Elad’s blog

Despite the intuition many of my readers have, Polar Bears and Penguins never meet in nature.
The reason for this is obvious: polar bears are confined to the arctic circle, in the northern hemisphere, while penguins thrive at the southern hemisphere, and are never found north of the equator.

They are found, however, throughout the southern hemisphere - not only in cold regions, like many people imagine, but also in subarctric and moderate zones - they can reach as north as Galapagos, which is near the equator. Thus, it shouldn’t have surprised me (but it did) that a nice colony of Little Penguins (this is the scientific name; there are 17 species of penguins, and these are the smallest - only 30 c”m in height, they look just like furry puppets) lives happily on Kangaroo Island; and as we came here on the right season, we got a good look at the jeuvenille penguins, which was even more fun.

Penguin where just one surprising colony here. I also visited a nice colony of sea-lions, a colony of fur seals, and many other animals - koalas, wallabies, kangaroos, and even an echidna. This island, arguably the best place to view wildlife in Australia, is just full of animals, wherever you look.

It is not very big, in australian terms: about the size of Israel without the Negev; but due to its isolation, they have remarkable natural habitats here - I skipped the seadragons (a special form of a sea horse) that live underwater, due to the shark attack from last week; but there’s enough life-forms even without the underwater marine life.

I visited some nice caves - stalactites, stalagmites, all the usual stuff; I learned there that when the water go through eucaliptus leaves on their way to the cave, they can pick up tanin - which acts as a pigment and gives the rocks special color: a nice way of dating things. I have also learned that there is a fungus in australia, that actually eats the rock formations - very interesting.

Another interesting question that rose, and I still didn’t find out, involves diving: every diver knows, that there is a problem with a fast ascent to the surface - the nitrogen that is dissolved in the blood forms bubles, and the vicous “decompression illness” can occur. If so, how can the seals - and other marine mammals - dive to depths of up to 100 meters and go up instantly to breath? There must be something in their blood/hemoglobin that allows this - someone please comment me on this.

I spotted an Echidna, which is a strange type of porcupine that lays eggs (actually only two mammals lay eggs: the enigmatic echidna and the elusive platypus - which I still didn’t see in nature, only at Sydney Aquarium). I wanted to see platypuses (they inhabit the island), but as a rain began we gave up that walk, and went to a hostel on the island.

A nice story about kangaroo island: it was discovered by Mathew Flinders, and was actually the earliest european settlement in South Australia. The name came because of a dinner: when Flinders and his crew first discovered the island, they hunted and cooked some kangaroos. Apparantely, they were very tasty kangaroos, as Flinders decided to mark the event in the island’s name: he must have learned naming from captan cook.

Another naming thing is connected to Remarkable Rocks, which are, indeed, remarkable. It is a group of rock on the seashore here, that were sculptured by the water and the wind to beautiful, remarkable, statue-like formations. We visited them this morning, just before the rain arrived, when it was already very windy. After the rocks we spotted the echidna, and then the rain started and we headed into town.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 at 11:26 and is filed under Travels, Australia Center and South. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.