HOMADE SOCCER BALL
By: Yury Noh
Description and Rationale
Soccer- an unattended sport in the Philippines
Soccer is one of the most unfamiliar sports in the Philippines; only some people, who have extra interest in playing soccer, likes to play it. In 1900, United States’ Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) introduced the sport of basketball to the Philippines. Basketball eventually supplanted soccer. However, due to its history as a Spanish colony once, preceding periods were dominated by the vast expansion of soccer’s popularity over Philippines Islands. Therefore, this generation of young Filipinos is very unaware of soccer. By recycling Filipinos’ general trashes and pests in Antipolo, which is my town, I will make a soccer ball for the help of their entertainment and for the help of their ecological and environmental problems.
What source of trash could I recycle to make a soccer ball? How could the following trash mock the specialty of elasticity in the original soccer ball? How can this help Antipolo’s environmental problems? Would the soccer ball have enough volume to take air in order to bounce properly? How would playing soccer be entertaining to Filipinos? How can I attract Filipinos to involve in this action of helping their own ecology?
In Antipolo, rapid rate of reproduction in European rabbits and Coconut trees are causing quite a serious invasion to Antipolo’s ecology. The conflict is that there are enormous amount of them, but very few ways are known by Filipinos to utilize them into a useful craft, which means their population is without a limit as well as out of control. It shows a great possibility of intrusion and domination over other species’ habitat, which is called secondary succession. Therefore, they are valued as a trash or a pest by the local people. Unlike coconuts, Europeans rabbits haven’t been with Philippines’ history, thus they don’t have a lot of usage for Filipinos. If beneficial ways are found to use these useless materials (rabbits, coconuts, and etc.) to make a useful craft and the simple procedures are made, what would be the best way(s) to communicate the findings to the barangays along the basketball court in Antipolo?
The initial purpose of this project will be to research the biology and ecology of daily wastes thrown out in squatters’ markets, through a search of the literature as well as firsthand observations and interviews with people living or/and selling rabbits or coconuts at the street markets (with the help of a Tagalog-speaking interpreter). These initial findings will help guide the experimental phase, where key variables in the daily wastes’ usefulness will be further explored.
It is hoped that new uses of the previously unwanted waste might help improve better entertainment in livelihood of the people living or/and playing around Antiopolo's street markets through a more informed understanding of a rapidly reproducing biological resource.
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Biology
Common Names and Synonyms
The New Zealand rabbit is also called Oryctolagus cuniculus. It has many different common names depending on what country or culture it is from. For instance, in Japan, it is called the Japanese white rabbit, while in Europe it is just plainly called the European rabbit. Some people may simply call it domestic rabbit. It is also known as the Lepus cuniculus because it has a short furry tail, and extended ears and back legs.
Classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia (mammals)
Order: Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, pikas)
Family: Leporidae (rabbits)
Genus: Oryctolagus (European, domestic, New Zealand rabbit)
Species: O. cuniculus (Burrow)
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Morphology and Physical Description
The European rabbit has a rounded body. It also has a slim but muscular face and facial lines at an angle with round cheeks. The rabbit is a small, brownish grey mammal that can possibly grow ranging from 34-45 cm (13-18 inches) in length. It also is approximately 1.3-2.2 kg (3-5 lb) in weight when it is fully grown. As the members of the taxonomic order Lagomorpha, the rabbit has four sharp incisors in total- two on the top and two on the bottom. These teeth grow continuously throughout the rabbit’s life.
The European rabbit have two “peg” teeth located on the top behind the incisors dissimilar to those of rodents, which have only two teeth each on top and bottom.
There are two different sizes of rabbit’s feet: short feet at the front and long feet at the back. This kind of leaning formation of front foot helps the rabbit to move. The rabbit uses their long powerful hind leg to be able to move very fast in a hopping movement. The rabbit also has toes that are long and web shaped for the sake of the hopping movement. This keeps them from spreading apart from animal’s continuous jumps. To prevent the shock or stun to the hind feet from rapid hopping, the rabbit has thick fur padding on the hind feet.
The European rabbits have long ears that stick straight up into the air, and, unlike their body, the ears have only a little bit of hair on them. Therefore, you can see the pink skin straight through. The most evident characteristic about the European rabbit is its glowing eyes. The reason is because have a scale of pale pink to a very bright ruby red color. The rabbit skeleton is so light that it only makes up 7-8% of its body weight.
Male and female can be classified by their weight. Bucks, which is the name given to the male European rabbit, can weigh from eight to ten pounds in average. However, the female can weigh anywhere from nine to twelve pounds in average, which is about two to three pounds more than male weight. Females can also be classified by having a dewlap or not. This is a flab of fur below the chin that is pulled for nesting during pregnancy.
When a rabbit is slaughtered and dressed it turns out to be 50% of its live weight.
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Getting Food
As for the gardeners, they know that they need to eat lettuce, cabbage, root vegetables and different types of grains and pellets. Originally, the European rabbits are known as an herbivore because of the kinds of food it consumes such as different types of grass, tree, bud, bark and root. Even though the diet of the European rabbit is relatively low in nutritional value, European rabbits can restore essential nutrients through unique process that only few rabbit species use, which is reingesting its faeces (coprophagy) to obtain extra nourishment from their food. In the large intestine, there is very large caecum where all the bacterial fermentation occurs to the indigestible materials. After the process of fermentation to the food is finished, the content of caucum is digested and eaten again. The rabbits depend on this process to get some essential nutrients that are only released after bacteria have worked on the stomach contents through the digestive system.
If breading rabbits, then this is the amount of pellets in grams that should be given each day to the doe’s: normal doe’s 100gms, Pregenant doe’s 160gms, breastfeeding doe’s 350gms.
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Reproduction
Most rabbits are famous for producing lots of babies(kittens) each year. The doe is taken to the buck’s cage for mating as the does are very territorial. The female rabbit is fertile all year round. The gestation period lasts about 28 to 31 days. Rabbit’s can produce up to seven young about four or five times a year.
“In addition, females exhibit induced ovulation, their ovaries releasing eggs in response to copulation rather than according to a regular cycle. They can also undergo postpartum estrus, conceiving immediately after a litter has been born.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit)
A little kitten is born blind, naked and helpless. Rabbit mothers are mostly lacks in care towards their young and usually never really there. They only feed them once a day for only a few minutes. This is not unusual for rabbits as their milk is one of the most nutritious of the entire mammal kingdom. Therefore, the young can grow very quickly and within about a month the kittens are already weaned. The male rabbits (bucks) do not help in caring for the young at all.
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Environmental Factors
The habitat in which a O. Cuniculus rabbit likes to live is on dry areas near sea level, that has soft sandy soil. They can then make burrows easily. They also may live in busy fields because of the cover that it provides and even in forests. Cultivated land was also a place in which they could be found. Modern plowing techniques destroy the rabbit burrows. Especially in Europe the O. Cuniculus has had to find a way to share the land with the humans by living in parks and gardens and even cemeteries. Because of human activities, especially when it comes to the spread of agriculture, this has really helped the rabbit species to colonize new areas.
Rabbits have been introduced into the wild by humans and this has caused problems for the agriculture because of their appetites and the rate in which they breed. Because of this, hunters have used shooting, fences and snaring. Diseases which were most effective were the diseases called Myxomatosis and Calicivirus. In Australia, rabbits are considered to be pests. Land owners are told to control the rabbits that are on their land. If rabbits are not controlled, they completely eat out parcels of land, which causes soil erosion.
When farming rabbits, these are the requirements that should be put into play: optimum temperature is from 10-25 ℃, ventilation is also required so that the temperature can be controlled and remove ammonia. Housing of rabbits is very important and heat stress will cause major rabbit mortalities and reproduction failure. The cage for the rabbit should be 45 cm high and quite long , the thickness of the wire mesh should not be less than 2.5 mm wide. There must be some kind of wood placed in the cage so that the rabbit has a place to get off the wire as the wire can bruise their paws and cause much damage. There can be a tray down under the cage that can catch the faeces so they can be used for plant fertilizer.
Diseases in rabbits are very common and if a rabbit is infected and dies, then it should be removed quickly from the cage as you don’t want the disease to spread any further. Some of the diseases that rabbits are susceptible to are as follows: Pasteurella, Coccidia, Myxoma and Calcivirus.
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Origin and Distribution
O. Cuniculus species during the last Ice Age were confined to the Iberian Peninsula and small areas of France and North West Africa. Nowadays, because of human actions and adaptability of this species, the New Zealand rabbit lives on every continent except Antarctica.
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Importance to People
The New Zealand white rabbit is bred for its excellent fur and meat. New Zealand rabbit is not only a domestic pet. The rabbits that are fryers are slaughtered at 2 months and the others that are sold a little later are called roasters. Rabbits that have the thickest fur are skinned and used to make fur coats and trimmings. Those rabbits that have less thick fur are skinned and used to make felt hats and glove linings. In the United States, the New Zealand rabbit is the number one rabbit meat eaten. Because rabbit meat is popular in other countries this could also mean that it could be introduced into the Philippines and then supply poorer Filipinos with a livelihood project.
New Zealand white rabbits are also used in laboratory testing; over one million have been used. The scientists use them because they react similarly to medications and diseases as humans do. These rabbits are used in pharmaceutical laboratories and also in cancer research. New Zealand white rabbits have been used to help finding drugs for diabetes, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cancer and heart disease. Also, skin creams and cosmetics and special diets have been used and tested on these rabbits.
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Survivability and Endangered Status
The survivability rate of the New Zealand rabbit is very high as it adapts very easily to many environments. Although the New Zealand rabbit has lots of natural predators, such as snakes and wild dogs, because of its high reproduction rate due to the female being fertile all year round and producing lots of kittens, there is not much chance of the rabbit going extinct.
This is a plot of pair wise geographical distance (km) against pair wise genetic distance () for the 17 populations of European wild rabbit. A high degree of population differentiation is observed between the 17 populations, indicating that the populations are substantially isolated. Because of the low levels of gene flow, there appears to be no significant trend of isolation by distance. A wide spread of pair wise genetic distances is observed, which cannot be correlated with geographical distance. The European wild rabbit exhibits a high degree of non-random mating and social structuring, and a consequence of this is a high degree of genetic structuring within a population. It shows no correlation relationship in both pairs, but it can be assumed that some has changed according to its environmental condition whiles some have not. The present day distribution and abundance of the European wild rabbit has been greatly modified by both man and disease. Therefore, these modifications in environment of bottle neck outbreak experiences from man modify their favors in condition. In conclusion, it shows that European rabbit’s survivability is very high that an endangered status won’t last long enough to extinct this species. It strengthens the past research of rabbit’s great reproduction and adoptability.
The New Zealand rabbit has been introduced into the Philippines solely as a pet, but from what has been found out is that this rabbit can be used for formulating new entertaining instrument, a soccer ball. It may just take some physiological help to have Filipinos take the rabbits’ skin as a source of soccer ball.
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Potential Solutions
Why would the European rabbit considered as a pest? Is it because it is an invasive species that brings a disorder in Philippines’ ecology? Maybe in reducing some amounts of grass for growing cattle, but it is not a major industry in Philippines. However, no, it is not. The main reason why the European rabbits are considered as a pest is because of its superior ability than other hares to reproduce massive amount of young and to adopt according to its new environment. Therefore, local people with no such history of rabbits have not much uses in rabbits in any area of human needs. It has been established at this point by a researchers have nominated the European rabbit as among 100 of the “World’s Worst” invader species because of its herbaceous vegetation that interferes with existing agricultures or cattle industry and the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus that it carries which causes the rabbit hemorrhagic disease. Their number must be stablized to a certain limit for the prevention of following disadvantages happening in Antipolo. Therefore, further research and field studies about the ecology and food webs in Antipolo are necessary before determining if the European rabbit is an asset or liability to the hunting efforts of the poor families living in the area. My project will solve these nasty problems with European rabbits and also introduce new entertainment for the local Filipinos to enjoy.
Possibility 1 -Rabbit Meat as a Food
Rabbit meat is a very healthy, nutritional meat that will really benefit the lives of the poorer communities in the Philippines. This meat can also be used as a livelihood project that will enable Filipinos to not only feed their tummies but also sell them to pet stores and make money from it. The meat of a rabbit is just like that of a chicken and is very lean so it is good as a healthy meat. Rabbits are a good source of meat and should be introduced into the Filipino diet. So by replacing the pork to rabbit in dishes such as adobo we can change the amount of fat intake of the Filipino.
Advantages: 1. Rabbit can be continuously provided because it can reproduce a lot of offspring every year.
2. It is a healthy type of fat that has less intake of fat from it.
3. Rabbits are easy to grow and feed.
4. They can be kept in a cage and their feces can be used as fertilizer.
Disadvantage: 1. European rabbit carries a virus that Filipinos might not put an effort to fix.
2. Filipinos think it is very strange to eat rabbit meat, and they refuse to eat because they think it is unclean.
3. Considering the price of rabbit and the amount of meat from one rabbit, it may be too expensive for the local people to afford.
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Possibility 2 -Rabbit Fur as a Coat
Before in 1960s, Korea was in a big economic crisis that brought the poor country to even poorer condition. Korea was in such poverty that we needed help from Philippines, which was a well living country compared to Korea. However, the government decided to do a project to bring the economic development higher and solve a ecological conflict: Everyone was to catch a mouse and sell its fur to the government, and then the government made a coat to sell it to cold countries such as Russia or other European countries. I believe Philippines could do a same thing to solve their economical problem and ecological problem at once as Korean government has done before.
Advantages: 1. Filipinos may earn a sufficient income for their livelihood.
Disadvantages: 1. the scale of this project gets over the top of a limitation of “local doings”.
2. It has to have a involvement of a whole country. A single salesman is unable of getting a grip of worldwide import and export.
3. The new century now is different than before when people used to cooperate all together to do something as a country. Now that a communism is in place, there is no way that a whole country will function as one to solve a problem.
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Possibility 3 -Rabbit Skin as a Soccer ball
For my action step, I made a “Soccer Ball Quality Test”, which consists of three individual tests that looks for different aspect of a ball: dribble test, bounce test, shoot test.
1. Dribble Test
Equipment: A measuring tape (five meters), four red cones, a pencil and the observation paper, an original Soccer ball, a rabbit skinned soccer ball, and a countdown timer.
Procedure: 1. Measure 80 meters on a flat field.
2. Every 25 meters, set a single red cones.
3. The runner in this “zigzag run drill” will start at one end of the line and “zigzag” between the cones.
4. The runner must accelerate with his/her best effort to run the whole drill forward and back.
5. This must be done once for each ball (There will be a 30 second rest in-between each try). It must be carefully recorded on the observation paper.
2. Bounce Test
Equipment: A pencil and the observation paper, an original soccer ball, and a rabbit skinned soccer ball.
Procedure: 1. Let the bouncer bounce the ball like juggling with a help of the bouncer’s feet.
2. If their soccer skill was considered to be too bad, the bouncer may be aloud to bounce using their two arms like volleyball.
3. Count up the total bounces that the bouncer makes with each ball and record the result very carefully on the observation paper.
3. Shooting Test
Equipment: Two red cones, measuring tape (five meters), an original soccer ball, a rabbit skinned soccer ball, a pencil and the observation paper.
Procedure: 1. 80 meters away from the start line, set up two red cones for a
post and a net.
3. With the pencil and the paper out, let the shooter kick the ball five times each.
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Dribble Test
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Bounce Test
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Shooting Test
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1
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2
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1
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2
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1
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2
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20 sec.
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20.5 sec.
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10
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8
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2
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3
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17sec
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13 sec
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47
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17
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1
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0
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14 sec.
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13 sec.
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12
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14
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1
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1
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19 sec.
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18 sec.
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3
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17
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2
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1
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23 sec.
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26 sec.
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4
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2
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2
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3
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26 sec.
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25 sec.
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2
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2
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0
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4
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26 sec.
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21 sec.
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7
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12
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4
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1
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14 sec.
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12 sec.
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6
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20
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2
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4
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18 sec.
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21 sec.
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20
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6
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2
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2
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16 sec.
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14 sec.
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12
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6
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3
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2
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Rabbit skinned ball was, overall, found to be better in dribbling and shooting but worse in bouncing. However, because of the limited amount of rabbit skin, the ball could not have been made as big as the original one, which tells us why is was better in dribbling but worse in bouncing. Therefore, if the ball was made again to the correct size, shooting and bouncing would be better but dribbling would be expected to go down because it rolled faster than the original ball because of its small area and lighter weight.
By manipulating a strong, waterproof rabbit skin, making a soccer ball for a fun exciting entertainment in their daily lives came to me as an idea for my project. Therefore, I visited Antipolo Brranque to buy an adequate amount of rabbit skin. However, unfortunately, they only had two middle sized rabbits and they told us that it takes a week to be delivered to my house.
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Bibliography
New Zealand Rabbit.” Animal World. 2008. 4 April 2009
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POSSIBLE FUTURE DIRECTIONS
In relating my experiment findings and one of the guards’, who was knowledgeable and skilled in soccer, comments, it is thought that with a bigger size of my ball with some air in it would make it possible to play an actual soccer game. With bigger interactions with bigger group of people will definitely spread the idea for the help of Philippines’ environment.
<http://animal-world.com/encyclo/critters/rabbits/newzealand.php>
"European Rabbit." Talk About Wildlife. 2009. 10 April 2009
<http://talkaboutwildlife.ca/profile/?s=1934>
“New Zealand white rabbit.” Wikipedia. 2008. 10 April 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_white_rabbit>
“Oryctolagus cuniculus, European rabbi.” Animal Diversity Web. 2008. 10 April 2009
<http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Oryctolagus_cuniculus.html>
“Philippines: Mortality Country Profile.” Mortality Country Fact Sheet. 2006. 4 April 2009 <http://www.who.int/whosis/mort/profiles/mort_wpro_phl_philippines.pdf
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