Grooming

Grooming helps to tone the horse’s muscles, clean its skin and keep its coat healthy. It is a good bonding exercise between the horse and it's owner. Horses are very tactile creatures – they will nuzzle one another in a paddock – and so they usually like being groomed. It's kind of like getting a massage. Horses who are kept in paddocks sometimes like to groom themselves with a good roll on the ground.

Horse Do’s & Don’ts



Horses have a very good sense of smell, better than humans. They are able to smell fear on humans so they will know if you are afraid.

Horses sight is also different to humans, because they have a long narrow head with eyes on either side. They can't see the tip of their nose so you have to remember this when you approach them. You also need to remember that if they glimpse someone too close to their rear, they might buck or kick them.

Horses will need to trust you. Talk to the horse as you approach it and give it a pat on the withers when you are standing by it.

You can always tell if a horse is in a bad mood. Its ears will be laid back, or the horse will tense up beneath your hand, or it will start stamping its feet.

Horses are very expensive and high maintenance.



Horse links



The Pony Club of NSW - each state has their own

The National Equestrian Organization

The Saddle Club

How do dolphins sleep?
Dolphins have to be conscious to breath.[1] This means that they cannot go into a full deep sleep, because then they would suffocate. Dolphins have "solved" that by letting one half of their brain sleep at a time. This has been determined by doing EEG studies on dolphins. Dolphins sleep about 8 hours day in this fashion.

A dolphin's behavior when sleeping/resting depends on the circumstances and possibly on individual preferences. They can either:
1. swim slowly and surface every now and then for a breath
2. rest at the surface with their blowhole exposed
3. rest on the bottom (in shallow water) and rise to the surface every now and then to breath. [2]

How smart are dolphins?
The short answer to this is that we do not know. There is no reliable method to measure intelligence in humans across cultures, so it is not surprising that comparing humans, dolphins, apes, dogs, etc. is impossible. There are some indications of their potential: they are fast learners and can generalize (which is also true of pigs). Also they can learn to understand complicated language-like commands (which is also true of the great apes).

How much do dolphins eat?
Bottlenose dolphins eat several kinds of fish (including mullet, mackerel, herring, cod) and squid. The compostion of the diet depends very much on what is available in the area they live in and also on the season. The amount of fish they eat depends on the fish species they are feeding on: mackerel and herring have a very high fat content and consequently have a high caloric value, whereas squid has a very low caloric value, so to get the same energy intake (calories) they will need to eat much more if they feed on squid than if they feed on mackerel or herring. On average an adult dolphin will eat 4-9% of its body weight in fish, so a 250 kg (550 lb) dolphin will eat 10-22.5 kg (22-50 lb) fish per day.

How long do dolphins live?
The maximum age for bottlenose dolphins is between 40 and 50 years. The average age a dolphin can get (the life expectancy) can be calculated from the ASR Annual Survival Rate (the percentage of animals alive at a certain point, that is still alive one year later). For the dolphin population in Sarasota Bay, the ASR has been measured to be about 0.961. This yields a life expectancy of about 25 years. For the population in the Indian/Banana River area, the ASR is between 0.908 and 0.931. This yields a life expectance between 10.3 and 14 years. So the actual life expectancy differs per region. [3]

Quick Facts: The common name of Bengal Tiger is tiger.

Zoological information:
Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

Genus species: Panthera (panther, leopard) tigris (tiger)

Size: The size of a male tiger can range upto 3 m (10 ft.), female to 2.7 m (9 ft.)

Weight: The weight of a male can be upto 225 kg (500 lb.), female to 135 kg (300 lb.); largest existing member of the cat family

Description: The Bengal tiger has a magnificent appearance. The coat colour of this wildcat is reddish orange with narrow black, gray or brown stripes, generally in a vertical direction. The underside is creamy or white; a rare variant has a chalky white coat with darker stripes and icy blue eyes that will freeze you with fear!

Life span: On an average Bengal tigers survive probably not more than 15 years in the wild; 16 to 18 years in captivation environments

Sexual maturity: Females achieve sexual maturity at 3 to 4 years whereas males achieve the same at the age of 4 to 5 years.

Gestation: 98 to 110 days; 2 to 4 cubs born

Habitat: Bengal tigers dwell in tropical jungles, brush, marsh lands, and tall grasslands in fragmented areas of Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Burma.

Diet: Bengal tigers hunt medium to large prey such as pigs, deer, antelopes, and buffalo

Status: It is listed by USFWS as endangered and protected by CITES

Knowledgeable Facts:
- Since tigers hunt mostly at dusk and dawn their stripes help them hide in the shadows of tall grasses. They stalk and pounce because they are not able to chase prey a long distance.

- The territorial male tiger usually travels alone, marking his boundaries with urine, droppings, and scratch marks to warn off trespassers.

- A tiger can consume as much as 40 kg (88 lb.) of meat in one feeding.

- Tigers may drag their prey to water to eat. They are commonly seen in the shade or wading in pools to cool off.

- Since white tigers have pigmented stripes and blue eyes, they are not albinos.

- It is estimated that there are less than 3,000 Bengal tigers left in the wild.

Ecology and Conservation:
Tigers, are seated at the top-of-the-food-chain predators help in maintaining the ecological balance of populations by keeping prey populations in check. When a tiger has eaten its prey, the abandoned prey becomes the food for a variety of mammals, birds, and reptiles. Some cultures believe that powdered tiger bones have medicinal values. Unfortunately, tigers are highly in demand to supply this damaging market.