The feeding habits of bass change with its size. Young fish mainly feed on microscopic animals (plankton). Fingerling bass eat insects and small fishes. Adult bass will eat whatever is available, including fish, crabs, frogs, salamanders, snakes, mice, turtles, and even birds.
Age and growth - Growth rates are highly variable with differences attributed mainly to their food supply and length of growing season. Female bass live longer than males and are much more likely to reach trophy size. By age two or three, females grow much faster than male bass. At five years of age females may be twice the weight of males. The oldest bass from Florida whose age has been determined by fisheries' biologists was 16 years of age.
The largemouth bass is a very popular fresh water game fish. Much of its popularity is due to its aggressive attitude and willingness to strike a bait with explosive force. They can be caught with almost every bait. The value of the largemouth as a sport fish has prompted a movement toward catch and release fishing.
A bass of 22 pounds, 4 ounces was caught in Montgomery Lake, Georgia (U.S. state) in 1932.
Sport fishing for Black bass, particularly largemouth and smallmouth, has seen extraordinary growth in popularity. In Texas alone, fishermen spent $28 billion on equipment, licenses and fishing trips in 1996. That same year Texas sport fishing was responsible for creating 80,000 jobs and brought in over $180 million to the state in taxes. Many talented fishermen have turned the sport of bass fishing into a business by becoming a professional and competing in tournaments. Kevin VanDam is the top-rated money winner in professional bass fishing, having earned more than $5.6 million.
Reinheitsgebot
The Reinheitsgebot is a regulation about the purity of beer. The regulation started in Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, in Germany, in 1516.
The regulation says several things:
Some people talk about the "Bavarian" Reinheitsgebot, or the "German" Reinheitsgebot. They all mean the same thing. There are similar acts in the other states which later became known as Germany.
The Reinheitsgebot is no longer part of German law. It has been replaced by the Provisional German Beer Law
, which allows things prohibited in the "Reinheitsgebot", such as wheat malt and cane sugar, but which no longer allows unmalted barley.
Yeast was not a part of beer until Louis Pasteur discovered what it did during fermentation. This was around the year 1800. Brewers (the people brewing beer) usually re-used some of the sediments of the fermentation. They took some sediments of an older brew and added those sediments to the next brew.
Hops were added as a method of preservation (to stop the beer going bad quickly). Hops were allowed to stop other things (like adding certain mushrooms to the beer, which was done in the Middle Ages) being done to preserve beer. Other herbs, like stinging nettles had been used. The stinging nettle is part of the same plant family as hops.
A brewer who broke the "Reinheitsgebot" was punished: The beer barrels were taken by the state and destroyed and he/she did not receive any money for the loss.
Even today, many brewers are proud of the "Reinheitsgebot"; most German breweries say they follow it. Some only use it as a marketing tool. The "Reinheitsgebot' says that beer is made of barley, so all wheat beers were not allowed by the original Reinheitsgebot).
Belgian beers are different. The brewers often add sugar (to boost fermentation). Nevertheless, Belgian beers have a brewing tradition at least as long as those of Germany. They taste totally different from the German ones.
Maß
A Maß or Mass is an old unit of measurement of liquid. Literally translated, it means "mass". It is equal to 1.069 litre. Today, it is only used for measuring quantities of beer (one litre). Beer is usually served as 0.2 or 0.3 l ("small beer") or as 0.5 l ("big beer"), but at some occasions (like the Oktoberfest) and some places it is also served as a "Maß".
Usually this Maß is served in special mugs. These used to be made of ceramics, especially clay. During the 19th and 20th centuries most were replaced by ones made of glass.
Wolverine
The wolverine or glutton ("Gulo gulo") is the largest member of the Mustelidae family (the weasels). It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more like a small bear than other mustelids. The wolverine, a solitary animal, has a reputation for ferocity, and can kill prey many times larger than itself. It is a powerful and versatile predator and scavenger.
There is a clear difference between two subspecies: the Old World form "Gulo gulo gulo" and the New World form "G. g. luscus".
The male is about tall, the female . Their length ranges from (female) to (male) and they reach a weight of around . Their tail measures about . Their brown fur protects them from the extremely cold temperatures and their big feet enable them to walk on top of snow.
Wolverines live primarily in isolated arctic and alpine regions of northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia. they are also native to European Russia, the Baltic countries, northeast China and Mongolia. In 2008 and 2009, wolverines were sighted as far south as the Sierra Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, for the first time since 1922. They are also found in low numbers in the Rocky Mountains and northern Cascades of the United States, and have been sighted as far south and east as Michigan. However, most New World wolverines live in Canada.
Wolverines feed on almost every type of food that they can find: mice, rats, birds, bird eggs, reindeer and other large prey. Wolverines prefer to hunt larger prey in winter, when the snow slows down the prey and gives the wolverine an advantage.
Wolverines are highly territorial. Wolverines reproduce every two or three years. The female gives birth to one to three young (called kits) in a tunnel called a den deep underneath snowdrifts.
Humans are the wolverine’s main enemy. The wolverine’s thick, warm fur is used to manufacture the trim of a parka's hood or other winter clothes, as the dense guard hairs do not collect frost.
In February 2013, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed giving Endangered Species Act protections to the wolverine largely because climate change (global warming) is whittling away its wintry habitat in the northern Rockies. Wolverines have poor eyesight but a keen sense of smell, they can smell prey 20 feet under the snow.
Bismarck (ship)
The German battleship Bismarck was built by Nazi Germany. It was one of the most famous and recognized warships of World War II. It sailed for just one mission, known as Operation "Rheinübung".
Its construction began on 1 July 1936 in a shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. The ship was launched on 14 February 1940. The "Bismarck" class battleship was the largest type of battleship built by any European power. Her sister ship "Tirpitz" was the second in this class.