What Is A Brahman Cattle?

Brahman Cattle

The Brahman is a breed of hump-shouldered cattle with drooping necks and large, floppy ears.  

In the United States, Brahmans are sometimes called Brahmas.  In other countries, they are known by the common name of zebu (pronounced ZEE boo).

Brahman’s hump is mostly a large, fatty growth that rises above the shoulders.  Brahmans were brought to the United States from India.  Because they are able to tolerate heat and refuse to accept insects and disease better than other cattle.

Brahmans are often crossed with other cattle to create new kinds of cattle that need these behavior.  Brahma bull-riding is a popular event at a rodeo.  The only equipment is a loose rope around the bull’s shoulders and a clanging bell attached below.  The rider must hold on with only one hand in his wild ride.–Dick Rogers

Why Does A Peacock Raise Its Feathers?

Peacock

The handsome peacock spreads his feathers into a gorgeous fan when he courts the female, or peahen.  A peacock is a bird with beautiful, rainbow-colored feathers.  Its range is really “peafowl”.

The male bird is called a peacock.  It is about as large as a turkey and has a long train or greenish feathers brilliantly spotted with bronze blue, green and gold.  A crest adorns his head.

The feather which grow from the back (and not the tail), are spread out into a gorgeous fan as the bird struts back and forth, “proud as a peacock ,” for all to see.

His majestic parade of flashing colors is actually a courtship display to charm the female, or peahen, and persuade her that he is the most handsome peacock.  The peahen is less brightly colored and has no train of feathers.

As you might imagine, the peacock’s magnificent plumage has made it a favorite parts of the world.  A peacock’s call is so loud it can be heard far away.  It sounds like a human screaming.-Dick Rogers

What is a Cassowary?

Cassowary

The cassowary is a large, odd-looking bird that lives in the thick forest of Australia and New Guinea.  A fully grown cassowary may be five feet tall and weigh two pounds or more.

Like the African relative the ostrich, the cassowary cannot fly.  All that remains of its flight feathers are a few spiny quilts, but it can sprint at speeds of at nearly 40 miles per hour for its long powerful legs, when it danger.

A bony helmet on its featherless head  helps it butt through the heavy underbrush.  Tough bristle like feathers that cover it body serve as a form of armor as it crashes headlong the forest.

A threatened cassowary can be a dangerous foe.  All three of the toes on each foot are armed with knife-sharp claws which can be a deadly weapon in a flight.  Usually, these shy birds are  heard more often than soon in their dense forest home.  They call by snorting and bellowing. - Dick Rogers

What is a crayfish?

Crayfish

Crayfish are small fresh-water shell fish that look like miniature lobsters.  

If you have ever played by the bank of stream or pond, you may have seen a small animal that looked like a miniature lobster living at the bottom of the water near the shore.

What you saw was a fresh water shell like known as a crayfish.  It is easy to see that the crayfish, sometimes called crawfish or crawdad, and the saltwater lobster are close relatives.  Both have 10 legs.  The front legs end in large pincers.  

These pincers are used to catch any prey that comes near,  as well as for defense.  The four other pairs of legs are used for walking.  The crayfish escapes from danger by swimming backward through the water with quick flips of its fan-like tail.

Like the lobster, the crayfish hatches from an egg.  A hard shell covers its soft body like a suit of armor.  Several times before it is fully grown, the crayfish must shed its outgrown shell and grow a new and larger one. - Dick Rogers

What is a starfish?

Starfish

A starfish is a star-shaped animal that lives on the bottom of the sea in bays and shallow water.  Starfish eat clams and other shellfish by pulling the shells apart and pushing their stomach into the shells to digest the food.

Starfish have a peculiar way of eating.  The common starfish feeds mostly on shellfish, it especially likes to eat clams, oysters, and mussels.

To open a clam shell, the starfish wraps its arms around it.  Under each arm are rows of tube like feet that stick to the shell like suction cups.  The starfish then pulls the two section of the clam’s shell assist with its powerful arms.

A starfish’s mouth is under its body.  As soon as a starfish has pulled open the clam, it opens its mouth, turns it stomach inside out and pushes it inside the clam’s shell and digests the clam’s soft body.

Once the meat is finished, the starfish pulls back its stomach, leaving only an empty clam shell behind.  Most starfish have five arms, but some have seven arms or more.  If a starfish loose an arm, it can grow another. - Dick Rogers

What are puffins?

Puffin

Puffins are comical-looking sea birds of the North Atlantic Ocean.  Puffins are sometimes called sea parrots, these plump, short-winged sea birds are one of the world’s oddest-looking birds.

A white face with blue lines around the eyes and a comical waddle make the common puffin look like a circus clown.  

Its enormous beak, colored with red, blue, and yellow bands, is nearly as large as its head.  The gaudy colors of the male puffin’s beak are just for show.  

They are really colored growths that drop off after the nesting season.  Despite its comical appearance, the puffin is an expert flier and swimmer.  Puffins can actually swim underwater in pursuit of their prey.  

A puffin can catch several fish, one after another, and carry them dangling crosswise in its beak to its nestling.  Puffins nest in large colonies on rocky coasts.  One white egg island in a burrow or crevice in the rocks at nestling time.-Dick Rogers

How are oysters born?

Oyster

Oysters are hatched from eggs.  An oyster spends all except the first few weeks of its life fastened to a rock or other hard object in the water.

Along the world’s seashores there are many kinds of sea animals with shells to rocks and other hard objects in shallow water near the shore.

A baby oyster is hatched from an egg laid by the mother oyster.  When first hatched, the baby oyster is about the size of a pinpoint and has no shell.  Its shell begins to form when it is a day old.

The baby oyster spends the first two weeks of its life swimming about freely.  Then it fastened itself so something hard, perhaps a rock or the piling of a wharf, or even to the shell of another oyster.

It remains fastened to the same spot for the rest of its life, feeding on tiny plants and animals carried to it by the current.  The oyster grows about an inch a mouth until fully grown.  Oysters are one of the most popular foods that we take from the sea.-Dick Rogers

How does a snail grow its shell?

Snail

The shell grows in an ever-widening spiral as the snail continues to add new shell material to its shell during its lifetime.  

You have probably seen a common garden snail peeking out of its shell as it slowly creeps along on a slick pathway of ooze.  Where did the snail get its shell?  It was born with a tiny shell just the right size for its body.  

The shell serves as a suit of armor to protect the snail’s soft body.  As the snail grows, it oozes a slimy shell liquid that hardens into shell, and so the shell grows with the snail.  The snail gets its shell-building materials from its food.

There are many kinds of snails, in almost every part of the world.  Some live only on land, some live in lakes and ponds, and others live deep in the ocean.  The most snails are hatched from tiny eggs and look very much like their parents when they are born.

Most snail shells are shaped like coiled spirals.  Some are brightly colored with gray stripes.  Some snails grow shells that are no bigger than a pinhead.  But the biggest shells belong to the sea snails called conchs.  Their shell grows to be more than a foot long.-Dick Rogers

What Are Jellyfish?

Jellyfish

Jellyfish are unusual sea animals that have jellylike bodies and stinging tentacles, with which they capture their food.  The jellyfish is among the strangest of sea creatures.

It is not even a fish, but a very simple kind of sea animal that has no skeleton.  The main pair of the jellyfish’s body looks like an umbrella, and it is made up of two thin layers of tissue with jellylike materials between them.

Around the rim of the umbrella are usually a number of simple eyes, and in the center of the body underneath is the mouth.

Hanging down from the edge are string like tentacles, armed with batteries of stinging cells filled with paralyzing poison.  If a small bumps into the jellyfish’s tentacles, it gets stung and captured for food.  If you touch these tentacles, you may get stung, too!

A jellyfish swims by folding and unfolding its body—much like closing an umbrella.  Mostly, it floats along with the current.  Some jellyfish are no larger than a pea.  Other may be two feet or more in diameter.–Dick Rogers

Is the wise old owl really wise?

Owl

Although its big, staring eyes make the own look like it is thinking very hard, it is really no smarter than other birds.  Owls look wise because their big, staring eyes and thoughtful air give the appearance that they are thinking very hard.  

Actually, the “wise old owl” is really no smarter that other birds.    In fact, geese, crows, and ravens are all smarter than the owl.  A person can recognized an owl at once by its large, broad face with a fur of feathers around the large eyes.  

Unlike the eyes of most birds, the owl’s eyes are in front of its head and point forward.  But to see in another direction, the own must turn its whole head.  Persons walking around a perched owl are often amused at the way it seems in danger of twisting its head off while watching them.

The owl comes out at night to hunt for mice and other small creatures.  Its large eyes can see in the dimmest light.  But the owl does not depend on its eyes alone for hunting.  Its keen ears can hear the faintest sound and its cry startles small animals into revealing their location.  The owl’s soft feathers allow it to swoop down silently on its prey.-Dick Rogers

What are ladybirds?

Beetle

Ladybirds are really small, spotted beetles with a rounded body shaped like half a pea.  The polka-dotted ladybird, or ladybug, is really  small beetle with a round body shaped like half a pea.  

The most familiar ladybirds are shiny red with black spots. But some are black with red spots.  Still others are yellow with black of red spots.

These gaily colored insects live in a orchards, gardens, and fields, where they eat great number of aphids and other plant-harming bugs.

In order times, farmers burning off their fields fretted about harming the helpful ladybird, giving rise to the children’s verse:  “ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.  Your house is on fire and your children are gone.”

To “fly away home,” a ladybird first raises its hard wing covers and then unfolds it flying wings.  The lady bird beetle got its name during the Middle Ages, when the insect was associated with the Virgin Mary by such names as creatures of Our Lady and Animals of the Virgin.–Dick Rogers

Why Do Woodpeckers Peck On Wood?

Woodpecker

When a woodpecker pecks, it may be searching insects for food that are living in the back of the tree, it may be digging out a nest, or it may be drumming out a “song” to its mate.

Most kinds of woodpeckers are our good friends.  They eat insects that harm trees.  Using its strong, sharp bill, the woodpecker digs out insects that are living in the cracks in the bark of trees.

In the springtime a woodpecker calls to its mat by drumming out a tattoo on a dry limb or the roof of a house with its strong bill.  Woodpeckers make holes in the trunks of trees for their nests.  They leave chips of wood on the bottom to cushion the white eggs.

The California woodpecker stores acorns in holes that it drills.  The woodpecker is not storing the acorns to eat.  A small worm has bored into each acorn.  Later, the woodpecker will return to feast on the fattened worms.

Only a few woodpeckers sometimes harm trees.  The unwelcomed ones are the sapsuckers.  As their name indicates, the drill rows of holes in the bark of trees and drink the sap as it drips from the holes.–Dick Rogers

How did the St. Bernard get its name?

St. Bernard Dog

The dog gets its name from the monastery of St. Bernard, in the Swiss Alps.  The Saint Bernard is a large, intelligent dog that has become famous for rescuing lost travelers.

These great rescue dogs got their name because they have been raised and trained for many centuries by Swiss monks at a rest house, called the Hospice of Saint Bernard, high in the snowy Alps of Switzerland.

At one time, there were many foot travelers who crossed the Alps through a high, dangerous pass.  They often lost their way or became buried in a sudden snowstorm.  The St. Bernard dog was trained to rescue them.  With its keen sense of smell, the St. Bernard could find people who were buried deep in the snow.

After it found the traveler, the dog would dig him out of the snow and bark loudly for help. When the monks heard the dog barking, they would bring the traveler to the hospice.

You have probably seen many picture of St. Bernard dogs with brandy keep around their necks.  But the dogs never really carried brandy kegs on their rescue missions.  Today, their rescue missions are almost never made.–Dick Rogers

Why is the lion called the king of beasts?

King of the Beast

Its terrifying roar and kingly appearance have helped earn the lion its nickname “King of Beast.”  Probably this is not because the lion could defeat all other animals in combat, nor because it is the biggest animal.

But throughout history, the lion has been thought of as the symbol of strength because it ranks among the fiercest and strongest of all wild creatures.

Its ferocity and the roar of its voice strikes terror in the hearts of both men and animal alike.  The long mane of the male gives the lion a proud and kingly appearance.  Lions live on the plains of Africa.  Newborn lion cubs are about the size of a large house cat.

When fully grown, the male lion may measure more than 9 feel long from his nose to the tip of his tail.  And weight more than 400 pounds.  One would expect lions to be fearless in hunting, yet they sometimes wait in ambush for prey to come close, the attack with a sudden pounces.

In circuses, these lordly animal attract much attention.  Sometimes a lion trainer will even put his head in a lion’s mouth.–Dick Rogers