Advertise

 
Friday, August 27, 2010

Indian Tiger

1 comments
Size and Physical Characteristics: The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest among all the living wild cats of the family Felidae. It has an elongated body, short neck, and compact head with a relatively short muzzle. The legs are stout and the paws are armed with retractile claws. The total body length of an adult male tiger is between 275-290 cm and that of an adult female is 250-260 cm. The adult male tiger weighs 180-260 kg whereas the adult female weighs 100-160 kg.

Tigers have a reddish-brown to rust-brown coat with black stripes and a white underbelly. Variations in coat colouration occur among individuals. White and black tigers are caused by a recessive gene.

Habitat and Distribution: In India, the tiger is found practically throughout the country, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, except in Punjab, Kutch and the deserts of Rajasthan. In the northeast, its range extends into Burma. Tigers occupy a variety of habitats including tropical evergreen forests, deciduous forests, mangrove swamps, thorn forests and grass jungles.

Behavioural Characteristics: Tigers are usually solitary, except for females with cubs. They are territorial and males have discrete territories overlapping those of several females. Male territories are mate oriented while those of females are more resource oriented. Tigers use scent (spraying urine on the trees or other vegetation or deposited on a scrape), scratch (marking on tree trunks with claws) and scrape marks on the ground to maintain contact and advertise their presence to others.

Males associate with females for breeding and have been observed with females and cubs when feeding and resting. Although tigers mate and produce cubs throughout the year in India, peak breeding activity is in winter and early summer. During breeding, which lasts about 20 to 30 days, males and females communicate with each other with loud and distinct calls that travel great distances. About 8 different kinds vocalizations have been documented in tigers from the wild.

The gestation period is about three months (90 days). The litter size may vary between 1-6 cubs, but 2-3 cubs are most common. At birth, the tiger cub weighs between 800 - 1500 grams and measures 31 - 40 cm in length. Cubs stay with their mother and siblings until about the age of two when they move on to establish their own territories. During these two years, cubs learn hunting techniques from their mother.

Tigers are well adapted to stalking prey rather than running it down. Tigers primarily hunt at night, between dawn and dusk and usually rest during daytime. On an average, tigers and tigresses without cubs kill once in eight days, whereas a tigress with cubs makes kill almost once every five days. However, the rate of kills depends on the number of successful attempts. The prey is killed mostly by a fatal throat bite causing suffocation, strangulation or severance of blood vessels. Sometimes nose bites are applied to suffocate the animal, when an effective throat bite is not an easy task, mainly in case of larger prey. Small prey is killed by a nape bite resulting in broken neck vertebrae or dislocation of head from vertebral column.

Diet: Tigers are meat eaters. Their diet includes chital, sambar, gaur, barasingha, hog deer, barking deer, nilgai, pigs and cattle. Apart from large prey, tigers are also known to consume birds like peafowl and large rodents like porcupines. They are even known to attack elephants and rhino calves. Tigers in the Sundarbans are known to feed on fish and crabs.

Threats: The tiger population in India is officially estimated to be 3,000 - 3,500. Many of the tiger populations across the nation, particularly those outside protected reserves, face a variety of threats, including habitat fragmentation, encroachment, and poaching and developmental projects. These problems are directly or indirectly linked to anthropogenic factors.

Decades of scientific research on tigers and their prey have provided us with a set of guidelines to develop and design protected areas to help the species survive. However, these reserves protect only a fraction of tiger habitat, and most are under severe human pressure. In the last few years, tiger poaching has increased dramatically, fueled by illegal trade in tiger body parts.

Large development projects, such as mining, hydroelectric dams and construction of highways are also taking their toll on the tiger's habitat. In the past few years, thousands of square kilometers of forestland have been diverted and destroyed to facilitate such projects. Though mostly outside the protected network, the loss of this vital habitat will have serious repercussions on tiger conservation in India.

WPSI’s Wildlife Crime Database shows 95 tigers are known to have been killed in 1994, 89 tigers were killed in 1997, 36 tigers were killed in 1998, 72 tigers were killed in 2001 and 35 tigers were killed in 2003. These figures, however, are incomplete and represent only a fraction of the actual poaching activity in India.

History: One of the earliest portrayals of the tiger in India is found in the Harappan seals from the Indus valley culture, dating back to 2500 BC, and depicting an intricate association between people and tigers. The rock paintings of Warli tribe, which date back to around 3000 BC, also feature the tiger.

It is believed that tigers evolved in northern China and Far East Asia approximately two million years ago. They then migrated through woodlands and along river systems into southwest Asia. In the south and southeast directions, tigers moved through continental southeast Asia, crossing into the Indonesian islands before they separated from mainland, and finally reached India.

During their evolutionary history, tigers split into eight subspecies. All the subspecies were alive until 1940. However, during the next three decades, three subspecies became extinct.

The five surviving subspecies are:
  1. Bengal Tiger - Panthera tigris tigris
  2. Siberian (Amurian) Tiger - Panthera tigris altaica
  3. Sumatran Tiger - Panthera tigris sumatrae
  4. Indo-Chinese Tiger - Panthera tigris corbetti
  5. South China Tiger - Panthera tigris amoyensis
The three extinct subspecies are:

  • Javan Tiger - Panthera tigris sondaica - extinct since early 1980’s
  • Bali Tiger - Panthera tigris balica - extinct since the 1940’s
  • Caspian Tiger - Panthera tigris virgata - extinct since the early 1970’s

Conservation: Project Tiger was launched in India in 1973, with the goal of saving the tiger and its habitat in India. With an initial list of 9 Tiger Reserves, this Project went on to cover 28 Tiger Reserves across the country, incorporating an area of 37,761 sq. km. Though this Project tackled various issues over the past 20 years, it had not been able to keep pace with the rapid changes that have changed the tiger landscape and increased human pressures. In 2006, it was replaced by the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

Despite all these problems, India still holds the best chance for saving the tiger in the wild. Tigers occur in 18 States within the Republic of India, with 10 States reportedly having populations in excess of 100 tigers. There are still areas with relatively large tiger populations and extensive tracts of protected habitat.

We need to make a concerted effort to combat poaching and habitat loss, if this magnificent animal is to survive into the future.
Read more...
Friday, August 13, 2010

Cloud Computing

1 comments
Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client–server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer. NIST provides a somewhat more objective and specific definition here. The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers. A key element of cloud computing is customization and the creation of a user-defined experience.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include SLAs.[9] The major cloud service providers include Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, Terremark, and Google.
Read more...
Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Image post

1 comments
This post has 2 images just to give you an idea about how image looks in this template.

Beautiful Image 1



Beautiful Image 2


Read more...

HTML5....next big thing

0 comments
This is a Wikepedia article about HTML5

HTML5 is going to Rock....

HTML5 introduces a number of new elements and attributes that reflect typical usage on modern websites. Some of them are semantic replacements for common uses of generic block () and inline () elements, for example (website navigation block) and (usually referring to bottom of web page or to last lines of html code). Other elements provide new functionality through a standardized interface, such as the multimedia elements

The HTML5 syntax is no longer based on SGML despite the similarity of its markup. It has, however, been designed to be backward compatible with common parsing of older versions of HTML. It comes with a new introductory line that looks like an SGML document type declaration, , which enables standards-compliant rendering in all browsers that use "DOCTYPE sniffing".

HTML5 also incorporates Web Forms 2.0, another WHATWG specification.

New APIs

In addition to specifying markup, HTML5 specifies scripting application programming interfaces (APIs).[13] Existing document object model (DOM) interfaces are extended and de facto features documented. There are also new APIs, such as:
  • The canvas element for immediate mode 2D drawing. See Canvas 2D API Specification 1.0 specification[14]
  • Timed media playback
  • Offline storage database (offline web applications). See Web Storage[15]
  • Document editing
  • Drag-and-drop
  • Cross-document messaging[16]
  • Browser history management
  • MIME type and protocol handler registration.
  • Microdata
  • Not all of the above technologies are included in the W3C HTML5 specification, though they are in the WHATWG HTML specification.[17] Some related technologies, which are not part of either the W3C HTML5 or the WHATWG HTML specification, are
  • Geolocation
  • Web SQL Database, a local SQL Database.[18]
  • The Indexed Database API, a indexed hierarchical key-value store (formerly WebSimpleDB).[19]
  • The W3C publishes specifications for these separately.
Read more...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

LovelyTemplates

0 comments
Spend less time in searching template and more time in building content. We have all quality template collection in one place. Visit Lovelytemplates.com today.

If you are looking for Quality template for your dream blog, then you should visit lovelytemplates.com. Our website not only offers quality templates, but also helps you to easily search and find your dream template in no time.

Read more...
Monday, January 18, 2010

Another sample 2

0 comments
Another sample 2
Read more...
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010

Post sample

0 comments
This is just a sample post
Read more...
Monday, January 11, 2010

Yet another sample post

0 comments
Yet another sample post
Read more...
 
Media online © 2011 DheTemplate.com & Main Blogger. Supported by Makeityourring Diamond Engagement Rings

You can add link or short description here