Echidna

 

Echidnas are basically a mammal covered in spikes but then are actually modified hairs. It’s cool because the echidnas has a beak like a bird, lays eggs like a reptile and also has a pouch like a kangaroo. They weigh around 4 to 10 pounds and 12 to 17 inches long, so they are pretty small animals.

 

 

 

 

 

A cool thing about the echidnas spikes are they can actually control the movement of them because there are little muscles at the start of each spike. When it is trying to protect itself it will roll up into a ball and make the spikes stand up like so… but I know you are thinking why doesn’t, it just shoot spikes out but no that is just a myth they don’t actually shoot spikes.

A baby echidna is called a puggle and they are so cute at least they are when they start growing hair.
without hair                                                                                                             with hair

ulysses butterfly

The Ulysses butterfly, also known as the ‘mountain blue’, is a massive butterfly.

                                                                                                                    

 

 

Female butterfly                                                                   , a male butterfly.

 

You can find this butterfly in Australia but to be more precise, northern Queensland, near the tropical rainforests.  It’s cool; it drinks from little puddles of water or from flowers. Here is an interesting fact about the butterfly; its wing span is 5.5 inches, so yes that is pretty big when a normal butterfly’s wingspan is around 2 inches. Before this creature turns into a beautiful blue and black butterfly it is a green with yellows spotted caterpillar. The caterpillar likes to eat a certain flower that grows on the branches of a tree called the pink flowered dough wood.

 When they are butterfly’s they like to eat pollen from flowers and nectar. It funny how the males get pretty much attracted to anything bright blue and when the females need to lay their eggs they usually lay it on another certain type of little tree that is just higher than 2 meters.

horses

Fun facts about hoses are, they don’t actually sleep laying down they stand up.  What you call young male horses are colts and the young females are called fillies. A pretty cool thing to know about horses is they actually have 205 bones in their body. Wow.

Horses have the largest eyes, well the largest eyes of a mammal that we know of. Horses have a particular eye and they can see fairly well too. They can gallop up to the speed of 44kph and the fastest record of a horses speed was 88kph now that is amazing.

When a horse puts its upper lip and bares its teeth into a grin it may look like it is laughing but actually it is a nose enhancing technique and it is called “flehmen response”.

The reason they do this face is when they are trying to track down a sent in the air. So they are not laughing at you they are just seeing if you smell bad or not. Horses are herbivores. A famous horse is lady Suffolk; she was the first horse to beat the 2.5 minute mile.

 This is for krofty.

 have a good day :) :)

The mantas family

The mantas family.

Interesting facts about Praying mantises, they are among the only insects that can turn their head 180 degrees. Predators feeling all slick trying to sneak up on mantis and then bam! The mantis can just look fully behind it. It’s pretty cool only the mantises can do this! Lucky, because predators wouldn’t have much of a chance anyway.  Haha! Point to the females because sometimes they eat their mate’s heads even if the relationship is not official. Apparently they can fairly behead the male. Scientists have found out that 30% of the time, the female doesn’t eat them. I wonder where the pray mantas got its name? Well, it got its name from always waiting to catch prey whilst in the praying position………..

                                                                                   Like so….

      

It’s so cool how praying mantas have pretty much fly eyes(binocular vision), though it’s interesting how they only have one ear and it’s just above their front legs, they can’t pick up frequencies like other insects nor can they find the direction of a sound.

 

 

kiwis

There are a few birds that can’t fly like emus, ostriches, penguins and kiwis. Today I will be talking about kiwis. They have very small wings and they mostly live in hollow trees, on the ground under small shrubs or in burrows that they make in the day time. Kiwis are mostly nocturnal animals.

Some weird facts about kiwis, they have lots of different feature of other animals, they are the only birds with nostrils at the end of their beaks. They have feathers that are very much like fur (wow cool). They have whiskers like cats and they also have no tail feathers.  Here are some of the things that they eat like some fallen fruits and invertebrates.    

Kiwis are from New Zealand, and there are only 70,000 kiwis left. Unfortunately there are only five species and they are all endangered L.  New Zealand is losing 2% of kiwis every year. We need to try and save them because they are so cute.

Wow a pretty cool fact about them is they can live up to 25 years old or even 50 year, well depending on the species. You know how usually the male species are bigger than the female’s well it’s not happening here; the female kiwis are bigger than the male kiwis J. Both genders usually get up to 20 inches in height and 2.20 pounds.   

 

Sumatran tigers

Two years ago there was an unexpected delivery at the Australian zoo. Two male tiger cubs arrived on the 22nd of august 2013. They fist tiger was born at 5:07 and the second on was born at 5:39 at night; the mother went into labour at 11:00 in the morning. They were the first ever, tigers to be born in the Australian zoo in the history of 43 years. It’s sad to think that there is only less than 500 Sumatran tigers left in the world. Kaitlyn is the mother of the two new born cubs. She was brought to the zoo in 2008 and also with her siblings, they are considered to be very special Sumatran tigers because their mother was wild but their father was captive. They are all healthy and happy now anyway. 

if you want see the baby tigers playing together slow motion. tap the link. CHECK IT OUT!!:):) 

                                       https://YouTube/watch?v=XfIl1EibKaM  .

elephants

First off, there are two amazing types of elephants. The Asian and African elephant (the African Forrest elephant and the African bush elephant)/ three types.

African Forrest elephant

African bush elephant

An interesting fact about the tusks of elephants are, on the African elephant both male and female have them but on the Asian elephant only the male has tusks. The reason for this is because African elephants of both genders would need them more, Asian elephants wouldn’t need to use their tusks as much so that’s why only the male has them. Now let’s talk about the females, they have to hold a calf (baby elephant) in their stomach for 22 months and this could all be happening when the mother elephants are 12 years old. Female elephants are called cows and male elephants are called bulls.
Fun facts about their ears are that they are big and thin because they are a pretty intense network of blood vessels which help make the elephants body a regular temperature.  If their ears a hot their whole body is hot and if their ears are cold their body is cold. J

                      
An elephant’s trunk is like hands to humans they use them for everything from picking up things to drinking. An adult elephant needs to drink up to 210 liters of water a day! wow.  Another cool thing is that they can swim, by using their trunk as a snorkel. Awesome! J

monkeys and apes

Monkeys and apes,

It’s actually pretty funny how the name monkey evolved; it was first formed by the Dutch word “manneken” meaning “little man”. The word ape came from the Old English word “apa”. Something else you wouldn’t know is that monkey and apes are very different creatures, monkeys have tails whilst apes don’t. Apes are larger and muscular, they have big/broad chests and monkeys are the opposite, even though apes have the biggest nose they need their eyes more. The only places where the ape’s natural habitat is in Africa and Asia, the monkey’s natural habitat is also in South America.

 

Monkeys are just like humans except for about the 1.23% difference, that amount is around 40 million differences in the monkeys/apes and humans DNA. Monkeys/apes they even know how to peel a banana without eating the skin (I'm pretty impressed). You would think that all monkeys swing arm to arm from trees but only apes and spider monkeys do this all the others just run across the branches.                                                                                                      

 

                             

If I could be a monkey. I would probably be the howler monkey. They spend up to 80% of the time resting  :) . Comments which kind of monkey you would be.

Blue ringed octopus

Octopus

Interesting fact about octopuses is that they actually have venom from the bacteria that builds up inside them, only most of them don’t have enough to hurt humans. Except the blue ringed octopus its most definitely very dangerous to humans and can paralyse an adult in minutes. It’s pretty disturbing but when some octopuses are stressed they start to eat their own tentacles. Tentacles are very sensitive and if there is something sharp or anything like that, that they are trying to cling onto the suckers/cup will individually move away from it. They have two rows of suckers on each tentacle. There are 1,600 cups in their arms and they can also smell with their arms.  

 

They can easily change the colour of themselves in seconds but not to certain patterns just to fit the surroundings like rocks or plants, they can also change their body shape the only thing in their body that is solid is their skull. Octopuses barley live a fully long life, some of them only live for maybe a few years then there are some that live for six months if even.

Today there are about 289 species of octopus.