Animals

You may have heard the expression “ferret out,” meaning to chase something out of hiding. But did you know that this word comes directly from an animal? The ferret is a relative of the weasel, and most ferrets are about the size of a cat. Before modern rat poisons and traps were invented, ferrets were … Read more

A donkey and an ass aren’t quite the same thing. An ass is a smaller relative of the horse, with longer ears and a shorter mane. A donkey is a domesticated ass. So all donkeys are asses, but not all asses are donkeys. The word “ass” is much older than the word “donkey.” The Latin … Read more

The creature called the mongoose isn’t a goose, but a mammal that looks something like a mink or weasel. The animal, a native of India, gets it confusing name from an Indian word that sounds like “mongoose.” Although only about two feet long when fully grown, and gentle enough to serve as a pet in … Read more

The mouse deer is closer in size to a mouse than to a deer, but it’s actually a deer! This tiny resident of Southeast Asia has the shape and all the markings of an ordinary deer, but it rarely grows more than one foot high. Imagine a full-grown deer that you can hold in the … Read more

The notion that a cat can fall from a great height and live probably sounds like a superstition, like the idea that cats have nine lives. But, to some extent, the notion is true. Cats can fall from very high places and survive. Why? Because a cat’s sense of balance enables it to always land … Read more

The kangaroo can’t run at all, or even walk, but he sure can jump! This Australian mammal can leap 15 or 20 feet in one bound, and can race along in these leaps at speeds up to 40 miles per hour! And a kangaroo can leap along like this for 20 miles without stopping to … Read more

Bulls don’t really get angry when they see red, because they can’t see red! Bulls are colorblind, and see everything in shades of black, gray, and white. Then, why does a bull attack a waving red cape? It attacks the cape because of its waving motion, not its color. To a bull, a green cape … Read more

The seal called the sea elephant may have gotten his name because of his size, for at three tons he’s the largest of all seals. But there’s another reason why this seal is like an elephant, he has a trunk! Most of the time, the sea elephant’s trunk-like nose hangs down over his mouth. Sea … Read more

The Alaskan seal is probably the best long-distance swimmer in the animal kingdom. In summer, these seals raise their young on islands off the coast of Alaska. When colder weather arrives, the seals take to the water and swim to warmer seas. They may remain in the water for eight months without once touching land, … Read more

The frog is an amphibian, an animal that stands somewhere between a fish and a reptile because it can live both in water and on land. Toads, newts, and salamanders are also amphibians. Frogs lay their eggs in water. When a young frog is born, it’s very much like a fish: it has gills on … Read more

In spring and summer, a country pond is abuzz with the loud croaking of frogs. But when winter comes and the pond freezes over, the sound of frogs disappears. It may seem that all the frogs have died. Actually, when cold weather comes, most frogs bury themselves in the soft mud at the bottom of … Read more

Frogs and toads are the same in many ways. Both are amphibians, cold-blooded creatures that spend part of their life in water and part on land. Both eat insects, lay their eggs in ponds, and begin their lives as tadpoles, swimming in the water before emerging and beginning their adult lives as lung-breathing creatures. But … Read more

A creature that lived during the age of the dinosaurs, the pterodactyl, was not really a dinosaur, it was a flying reptile. The pterodactyl flew by means of thin wings made of skin that stretched between its hind legs and one very long finger of each forelimb. Some of these flying reptiles were only the … Read more

It’s hard to say how smart or stupid an animal is, because animals may show their intelligence in ways that we don’t recognize. But if the size of an animal’s brain in relation to the size of its body is any sign of intelligence, then the stupidest animal that ever lived was probably the dinosaur … Read more

The creature with this talent is the horned toad, a reptile that isn’t a toad at all, but rather a type of lizard that lives in the deserts of the western United States and Mexico. Most horned toads are from three to six inches long, with sharp hornlike spikes on their head. When one of … Read more

The huge reptiles called dinosaurs began to flourish on earth 180 million ears ago. But all these creatures seemingly died out about 60 million years ago. Why the dinosaurs vanished suddenly, after ruling the earth for some 120 million years, is a question that still puzzles scientists today. The most probable explanation is that the … Read more

You probably think of all dinosaurs as huge creatures. But dinosaurs actually existed in a great variety of sizes. Most were from 25 to 35 feet long, and weighed from five to ten tons. Some were the size of a rhinoceros, and a few early forms were no bigger than a chicken. One winged dinosaur … Read more

Until just a few years ago, scientists were convinced that the dinosaurs who lived on earth many millions of years ago were reptiles, related to modern snakes and lizards. But recent discoveries have made these same scientists wonder exactly what kind of creature the dinosaur really was. First of all, they still do not know … Read more

Because most dinosaurs were so huge, we think of them as vicious meat-eaters roaming the earth in search of prey. Actually, most dinosaurs were completely harmless to other creatures. Only one dinosaur in 20 was a meat-eater. The rest were vegetarians, eating only plants that they scooped up from swampy water. Some giant dinosaurs didn’t … Read more

Pit vipers are members of a family of poisonous snakes found mostly in the Americas. They include the rattlesnake, copperhead, and cottonmouth. All pit vipers are equipped with a form of “radar” that helps them find their food! A pit viper has two small holes, called pits, just behind its nostrils. These pits look like … Read more

When a chicken or any other bird lays an egg, the egg stays the same size (even though the bird inside is growing) until it’s ready to hatch. But a snake egg grows along with the developing unborn snake inside it. The shell of a snake egg is not hard like a bird’s egg; it … Read more

There is a reptile called the flying snake, but there is no snake that can really fly. The flying snake lives in trees, and when danger threatens, it can flatten its body and leap from the tree, gliding to another tree or to the ground. The snake’s flattened body acts like a parachute, so that … Read more

As a snake grows, its skin doesn’t grow with it, so the snake has to shed its skin every now and then, and grow a new one. Some snakes shed once or twice a year; others shed as much as six times in one summer. As the time for shedding grows near, the snake’s outer … Read more

A snake can’t close its eyes because it has no eyelids. Instead of a movable lid to protect its eyeball, a snake has a hard, transparent shell over its eyes, almost like a pane of glass. This shell protects the eye, yet doesn’t block the snake’s vision. But a snake never closes its eyes. So … Read more

There is one poisonous snake that rarely its victims; instead, it squirts its venom through the air! This snake is the spitting cobra, from Africa. The spitting cobra can shoot its poison from venom glands inside its mouth and strike another animal up to a foot away. And the snake’s aim is very good: It … Read more

Actually, very few snakes have poison, or venom, with which to kill prey or attackers. Of the 3,000 different kinds of land snakes known to scientists, only about 250 of these have venom. This means that only about one snake in 12 is Poisonous. Of the snakes that are poisonous, many are either very rare, … Read more

A small bird that lives in India rightly deserves its name, the tailorbird. When the female tailorbird is ready to lay her eggs, the male tailorbird finds two big leaves hanging together on a branch and uses his bill to poke holes in the edges of the leaves. Then he uses string-like pieces of plants … Read more

You’ve probably heard about birds that fly across an entire ocean when they travel to or from their winter homes. But have you ever wondered how these birds get fresh water to drink during their journey? The answer is simple: They don’t have to drink fresh water, but survive well enough on salt water. People … Read more

Turkeys have never been raised in Turkey. In fact. the turkey wasn’t known in Europe until it was discovered by early colonists in North America. But in a way, the turkey was named after the nation of Turkey! Here’s how it happened: When European settlers first saw the turkey in America, they thought it looked … Read more

Although most of the parakeets owned by Americans today were born in pet stores or parakeet nurseries here, long ago, these colorful, noisy birds lived in the jungle. The parakeet belongs to the same large group of birds as the parrot. These birds live in most tropical regions of the world, especially in Africa, India, … Read more

“When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” is the title of a popular old song. These small birds are well known for their winter and summer homes, in South America and in California. When it’s winter in California, these birds live in South America, where winter is the warm season. When summer arrives in South … Read more

This happens because oil and water don’t mix. When a duck is swimming or out in the rain, the bird secretes an oil from glands near its tail. With its bill, the duck rubs the oil over its body. The oil keeps the water from soaking through the duck’s feathers, making the bird “waterproof.”

All female birds lay eggs, but the number of eggs in each laying, or clutch, varies greatly from one kind of bird to another. For example, most sea birds lay only one or two eggs, since the nests of these birds are rarely attacked by enemies. But ducks, geese, and other waterfowl that are often … Read more

Almost all young birds get their food directly from their mother, and the penguin is no exception. But the mother penguin not only provides her young with food, she partially digests it for them too! The mother penguin swims through the frigid waters of the Antarctic searching for the fish and shrimp that penguins like … Read more

Considering how small and light they are, birds are very big eaters. Since birds do everything quickly, they fly quickly, they run quickly, even their hearts beat quickly, birds need a lot of food energy to keep going. Most birds eat half their weight in food every day. That’s like a 100-pound person eating 50 … Read more

When a robin is searching for worms in the ground, it turns its head and leans downward. Because of this position, most people believe that the bird is straining to “hear” the worm. But birds have their eyes on the sides of their head, and therefore must turn their head to the side to see … Read more

The Helena’s hummingbird, a native of Cuba, is so small that you could mistake it for an insect. This tiny creature is only 21/4 inches long, including the tail and the bill. Of this 21/4 inches, its body is only a half- inch long. It would take 18 of these birds to weigh one ounce, … Read more

On land, the fastest creatures in the animal kingdom are the horse, which can run at 50 miles per hour, and the cheetah, which can top 70 miles per hour. But that’s nothing compared to the speed of some birds. Even a common small bird like the sparrow can sail along at 50 miles per … Read more

Most birds don’t fly very high, usually under 3,000 feet, as they go about their business of looking for food and building nests. But some birds fly very high while they’re traveling to or from their winter homes. Geese are the highest-flying birds of all. Those in the Himalaya Mountains in Asia fly at heights … Read more

Almost all birds have keen vision, and birds of prey have the keenest vision of all. These birds cruise through the air looking for worms, small animals, or other birds on the ground, and must be able to see tiny creatures far below them. Of all birds of prey, the eagle probably has the best … Read more

We can move our eyes back and forth or up and down, but birds cannot move their eyes at all. To make up for this, most birds can turn their head around much farther and much more quickly than people can. Some birds can even turn their head completely around so they can look behind … Read more

A rooster is, of course, a male chicken, and only hens, or female chickens, lay eggs. But every now and then, a disease may cause a rooster to change its gender and become a hen, or vice-versa. Some of these roosters-turned-hens have actually laid eggs. But this still does not mean that a rooster can … Read more

A baby bird doesn’t start breathing until just before it breaks out of its egg. How then does air get inside the egg for the bird’s first few breaths? Though you can’t see them, there are tiny holes in the shell of a bird’s egg. These holes allow air to fill up part of the … Read more

The ostrich and the penguin are two familiar birds that cannot fly, but they’re not the only two. The emu and the cassowary, two large birds that live in Australia, and a South American bird called the rhea, are also flightless. And so is a smaller bird, the kiwi, that is found in New Zealand. … Read more

Fossils are the remains of animals or plants that have been preserved in rock formations for many centuries. Scientists know from fossils, for example, that a certain kind of fish, the coelacanth, lived in the ocean more than 350 million years ago. This fish was thought to have disappeared about 70 million A years ago, … Read more

When we think of a rodent, we usually picture a mouse or a squirrel or maybe a beaver. But did you know there’s a rodent that grows to the size of the largest dog? This creature is called the capybara, and lives in tropical regions of South America. The capybara looks a lot like a … Read more

Today, rats can be found everywhere in the world. But it wasn’t always like that. The rat is a native of Asia, and was unknown in Europe during ancient times, except in ports where ships from Asia docked. The first kind of rat to reach Europe was the black rat, which came from southern Asia … Read more

Fish get their oxygen directly from the water. They have organs called gills that take oxygen out of the water, just as your lungs take oxygen out of the air. But water can run out of oxygen, just as air can. So fish can suffocate in water, which means they can drown in water. These … Read more

Have you ever noticed that the bottoms of ships or the supports of piers are often covered with white, shell-like substances with sharp edges? Perhaps you’ve even cut yourself on them while handling a rope or barrel that was in the water. These white substances are produced by tiny sea creatures known as barnacles. Barnacles … Read more

A jellyfish looks like a floating sac of jelly, and if you’ve ever seen one, you know how it got the jelly part of its name. But the fish part of the name is less deserved, for the jellyfish is not a fish at all. Fish have skeletons, blood, and brains, but the jellyfish, like … Read more

When something is “scalloped,” it is shaped with a series of rounded edges. If you’ve ever eaten the seafood known as scallops, you may have wondered how this creature gave its name to a scallop shape, since the food looks nothing like the shape. Scallops are actually mollusks, related to the clam and oyster, and … Read more

Most crabs are small enough to hold in your hand, ranging from one inch to eight inches across. But there is one kind of crab, the giant spider crab found in the waters off Japan, that is so big, its legs can span a distance of 12 1/2 feet. Some of these monsters stand three … Read more

You may have seen the odd-looking creature known as the horseshoe crab washed up on a beach. Its body is covered by an armored shell with pointed barbs, and it has a long tail. But the horseshoe crab is not horseshoe-shaped, and it’s not a real crab either! All real crabs are crustaceans, like lobsters … Read more

The spider crab not only plants its own seaweed garden, but it plants the garden right on its own body! This crab snatches pieces of seaweed, cuts them into smaller pieces, and attaches the cuttings to the hairs on its legs and shell. The seaweed cuttings take root on the crab, and eventually grow to … Read more

Goldfish are small, colorful fish related to the carp. In nature, goldfish are usually greenish-brown and not gold. But some fish lack dark pigment, and they’re gold-colored. Originally, goldfish were found in China, mainly in rivers, lakes, and ponds. The Chinese liked the looks of the gold-colored fish, and began to breed them for use … Read more

If you were walking along a California beach and saw a group of fish dancing on their tails in the sand, you might think your eyes were playing tricks on you. But a small, sardine-like fish called the grunion performs just such a dance on the beach every year! In spring and summer, schools of … Read more

Tropical fish owners may think that the tiny, colorful guppy must be the smallest fish on earth. But there’s a fish that’s even smaller than the guppy, and its name sounds almost the same, the goby. The tiny goby, a very rare fish, lives in lakes in the Philippines. Even the full-grown adult gobies, which … Read more

When you think of creatures with a pouch, you probably think of the kangaroo. But there’s a fish that has a pouch for its young, and even more surprising, the pouch is found on the male! It’s the male sea horse. The male sea horse has a small pouch near his tail. The female sea … Read more

Even though the male and female of most animals are the same size, there is one creature that shows such a remarkable difference in size between the male and female that you’d never guess they were even the same fish. The very tiny male angler bites into the skin of the larger female, and soon … Read more

Deep below the ocean, where sunlight cannot reach and where the water pressure is so great that no person could survive, creatures take on weird shapes and develop strange habits. One of the weirdest of these creatures is the deep-sea angler, a small black fish with long, sharp teeth. What makes this fish so weird … Read more

The large group of fish known as flatfish has a most unusual growth pattern in its eyes. These fish include such common food fish as the flounder, sole, and halibut. When a flatfish is born, it has one eye on each side of its head, just as all other fish do. But as it grows, … Read more

Since sunlight never reaches the deeper parts of the sea, these regions are always totally dark. Yet fish live here and swim about without bumping into each other. How is this so? Well, fish actually “see” without their eyes; they use other sensory organs. The next time you catch a fish, look for a line … Read more

The favorite meal of the starfish is a juicy oyster. But the starfish’s mouth, which is located under its body, present a problem, it is smaller than an oyster. And the oyster presents another problem, it is protected by a hard shell. So when a starfish finds an oyster, it climbs on top of it … Read more

That bold act is accomplished by the sea hedgehog. Getting its name from the land hedgehog, a small insect-eating mammal with sharp spikes on its back, much like a porcupine, the sea hedgehog is a small, roundish sea creature related to the starfish. It has spines on its skin that look like the hedgehog’s spikes, … Read more

Many people wear bifocal eyeglasses, which have two different kinds of glass in each eye: the lower half for reading and the upper half for looking at things farther away. But there’s a tiny tropical fish, the anableps, that has eyes which work just like bifocal eyeglasses. The anableps spends a lot of its time … Read more

To divers, the underwater world is silent, and we call the ocean the “silent deep.” But to a fish, the underwater world isn’t silent at all, for fish can “hear” other fish moving through the water and even “hear” the water itself moving. Fish do not have ears, as animals do, but they do have … Read more

Fish don’t have voices as most animals do, but they can make noise through an organ called an air bladder. The air bladder acts primarily as a “float” to keep the fish at a certain level in the water by filling up with gas from the fish’s blood. When the fish wants to swim toward … Read more

No one knows for sure how many living things there are on earth. But scientists have estimated that the number of plants and animals alive on our planet today would come to a total of 3 with 33 zeroes after it. And the most common of these creatures one you probably never see, the nematode … Read more

Well, yes and no. The sponge you now use in the kitchen to wash dishes is probably made from plastic or rubber, and not from the sea animals called sponges. But before these artificial sponges were invented, people used real sponges which were caught in the sea. Yet even these “sponges” weren’t really animals; they … Read more

This underwater borrower is the hermit crab. Because the hermit crab has a soft part on its body that is not protected by its shell, it borrows the shell of another creature to form a “house,” which it carries around on its back! A young hermit crab finds the shell of a dead snail or … Read more

It’s hard to imagine a fish that doesn’t swim “lying on its side,” with its head in front and its tail behind, moving its body and its fins to glide forward through the water. But there’s one fish that swims “standing up,” with its head above its tail, the sea horse. You never thought that … Read more

You probably don’t think of a lobster as anything like an insect . . . especially when you’re eating it. But lobsters and insects are very similar in structure: Both have hard skeletons covering and protecting their soft bodies; both have many legs with movable joints; both have bodies divided into segments; both have antennae; … Read more

The whale is a mammal, not a fish, so we cannot count it as the world’s largest fish. That honor goes to the whale shark, a fish that often grows to a length of 45 to 50 feet, and weighs over 30,000 pound’s. The biggest whale shark ever caught was 59 feet long and weighed … Read more

Some South American beetles grow over 5 1/2 inches long, and one tropical stick-shaped insect has been known to grow over a foot in length. But the heaviest or “biggest” insect on earth is the African Goliath beetle, which grows up to six inches long and may weigh over 3 1/2 ounces. The body of … Read more

In nature, camouflage means a disguise employed by animals or plants to conceal themselves from their enemies. And there is no better camouflage in the animal world than that used by an insect known as the walking leaf. This creature of disguise, which lives on the island of Ceylon, near India, spends its life in … Read more

Most birds fly like airplanes, soaring straight ahead or swooping from side to side. But there’s one bird that can also move up and down, or hover in the same spot, just like a helicopter. That bird is the hummingbird. It accomplishes this feat by beating its wings 70 times a second! The hummingbird does … Read more

A human circulatory system includes a heart, millions of veins and arteries, and other blood vessels. But an insect’s circulatory system is much different, and so is its blood, even though that system also sends blood to all the tissues in its body. An insect has only one major blood vessel, a vein that runs … Read more

Bedbugs are wingless, reddish-brown insects about 3/16 of an inch long. They’re called bedbugs because they often live in beds and mattresses, and come out at night to bite sleeping people. During the day, bedbugs may hide in the folds of a mattress, in cracks in a bedstead, beneath loose wallpaper, or wherever else they … Read more

Spiders normally build webs to snare their prey, but there’s one kind of spider that has another, and quite an unusual, way to catch its meal. This creature is called the trap-door spider. At home in the deserts of the western United States and Mexico, the trap-door spider spends most of its time in the … Read more

We commonly think of all insects and spiders as “bugs.” But spiders aren’t insects at all. All insects have six legs, while spiders have eight. Insects have three body sections: the head, the chest, and the stomach. But the spider has only two, with the head and the chest combined to form one section. Spiders … Read more

Certain kinds of ants, called sanguinary ants, raid the nests of other ants and carry away their larvae. When the captured ants become adults, the sanguinary ants force them to work as slaves, chewing food for their captors! Another type of sanguinary ants send their queen into the nest of other ants. The queen kills … Read more

The word cent comes from a Latin word that means “one hundred,” so you might think that the many-legged creature called the centipede has 100 legs. But it’s only a rare centipede that has exactly 100 legs. All centipedes have one pair of legs for each body segment; so if a centipede has 20 body … Read more

Early in this century, a scientist claimed that the tiny insect called the deer botfly was the fastest living thing on earth, flying at speeds of 818 miles per hour. That’s faster then the speed of sound! You may still read about the deer botfly’s tremendous speed in some books, but scientists today know that … Read more

In order to live, all animals need to take in oxygen and send it into their blood stream. Land creatures use their lungs to take this oxygen from the air, and fish use their gills. But insects have neither lungs nor gills! So how do they breathe? The body of an insect is filled with … Read more

Inside a bee hive, there may be more than 50,000 bees crowded together, each busily going about the work of making honey or tending to the young. So you can imagine how hard it is for fresh air to reach all the bees inside the hive. But bees have developed an ingenious way to accomplish … Read more

The dragonfly, a large airplane-shaped insect that skims across the surface of lakes, ponds, and rivers surely looks dangerous, with a long, thin “stinger” in the back of its body. But the dragonfly cannot sting. The “stinger” is actually the slender rear part of its body. The only creatures that have to worry about the … Read more

The idea of eating insects doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it? But insects are actually quite nutritious, and people in some parts of the world do eat them. Primitive people in eastern Asia sometimes mash termites together into a paste and eat them, while roasted locusts or grasshoppers are part of the food supply in … Read more

During the summer, mosquitoes seem to be swarming everywhere, but in winter they vanish. It may appear that they’ve all died. But if you think about it, that couldn’t be true, if it were, where would the mosquitoes come from the next spring? Mosquito eggs hatch plant and animal matter in water, and the worm-like … Read more

The snail must be the slowest-moving animal on earth. Some snails can crawl more than 150 feet in an hour, but among ordinary land snails, the fastest ever timed took three minutes to crawl just two feet. This equals a speed of only 40 feet per hour, or about 7/1000 of a mile per hour! … Read more