

Plastic bags and the larger pieces of plastic block the intestines of whales, sea turtles and birds, such as albarosses, or kill chicks because their parents have fed them plastics.

Autor: XYuriTT

Tytuł: Wędrówki z dinozaurami
Tytuł oryginału: Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History
Autor(zy): Tim Haines
Tłumaczenie: Brak danych
Rok wydania: 1999 (ENG)
Wydawnictwo: BBC Books (ENG), Muza SA (PL)

Dlaczego w bazie: Książka związana bezpośrednio z telewizyjną serią przyrodniczą o takim samym tytule – chociaż skupia się na dinozaurach, znalazło się też trochę żółwich elementów. Żółwia skorupa widoczna jest na jednym zdjęciu, żółwi zarys jest też pokazany na grafice pokazującej zróżnicowanie gadów. Poza tym, w kilku fragmentach książki pojawiają się wzmianki słowne, przytaczamy je wszystkie poniżej:

Pierwsza wzmianka dotyczy czaszek gadów:

When reptiles first appeared they formed three main groups distinguished by different types of skulls. Today this forms live in turtles, birds and crocodiles, and mammals.

Kolejne dwa fagmenty wspominają o tym, że żółwie morskie muszą wychodzić na ląd by złożyć jaja:

The need to crawl out of the water every year and bury eggs, as turtles do, must have prevented the ichtyosaurs’ ancestors from exploiting the water fully.

But at the same time all four of their limbs were dedicated paddles (turtles have retained stumpy hind limbs for digging holes to lay eggs) and no plesiosaur or pliosaur eggs have ever been discovered.

Kolejny fragment dotyczy tego co widać także na zdjęciu, informuje że dinozaur znalazł martwego żółwia na plaży:

There, in the middle of the beach, is the decaying body of a huge turtle. The Eustreptospondylus bends down and pushes his head into the half-empty shell. With a tug he draws out a large blob of meat and starts to feast.

Porównanie do łap/płetw żółwi morskich:

In the 1970s American paleontologist Jane Robinson studied the muscle attachments of the flippers and concluded that they worked like underwater wings, powering the reptiles through the water just as the flippers of penguins or turtles do today.

Ponowne przypomnienie martwego żółwia:

He heads once again for the cove where he found the roting turtle, and he crosses the headland, the source of the new odour becomes apparent.

Wzmianka, że m.in. żółwie nie mają mieśni twarzy, a więc mimiki:

Crocodiles, lizards and turtles, for example, have no facial muscles; mammals are unique in having such expressive muscular faces, of which cheeks are an integral part.

Wzmianka o żyjących obok dinozaurów dużych, drapieżnych żółwiach:

Being cut off from the marine environment by the cliffs, these lakes have developed unique residents. In particular, they are dominated by large, predatory turtles. Most of the time these unlikely killers litter the beaches, sunning themselves, and seem somewhat slow and cumbersome compared to other aquatic predators. But in the dark waters of the lakes they are highly effective ambush hunters and few fish escape their powerful jaws.

Kolejna wzmianka o żyjących obok dinozaurów żółwiach:

The Ornithocheirus suddenly finds himself sharing his island with numerous big black turtles. He tries wadding away from them, but soon day is not warm enough for him to soar, therefore he takes off and flaps his way slowly to a turtle-free piece of shore.

Ostatnia wzmianka dotyczy tego, że m.in. żółwie przetrwały wydarzenie/proces które doprowadziły do wyginięcia dinozaurów:

However, other mammals, crocodiles, turtles, frogs, salamanders and numerous other marine organisms survived relatively unscathed.

Autor: XYuriTT

Tytuł: Planet Earth II: A New World Revealed
Autor(zy): Stephen Moss
Rok wydania: 2016
Wydawnictwo: BBC Books

Dlaczego w bazie: Ksiązkowy dodatek do serii przyrodniczej Planeta Ziemia II. Znalazło się tutaj kilka żółwich fragmentów i dwa całostronicowe zdjęcia.

Pierwsza żółwia wzmianka pojawia się w przedmowie autorstwa Davida Attenborough:

It was a blissful time for those of us making natural history programmes. Even in Africa, where many of the animals were so familiar, we could easily find creatures that were quite new to most viewers – porcupines, chameleons and turtles. And if we went to other continents there were all kinds of astonishments – wombats and narwhals, hummingbirds and armadillos, manatees and sloths.

Kolejna wzmianka jest o tym, że Jaguary czasem zjadają żółwie:

The jaguar is an excellent swimmer and, like most big cats, an opportunist, hunting a wide range of prey, from freshwater turtles and armadilos, to capybaras and deer.

Wzmianka o tym, że niektóre zwierzęta w nietypowych warunkach wyjątkowo rosną, jak żółwie z Galapagos:

In the absence of of their old predators or competitors, many animals (and plants) have developed unusual characteristics. Some are bigger than their mainland cousins – the Galapagos tortoises, for example.

Kolejny fragment to spory kawałek o żółwiach z Galapagos i Darwinie:

The biggest tortoise

Small may not always be the best route to survival on an island, and many creatures display the opposite trait: they become giants. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Galápagos Islands. Off the Pacific coast of South America, straddling the equator, the Galápagos gained their worldwide fame as the cradle of evolutionary theory when Charles Darwin visited in the 1830s. Observing the strange life forms he encountered, adapted to different situations, led him to develop his theory of evolution through natural selection.

Of all the creatures he came across, few were as impressive as the giant tortoises. They weigh on average roughly the same as three grown men. Once, these huge reptiles roamed across many of the world’s continents, but today they are only found on two island groups, separated by thousands of miles of sea: Aldabra in the Indian Ocean, and the Galápagos, where they live on 7 of the 21 islands. These reptiles are not only huge but also among the longest lived of any animal surviving more than a century in the wild (up to 170 years in captivity). Of the 13 known races, 11 survive today.
Like many of the other creatures on the Galápagos, the giant tortoises were castaways, drifting across the ocean from mainland South America. They managed to travel such a distance – some 1000km (620 miles) – because they float and can survive for several months without food or water. Helped by ocean currents, though some would have drifted westwards, enough made landfall for a viable population to become established.
Darwin was stunned by the size of these reptiles, noting in his journal that it took up to eight men to lift a tortoise. So why are they so big? One theory suggests that only the largest tortoises could have survived such a difficult sea crossing, as their large volume to surface area ratio would have allowed them to retain fluids, while their longer necks meant they could breathe more easily.
The other notable feature is how the shape of their shells differs. The shapes seem to correlate with the habitat of the island on which they live: those on lush, well-vegetated islands have domed shells and shorter necks; those on dry, desert-like islands have 'saddleback’ shells and long necks. Presumably, where there is plenty of low-growing vegetation, the animals can easily reach their food, while on drier islands, they may need to reach up to get to taller vegetation such as the abundant prickly pear cactus. However, other scientists have suggested that this may be a coincidence and that the saddleback shell shape is actually a product of sexual selection, a result of generations of females preferring males with a higher front to their shell and longer necks. But then two races that have a similar shape may not necessarily be very closely related, which tends to suggest that they have evolved in response to the type of habitat in which they live.
Famously, at the time of his visit, Darwin falled to appreciate the differences in shell-shape between each island tortoises. Only when he returned to England did he develop his theory; and then, to his eternal regret, he found that he had not always labelled the tortoise shells he had collected with the name of the island where it had been found – thus making the specimens far less useful for determining whether his assumptions were correct.
When the islands were discovered in the sixteenth century there were as many as a quarter of a million giant tortoises; today there are just a few thousand. But with better habitat conservation, and the removal of introduced animals, their future now looks more assured.

Poniższy tekst jest opisem obrazka z żółwiem z Aldabry, widocznego obok powyższego długiego tekstu:

The biggest survivor. Aldabra giant tortoise, on the remote Indian Ocean atoll of Aldabra – part of the Seychelles group. It is more than a metre long (more than 3 feet), and is the only species of giant tortoise to have survived in this part of the world, the others having been hunted to extinction by visiting seafarers or settlers or their habitat destroyed by introduced animals accompanying humans. These giants can live for more than 100 years, probably more than 150.

Ponowna wzmianka o żółwiach z Galapagos/Aldabry i tym że są duże:

So long as the niche you fill is unocuppied, it makes sound evolutionary sense to be either tiny or, if you are a tortoise on the Galapagos or Aldabra, very large indeed.

Drugi pod względem długości fragmencik, o składaniu jaj przez żółwie i tym jaki problem dla wyklutych żółwi stanowi sztuczne oświetlenie:

Turtles have been coming to Barbados to lay their eggs for thousands of years, but now light from the holiday resorts is throwing the hatchlings off track. On emerging, they need to head to the water as fast as they can to avoid being picked off by predators such as gulls. They have evolved to head to the brightest horizon – the water reflecting the light of the moon. But today the brightest glow comes from the hotels and restaurants, which takes the hatchlings in exactly the wrong direction. Red crabs then gather under the streetlights, picking them off before they ever reach the sea. For these turtles, which have seen urbanization take over their once-pristine natural nurseries, the future would be bleak were it not for the conservationists who are helping the hatchlings make it to the sea.

Podpis do drugiego żółwiego zdjęcia w książce, z żółwiem skórzastym, fotka znajdowała się obok powyższego tekstu:

Lure of the nightlight. On Juno Beach, Florida, a leatherback sea turtle hauls up to lay her eggs. When the baby turtles hatch, they head for the brightest horizon, which should be the natural glow of moon on the sea. But light from beachfront development can lead them off course, and wandering hatchlings can be hit by cars or caught by predators.

Ostatnia żółwia wzmianka, ponownie o tym jak sztuczne oświetlenie negatywnie działa na świeżo wyklute żółwie:

On the Caribbean island of Barbados (as on the beaches elsewhere), hatchling turtles are so confused by the lights of beach developments that they head away from the sea rather than towards it, and the shoots at night mostly recorded baby turtles dying in street gutters.

Autor: XYuriTT