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Malawi Blind Snake
''Afrotyphlops obtusus'', also known as the slender blind snake or southern gracile blind-snake, is a species of snake in the Typhlopidae family. It is Endemism, endemic to East Africa. Geographic range It is found in southern Malawi, northern Mozambique, and eastern Zimbabwe. Description Dorsally, it is dark brown, with the base of each scale paler. Ventrally, it is pale brown to cream-colored. Maximum snout-vent length (SVL) is . The scales are arranged in 24 or 26 rows around the body, and there are more than 300 scales in the vertebral row.Branch, Bill. 2004. ''Field Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa'', Third Revised edition, Second impression. Ralph Curtis Books. Sanibel Island, Florida. . p. 54. Snout very prominent, rounded. Nostrils located inferiorly (ventrally). Rostral large, more than half as broad as the head; portion of rostral visible from below as long as broad. Nasal semidivided, the cleft proceeding from the first upper labial. Preocular muc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Peters
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer. He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural History Museum, Berlin, Berlin Zoological Museum. Encouraged by Müller and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Peters travelled to Mozambique via Angola in September 1842, exploring the coastal region and the Zambesi River. He returned to Berlin with an enormous collection of natural history specimens, which he then described in ''Naturwissenschaftliche Reise nach Mossambique... in den Jahren 1842 bis 1848 ausgeführt'' (1852–1882). The work was comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, river fish, insects and botany. He replaced Martin Lichtenstein as curator of the museum in 1858, and in the same year he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In a few years, he greatly increased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reptiles Of Zimbabwe
Reptiles, as commonly defined, are a group of tetrapods with an ectothermic metabolism and amniotic development. Living traditional reptiles comprise four orders: Testudines, Crocodilia, Squamata, and Rhynchocephalia. About 12,000 living species of reptiles are listed in the Reptile Database. The study of the traditional reptile orders, customarily in combination with the study of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. Reptiles have been subject to several conflicting taxonomic definitions. In Linnaean taxonomy, reptiles are gathered together under the class Reptilia ( ), which corresponds to common usage. Modern cladistic taxonomy regards that group as paraphyletic, since genetic and paleontological evidence has determined that birds (class Aves), as members of Dinosauria, are more closely related to living crocodilians than to other reptiles, and are thus nested among reptiles from an evolutionary perspective. Many cladistic systems therefore redefine Reptilia as a clade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snakes Of Africa
Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors and relatives, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most only have one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afrotyphlops
''Afrotyphlops'' is a genus of snakes in the family Typhlopidae. Distribution The 28 species of this genus are found in sub-Saharan Africa. Species The following species are recognized as being valid.. www.reptile-database.org. * Angola blind snake (''Afrotyphlops angolensis'' ) * Angolan giant blind snake (''Afrotyphlops anomalus'' ) * Bibron's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops bibronii'' ) * Blanford's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops blanfordii'' ) * Somali giant blind snake (''Afrotyphlops brevis'' ) * Calabresi's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops calabresii'' ) * Chirio's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops chirioi'' ) * Blotched blind snake (''Afrotyphlops congestus'' ) * Wedge-snouted blind snake (''Afrotyphlops cuneirostris'' ) * Elegant blind snake (''Afrotyphlops elegans'' ) * Fornasini's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops fornasinii'' ) * Gierra's blind snake (''Afrotyphlops gierrai'' ) * Kaimosi blind snake (''Afrotyphlops kaimosae'' ) * Liberian blind snake (''Afrotyphlops liberiensis'' ) * Lined b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miombo
Miombo woodland is a tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome (in the World Wide Fund for Nature scheme) located in central and southern tropical Africa. It includes three woodland savanna ecoregions (listed below) characterized by the dominant presence of '' Brachystegia'' and '' Julbernardia'' genera of trees, and has a range of climates ranging from humid to semi-arid, and tropical to subtropical or even temperate. The trees characteristically shed their leaves for a short period in the dry season to reduce water loss and produce a flush of new leaves just before the onset of the wet season with rich gold and red colours masking the underlying chlorophyll, reminiscent of autumn colours in the temperate zone. Miombo woodlands extend across south-central Africa, running from Angola in the west to Tanzania in the east, including parts of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. They are bounded on the north by the humid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest
A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a Canopy (biology), canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds ''in situ''. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, ''Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020'' found that forests covered , or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020. Forests are the largest Terrestrial ecosystem, terrestrial ecosystems of Earth by area, and are found around the globe. 45 percent of forest land is in the Tropical forest, trop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by restricting the former term specifically to displaced soil. Soil consists of a solid collection of minerals and organic matter (the soil matrix), as well as a porous phase that holds gases (the soil atmosphere) and water (the soil solution). Accordingly, soil is a three- state system of solids, liquids, and gases. Soil is a product of several factors: the influence of climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), organisms, and the soil's parent materials (original minerals) interacting over time. It continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness, soil ecologists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humus
In classical soil science, humus is the dark organic matter in soil that is formed by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. It is a kind of soil organic matter. It is rich in nutrients and retains moisture in the soil. Humus is the Latin word for "earth" or "ground". In agriculture, "humus" sometimes also is used to describe mature or natural compost extracted from a woodland or other spontaneous source for use as a soil conditioner. It is also used to describe a topsoil horizon that contains organic matter (''humus type'', ''humus form'', or ''humus profile''). Humus has many nutrients that improve the health of soil, nitrogen being the most important. The ratio of carbon to nitrogen ( C:N) of humus commonly ranges between 8:1 and 15:1 with the median being about 12:1. It also significantly improves (decreases) the bulk density of soil. Humus is amorphous and lacks the cellular structure characteristic of organisms. The solid residue of sewage sludge treatment, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zimbabwe
file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 16.6 million people as per 2024 census, Zimbabwe's largest ethnic group are the Shona people, Shona, who make up 80% of the population, followed by the Northern Ndebele people, Northern Ndebele and other #Demographics, smaller minorities. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona language, Shona, and Northern Ndebele language, Ndebele the most common. Zimbabwe is a member of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. The region was long inhabited by the San people, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
