To the common man sea pigs may look like sea creatures produced from a cross between a pig and a slug. To some others it appears to be human fingers growing out of the creature’s mouth. But scientifically, these ugly sea pigs are scotoplanes or sea cucumbers belonging to the genus of the deep sea Holothurians.

These Holothurians are marine animals that inhabit the deep sea floor. Some other examples of deep sea marine life include Sea squirt, sea stars, sea slugs, corals, clams, sponges and sea urchins. The Sea pigs may look like slugs. Their body wall skeleton is clearly visible as spiny C shaped rods and are clear cucumbers measuring2-4 inches in length. They have tentacles and large tube feet. The tube feet may appear like two antennas, while the other tube feet are arranged in a row around the rim at the bottom.

Sea pigs thrive best on the abyssal plain of the ocean floor and behave like slugs do above sea level. The sea cucumbers feed on deep ocean mud and thrive on the organic material present there. The sea pigs feed by using their tentacles to push the food into their mouth. They tread deep sea waters using their tube feet. Other sea organisms present here are starfish, sea urchins, clams and other members of the echinodermata family.

The sea pigs feed and reproduce in the depths of the ocean and form the majority of deep sea marine population. The sea pigs are not considered as a threat to humans and they are not an endangered species.

Mills and colleagues from the New Zealand’s National Institute of water and atmospheric pressure collected 30,000 deep sea animals including the sea pigs during a marine census of southern Antarctica. The sea pigs are available in abundance all over the world except the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean and eastern part of Pacific Ocean, and in central and South America.

The white lion is occasionally found in wildlife reserves in South Africa and is a rare color mutation of the Kruger subspecies of lion (Panthera leo krugeri). It has been perpetuated by selective breeding in zoos around the world. White lions are not a separate subspecies and they have never been common in the wild. Regarded as divine by locals, white lions first came to public attention in the 1970s in Chris McBride’s book The White Lions of Timbavati. The greatest population of white lions is in zoos where they are deliberately bred for color. The population of the white lion is unknown but the most recent count was in 2004 and 30 were alive. White lions are not albino lions. Instead, the white color is caused by a recessive gene known as chinchilla or color inhibitor. They vary from blonde through to near white, however some can also be red. This coloration gives white lions a distinct disadvantage in nature because they are highly visible. This gives them away to their prey and makes them an attractive target for hunters. According to Linda Tucker, in “Mystery of the White Lions – Children of the Sun God” they are bred in camps in South Africa as trophies for canned hunts.

The chinchilla mutation, a recessive gene, gives white lions their unusual colors. A similar gene also produces white tigers. White lions can therefore be selectively bred for zoos and animal shows. Such breeding involves inbreeding of close relatives and can result in inbreeding depression (genetic defects, reduced fertility, and physical defects) although this has not yet been recorded in white lions in zoos as it has in white tigers. According to Tucker, white lions in canned hunt camps have been found to have hind-limb paralysis and serious heart defects, indicating a severe level of inbreeding involved in mass-production although they are rare in the wild.People are concerned about the White Lions mating with regular lions.

The toyger is a breed of cat, the result of breeding domestic shorthaired tabbies (beginning in the 1980s) to make them resemble a “toy tiger”, as its striped coat is reminiscent of the tiger’s. The breed’s creator, Judy Sudgen, has stated that the breed was developed in order to inspire people to care about the conservation of tigers in the wild. It was recognized for “Registration only” by The International Cat Association in the early 1990s, and in 2007 its status was upgraded to allow the breed full Championship status.

There are several breeders in the United States, three breeders in the UK, and one in Australia working to develop the breed.The breed began development in 1980 when Judy Sudgen, a breeder looking to clarify the mackerel markings in tabbies, noticed distinctive markings in two of her cats.

These markings, occurring on the head, an area normally devoid of distinct pattern, first inspired the idea of a tiger-like tabby. After importing a tom from the streets of India with noticeable head markings, the quest to develop tiger-like, circular face markings in the cats began. The introduction of the Bengal breed into the gene pool was a move on Sudgen’s part to produce a “big cat body”.

Tardigrades (commonly known as water bears) form the phylum Tardigrada, part of the superphylum Ecdysozoa. They are microscopic, water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. Tardigrades were first described by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773. The name Tardigrada means “slow walker” and was given by Spallanzani in 1777. The name water bear comes from the way they walk, reminiscent of a bear’s. The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm, the smallest below 0.1 mm. Freshly hatched larvae may be smaller than 0.05 mm. More than 1000 species of tardigrades have been described. Tardigrades occur over the entire world, from the high Himalayas (above 6,000 m), to the deep sea (below 4,000 m) and from the polar regions to the equator.The most convenient place to find tardigrades is on lichens and mosses. Other environments are dunes, beaches, soil and marine or freshwater sediments, where they may occur quite frequently (up to 25,000 animals per litre). Tardigrades often can be found by soaking a piece of moss in spring water.

Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space.

Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space. Tardigrades have a body with four segments (not counting the head), four pairs of legs without joints, and feet with claws or toes. The cuticle contains chitin and is moulted. They have a ventral nervous system with one ganglion per segment, and a multilobed brain. Their pigment-cup eyes are rhabdomeric. Instead of a coelom they have a haemocoel. The only place where a true coelom can be found is around the gonad (coelomic pouch). The pharynx is of a triradiate, muscular, sucking kind, armed with stylets.

Although some species are parthenogenetic, males and females are usually present, each with a single gonad. Tardigrades are eutelic (all adult tardigrades of the same species are believed to have the same number of cells) and oviparous. Some tardigrade species have as many as about 40,000 cells in each adult’s body, others have far fewer