owoce-i-warzywa: Rodent

Evidence: 97 • authority: 72

Rodents (from Latin rodens 'gnawing') are a group of mammals belonging to the order Rodentia ( roh-DEN-shə or roh-DEN-chə) characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. Rodents make up about 40% of all mammal species. Rodents are native to all major landmasses except Antarctica and a handful of isolated oceanic islands — though humans have since introduced them to nearly all of these places too. Most rodents are small animals with robust bodies, short limbs, and long tails. They use their sharp incisors to gnaw food, excavate burrows, and defend themselves. Most eat plant material, but some have more varied diets. Rodents are extremely…

Evidence: 61 • authority: 72

The fauna of Madagascar is a part of the wildlife of Madagascar. Madagascar has been an isolated island for about 70 million years, breaking away from Africa around 165 million years ago, then from India nearly 100 million years later. This isolation led to the development of a unique endemic fauna. Before humans arrived about 2,000 years ago, there were many large and unusual animals living there, descended from species that were originally present when Madagascar became an island, or from species that later crossed the sea to Madagascar. Ecological niches were often filled by animals with quite different histories from those on the African mainland, often leading to convergent evolution.…

Evidence: 48 • authority: 88

The strange rodents of Africa and South America. Abstract The name rodent—from the Latin rodo, to gnaw-indicates the chief characteristic of the group. Rodents have ever-growing incisors, with enamel on the outside only; and they have a jaw which can be aligned either to gnaw with the incisors or to chew with the cheek teeth. The two working positions necessitate moving the jaw fore and aft. The jaw joint is, therefore, long and loosefitting; there is a gap, the diastema, between the two sets of teeth; the two sides of the lower jaw are only loosely connected in front; and the masseter muscles—the chewing muscles—are complex. These arrangements allow for a great variety of jaw movements. In…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 80

Africa, see South Africa America, see United States of America Australia

Evidence: 42 • authority: 80

Ch02. Founding of the Knights of Pythias of North America, South America,Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

The Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), also known as the Great American Interchange and the Great American Faunal Interchange, was an important late Cenozoic paleozoogeographic biotic interchange event in which land and freshwater fauna migrated from North America to South America via Central America and vice versa, as the volcanic Isthmus of Panama rose up from the sea floor, forming a land bridge between the previously separated continents. Although earlier dispersals had occurred, probably over water, the migration accelerated dramatically about 2.7 million years (Ma) ago during the Piacenzian age. It resulted from the joining of the Neotropic (roughly South American) and Nearctic…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 72

Rodentia is an order of placental mammals. Members of this order are called rodents. The order comprises 2,361 extant species, which are grouped into 513 genera. The largest order of mammals, rodents comprise about 40% of all mammal species worldwide. They are native to all major land masses except for Antarctica, and can be found worldwide. They live in a variety of habitats, particularly forests, grasslands, and shrublands, but also savannas, wetlands, deserts, and rocky areas. Most rodents are small animals with robust bodies, short limbs, and long tails. They range in length from the African pygmy mouse, at 4 cm (2 in) plus a 2 cm (1 in) tail, to the capybara, at 134 cm (53 in) plus a 2…