What are a deer’s antlers used for?

Deer

Deer have several uses for their antlers.  During the mating season, a buck or bull deer uses his big antlers as a weapon to fight other males for leadership of the herd and to win mates.  Any predator (such as a wolf) that dares to attack a deer is also likely to be hurt by the sharp antlers.  

Nearly all male deer have antlers. Female caribou and reindeer (cows) are the only female deer that grow antlers.  During the long winter, when food is scarce, cows often use their antlers to push other cows away from the best feeding spots.-Dick Rogers

Why do birds molt?

Molting Bird

Feathers wear out, as clothes do, and need to be replaced. The process is called “molting.”  Birds molt their feathers at least once a year, in late summer or early fall.  Feathers are made from a substance called “keratin.”  

It is basically the same material your hair is made of.  In molting, old worn feathers drop out of their sockets in a bird’s skin and new ones grow in their place.  

Some birds grow bright, new feathers for the nesting season. These birds molt twice a year.  Most birds molt just a few feathers at a time, so they are able to fly during molting periods.–Dick Rogers

What kind of bird is a mutton bird?

Fat, young shearwaters are known as mutton birds on Australian Islands.  The mutton bird is another name for a kind of seabird known as the shearwater.  

Shearwaters are very fat when young and are considered good to eat, especially on Australian islands where they are known as mutton birds.  The shearwater’s real name comes from its habit of shearing or skimming close to the water as it soars just above the waves on its long, slender wings.  

The shearwater can glide for many hours, riding the air currents with barely a wing beat.  The shearwater comes ashore only  to nest, usually on an island where it can be safe.  Here it lays one large while egg in a hole dug in the ground.  

The young chick grows up slowly and becomes extremely fat, and weighs more that its parents. At this point, the parent shearwaters simply fly off, leaving the fat chick entirely alone, to live only on the fat in its body.

In about a week, the young shearwater has slimmed down and comes out of its underground nest to exercise its new wings, then flies off. It may be three to four years before it returns to land again.-Dick Rogers

Why do jellyfish sting?

Jellyfish

Jellyfish sting in order to get food.  A jellyfish is a simple, primitive sea animal with a jelly-like body.  It eats other small creatures of the sea.  The main part of the jellyfish’s body looks like an umbrella. 

Hanging down from the umbrella are string-like tentacles.  The tentacles are armed with stinging cells that contain a paralyzing poison.  

When a fish or other small sea animal brushes against the jellyfish, the jellyfish paralyzes the animal with its sting.  Then the tentacles pull the victim up to the jellyfish’s mouth, which is at the bottom of the umbrella.–Dick Rogers

What is a flying fox?

A flying fox is a kind of large bat, not a fox.  It is the largest bat in the world.  Its wingspread may be more than four feet, and its hairy body may be a foot long and weigh as much as three pounds.

The flying fox gets its name because its face and long, slender snout look like that of a fox.  Flying foxes are also called fruit bats.  Flying foxes live in most tropical parts of the world, where fruit is continually ripening.

They spend the day nesting in trees, hanging upside down from branches with their wings folded around their bodies like blankets.

At sundown the bats leave their roosts and search for an orchard of ripe fruit to eat.  When fruit is hard to find, flying foxes live by fishing.  They skim over the water and catch fish with their feet.

Unlike other bats that must depend on the echoes of their own voices to guide them as they fly about at night, flying foxes and other fruit bats have good eyes, and guide themselves mostly by sight, just as you and I do.-Dick Rogers

Is the sea anemone a plant or an animal?

When it is time to feed, the sea anemone will open up like a flower.  The sea anemone (pronounced “un NEM oh nee”) is a strange sea animal whose many graceful tentacles (tiny arms) often look like the petals of a flower.

A cluster of sea anemones looks very much like an undersea garden of brightly colored, red, purple, green, and blue blossoms.  Although sea anemones may look like harmless flowers, their touch means death to small fishes and other small sea creatures.

When a small fish happens to swim too close to the sea anemone and touch the tentacles, tiny, needle-like poisoned threads shoot out of the tentacles and sting the fish.  Then the tentacles drag the helpless prey into the sea anemone’s mouth.

The foot of the sea anemone allows it to slide about slowly on rocks.  But usually, they anchor themselves by gripping rocks, shells, or burrow into the sandy floor of the ocean.  Then a sea anemone is disturbed, it pulls its tentacles inside the body.  It then looks like a round lump on the rock.-Dick Rogers

How does an octopus eat?

The octopus has a powerful parrot-like beak in its mouth that it uses to crack the hard shells or crass and oysters.  The octopus is a sea animal with a soft, bag-shaped body.  It gets its name from two Greek words that mean “eight feet.”  We call its eight feet “arms.”

The octopus dwells on the ocean bottom where it crawls about on its arms, searching in every crack and crevice for its favorite food of shrimp, crab, and mussels. On each of the eight arms there are two rows of cup-like suckers which help the octopus grab and hold very tightly to anything it catches.

The arms do not squeeze and prey, but pull it toward the creature’s mouth.  An octopus has two very strong jaws that look like the beak of parrot.  It uses its jaws to crush crab shells and to tear apart the food it eats.

The long, snakelike arms and large, unwinking, strangely human eyes give it a frightening look.  Most kinds of octopus are only about as big as a man’s fist, and do not attack people.  Some however, have poisoned jaws and bites from even a small octopus.-Dick Rogers