Category Zoology

Safety in Numbers

A herd of baboons hunts for food at the edge of a grassy plain in Africa. Each baboon is looking and listening every second. There might be a lion creeping through the grass towards the herd!

If a baboon saw or heard something, it would give a loud grunt. Baboon grunts sound almost like someone yelling “Hah!” Then all the baboons would hurry to climb trees. Because of one baboon’s warning, all the baboons would be safe.

Some animals live together in herds. They are safer that way. An animal by itself may not see or hear the enemy that creeps towards it. But if there are many animals watching, there are many more chances that one animal will see or smell danger and warn the others.

Herds of baboons, zebras, antelopes, and deer run when they sense danger. But sometimes a whole herd of animals will fight an enemy.

Sometimes the safest place to be is in a herd. There is safety in numbers!

Animal Pretenders

Sometimes, in the world of animals, it’s eat or be eaten. To stay safe from predators, some animals hide in clever ways or pretend to be something else.

It’s hard to see a green grasshopper on a leaf, a striped tiger in tall grass, or a brown lizard on the bark of a tree. Their colour makes them hard to see in their habitats. Some insects are also experts at hide-and-seek. Their bodies are shaped like leaves or twigs, or even like bird droppings. These ways of blending into the background are called camouflage. It makes the animals hard to find, so they are safe from predators.

Other animals are actors they trick predators into leaving them alone. When the Australian frilled lizard is frightened, it unfolds a big flap of skin around its neck and opens its mouth wide. The small, harmless lizard suddenly looks big and dangerous. The opossum and the eastern hognose snake lie on their back and “play dead” when they feel threatened.

How well some animals can hide or act often decides whether they will be able to look for food or become food themselves!

Animal Armour

If you saw a pangolin you might say it looked like a pine cone with legs and a long tail.

A pangolin is one of the animals that is protected by armour. It’s covered with scales like those on pine cone, only bigger. When a pangolin is frightened, it rolls itself into ball. Then it tucks its head between its legs and covers its stomach with its tail. Its sharp-edged scales stick up. Not even a tiger would dare to bite through it.

The armadillo is another animal in armour. An armadillo is born with soft skin. But as it grows, its skin becomes covered with small, flat pieces of bone. This bony armour covers much of the armadillo’s body. The armadillo protects itself by rolling up into a hard, bony ball that even a wolf finds hard to bite.

Porcupines, hedgehogs, porcupine fish, and sea urchins wear a sort of armour, too. Their bodies are covered with sharp spines that keep other animals from biting them. These animals can’t run fast or fight well. But wearing armour helps they stay alive.

Amazing Animals

Do you know of a mammal that lays eggs? A bright blue lizard with stubby legs? Or a fish that can walk on land? There are millions of different animals, and some are truly fantastic.

The platypus and the echidna are mammals that seem to be part bird. The platypus looks like it has the body of a beaver and the bill and feet of a duck. The echidna looks like a porcupine with a pointy snout. Female platypuses and echidnas feed their young with milk, like all mammal females, but they also lay eggs, like all female birds.

The bright blue lizard called an ajolote looks like a worm with legs. It uses its two tiny front legs to crawl and dig holes.

The walking fish will drown if it stays underwater too long. It has to come to the top of the water to gulp air. Sometimes it even crawls out of the water. It pulls itself along with its fins.

Arthropod of the Sea

Many kinds of arthropods live in the sea. Lobsters, shrimps, crabs, and barnacles are all arthropods that live in the sea. They are called crustaceans. That means animals with crusts. Every part of a lobster’s body is covered with a crust of hard skin, like armour. Crustaceans have hard shells, 10 leg and 4 feelers, or antennae. Because they live mostly in the water, crustaceans breathe with gills, like fish.

Lobsters use eight of their ten legs for walking along ocean floor. The other two legs are used like arms. Each arm ends in a fierce-looking pincer, or claw. Shrimps look like tiny lobsters. Some kinds of shrimps are so small they can be seen only with a microscope.

Crabs have flat bodies. The tail is tucked forwards under the rest of the body. Instead of walking forwards, crabs scuttle sideways along the seashore or in shallow rock pools. Barnacles are crustaceans that fasten themselves to rocks or the bottoms of ships. They are closed up inside their shells, and only their legs stick out. They wiggle their legs to pull in food that floats past in the water.

The Web Weavers

Many kinds of spiders spin webs to catch flying insects. Each kind of spider makes its own special kind of web, from small, sticky traps to large, tightly woven nets. Orb spiders make webs with threads that stretch from the centre like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Black widow spiders make tangled webs. Grass spiders make webs like little sheets.

Spider webs are made of silk that comes out of the spider’s body. The silk is a liquid that forms a thin, strong thread when air touches it. After a spider spins its web, it hangs underneath it or hides nearby. An insect caught in the web shakes the web as it struggles, telling the spider that dinner is ready!

Some spiders have other ways to catch their food. Wolf spiders and lynx spiders chase insects. Jumping spiders catch insects by jumping on them. Some spiders even like to fish! They wait beside a stream or pond and catch water insects that swim past.