Отправлено: 18.03.12 11:51. Заголовок: Перевод на английский

Предлагаю создать тему для перевода неоцена на английский.
Для начала - перевод описания малого соломенного зимородка из главы "Тростниковый бастион". Если что - перевод сделан в основном через translate.ru, так что сильно тапками не бить

Small straw halcyon (Micralcyone scirpophyla)
Order: Coraciiformes
Family: River kingfishes (Alcedinidae)
Habitat: lower reaches of the Threerivers, Fourseas fluxes, the Kara Kum beach and Ust'-yurt island .
Reed thickets –area fine place for reproduction of various fishes and other water inhabitants. Here they find food and set of shelters. And also here are no large predators. But all the same they can't feel in safety – them hunts one of the smallest birds of fluxes, a small straw halcyon.
This tiny bird, the descendant of an ordinary halcyon (Alcedo atthis), has a size less than sparrow. At it short wings and a tail, but a large head and a sharp beak. The small straw halcyon is perfectly adapted for life in reeds. It's main color islight yellow, and wings, a tail and top of a head which at its ancestor sparkled an azure, have got brownish color with gray longitudinal strips. With such coloring the bird is invisible to the predators occasionally visiting these places. A beak is black, but pads and eyelids of males are bright red (of females they have dim-orange color).
On behavior this species is very similar to the ancestor, but it nests not in the holes which have been dug out in steep river bank, but in cavities of trunks of papyrian reed mace. Because the halcyon isn't able to peck a hollow in strong trunks of reed mace, it very much depends on activity of other bird – tiny cane pecker. It happens that a couple of halcyons ready to reproduction expels peckers from a hollow and destroys their laying, or expects, while birds will peck a hollow at once to occupy it. If there are lot of peckers, halcyons peacefully adjoin to them, occupying their last year's nests. Often halcyons suit a nest in the broken trunks huge reed mace. In the absence of a suitable hollow of a bird can dig out a hole in sandy steep (mainly this do the birds from Ust'-yurt island).
The small straw halcyon eats small fishes and invertebrates, tracking down them from a reed trunk, or hanging in air, as if the humming-bird. During this moment its wings make up to 20 waves in a second, but the bird quickly is tired and can't long track down fish, flying in such way. But «weeds of the humming-bird» - an important point of marriage ritual of these birds.
The pair is formed for one season. In a laying are 4 – 5 eggs, the laying repeats twice within summer and if the first laying was lost at an early stage of incubation, birds have time to make the third laying and will grow up baby birds. The growt of baby birds takes about 5 weeks, from them last week parents finish feeding the youngs which have already left a nest.

This species of birds has been described by Simon, the member of the forum.

 Отправлено: 17.06.13 21:07. Заголовок: Слепыш-голиаф: Goli..

Слепыш-голиаф:

Goliath spalax (Megaspalax goliath)
Order: Rodents (Rodentia)
Family: Slepysha (Spalacidae)
Habitat: Three-river steppes, along the rivers and about standing reservoirs.
Spalaxes – specialized digging animals of the Holocene. With distribution in the ice age of rather dry plains which have been grassed, they could expand their area and outlive the glaciation, having kept a specific variety.
In the neocene when the steppe vegetation became more plentiful and more various, on the life arena there was appeared a peculiar, huge species of spalaxes, by right bearing a name of goliath spalax. This is a large subterrain animal of the size of a badger, the descendant of common spalax. Anatomic it doesn't differ almost from typical representatives of the family, known to the man. It has the same strong rolled body, short powerful paws, eyes completely are lacking. The dense fur of the animal is short, velvety, is a little similar to fur of a mole, painted in pale-yellow-gray color.
His skull became the real tool of the drift miner – bones grew together, the frontal bone turned into the thick integral roof outside covered with becomes horny skin. The main digging tool of goliath spalax – huge incisors of yellow color with which the animal bites off the soil, digging itself a course. This animal builds huge adits, sometimes pulling down the cities of souslik dogs and other underground rodents. Diameter of holes of goliath spalax can reach 40 – 50 cm. It builds a network of fodder passages, often using as a basis the tunnels which have been dug through by souslik dogs and other animals. Goliath spalaxes are the single animals meeting only for the time of pairing. Each animal out of a season of reproduction watches territory borders, marking them with urine.
This species eats various roots and tubers, generally a potato woundwort – a tuberous plant of family labiates. For the winter goliath spalax reserves roots and tubers of plants, putting them in special "storerooms" at a depth up to 3 - 4 meters. It carefully marks "storeroom" with the smell, and the entrance to it blocks with the soil. It makes for protection of stocks from other subterrain rodents whom it often plunders. At an opportunity goliath spalax can simply eat other rodent who has got to his passage. In the winter the animal is so active, as in the summer, only at a cold spell becomes more sluggish, spending more time in a hole.
Sometimes this rodent creeps out on a surface. It differs curious feature of behavior: despite a total blindness, it is able to float and dive. At night goliath spalaxess leave the holes, and go down to basins, using the marked tracks. Using sense of smell, they find and dig out edible herbs. The part from them is eaten at once, and the part gets to "storerooms". Diving, goliath spalaxes are fed with water plants. On an earth surface this rodent could easily fall prey of predators, but he is rescued by sensitive sense of smell and touch. Soles of paws of goliath spalax are supplied with special receptors thanks to which the animal feels soil concussions from steps of an animal. The scared animal easily and precisely finds a hole by the sense of smell. Taken unawares, goliath spalax turns into the dangerous opponent: it strikes to a predator blows with the armor head, and bites huge cutters.
Reproduction happens since early spring to the beginning of fall. The female gives birth to 2 - 3 large cubs the size approximately about a guinea pig. About a month they sit in a lair, further begin vagrant life together with mother. When young animals become rather independent (at the age of about 3 months), the female banishes them. Usually at this time the female already bears new cubs. In a year there are 2 broods.
Young animals are settled, usually along river valleys and coast of lakes. They spend day in holes, and at night move, finding suitable territories. The young animal becomes an adult at the age of about a year, and life expectancy reaches 17 – 20 years.

This look was open by Simon, the participant of a forum

 Отправлено: 01.08.13 18:48. Заголовок: Учитывая, что сегодн..

Учитывая, что сегодня начало августа, перевёл одного из своих старых зверей в Бестиарии:

The striped tree porcupine (Bradycoendu lanceolatus)
Order: Rodents (Rodentia)
Family: New World porcupines (Erethizontidae)
Habitat: open forests of South America.

At the dawn of the Holocene and Neocene, when much of the jungle of South America disappeared as a result of global cooling and a dry climate, many tropical rainforest animals died out or were forced to change their way of life to survive. Among them were the various arboreal porcupines of South America, quite unusual rodents, which felt safe from the many enemies due to their quills.

Among mammals, the rodents show a very wide adaptability, and have adapted to live everywhere, from the slopes of the mountains to fresh water. Some of their Neocene descendants even became marine animals, but the evolution of South American porcupines do not reach to such extremes. Most of them (for example, the quill-sided porcupine) remained tree-dewelling animals, but there are exceptions in any rule, and the striped tree porcupine is one of these animal exceptions.

The striped tree porcupine is a relative of quill-sided porcupine and is a relatively large rodent, reaching almost 1.5 m in length and weighing up to 15 kg. It is covered with brown fur, from which protrude some very brightly colored quills; the contrast combination between colour of the quills and fur creates a striped pattern like that of the zebra, which makes this porcupine less noticeable among vegetation. The quills of this animal are longer than those of its Holocene predecessors. This species has a short strong tail that serves as support when climbing trees and digging the ground.

Unlike their relatives, the striped tree porcupine is rather ponderous and spends only part of its life in the trees. It often comes down to earth, where it searches for some edible plants, takes dust baths and escapes from enemies (mostly birds of prey). This lifestyle has developed in connection with the fact that this rodent is one of the most southerly species of its family, and is found not in rainforest, where it is humid year-round, and the land is often waterlogged, but much further south, where the climate is drier, with pronounced seasonality, and drought can occur in summer. As a result, the ancestors of this animal had to learn a new way of life.

The food of this animal includes various fruits and lush greens of ground-dwelling plants. In the dry season the striped charcoal porcupine eats roots, which it digs out of the ground with powerful claws. It supplements this diet with cockroaches and beetle larvae, which the porcupine finds on the ground and among the fallen leaves.

In autumn the mating season of this species begins and the females loudly call out to the males reminiscent of meowing cats. If several of males gather around a single female, they will begin to push each other away from the female, until the most powerful and enduring male remains. From that point on, the male porcupine continually remains next with the female. The male mates with the female porcupine until the latter is ready to accept the male’s advances, and it also drives away other males from the female. While the female is pregnant, the male stays close – this species forms a family while the kits are young and growing.

1 – 2 well-developed kits with open eyes are born to the females in three months. The babies are cared for by both parents, when even carry them (sometimes taking turns) on the backs. Unlike the quill-sided porcupine, this species’ quills grow both on the sides and on the middle part of the back. Only the hind part of the back and the base of the tail do not have any quills. The kits sit on that part of the adults, and the adult animal covers them up with its tail, curving it upwards. There are long and moveable quills around that part of the porcupine’s body. In case of danger they lock over the kits, protecting them.

The young of this species grow rapidly, and by the following year they becoming fully independent. They become capable of reproduction at the age of two years.

The maximum life span of the striped tree porcupine is up to 20 years, but most animals survive only up to 10-12 years.

 Отправлено: 22.09.13 11:56. Заголовок: Перевод описания гор..

Перевод описания горной сони:

Mountain dormouse, chinchilla-dormouse (Raptoglis chinchilloides)
Order: Rodents (Rodentia)
Family: Dormouses (Gliridae)
Habitat: mountains of the Caucasian peninsula, Middle East.
In early neocene rodents have an opportunity to prove once again the evolutionary success. They quickly evolved, taking all suitable habitats for them, and already in early neocene their specific variety was comparable with that in a pliocene and an early pleistocene, before the age of anthropogenous pressure. In the neocene rodents are widespread on all Earth, except Antarctica – from the equatorial woods to cold northern meadows and tops of mountains.
In Eurasia in the neocene there were some species of dormouses family which use food of an animal extraction much more often than their ancestors. These are the sable dormouse (Raptoglis zibellinus) from Three-Rivers steppes and the otter-dormouse (Glirolutra hamiota) from the rivers of east part of Europe. One more species is close to them, lives to the south of Fourseas, in mountains of the Caucasian peninsula and mountains of the Middle East, is the mountain dormouse called also the chinchilla-dormouse for the dense warm fur. This representative of northern fauna prospers in the south exactly thanks to dwelling in cold highland climate.
The mountain dormouse – the large rodent reaching weight about 3 kilograms and of the size of a small cat. Thanks to a tail covered with long wool, the animal seems more largely. The head of this rodent is rounded, with the shortened muzzle and the small ear conches covered outside with wool. The mountain dormouse has large eyes and good sight.
This species successfully mastered life in highlands thanks to dense fur which helps to keep heat even in a hard frost or at big height. Summer fur of an animal is reddish-brown, velvety, rather short. On a breast and a throat there is always a white spot, head top is more dark. The winter fur differs by the bigger length and density, and also lighter coloring.
Constitution of an animal is tight, paws are short (hinder legs are a little longer than forelegs). Fingers are armed with sharp claws thanks to what the mountain dormouse is capable to climb on almost steep mountainsides and among a bush. This animal can make jumps up to 2 - 3 meters long.
Mountain dormouses are almost exceptionally carnivorous, adding to a diet no more than 10% of vegetable food though in case of starvation they can temporarily turn to completely vegetable forage. These rodents often eat drop for which search by a smell. Besides, mountain dormouses readily gnaw even bones. For them is characteristic the habit to search and pull down bones in "bonemill", a special place covered from predators where these animals gnaw their finds. They almost completely assimilate collagen from the eaten bones, and the remains are small. Usual the prey of mountain dormouses are small rodents, birds and their eggs, and in lowlands – reptiles and insects.
This species of rodents lives singly and rarely – in couples. The female is more aggressive than the male. The dwelling of this rodent represents the deep hole which has been dug out among stones so that they complicated digging the hole out by predators.
Like other representatives of family, mountain dormouses lay down in long hibernation which can last up to half a year with small breaks. Animals are very strongly eaten off to the winter, gaining weight about 4,5 kg. The fur becomes long and more dense. Several times during the winter the animal wakes up to leave the dung, which is at this time very condensed and dry.
The posterity is born at the end of spring when there is a lot of forage. In a brood are to 5 cubs who quickly grow and at the age of about two weeks already start tasting meat. Occasionally at the end of summer animals can bring the second brood in which there are rarely more than two cubs. Life expectancy doesn't exceed 5 years.

 Отправлено: 24.09.13 19:13. Заголовок: Новый перевод - сент..

Новый перевод - сентябрьский:

Marsupial potto (Neodasyrus auridae)
Order: Marsupials (Marsupalia)
Family: carnivorous marsupials (Dasyuridae)
Habitat: mountain forests of Meganesia.
Like the other carnivorous marsupial, the quolls have experienced hard times in the age of the Holocene: their numbers greatly decreased due to anthropogenic pressure and competition with the introduced placental predators. However, unlike their larger relatives, the thylacine and the Tasmanian Devil, the quolls have been able to survive the anthropogenic pressure, more evolutionary advanced animals, climatic disasters and much more.
However, such "tests" have not gone unnoticed for the quolls: some of their species became extinct, and the descendants of others sometimes began to develop along quite different evolutionary paths, acquiring completely different features. The marsupial potto is one of such deviating species.
Like its placental analog, this is a small animal, about 26-33 centimeters in length, with a short tail. This tail is a legacy of the past: the marsupial potto moves too slowly and does not jump, so it does not really need a tail.
The ancestors of the marsupial potto were patchy in coloration, but nocturnal lifestyle made the fur of this animal monochromatic, dark brown with a golden tint. In addition, it has a shorter and broader snout, larger eyes and ears, and longer whiskers. The teeth are small, but strong, able to bite through even a thick bone. The marsupial potto is an active predator that feeds on insects and spiders, slugs and snails, tree frogs and lizards, small animals and birds - everything that it can catch and kill with a strong bite. The dark fur of the animal makes it hard to see at night when it sneaks up onto its prey - the potto’s short legs are poorly adapted for longer jumps or a long chase, but it can very carefully sneak up to sleeping birds.
The marsupial potto comes very rarely onto ground - mainly for a drink. But more often the animal finds rosettes of epiphytic plants where water accumulates and so it does not need to descend at all. Twice a year the females begin to call out to males with barking cries, indicating the beginning of the mating season. If two or more males meet at the same female there will be severe fighting, including biting. The victor mates with the female and leaves it – the female of this species raises the young alone. The pouch has only two nipples but the females give birth to 5 offspring – but only those that reach the nipples first survive. When three months old the young begin to leave the pouch and by 8 months they are independent. By that time the female is ready to breed again. If for some reason a female loses its offspring it comes into heat much faster.
The life expectancy of the marsupial potto - 8-10 years; the sexual maturity comes at two-and-a-half to three years.

 Отправлено: 26.09.13 19:12. Заголовок: Neopueo (Strigocircu..

Неопуэо:

Neopueo (Strigocircus vespertinus)
Order: Falconiformes
Family: Accipitridae
Habitat: Hawaii, woods.
In Hawaiian "pueo" means "owl". On Hawaii during an era of the man the marsh owl, obviously, a North American origin lived. It’s descendant during the neocene also remained on islands, but the new Hawaiian predator partly competes with him – the descendant of got to Hawaii harrier, one of recent settlers on islands. This feathery predator – neopueo, the night bird of prey who is very similar to an owl. Probably, otherwise owls simply wouldn't allow to appear to such competitor on islands, but neopueo and owls accurately differ with activity time and therefore not so rigidly compete for prey. Unlike owls, activity peak of neopueo is twice per day: late evening and early in the morning, in the conditions of faint lighting. It is associated with that this bird hunts mainly by means of sight, to a lesser extent relying on hearing. Therefore it spends the most dark night hours in relative rest, and owls hunt just at this time.
Neopueo – rather small bird of the size of a pigeon. It hunts on small vertebrate animals and large insects. The nocturnalism made of neopueo a bird, similar by shape to an owl. The head neopueo is roundish, and the feathers growing around eyes, form a characteristic front disk. The head of a bird has dark brown color, and the front disk is white, similar to a mask.
The long tail and rather short wide wings allow to maneuver among branches: this predator lives only in the woods. Remiges of neopueo are similar to the owl's: on them there is a set of bristles by vane edge. They extinguish air turbulences at waves of wings because of what flight of a bird becomes almost silent as at the real owls.
The body top of neopueo is painted in brown color with dark cross stripes, the stomach is gray. On the head stripes are more frequent and narrow therefore it seems more darkly than a trunk. Remiges are light brown, and long steering feathers of a tail have black tips.
One more "heritage" from harrier in shape of neopueo are long legs. Because of it the bird seems slightly more largely, than is actually. Feet of neopueo are covered by smooth small scales of yellowish color, fingers are armed with hooked claws. Neopueo possesses interesting feature which is characteristic for some African birds of prey of the Holocene: it has a joint jointing a tarso-metatarsus and a shin, is exclusively mobile and can be bent not only forward, but also sideways, and even back a little. Thanks to such adaptation neopueo can hunt on small animals who hide in hollows, just pushing a paw in a hollow, and catching the animal who has hidden in it.
Neopueo keeps single, only during the mating season a couple of birds builds a nest on high trees and together grows up posterity. Nestbuilding skill of neopueo is developed better, than at other feathery predators. Birds of this species build in branches a big nest of brushwood in the form of a deep bowl though take more often and reorganize already done nest of other birds. The most remarkable trait of the nest of neopueo is that birds complete over the nest a friable roof from brushwood, and because of it a nest of this bird is more similar to that of magpie. In completely finished nest of neopueo there is a through pass, and a bird, having got into a nest on the one side, leaves it on another. And the long tail of a brooding bird sometimes even juts out of pass. There are some advantages in occurrence of the roof on the nest: it perfectly protects from the hot sun, and in the afternoon both birds take cover in the nest. Neopueo has very sensitive eyes, and a daylight irritates them.
The female neopueo is larger than a male, and she "inherits" the nest: it settles down in its territory, and males fly for formation of couple from the next sites of the wood. In a laying are 2 - 3 eggs, which in common brood both birds of couple. But, despite such care, up to the departure from a nest lives only 1 - 2 baby birds: at these birds the cannibalism is developed, and the weakest baby bird is sometimes eaten by stronger brothers and sisters. Sometimes already grown up baby bird throws out from a nest or pecks to death another, especially if there is no feed (for example when one bird from couple was lost, and the second can't provide with food of both baby birds).

 Отправлено: 04.10.13 19:59. Заголовок: В связи с началом ок..

В связи с началом октября, новый перевод из Бестиария:

Skimmer tortoise (Agrionemys teratognathus)
Order: Tortoises (Testudines)
Family: Terrestrial tortoises (Testudinidae)
Habitat: semi-desert in the Persian mountains.
The human era has caused great damage to the detachment of the tortoises – the biggest repre-sentatives of these reptiles died out or became a rarity in the historical era. But the actual nega-tive impact began much earlier: in the Pliocene and the Pleistocene the species diversity of large terrestrial tortoises declined on the background of development and proliferation of the terrestrial hominids: first australopithecines, and then humans.
At the end of the historic era, the tortoises in the wild have become exclusively small and me-dium-sized, and the large species remained in a small number almost solely in artificial habitat and under strict protection. After the end of the human epoch and the ice age the tortoises are once again coming back to their lost territories - among them there are many large species that have arisen independently in different places of the Earth.
In the semi-deserts, a large species of tortoises can be encountered in the Persian mountains - it is a descendant of the Russian or Central Asian tortoise (Agrionemys horsfieldii). Its peculiar fea-ture is the very large head, which does not fit under the shell and bears its own protective horny scute. A significant part of the head is the huge jaws with sharp edges, similar to the beak of a skimmer bird, for which this tortoise is named.
This is a fairly large species of terrestrial reptiles: the length of an adult’s carapace reaches 70-80 cm and it weighs of up to 60-70 kg. The females are larger than males, but the males have a larger head, and the scute on it is covered with lots of bumps on edges and is used as a weapon.
The skimmer tortoises have a certain food specialization, allowing them to avoid competition with closely related species and to use a very accessible source of food. These reptiles feed on large hard grasses and on branches of shrubs. Due to the low sensitivity of the alkaloids they eas-ily eat large bulbs of stony onion (Petroallium petrops). The opened jaws of the skimmer tortoise really look like garden shears - the cutting edge of the lower jaw curves up and it looks more massive than the top one. The horny beak’s edges are self-sharpening and do not get blunt when the tortoise is eating solid food. Sometimes these reptiles eat food of animal origin: small verte-brates and carrion. To replenish the calcium in its body the skimmer tortoise gnaws dry bones. If there is water, the tortoises drink it willingly and often.
To protect themselves from overheating these reptiles have very light shells: the scutes are grey with a darker centre. The reptile’s dry, wrinkled skin is gray-white. In addition, these tortoises live in places where the ground vegetation are tall herbaceous plants and shrubs.
The life of these reptiles exposed to the seasonal rhythm. These animals spend the winter hiber-nating in burrows that they dig with feet and beak. In early spring the tortoises emerge from win-ter shelters and in 10-12 days they are already ready to reproduce. During mating, the males are very active - they quickly pursue each other and bite the legs and edges of the carapace. At the high number of tortoises on their "leks" there are continuous sounds of striking shells (with their armour strikes the males encourage females to mate) and the hoarse rumbling of the males. In May, at the beginning of the dry season, the females lay 2-5 eggs 5 cm long in an underground nest, making three nests in a short time. In October the tortoise eggs hatch and the hatchlings re-main through the winter underground, leaving for the surface only in the spring of the next year. Although they grow up a bit over the winter due to the remnants of egg yolk, their shells are still soft and therefore they are easily vulnerable. By 25 years of age young reptiles reach the average adult size and maturity. Their life expectancy is very great: individuals live up to 125 years.