he Lapland War (Finnish: Lapin sota) were the hostilities between Finland and Nazi Germany between September 1944 and April 1945, fought in Finland's northernmost Lapland Province. While the Finns saw this as a separate conflict much like the Continuation War, German forces considered their actions to be part of the Second World War. A peculiarity of the war was that the Finnish army was forced to demobilise their forces while at the same time fighting to force the German army to leave Finland. The German forces retreated to Norway, and Finland managed to uphold its promise to the Soviet Union.

List of wars by death toll

Algeria

Algeria

World War II's basic statistics qualify it as by far the most costly war in history in terms of human casualties and material resources expended.

During the Ice Ages, the last of which occurred about 10,000 years ago, the frozen areas of the North and South Poles spread over much of the earth, causing huge numbers of extinctions. But the giant freeze did not reach many tropical rainforests. Therefore, these plants and animals could continue to evolve, developing into the most diverse and complex ecosystems on earth. The nearly perfect conditions for life also help contribute to the great number of species. With temperatures constant at 75 -80 degrees F. the whole year, animals don't have to worry about freezing during cold winters or finding shade in the hot summers. They rarely have to search for water, as rain falls almost every day in tropical rainforests. Some rainforest species have populations that number in the millions. Other species consist of only a few dozen individuals. Living in limited areas, most of these species are endemic, or found nowhere else on earth. The maues marmoset, a species of monkey, wasn't discovered until recently. Its entire tiny population lives within a few square miles in the Amazon rainforest. It is so small, it could sit in a person's hand!

Leaf-cutter, or parasol ants, can rightfully be called the world's first farmers. They climb trees up to 100-feet tall and cut out small pieces of leaves. They then carry these fragments, weighing as much as 50 times their body weight, back to their homes. Sometimes they must travel 200 feet, equal to an average human walking about 6 miles with 5,000 lbs. on his/her back! The forest floor is converted to a maze of busy highways full of these moving leaf fragments. These ants don't eat the leaves they have collected, but instead bury them underground. The combination of leaves and substances that the ants produce such as saliva allows a type of fungus to grow. This fungus is the only food that the ants need to eat. Azteca ants live on the swollen thorn acacia tree, which offers the ants everything needed for survival - lodging, water, and food for themselves and their young. In return, the ants protect the trees from predators. Whenever the ants feel something brush against the tree, they rush to fiercely fight the intruder. They also protect it from vines and other competing plants that would otherwise strangle it. As a result, nothing can grow near these trees. They are the only trees with a built-in alarm system!

Three bear species do not live in cold climates. These tropical bears are the spectacled bear, sun bear and sloth bear. These bear species do not sleep for long parts of the year like their cold-weather cousins.

Sun bear; Borneo and other parts of Southeast Asia (endangered)

Spectacled bear; tropical South America (endangered)

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In 2006, the number of endangered species rose to more than 16,000 worldwide. Habitat loss, pollution and human-animal conflict all play a part when species are threatened with extinction. Introductions of non-native species devastate local native populations and alter ecosystems. From elephants, leopards and bears to monk seals, sea turtles, manatees and whales we'll explore wildlife conservation issues and find some reasons to be encouraged. With new species being discovered every day, interest in protecting some of the world's unique habitats is growing.

Many of these forests may be too damaged to fully recover," warns one of the researchers, Lisa Curran of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, United States. "They are so degraded that the ecological processes of regeneration will be so slow as to be essentially nonexistent." Indonesia contains 10 per cent of the world's tropical rainforest, and it is disappearing even faster than the Brazilian Amazon. Scientists are now calling for action both in Indonesia and abroad to save Borneo's forests, which they say are critical in maintaining the island's biodiversity and sustaining rural livelihoods.

The current rampant destruction of rainforest in Borneo is a biodiversity disaster of planetary proportions. Majestic gifts of creation, which took 50 to 100 million years to develop could be totally decimated in just 50 years of frenzied, largely uncontrolled exploitation

A government agreement on the oil palm plan was signed during a visit to Beijing by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia in July of last year. But an Indonesian Forestry Ministry spokesman said last month that the government now proposed to steer Chinese oil palm investment toward 400,000 hectares of agricultural land instead.The government had never intended to destroy more rain forest, the spokesman said in a telephone interview from Jakarta, adding that no official agreement had yet been signed with Chinese business interests."The Indonesian Government seems to be supportive of the Heart of Borneo project and generally more concerned about facing up to its environmental challenges," said Douglas Sheil, a scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia

WWF-Malaysia has said that the forests are one of two places in the world where endangered orangutans, Bornean pygmy elephants and the critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros still coexist. In June, a motion- triggered camera there photographed for the first time a wild rhino, believed to be one of only 13 whose existence was confirmed by a field survey last year.

A food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community (an ecosystem) to obtain nutrition. A network of many food chains is called a food web. The food chain starts with plants or other autotrophs (organisms that make their own food from light and/or chemical energy) - these organisms are called primary producers. The primary producers are eaten by herbivores (plant-eaters) called primary consumers. The herbivores are eaten by carnivores (meat-eaters) and omnivores (animals that eat both animals and plants) - these organisms are called secondary consumers. Secondary consumers may be eaten by other carnivores called tertiary consumers. When any organism dies, it is eaten by tiny microbes (detrivores) and the exchange of energy continues.

A food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community (an ecosystem) to obtain nutrition. A network of many food chains is called a food web. The chain starts with plants or other autotrophs (organisms that make their own food from light and/or chemical energy) that are eaten by herbivores (plant-eaters). The herbivores are eaten by carnivores (meat-eaters). These are eaten by other carnivores. When any organism dies, it is eaten by tiny microbes (detrivores) and the exchange of energy continues.

Madagascar is world-famous for its lemurs—primates that look something like a cat crossed with a squirrel and a dog. These animals are unique to the island and display a range of interesting behaviors from singing like a whale (the indri) to sashaying across the sand like a ballet dancer (the sifaka). Below you will learn more about these fascinating creature

The smallest rhinos are found in the tropical rainforests on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo.  These two species are very rare and extremely difficult to find.  Only a few photographs of them in the wild have been taken.

Sumatran and Javan rhinos—use their speed to disappear to safety in the thick grass or jungle.

For the rarest rhinos, the Sumatran and Javan rhinos, their survival may depend on how well we learn to breed them in captivity while we work to protect their wild tropical rainforest home from destruction.

Primates are a group of mammals that include prosimians, monkeys, and apes. Humans are primates, too. We are a type of ape. Most primates have hands and feet that can grasp, and many have tails. There are about 230 primate species. Most primates are found in tropical environments. The only great exception to this is humans. We live all over the planet. Almost all primates eat both plants and animals. Most primates are threatened or endangered.

The Big ThreePrimates belong to one of three general groups: prosimians, monkeys, and apes. ©G.Ellis/GLOBIO.org Prosimians include lemurs, tarsiers and lorises. ©G.Ellis/GLOBIO.org Monkeys include new world and old world monkeys as well as macaques and baboons. ©G.Ellis/GLOBIO.org Apes include chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and humans. Prime Locations for P

What Sets Primates Apart Humans are the only primates that are strictly bipedal, meaning they walk upright on two feet. Humans live all over the planet in almost every environment. ©G.Ellis/GLOBIO.org As primates evolved over the past 50-60 million years, two important things happened. 1) Their faces flattened and the eyes moved to the front of the head, giving them binocular vision. 2) They developed hands with separate fingers and opposable thumbs. This allowed them to grasp and hold on to branches and other objects. These two important developments make primates very different from all

The incredible diversity of food sources and unique niches of the canopy trees support a wide variety of animal species. Animals often congregate around a flowering tree, which makes trees in this stage some of the best sites for viewing wildlife. In places like these, where food is abundant, animals set up territories, but since canopy leaf cover affects visual territorial displays, most animals rely on sound signals. Thus some of the loudest animals of the world are canopy dwellers. Many primates emit howls and screams, while birds use song to let other animals know that they are intruding on their space.

div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited { color:#06c; } A leopard can, after all, change its spots: a new species of big cat has been identified for the first time in almost two centuries. The big cats prowling the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra had long been assumed to be the same clouded leopards that are found in mainland Asia. Genetic analysis and comparisons of fur patterns have now shown the two animals to be as distinct as the lion and the tiger, the WWF announced yesterday. Among the findings that convinced scientists was the realisation that the Bornean cat has changed the number and prominence of its spots.

The cats have now been reclassified as the Bornean clouded leopard, with the name Neofelis diardi, to distinguish them from other clouded leopards, Neofelis nebulosa. The two species, both endangered, are shown by genetic analysis to have separated 1.4 million years ago, after the animals used a land bridge, now covered by water, from mainland Asia to reach Borneo and Sumatra.