Turtle or Tortoise?

How can you tell between a turtle and a tortoise? You can’t separate the two exactly, because a tortoise will always be a turtle too. The turtle group includes tortoises. There are, however, certain characteristics that make tortoises special turtles, so not all turtles can be tortoises. The most important factor that distinguishes the tortoises is that they are not as enthusiastic about water as other turtles. Most turtles live mostly in the water but tortoises only go for a bath every once in a while or go to water to fill up their tanks. They live on the dry land and eat mostly plants. They dig holes for home and don’t like to migrate.

There is another small group somewhat between the two that is called the terrapin. Terrapins may live in fresh or partially salty water like saltwater or mangrove marshes and may spend significant time on the land too. Of course, each animal is suited to its environment. The tortoises generally have bigger shells to store a bigger water tank and sturdy walking and digging legs while some sea turtles may have slim, water-dynamic shells and paddles for front legs. The largest turtle of all is the leatherback sea turtle and the largest tortoise is the galapagos tortoise.

The Giant Panda

                                          The Giant Panda

The giant panda has an insatiable appetite for bamboo. A typical animal eats half the day—a full 12 out of every 24 hours—and relieves itself dozens of times a day. It takes 28 pounds (12.5 kilograms) of bamboo to satisfy a giant panda's daily dietary needs, and it hungrily plucks the stalks with elongated wrist bones that function rather like thumbs. Pandas will sometimes eat birds or rodents as well.

Wild pandas live only in remote, mountainous regions in central China. These high bamboo forests are cool and wet—just as pandas like it. They may climb as high as 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) to feed on higher slopes in the summer season.

Pandas are often seen eating in a relaxed sitting posture, with their hind legs stretched out before them. They may appear sedentary, but they are skilled tree-climbers and efficient swimmers.

Giant pandas are solitary. They have a highly developed sense of smell that males use to avoid each other and to find females for mating in the spring. After a five-month pregnancy, females give birth to a cub or two, though they cannot care for both twins. The blind infants weigh only 5 ounces (142 grams) at birth and cannot crawl until they reach three months of age. They are born white, and develop their much loved coloring later.

There are only about 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild. Perhaps 100 pandas live in zoos, where they are always among the most popular attractions. Much of what we know about pandas comes from study of these zoo animals, because their wild cousins are so rare and elusive.

Fast Facts

Type: Mammal

Diet:Omnivore

Average life span in the wild:20 years

Size: 4 to 5 ft (1.2 to 1.5 m)

Weight: 300 lbs (136 kg)

Pro tection status:Endangered

Killer Whale

Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world's most powerful predators. They feast on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even whales, employing teeth that can be four inches (ten centimeters) long. They are known to grab seals right off the ice. They also eat fish, squid, and seabirds.

Though they often frequent cold, coastal waters, orcas can be found from the polar regions to the Equator.
Killer whales hunt in deadly pods, family groups of up to 40 individuals. There appear to be both resident and transient pod populations of killer whales. These different groups may prey on different animals and use different techniques to catch them. Resident pods tend to prefer fish, while transient pods target marine mammals. All pods use effective, cooperative hunting techniques that some liken to the behavior of wolf packs.

Whales make a wide variety of communicative sounds, and each pod has distinctive noises that its members will recognize even at a distance. They use echolocation to communicate and hunt, making sounds that travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back, revealing their location, size, and shape.

Killer whales are protective of their young, and other adolescent females often assist the mother in caring for them. Mothers give birth every three to ten years, after a 17-month pregnancy.
Orcas are immediately recognizable by their distinctive black-and-white coloring and are the intelligent, trainable stars of many aquarium shows. Killer whales have never been extensively    hunted by humans.

 

 

 

Type:Mammal

Diet:Carnivore

Average life span in the wild:50 to 80 years

Size:23 to 32 ft (7 to 9.7 m)

Weight:Up to 6 tons (5,443 kg)

Group name:Pod

Hippopotamus

Hippopotamus

Hippopotamuses love water, which is why the Greeks named them the "river horse." Hippos spend up to 16 hours a day submerged in rivers and lakes to keep their massive bodies cool under the hot African sun. Hippos are graceful in water, good swimmers, and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. However, they are often large enough to simply walk or stand on the lake floor, or lie in the shallows. Their eyes and nostrils are located high on their heads, which allows them to see and breathe while mostly submerged.

Hippos also bask on the shoreline and secrete an oily red substance, which gave rise to the myth that they sweat blood. The liquid is actually a skin moistener and sunblock that may also provide protection against germs.At sunset, hippopotamuses leave the water and travel overland to graze. They may travel 6 miles (10 kilometers) in a night, along single-file pathways, to consume some 80 pounds (35 kilograms) of grass. Considering their enormous size, a hippo's food intake is relatively low. If threatened on land hippos may run for the water—they can match a human's speed for short distances.

Hippo calves weigh nearly 100 pounds (45 kilograms) at birth and can suckle on land or underwater by closing their ears and nostrils. Each female has only one calf every two years. Soon after birth, mother and young join schools that provide some protection against crocodiles, lions, and hyenas.
Hippos once had a broader distribution but now live in eastern central and southern sub-Saharan Africa, where their populations are in decline.

Scientific Name:Hippopotamus amphibius

Weight: up to 3 1/2 tons

Size: 13 feet long, 5 feet tall

Lifespan: 50 years

Diet: Herbivore

Predators: Human, crocodile, lion

Hippo Fun Facts 

Hippo is really a short name for Hippopotamus.

A group of hippos is called a school.

A hippo's lifespan in the wild is about 40 years.

A hippo's weight can be 5,000-8,000 pounds.

Since hippos love the water the Greeks named them the "river horse".

A baby hippo is called a calf.

A calf (a baby hippo) can weigh 100 pounds.

A hippo has tiny legs even with it's huge body.

A hippo can run really fast on land.

Even though hippos love water and spend a lot of their time in it, they are very bad swimmers.

Chipmunk

Lively and speedy critters, chipmunks are smallest members of the squirrel family. Their pudgy cheeks, large, glossy eyes, stripes, and bushy tails have made them a favorite among animators, and landed them a series of starring roles in Hollywood.

Of the 25 species of chipmunks, all but one, Asia’s Tamias sibiricus, is found in North America. Ranging from Canada to Mexico, they are generally seen scampering through the undergrowth of a variety of environments from alpine forests to shrubby deserts. Some dig burrows to live in, complete with tunnels and chambers, while others make their  homes in nests, bushes, or logs.

Depending on species, chipmunks can be gray to reddish-brown in color with contrasting dark and light stripes on the sides of their face and across their back and tail. They range in size from the least chipmunk, which, at 7.2 to 8.5 inches (18.5 to 21.6 centimeters) and 1.1 to 1.8 ounces (32 to 50 grams), is the smallest chipmunk, to the Eastern chipmunk, which grows up to 11 inches (28 centimeters) and weighs as much as 4.4 ounces (125 grams).

Chipmunks generally gather food on the ground in areas with underbrush, rocks, and logs, where they can hide from predators like hawks, foxes, coyotes, weasels, and snakes. They feed on insects, nuts, berries, seeds, fruit, and grain which they stuff into their generous cheek pouches and carry to their burrow or nest to store. Chipmunks hibernate, but instead of storing fat, they periodically dip into their cache of nuts and seeds throughout the winter.

Their shrill, repeated, birdlike chirp is usually made upon sensing a threat but is also thought to be used as a mating call by females. Chipmunks are solitary creatures and normally ignore one another except during the spring, when mating takes place. After a 30-day gestation, a litter of two to eight is born. The young stay with their parents for two months before they begin to gather their own provisions for the winter ahead.

For the most part, chipmunks, although susceptible to forest fragmentation, are not currently threatened. However, the Palmer’s chipmunk (Tamias palmeri) is considered a vulnerable species.

Honeybee

Honeybee hives have long provided humans with honey and beeswax. Such commercial uses have spawned a large beekeeping industry, though many species still occur in the wild.All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. A hive's inhabitants are generally divided into three types.Workers are the only bees that most people ever see. These bees are females that are not sexually developed. Workers forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean, circulate air by beating their wings, and perform many other societal functions.

        The queen's job is simple—laying the eggs that will spawn the hive's next generation of bees. There is usually only a single queen in a hive. If the queen dies, workers will create a new queen by feeding one of the worker females a special diet of a food called "royal jelly." This elixir enables the worker to develop into a fertile queen. Queens also regulate the hive's activities by producing chemicals that guide the behavior of the other bees.Male bees are called drones—the third class of honeybee. Several hundred drones live in each hive during the spring and summer, but they are expelled for the winter months when the hive goes into a lean survival mode. Bees live on stored honey and pollen all winter, and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. Larvae are fed from the stores during this season and, by spring, the hive is swarming with a new generation of bees.

Fast Facts

Type   :Bug

Diet    :Herbivore

Average life span in the wild:Up to 5 years

Size    :0.4 to 0.6 in (5 to 15 mm) (Workers)

Group name:Colony or Swarm

Cockroach - Super Pest Survivalist

           Cockroaches have inhabited the earth for more than 250 million years. There are over 4,000 kinds with only 30 being the kind to be near human dwellings. There are American ones, Asian (perhaps the most destructive), German, Surinamian, Peruvian, and Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches... Brown Cockroaches, Wingless Cockroaches... and they are all coming to eat your Cheerios and Cornflakes because they love your cereal even more than you do. More money is spent to control cockroaches in the United States than any other pest. They are the number one urban pest throughout the world.

                The average roach-infested household contains more than 20,000 roaches.Roaches can live up to 20 days without food and 14 days without water.They can flatten their bodies and crawl through a crack thinner than a dime.Cockroaches can survive radiation up to 12 time greater than humans.Cockroaches are startled by the smallest of air movements and can run for cover in less than .05 seconds.        

          

Among the dirt and filth
Roaches may transmit a wide variety of diseases and cause common allergic reactions previously thought to be caused by dust. They have been implicated in the spread of tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, dysentery and typhoid. However, they are not considered to be disease vectors, that is they do not actively transmit any virus or bacteria. If they come out of the sewer for example, they may carry pathogens on their bodies and passively transmit those pathogens by close contact. They frequently enter buildings by coming up through drains.

True Survivors
Cockroaches will eat anything - food, leather, hair, and the glue in book bindings. They can live off the toothpaste residue in your toothbrush. They are cannibals and take a particular liking to each others' excrement. In extreme cases roaches will feed off people.

The Emperor Penguins

Emperors are the largest of all penguins—an average bird stands some 45 inches (115 centimeters) tall. These flightless animals live on the Antarctic ice and in the frigid surrounding waters.

Penguins employ physiological adaptations and cooperative behaviors in order to deal with an incredibly harsh environment, where wind chills can reach -76°F (-60°C).

They huddle together to escape wind and conserve warmth. Individuals take turns moving to the group's protected and relatively toasty interior. Once a penguin has warmed a bit it will move to the perimeter of the group so that others can enjoy protection from the icy elements.

Emperor penguins spend the long winter on the open ice—and even breed during this harsh season. Females lay a single egg and then promptly leave it behind. They undertake an extended hunting trip that lasts some two months! Depending on the extent of the ice pack, females may need to travel some 50 miles (80 kilometers) just to reach the open ocean, where they will feed on fish, squid, and krill. At sea, emperor penguins can dive to 1,850 feet (565 meters)—deeper than any other bird—and stay under for more than 20 minutes.

Male emperors keep the newly laid eggs warm, but they do not sit on them, as many other birds do. Males stand and protect their eggs from the elements by balancing them on their feet and covering them with feathered skin known as a brood pouch. During this two-month bout of babysitting the males eat nothing and are at the mercy of the Antarctic elements.

When female penguins return to the breeding site, they bring a belly full of food that they regurgitate for the newly hatched chicks. Meanwhile, their duty done, male emperors take to the sea in search of food for themselves.

Mothers care for their young chicks and protect them with the warmth of their own brood pouches. Outside of this warm cocoon, a chick could die in just a few minutes. In December, Antarctic summer, the pack ice begins to break up and open water appears near the breeding site, just as young emperor penguins are ready to swim and fish on their own.

                                                                Fast Facts

Type:   Bird

Diet:    Carnivore

Average life span in the wild:

15 to 20 years

Size:    45 in (115 cm)

Weight:Up to 88 lbs (40 kg)

Group name:Colony

WOLVERINE

Wolverine

The wolverine is a powerful animal that resembles a small bear but is actually the largest member of the weasel family.These tough animals are solitary, and they need a lot of room to roam. Individual wolverines may travel 15 miles (24 kilometers) in a day in search of food. Because of these habitat requirements, wolverines frequent remote boreal forests, taiga, and tundra in the northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and North America.

Wolverines eat a bit of vegetarian fare, like plants and berries, in the summer season, but this does not make up a major part of their diet—they are tenacious predators with a taste for meat. Wolverines easily dispatch smaller prey, such as rabbits and rodents, but may even attack animals many times their size, such as caribou, if the prey appears to be weak or injured. These opportunistic eaters also feed on carrion—the corpses of larger mammals, such as elk, deer, and caribou. Such finds sustain them in winter when other prey may be thinner on the ground, though they have also been known to dig into burrows and eat hibernating mammals.

Males scent-mark their territories, but they share them with several females and are believed to be polygamous. Females den in the snow or under similar cover to give birth to two or three young each late winter or early spring. Kits sometimes live with their mother until they reach their own reproductive age—about two years old.

Wolverines sport heavy, attractive fur that once made them a prime trapper's target in North America. Their fur was used to line parkas, though this practice is far less common today and the animals are protected in many areas.

Fast Fact

 

Type:Mammal

Diet:Omnivore

Average life span in the wild:7 to 12 years

Size:Head and body, 26 to 34 in (66 to 86 cm);

Tail, 7 to 10 in (18 to 25 cm)

Weight:24 to 40 lbs (11 to 18 kg)

LLAMA

                                                                   Llama

       The llama is a South American relative of the camel, though the llama does not have a hump. These sturdy creatures are domestic animals used by the peoples of the Andes Mountains. (Their wild relatives are guanacos and vicuñas). Native peoples have used llamas as pack animals for centuries. Typically, they are saddled with loads of 50 to 75 pounds (23 to 34 kilograms). Under such weight they can cover up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) in a single day. Pack trains of llamas, which can include several hundred animals, move large amounts of goods over even the very rough terrain of the Andes.

       Llamas are willing pack animals but only to a point. An overloaded llama will simply refuse to move. These animals often lie down on the ground and they may spit, hiss, or even kick at their owners until their burden is lessened.Llamas graze on grass and, like cows, regurgitate their food and chew it as cud. They chomp on such wads for some time before swallowing them for complete digestion. Llamas can survive by eating many different kinds of plants, and they need little water. These attributes make them durable and dependable even in sparse mountainous terrain.

       Llamas contribute much more than transportation to the human communities in which they live. Leather is made from their hides, and their wool is crafted into ropes, rugs, and fabrics. Llama excrement is dried and burned for fuel. Even in death, llamas can serve their human owners—some people slaughter them and eat their meat.






                                             

  Fast Fact

 Type:   Mammal

 Diet:    Herbivore

 Size:    Height at the shoulder, 47 in (120 cm)

 Weight:  250 lbs (113 kg)

 

WOLF

                                                 WOLF

       

        Wolves are legendary because of their spine-tingling howl, which they use to communicate. A lone wolf howls to attract the attention of his pack, while communal howls may send territorial messages from one pack to another. Some howls are confrontational. Much like barking domestic dogs, wolves may simply begin howling because a nearby wolf has already begun.

  Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adaptable gray wolves are by far the most common and were once found all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wolves and humans have a long adversarial history. Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world's most fearsome natural villains. They do attack domestic animals, and countless wolves have been shot, trapped, and poisoned because of this tendency.

  In the lower 48 states, gray wolves were hunted to near extinction, though some populations survived and others have since been reintroduced. Few gray wolves survive in Europe, though many live in Alaska, Canada, and Asia. Red wolves live in the southeastern United States, where they are endangered. These animals actually became extinct in the wild in 1980. Scientists established a breeding program with a small number of captive red wolves and have reintroduced the animal to North Carolina. Today, perhaps 100 red wolves survive in the wild.

The maned wolf, a distant relative of the more familiar gray and red wolves, lives in South America. Physically, this animal resembles a large, red fox more than its wolf relatives.Wolves live and hunt in packs of around six to ten animals. They are known to roam large distances, perhaps 12 miles (20 kilometers) in a single day. These social animals cooperate on their preferred prey—large animals such as deer, elk, and moose. When they are successful, wolves do not eat in moderation. A single animal can consume 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of meat at a sitting. Wolves also eat smaller mammals, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, and fruit.

Wolfpacks are established according to a strict hierarchy, with a dominant male at the top and his mate not far behind. Usually this male and female are the only animals of the pack to breed. All of a pack's adults help to care for youngpups by bringing them food and watching them while others hunt.

                                                                Fast Fact

Type:Mammal

Diet:Carnivore

Average life span in the wild:6 to 8 years

Size:Head and body, 36 to 63 in (91 to 160 cm);

Tail, 13 to 20 in (33 to 51 cm)

Weight:40 to 175 lbs (18 to 79 kg)

Group name:Pack

Protection status:Endangered

DINGO

DINGO

The dingo is legendary as Australia's wild dog, though it also occurs in Southeast Asia. The Australian animals may be descendents of Asian dingoes that were introduced to the continent some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.



           These golden or reddish-colored canids may live alone (especially young males) or in packs of up to ten animals. They roam great distances and communicate with wolf-like howls.Dingo hunting is opportunistic. Animals hunt alone or in cooperative packs. They pursue small game such as rabbits, rodents, birds, and lizards. These dogs will eat fruits and plants as well. They also scavenge from humans, particularly in their Asian range.

        

           Dingoes breed only once a year. Females typically give birth to about five pups, which are not independent until six to eight months of age. In packs, a dominant breeding female will kill the offspring of other females.

Australia is home to so many of these animals that they are generally considered pests. A famous "dingo fence" has been erected to protect grazing lands for the continent's herds of sheep. It is likely that more dingoes live in Australia today than when Europeans first arrived.

            

       Though dingoes are numerous, their pure genetic strain is gradually being compromised. They can and do interbreed with domestic dogs to produce hybrid animals. Studies suggest that more than a third of southeastern Australia's dingoes are hybrids.

Fast Facts

Type:  Mammal

Diet:   Carnivore

Size:    Head and body, 3.5 to 4 ft (1.1 to 1.2 m);

Tail, 12 to 13 in (30 to 33 cm)Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man

Weight: 22 to 33 lbs (10 to 15 kg)

Group name: Pack