Sterling’s Blog

Since the beginning of the trip I like nature and animals a lot more than I did before. We have seen a lot of animals on our trip and because I have gotten to see them more in the wild and that has made me appreciate their behavior and ability to survive.

I have also changed because I know a lot more about animals and geography. I know more about geography because I can map the world and name the countries, capitals, rivers, mountains, land forms and oceans. The easiest continents to map were Australia and Antarctica. It was easier to learn about geography because I went to all seven continents.

The most boring part of traveling around the world was going on planes. I also do not like packing and unpacking suitcases every two or three days. But the planes and packing were worth getting to go see the world.

My favorite place on the trip was Madagascar because of the chameleons, other reptiles, amphibians, and lemurs. We got to hold the chameleons and lemurs. They crawled all over us. We fed the lemurs bananas and carrots. It was awesome .

I also really loved Africa We saw lions, leopards, elephants, buffalos, rhinos, zebras, giraffes, tortoises, snakes and other animals. We went to the Giraffe Manor House and got to pet and feed giraffes.

I was surprised at how disgusting Chinese food is in China. American Chinese food is good but not Chinese food in China. Food in all the other countries was like American food.

I was very surprised that Antarctica was not that cold. It was only as cold as a ski field.

On our trip the people in Australia and New Zealand were a lot like the people in America. In Africa we saw some people that lived in houses made of cow dung .  They wore traditional African clothes and jewelry. In Beijing there were millions of people on the street trying to sell us splatty balls and wheels that people strap to their feet. The people in China did not wear silk clothes and triangle hats like I thought they would. Instead they just wore regular t-shirts and pants like you would see in the U.S.

If you are going to travel and like nature I think you should go to Africa. I liked it best because of the animals. In Africa my favorite places were Mala Mala, Madagascar and Namibia. If you go to Asia I definitely think you should bring a jar of peanut butter because the food can be pretty disgusting there.

When I was home schooled Gibson and I did schoolwork on planes cars and in hotel rooms. We learned how to map the countries on every continent. We also did spelling, math, vocabulary, essays, art projects and other things.  We home schooled three hours a day 7 days a week but got twice as much work as a regular school year.

When I was away traveling the things I missed the most was my cute cuddly yellow lab Scallop. She was staying at my cousin’s house in Needham. The Only thing I did not miss about her is that she sheds boat loads of hair everyday. The other thing I missed were corn toasties (like English muffins), popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, my own bedroom and toys and not having to pack up and move every two to three days.

I also learned lots of life lessons.

1. Never stick your finger in range of a monitor lizard’s mouth regardless of its size. They will never miss an opportunity to take a bite off a finger.

2. Always be thankful that you have a house and food to eat. Many people around the world have neither.

3. Never accept bananas or anything else “free” from people in Asia. There is a 99% chance they are not a present. They will probably charge you after you have eaten them.

I live in a house with a refrigerator and oven. It has running water and a shower. In Africa people live in cow dung houses. Four of them sleep in one bed. The walk over a mile to get water to bring home. They live a hard life.

Giraffes are one of my favorite animals.  In my opinion, they are one of the most beautiful and interesting animals in Africa.  We have seen them in Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Tanzania.

Giraffes are HUGE!  A baby is as tall as a grown man!  6 feet tall!  They live on average 28 years.  Even though Giraffe necks are so long, they only have seven vertebra (the same as humans) but each Giraffe vertebra is much longer than a human vertebra.  The reason Giraffes have such long necks is so the can reach higher branches and avoid competition for food with almost every other animal other than elephants.  Giraffe legs are so long that the only way that they can drink is to sprawl out their legs. 

A Giraffe’s enemies are Spotted Hyaena, Cheetah, Lion, and Leopard.  When a Giraffe sees a predator he or she will grunt or snort.  Then the Giraffe will run away at up to 55 km. per hour.   If the predator is too close and there is not time for the giraffe to run it will give a kick which could kill a lion.  Since giraffes have very good vision and hearing, they do not often get put in that situation.

Unlike most animals, Giraffes are born with horns but the horns are squishy and soft and made of cartilege.  They are called floating horns.  Later Giraffe horns become hard bone attached to their skull.  Giraffes rub necks when sparring and when a pair is together.  Two fighting male Giraffes could break each other’s necks, bones, horns or even kill each other, but those events are very unlikely.

We went to a Reptile Park in South Africa.  We got to feed terrapins (turtles), black mambas (snakes), and Giant Plated Lizards.  The terrapins and Giant Plated Lizard ate hibiscus flowers and the mambas ate mice.  When the Giant Plated Lizards climbed on to our hands to eat the flower we could lift them up until they were done with their snack.  When they were done they would jump on to the rock.

They had some chameleons and Bearded Dragons that had been mistreated by their previous owners who had dumped them at the park.  A Bearded Dragon had been put underneath a bad heating system and had been badly burnt.  He had to have his tail and 2 legs cut off.  A chameleon had been fed wrong and was weak and small instead of being strong and bright and colorful.  The park was trying to help them but unfortunately the damage was permanent. 

Almost every day the park gets called by people to take away snakes and even lizards from their property.  Some of the cultural beliefs think chameleons and geckos are bad.  Once they collect the reptile from the house they do scientific research on it and see if it is sick or not.  If it is sick, they will take care of it until it’s better.

At the end of our tour our guide let us hold a big Burmese Python.  Most people think snakes are slimy but it is the exact opposite.  The Python felt smooth and soft.  The reason people think snakes are slimy is because the reflection off their scales make them look like they are wet and slimy, but it’s just reflected light.

It was very exciting at the Reptile Park and I wish I could go there again.

Once there was a Desert Plated Lizard named Sandy.  He lived on the Roaring Dune at Skeleton Coast, Namibia, Africa.  On the dune next door lived his friend Sandra.  Sandy and Sandra loved to slide down the sand dune and watch as the sand rippled down the dune.  One day they decided to go see what was beyond the Roaring Dune. 

When one of the tourist buses came, Sandy and Sandra started to wave and the bus stopped.  Three people ran out and caught Sandra but Sandy was too quick.  While Sandra was being a movie star, Sandy ran up and jumped on the bus.  He then screamed to Sandra in lizardish (which humans cannot hear), “Come to the truck when you get put down.”  So after a half hour of getting photos taken (which she quite enjoyed), Sandra dug a tunnel in the dune and popped right up in front of the bus and jumped on. 

About 30 minutes later the bus arrived at the beach.  The two lizards had never seen so much water.  They walked around the rocks and all of a sudden they saw a fish.  They thought it moved just the way they did in the sand.  They walked around for about 29 minutes watching the people catch four HUGE 2 feet long fish!  It was good that they went in the bus then because one minute later the bus drove away with the lizards. 

The next stop was a sandy beach.  The lizards thought it was a wonderful place and even thought about moving there.  A few minutes after they got off the bus they met a big ferocious crab.  He grabbed and pinched them and chased them down the beach.  When the crab finally left, they looked down the beach and discovered that the bus was lost in the mist! 

They started walking away from the ocean planing to walk to the nearest dune.  Suddenly Sandy shouted, “There’s the bus!”  They scampered over to the object that Sandy called a bus only to find it was the grave of a stranded lizard by the name of John S. Lizard.  “We are really helpless now,”cried Sandra.  “I know,” exclaimed Sandy, “Let’s dig a lizard hole.”  They dug and dug and dug until they came across 17 lizard skeletons!  They both screamed and ran out of the hole. 

Then Sandy remember something that the grave had said, “Died on Skeleton Coast January 5, 1872.”   ”Ahhh!  We are on Skeleton Coast!!!” Sandy screamed.  Sandy and Sandra had heard a lot about how so many lizards had gotten stranded on Skeleton Coast, and how horrible the place was.  The two lizards ran as fast as they could until Sandy yelled happily, “Look!  There is the bus!!!  Yay!!!”  They both jumped on the bus with glee a second before it roared away to the Roaring Dune!

The End

The word “Hippopotamus” means “water horse” in Greek.  Hippos are in the family of Hippopotamidae.  The earliest hippo fossils found were from 16 million years ago.  Surprisingly, a hippo’s closest relatives are whales and porpoises, instead of pigs or rhinos.

The plural for hippopotamus is hippopotami and for hippo it is hippos.  A group of hippos can be called a pod, herd, dale, or bloat of hippos.  A bull is a male, a cow is a female, and a calf is a baby hippo.

Hippos are one of the largest land mammals in the world.  The elephant is the largest and heaviest land mammal, but it is debated whether hippos or White rhinos are second largest.  The average hippo is 11 feet long and 5 feet tall at its shoulders.   The average weight for an adult male hippo is 3,300 to 4,000 pounds, for a female it is 2,900-3,300 pound, and an old male can weight over 7,000 pounds!!! 

Hippopotami eat 88 pounds of food every night.  That is 1.5% of their body weight.  Hippo’s graze at night and wallow in the mud all day.  They like short of patches grass called “hippo lawns.”  In zoos, the hippos are fed herbivore pellets, alfalfa, Bermuda hay, lettuce and as a special treat melons.  We went to the Cairo Zoo and got to feed a giant hippo alfalfa.  From personal experience, hippos have HUGE mouths!

Hippos live in rivers and lakes in the sub-Sahara desert in Africa in groups of up to forty.  Hippos have clear eyelids like goggles to see under water.  Since they cannot float or swim, hippos walk underwater!  Only the male hippos are territorial, and the male hippos are only territorial in the water.

There are 125,000-150,000 hippos left in the wild.  Zambia and Tanzania have the biggest hippo populations.   Unfortunately, hippo populations are declining mostly because of poachers.  The poachers want the Hippos soft 20 inch teeth that are perfect for carving and their meat, which people eat. 

Dana Nature Reserve is a reserve in southern Jordan. It has wooded highlands, rocky slopes, gravel plains, and sand dunes. There are many mountains and valleys and 4 distinct vegetation zones. Dana is 320 square kilometers. The reserve was established in 1993. Dana ranges from the top of Rift Valley to the bottom of Wadi Araba. The difference between these two heights is 1600 meters!

When we we went to Dana Nature Reserve, Gibson flipped a rock and found a Death Stalker Scorpion! We got really close to it but then a guide told us it was the most poisonous in the world so we backed off. We also saw an Nubian Ibex, which I spotted (and see picture at bottom) and lots of lizards.

Dana is home to: 2/5 of the amphibians of Jordan, 36/970 of the reptiles, 200/415 birds, and 45/77 mammals. There are also 25 endangered or vulnerable species,and over 600 plants. Dana has 200-300 invertebrates making it a home to 449 animal species!

There have been people living in Dana since 4000 B.C. Paleolithic people, Egyptians, Nabateans, and Romans have come to Dana because of the fertile soil and water springs leaving behind over 100 archeological sights.

Now Dana Nature Reserve is a camping and hiking area for tourist. The tourist pay to get in and rent tents to camp out in. The money from the tourists runs the park.

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Hieroglyphics were the Ancient Egyptians’ form of writing.  The word  ”Hieroglyphics” means “sacred engraved letters.”  There are three types of Egyptian writing.  First there was hieroglyphics which was difficult to write.  Then as writing became more common they developed two more types of writing, demonics (common) and hieratic (priestly).

There were 800 hieroglyphics in the Old, Middle and New Kingdom but by the Greco-Roman period there were over 5,000!!  That sounds very confusing! When one hieroglyphic is combined with another it makes a totally different hieroglyphic.  What also makes it more confusing is that you can read hieroglyphics from left to right, right to left, and up to down!  The way to tell whether to read it right to left or left to right is to determine which way the hieroglyphic bird is facing.  if the bird is facing left, start left, if facing right, start right.  Confused ?!?!

In the 5th century the Hieroglyphica of Hora (a stone with two languages, hieroglyphics and another language that the Egyptologists  knew) was discovered.  That explained 200 hieroglyphics.  Then Napoleon’s army discovered the  Rosetta Stone (similar to Hieroglyphica of Hora) in 1799 but nobody deciphered it until Champollion in the 1820’s.  Both of those stones were not enough to complete the Egyptian alphabet though so they used cartouches (in photo on left, along the bottom).  Cartouches are ovals with king, queens, and sometimes gods names in them.

Vivian is one of the waiters on our Antarctica ship.  Because she was very nice and helpful, I decided to interview her. 

She works 10 months straight and then goes home and spends 2 months with her family.  During those ten months, she works 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Vivian has one daughter and only gets to see her when she’s home for two months each year. 

All the waiters on the ship are from the Philippines.  Vivian came here from the Philippines because she makes more money here.  She is on this boat in Antarctica from November-March.  She has worked on cruise boats for 12 years.

I think she has a very tough job working long hours away from her daughter.  It must be really boring during off hours because she cannot get off the boat and has to stay in her room.

As an assignment I had to interview someone working on our Antarctica cruise.  I decided to interview the marine mammalogist, Mark Deakos.  On our trip, he was the naturalist that specialized in marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, and seals. 

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Mark has been a marine mammalogist for 12 years but has only been in Antarctica for four weeks.  He has seen about ten species of marine mammals in Antarctica.  He decided to work on this cruise ship because he thinks that Antarctica is an amazing place.    Some of the things he did were to identify whales and dolphins, give lectures, and lead expedition tours.   He will only be working here for 3 trips (6 weeks). 

Mark’s favorite animal in Antarctica is the Leopard Seal.  The rarest species of marine mammal he has ever seen is the North Pacific Right Whale calf.  It was the first calf of that species seen in 100 years!!! 

Mark grew up in Montreal but did not see many marine mammals there.  Now he is living in Hawaii, where he is getting his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii.  The thing he likes best about being a marine mammalogist is that he gets to be outdoors in nature.  He thinks the best place to see whales is Hawaii, where there are 20 species. 

Glaciers are large, slow-moving rivers of ice.  They are the second largest reservoir of water next to the oceans.  Glaciers are threatened to melt because of global warming.  If the Greenland ice sheet melted, the sea level would rise 20 feet.  If the Antarctic ice sheet melted, the sea level would rise 210 feet.

Most glaciers move very slowly but not all.  Byrd Glacier moves six feet every day.  That’s pretty fast for a glacier!  When a glacier reduces its size by a pretty big amount, it stops moving.  Friction makes the lower part of the glacier move slower than the top part.

There are two main types of glaciers, continental and alpine.  Alpine glaciers live in mountains.  Continental glaciers are found at lower elevations.  Every type of glacier is either alpine or continental.  For example, tidewater Glaciers flow into the sea.  They are continental glaciers.  When tidewater glaciers hit the sea, they become icebergs.  Sometimes tidewater glaciers drop down a tall cliff, resulting in a big splash.  Continental ice sheets are thin glaciers only found in Antarctica and Greenland.  Plateau glaciers are glaciers on plateaus in high altitude places.  There are many types of glaciers.