Animals

Because we can easily see colors around us every day, we might assume that every creature does too. But that is not so. The question of whether animals can distinguish between colors has long, puzzled scientists. However, they have come up with some interesting answers as a result of thousands of experiments. Dogs, for example, […]

What? The lowly earthworm, educated? Well, the answer is yes! This amazing feat was accomplished at the University of Michigan, where scientists used the common flatworm that you are likely to see in streams and ponds. These scientists taught the worms to crawl through a series of very difficult mazes, and the worms learned how […]

Creatures with backbones, like birds, fish, lions, and man, usually have a tail at the end of that backbone. Even man had a tail at one time. Tails are useful to many animals, but their use differs according to whose tail it is. Kangaroos and woodpeckers use their tails to prop themselves up and rest […]

No, but it often takes a very close look to see the difference, and who wants to get that close to either one of them! Alligators and crocodiles are both long, cigar-shaped reptiles, with four short legs, powerful tails, long snouts, and scales, or plates, covering their bodies. If you see a broad, rounded snout […]

One species of cicadas, small dark insects about 1 to 2 inches long with heavy bodies and thin wings, holds the insect record for the most unusual life cycle. The cicada, also called the 17 year-locust, spends 17 years sleeping in the ground, comes out for five weeks in the sun, then it dies! Scientists […]

For many years that question puzzled scientists, but in 1825 a scientist studied sponges under a microscope and saw water enter them through some openings and come out others, looking different. This was evidence that the sponge was an animal which captured tiny plants and animals from the water to use as food, digested them, […]

Really in many different ways, from many different places, and from many different languages! Ducks, for example, are birds who “duck” in the water. Their name comes from an old English word duce, which means a “diver.” The Arabic word zirafoh, which means “long neck,” gave the long-necked giraffe its name. Two Greek words, hippos, […]

The spotted hyena, which is the largest member of the hyena family, is appropriately named the laughing hyena. But don’t think that this creature laughs as you do, because of something funny or because it is tickled. The hyena’s laugh is more of a mixture of a weird howl and a chuckling gurgle. But these […]

The odd-looking flamingo, which appears to be all legs and all neck, has a boat-shaped beak which gives it the most unusual habit of eating with its head upside down. The flamingo lives near muddy lakes and lagoons, and gets its food from the waters there. When the flamingo feels hungry, it lowers its beak […]

The owl is not a wise animal. For its size, the owl has a small brain, and in fact, is not as smart as geese, crows, and ravens. However, from ancient times, people have used the owl as a symbol of wisdom. The very serious look on the owl’s face might have given people the […]

The snail has an unusual body sticking out from the underside of its coiled shell. This body is actually a strong muscle called a foot. A snail’s foot is made up of many tiny muscles which help it to crawl about in an up-and-down, or wavelike, motion. The waves start at the front of the […]

Even though octopuses belong to a group of shellfish called mollusks, they have no outside shell. A tough skin, called a mantle, covers the octopus’ body. This mantle contains small bags of pigment, or coloring matter, which are connected to the animal’s nervous system. Any outside stimulus that excites the octopus makes its skin change […]

Although an octopus has eight arms, or tentacles, it does not use them for swimming. These tentacles are only for crawling along the ocean floor and for catching food. In order to move through the water, the octopus draws water into a cavity in its body, then squirts it out in jets through a tube, […]

Tiny, jellylike sea creatures, called polyps, have actually built reefs and entire islands. These cylinder-shaped, 1-inch wide polyps live in large colonies on the ocean floor and attach themselves to each other. Polyps remove a chemical called calcium from the sea water and use it to build a shell, or outer skeleton, of limestone around […]

Many large grazing animals, such as rhinoceroses and buffaloes, form strange partnerships with small birds. These birds, cattle egrets and tick birds are carried about on the backs of larger animals. There, they perform an important service by eating ticks and fleas that otherwise would suck the blood from the animal and cause dangerous diseases. […]

No. Cows do not start producing milk until after they have given birth to their calves. Until that time, they are called heifers. When heifers reach the age of 2-2.5 years, they are then mature enough to produce their young. A cow carries her unborn young for 283 days. This is called the gestation period. […]

Yes and no. If you mean does it hum with its voice like a person, then the answer is no. But the hummingbird does produce a humming that comes from the rapid movement of its wings in the air. Even though this bird is the smallest in the world, it can move its wings so […]

Perhaps you think it might be the ferocious lion or the enormous elephant, but guess again. It’s actually the tiny ant, which may be as small as 1/16 of an inch or as long as 2 inches. Whatever its size, this tiny insect can carry up to 50 times its own weight. What is probably […]

Scientists have discovered and named about 1,000,000 different creatures in the animal world, from insects and worms to reptiles and humans. Of these, more than 800,000 are insects! Each year, from 7,100 to 10,000 new insects are discovered, but scientists believe that anywhere from 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 are still waiting to be discovered. These small, […]

The amazing, well-trained homing pigeon has been known to travel more than 1,500 miles from its home over strange territory, yet it always returns to its home loft. The pigeon has a natural homing instinct, but it does get special training from the time it is three months old. Its keeper releases it a short […]

Even though the ostrich is the largest bird in the world, weighing up to 350 pounds and standing about 8 feet tall, it has an amazing ability to run. Because a bird this size cannot fly, nature has given it the power to reach top speeds of nearly 60 miles an hour when trying to […]

The small hairy rodents known as marmots that live on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains have an amazing warning system against attack from the sky. These rabbit-sized rodents live in family groups in colonies, with each family digging out and living in its own burrow on the slope of the mountain. Marmots lead busy, […]

A snake’s tongue looks like a long, sharp, slender forked finger. People have long believed that when a snake flicks its tongue in and out of its mouth rapidly, it is preparing to attack. But this is not so. Actually, the snake’s tongue is harmless. The flicking is only a snake’s way of feeling, touching, […]

The strange-looking round fish called the electric ray has a method of catching its food that is unlike any other fish. On each side of its soft head, the ray has two organs which give off electrical shocks. The ray butts, or hits against its prey, other fish, with these organs and either stuns them […]

The giant king cobra is one of the deadliest creatures in the world. The adult has enormous poison sacs and its venom kills in a very short time. The king cobra will attack even if it hasn’t been provoked. In Asia, where these snakes are found, king cobras have been known to kill huge elephants. […]

The giant anaconda snake of South America, a 200-pound member of the boa family, can swallow a pig or even a deer whole at one meal. The snake coils its 28-foot-long body around the animal and squeezes tightly to stop its victim’s heart. Once the victim is dead, the snake swallows it whole. During the […]

Have you ever collected shells at the beach, especially the large, flat, rounded ones that many people use as ashtrays? Well, those shells once belonged to the sea creature known as the clam. At one time, two of those shells were fastened together and formed the home of the fleshy creature that lived inside. For […]

The inside shells of oysters and other shell-forming mollusks are covered with a shiny, lustrous substance called nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Only tropical sea pearl oysters have the beautifully colored nacre necessary to make valuable pearls. Other edible clams and oysters also make pearls. But we would not recognize them as pearls, and they have no […]

The salmon is this determined navigator. Not only will it travel great distances to reach the place where it was born, but it swims against strong currents while doing so. After salmon are spawned, or hatched from their eggs, in a stream, they swim out to the ocean, where within a year or two, they […]

One of the oldest and strangest ways of fishing is still used today by the Maori tribe of New Zealand. The fishermen wade out into the clear waters of streams or lakes, making sure that they move quietly so the water doesn’t ripple. The fish in these waters dart in and out of rocks or […]

The family of fish commonly known as “flying fish” have very strange powers indeed! When these fish are trying to escape their enemies, they throw themselves out of the water through the motion of their strong tails. Once they are in the air, they spread out their large fins which carry them through the air […]

The harmless-looking silver and brown speckled piranha is the deadliest fish in the world. This blood-thirsty fish of South America’s Amazon River has jaws containing triangular-shaped teeth as sharp as razor blades. A school of these meat-eaters can strip an animal or a human being down to a skeleton in just a few minutes. Because […]

Hundreds of species of eels are found in streams and rivers of North America and Europe, but the amazing thing about them is that all these eels were born in the same place and will die in the same place! That place is a calm area of the Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea. Once […]

The ten-armed squid, which is a cousin of the octopus, has an unusual way of escaping from its enemies. If the discs on its arms cannot hold onto its enemy through suction, the squid spurts out a dark fluid from its “ink sac” and sets up an underwater smoke screen. With its enemy in the […]

The frogfish is an unusual creature because of the way it catches its food. Long threads that look like fishing lines grow out of the frogfish’s head. At the end of these threads are barbs, resembling the notched ends of a fishing hook. As the frogfish waits for its prey, it lets these threads float […]

The Australian walking fish is most unusual. In the water, it swims just like any other ordinary fish. But on land, this fish behaves as if it belongs there, for it actually walks! Its gills are bent in such a way that it can stroll out of the water and even climb up into the […]

Some fish, like guppies, give birth to live young, but most fish lay eggs. In spring and summer, when the water is warm enough for eggs to hatch, the male and female fish send signals to each other with their fins or their body. At this signal, the female lays her eggs in the water […]

The lamprey is a long, fishlike creature which resembles an eel. Lampreys differ from fish in that they have no limbs (fish have fins) and practically no scales. The lamprey secretes a slime, which makes it almost impossible to grasp. The most outstanding feature of the lamprey, however, is its mouth. This animal has no […]

However, it is these tentacles that make them so dangerous, for on them are stinging cells called nematocysts. When the umbrella-like jellyfish moves through the water, its tentacles drift along behind it. Jellyfish do not attack their prey rapidly like sharks and other fish. They might slowly propel themselves along, but usually they lie in […]

Most fish die very quickly if they are taken out of water, but the unusual eel-shaped lungfish, also called the mudfish, can survive for many months out of water. The lungfish has gills, like other fish, that it uses to breathe while in the water. But it also has an air bladder, which works very […]

When you think of sleep, you think of eyelids closing over your eyes. But fish have no eyelids, so they have nothing to close over their eyes. Yet fish DO sleep. Most fish sleep by keeping very still in the water. In this way, their bodies rest, just as yours does while you are asleep. […]

Billions of years ago, birds were part of the reptile family and had scales covering their body. Over the ages, the scales evolved into the feathers that help birds fly and keep them warm. Feathers come in different sizes and textures. An owl’s feathers are soft and long, so it can fly quietly but slowly. […]

The armadillo is a small mammal whose upper body is encased in armor. In fact, armadillo means “little armored thing” in Spanish. The armor is composed of many bony plates which overlap. These bony plates are covered with scales. Armadillos use their armor for protection since they cannot run fast, bite hard, or fight well. […]

The pelican has a long beak and an enormous elastic pouch connected to its underside. The pelican uses its pouch to feed itself and its young. Living by the shore, this bird’s diet consists mainly of fish. The pouch is a very efficient fish net. If the pelican passes a shoal of fish, it puts […]

Penguins are birds who lost the ability to fly millions of years ago. These birds are such good swimmers that they seem to fly along in the water. They are as graceful and swift underwater as other birds are in the air. Penguins can attain speeds of 15 miles an hour, using their flippers as […]

Lemmings are small rodents, only 4 – 5 inches long, that live in most Arctic and Subarctic regions of the world. Legend has made them famous for their death plunge into the sea. In Norway and other Scandinavian countries, large numbers of these animals make periodic migrations from their mountain homes, eating everything edible in […]

Different animals have different ways of protecting themselves from their enemies. The snowshoe rabbit is protected by its coloring. This animal is brown like the earth in summer, then becomes white like the snow in winter. Actually, the snowshoe rabbit is really a hare; its correct name is the varying hare. Its varying, or changing, […]

There are anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 bees in a hive. Of these, 25,000 to 40,000 are female worker bees. There is only one queen in a hive. The rest of the bees are drones, or male bees. Each group of bees has certain tasks within the colony. The queen’s only responsibility is to lay […]

Bees sting in self-defense. Stinging is their only means of protecting themselves. Female, or worker, bees have barbed stingers at the end of their bodies. When a female thrusts her stinger into flesh, barbs hold her onto the flesh and the stinger pulls out of her body. The bee dies several hours after stinging. Thus, […]

All bees live on honey, which they make themselves. Only honeybees make honey that people can use. These bees are the only insects which provide food for humans. Bees also make wax to build their nests, and help nature by pollinating flowers as they fly from one to another. Making honey is the most important […]