Rahul Alvares

“ Learning to make an aquarium tank is great fun. One has to first plan the size of the tank. For this one must first decide on the length of the tank. After that, the height and the breadth are to be proportionately calculated. The sides of the glass are held together with silicone, which is a glue, and which feels like rubber when it hardens. Silicone does not dissolve in water. The tricky part is being able to apply the silicone only to the edges of the glass and not letting your sticky fingers touch any other portions of the glass. ”

“ All sea-snakes are poisonous. The most poisonous snakes in the world include some sea-snakes which have venom 5 times more toxic than the Cobra. But sea-snakes will bite only when severely provoked and are never known to attack swimmers in water.
Snakes are cold-blooded; their eyesight is very poorly developed and they have no eyelids. They are deaf and can only respond to vibrations. They taste, feel and smell with their forked tongue. These senses are very well developed and enable them to differentiate between living and dead creatures, prey or enemy. ”

“ For the talk I would start by telling the students about my sabbatical, how the idea came up, the various places I had visited and the various things I had done so far. After that I would speak about two topics-vermiculture and snakes-because I thought that these would be of most use to the students. Vermiculture because they could practise this at home to process the garbage into compost and snakes because people have so many fears about them. ”

“ To which he said: "You and the boys take a taxi, but I will walk. I prefer to walk." I was quite astonished. Of course, we all decided instead to walk to the restaurant, with Grandpapa briskly leading the way, and had an enjoyable birthday dinner.
My mum and my two younger brothers, Sameer and Milind returned to Goa soon thereafter, but I stayed on with Grandpapa in Mumbai for a few more days, since I was to proceed from there directly to Chennai where I would spend the next two and a half months in the pleasant company of spiders, earthworms and my all-time favourites, crocodiles and snakes. ”

“ Some species build zigzag white coloured threads in their webs which are visible to birds who avoid flying through the webs and damaging them.
The male spider is smaller than the female, and is thus liable to be eaten by his mate. So, the male uses many tactics to prevent his being devoured by his mate. In some cases the male drums or pulls at the strings of the web in a special code to announce that he is not a prey or an enemy, but a sexual object.
Some spiders offer their mate a gift such as a juicy fly, wrapped in silk. ”

“ In my speech at Belgaum, in the workshops I had conducted at Bangalore for the school students and in the article I wrote I always recommended at the end of my presentation that every student ask their parents for a break from regular studies when they finished school as it is something they would never regret. ”

“ It was also the rainy season and travelling around the country would be much more difficult they explained.
So I started out by helping at an aquarium shop in Mapusa, the town nearest my village. The proprietor of the shop is Ashok D'Cruz, a college friend of my father's. I must tell you about Ashok. He is no ordinary businessman: keeping fish is a passion with him. He is far more interested in chatting with his customers about fish than making money selling them. I have never seen him forcing any of his customers to buy from his stock of aquarium fish. ”

“ Crocodiles have many uses in nature's ecosystem. They help keep the environment clean by eating the carcasses that would otherwise rot. They capture the diseased, wounded and weaker prey thus letting only the strongest survive and thus maintaining a healthy population and keeping up the genetic quality of their prey species.
In the dry season, wallows and tunnels dug by crocs provide essential water for other animals, turtles and fish. Many animals depend upon crocs for food for e.g. the sacred Ibis and monitor lizard will eat the eggs of the Nile crocodile. ”

“ The biggest and the most dangerous of all crocodiles in the world is the salt water crocodile, which can grow upto 25 feet. It is the only crocodile that can live in the sea for a long time. The Nile crocodile of Africa is yet another deadly species. Fossils of three other extinct species of crocodiles have also been found in India.
These cold blooded animals have evolved with dinosaurs millions of years ago and are more closely related to birds than to snakes or reptiles. Being cold blooded they control their body temperature by seeking shady, sunny spots or different levels in water. ”

“ Bing (that's how we all call Hartman) was at the bus-stand to pick me up, with his car. We drove to his house, me chatting away in reply to all his questions. At home there was Ujwala and their kids, Zuri and her younger brother, Zaeer. Also living with them at the time was Mrs Kalai who was Bing's colleague at the India Foundation for the Arts.
After settling down to a good meal and generally relaxing, Bing told me that he had in mind a few people and institutions connected with my interest i.e., wildlife and that I should use my time in Bangalore to meet them. ”

“ Many spiders spin webs to capture their prey. However spiders also have other means of capturing their prey. Some spiders spit a sticky web onto their prey. Others live in burrows with trapdoors. Whenever they feel hungry they come out and catch an unsuspecting insect. One species attaches a sticky drop to one end of its silken thread and holds it with its first three pairs of legs. When an insect passes by, the spider waves the thread at the insect and ropes it in, as it were.
Some spiders sit on flowers and catch insects that come to collect nectar. ”

“ Once it is released in the pool the ropes and rubber bands are removed and the last unfortunate or brave man, depending on how you look at it, makes a run for his life over the edge of the pond onto the safety of dry land.
As we were transferring the male Gharial into a female mugger pit, Harry jokingly yelled: "What do you think we will get-a Ghammer?" Of course crocs only mate with others of their own species and there is no way a Gharial and mugger will get together. We were in fact transferring the male here in order to give it a period of rest and recovery from fighting with other males. ”

“ The Black Widow spider, for example, which is found in South America is the most poisonous of all spiders. The female of the species, whose poison is strong enough to kill a human being, often kills and eats the male after mating and is thus aptly named the Black Widow. This spider is shiny black in colour with a red hour glass mark on the ventricle side of the abdomen. Fortunately, there are no spiders in India which can seriously harm human beings. ”

“ The smaller spiders used to get flies to eat and these were caught by us everyday from the garden. The flies have to be fed alive to the spiders, so we used transparent plastic bottles to trap the flies and once caught we would carefully put them into the spider's bottle. Sometimes the spider would immediately catch the prey and eat it; at other times the fly would buzz around in the bottle for days till the spider was ready to eat it.
Dr Vijayalakshmi also bred a particular species of fly in a small cage with fine mesh with a small saucer of milk in the centre as a medium for breeding. ”

“ The venom contains digestive enzymes that start digesting the prey from the inside.
Snakes grow rapidly till they mature and then continue to grow very slowly till their death. As they grow, they outgrow their skin so they moult the old one after a new skin has formed under it. The snake splits the old skin at the nose and literally crawls out of the old skin. During moulting, the snake stops eating but becomes aggressive.
A bite from a poisonous snake affects either the nervous system (neurotoxic) or the blood vessels (hemotoxic) of human beings. ”

“ Sometimes a male may even offer the female the empty husk of an insect. Sometimes the male loosely binds the female with silk to immobilize her before mating. Some species of male spiders may patiently wait near the web of a female spider for weeks until she has caught a prey, and then mate with her while she is busy feeding on the prey. Sometimes, the male is so small compared to the female that the female is practically unaware of him while mating and this gives him protection. ”

“ However, there are some spiders called social spiders that live together in one web. Sometimes there may be hundreds or even thousands of adults and young ones living in one web. Even if a single prey is caught (such as a small fly) , all the spiders will share the meal.
Spiders multiply very rapidly. After mating, an egg sac is constructed and the internally fertilized eggs laid inside the egg sac which is carried by the female with her palps and fangs. Fertilization of eggs may be internal or external depending on the species. ”