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Sisters' Islands
Sisters' Islands are two of the Southern Islands in Singapore and are located to the south of the main island of Singapore, off the Straits of Singapore. It can be reached via a boat ride from Marina South Pier or West Coast Pier. Big Sister's Island, about in area and also known as ''Pulau Subar Laut'' in Malay, faces the open sea, while Little Sister's Island, about in area and also known as ''Pulau Subar Darat'' in Malay, faces the mainland. The two islands are separated by a narrow channel. Currents through this channel can be very dangerous to swimmers and divers. Legends There are three legends on how the Sisters's Islands come about. The first version tells of two orphaned daughters, Minah and Linah, who stayed with their uncle on an island. One day, Linah met some pirates when fetching water from a well near the sea. The pirates chased her home and at her home, the pirate chief demanded to marry Linah the next day. On the next day, the pirates forcibly took Linah f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straits Of Singapore
The Singapore Strait is a , strait between the Strait of Malacca in the west and the South China Sea in the east. Singapore is on the north of the channel, and the Indonesian Riau Islands are on the south. The two countries share a maritime border along the strait. It includes Keppel Harbour and many small islands. The strait provides the deepwater passage to the Port of Singapore, which makes it very busy. Approximately 2,000 merchant ships traverse the waters on a daily basis in 2017. The depth of the Singapore Strait limits the maximum draft of vessels going through the Straits of Malacca, and the Malaccamax ship class. Historical records The 9th century AD Muslim author Ya'qubi referred a ''Bahr Salahit'' or Sea of Salahit (from the Malay ''selat'' meaning strait), one of the Seven Seas to be traversed to reach China. Some have interpreted Sea of Salahit as referring to Singapore, although others generally considered it the Malacca Strait, a point of contact betwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macaques
The macaques () constitute a genus (''Macaca'') of gregarious Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The 23 species of macaques inhabit ranges throughout Asia, North Africa, and (in one instance) Gibraltar. Macaques are principally frugivorous (preferring fruit), although their diet also includes seeds, leaves, flowers, and tree bark. Some species, such as the crab-eating macaque, subsist on a diet of invertebrates and occasionally small vertebrates. On average, southern pig-tailed macaques in Malaysia eat about 70 large rats each per year. All macaque social groups are matriarchal, arranged around dominant females. Macaques are found in a variety of habitats throughout the Asian continent and are highly adaptable. Certain species have learned to live with humans and have become invasive in some human-settled environments, such as the island of Mauritius and Silver Springs State Park in Florida. Macaques can be a threat to wildlife conservation as well as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octopus
An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. Like other cephalopods, an octopus is bilaterally symmetric with two eyes and a beaked mouth at the center point of the eight limbs. The soft body can radically alter its shape, enabling octopuses to squeeze through small gaps. They trail their eight appendages behind them as they swim. The siphon is used both for respiration and for locomotion, by expelling a jet of water. Octopuses have a complex nervous system and excellent sight, and are among the most intelligent and behaviourally diverse of all invertebrates. Octopuses inhabit various regions of the ocean, including coral reefs, pelagic waters, and the seabed; some live in the intertidal zone and others at abyssal depths. Most species grow quickly, mature earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nudibranchs
Nudibranchs () are a group of soft-bodied marine gastropod molluscs which shed their shells after their larval stage. They are noted for their often extraordinary colours and striking forms, and they have been given colourful nicknames to match, such as "clown", "marigold", "splendid", "dancer", "dragon", or "sea rabbit". Currently, about 3,000 valid species of nudibranchs are known.Ocean Portal (2017)A Collage of Nudibranch Colors Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 17 April 2018. The word "nudibranch" comes from the Latin "naked" and the Ancient Greek () "gills". Nudibranchs are often casually called sea slugs, as they are a family of opistobranchs (sea slugs), within the phylum Mollusca (molluscs), but many sea slugs belong to several taxonomic groups which are not closely related to nudibranchs. A number of these other sea slugs, such as the photosynthetic ''Sacoglossa'' and the colourful Aglajidae, are often confused with nudibranchs. Distrib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Corals
Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mouth is fringed with tentacles. Although some species are solitary, most are colonial. The founding polyp settles and starts to secrete calcium carbonate to protect its soft body. Solitary corals can be as much as across but in colonial species the polyps are usually only a few millimetres in diameter. These polyps reproduce asexually by budding, but remain attached to each other, forming a multi-polyp colony of clones with a common skeleton, which may be up to several metres in diameter or height according to species. The shape and appearance of each coral colony depends not only on the species, but also on its location, depth, the amount of water movement and other factors. Many shallow-water corals contain symbiont unicellular organism ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton. A coral "group" is a colony of very many genetically identical polyps. Each polyp is a sac-like animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in height. A set of tentacles surround a central mouth opening. Each polyp excretes an exoskeleton near the base. Over many generations, the colony thus creates a skeleton characteristic of the species which can measure up to several meters in size. Individual colonies grow by asexual reproduction of polyps. Corals also breed sexually by spawning: polyps of the same species release gametes simultaneously overnight, often around a full moon. Fertilized eggs form planulae, a mobile early form of the coral polyp which, when matu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic component, abiotic processes—deposition (geology), deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic component, biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marina South Pier
Marina South Pier is a pier that is located in Marina South, Singapore. It is used as a terminal for tourists and day-trippers who are boarding small boats and ferries heading for the Southern Islands. There are regular ferries from the pier to Kusu Island and Saint John's Island. History Marina South Pier was first announced in January 2004, to act as a landing point for ship's crews in place of Clifford Pier. Covering an area of , the pier was intended to be the first of four ferry terminals at Marina South, and to make way for the conversion of Marina Bay into a reservoir. The pier commenced operations in April 2006, but due to poor transport connections and lack of development in the vicinity, boat operators at the pier initially fared poorly, while efforts by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Transport of the Government of Singapore. History The Maritime and Port ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulau Ujong
Singapore Island, or Mainland Singapore, is the main constituent island of the sovereign island country and city-state of the Republic of Singapore. It is located at the southern tip of Malay Peninsula, in-between the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. The Singapore Strait lies to the south, while the Johor Strait lies to the north. The island forms the bulk of the country in terms of area, population and prominence, since areas situated on the country's smaller islands consists of military or industrial areas, with the exceptions being Sentosa as well as Ubin Island. As of June 2021, Singapore's population stood at 5.45 million and the mainland has a land area of approximately . Etymology Temasek was the early recorded name of a settlement on the site of today's Singapore, although the island itself wasn't specifically defined. Meanwhile, Pulau Ujong was the one of the earliest references to Singapore Island. The 3rd-century Chinese reference to ''Pú Luó Zhōng'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means " Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
