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