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

How many eggs does a chicken lay in a year?

A typical egg-laying hen can lay as many as 250 eggs a year.  Egg-laying hens, call pullets, begin laying eggs when they are about five months old.  On a small farm, a chicken might lay eight to ten eggs in a nest and spend three weeks hatching them.  

But on a large commercial egg farm, the eggs are taken away as soon as they are laid, and the chicken jus keeps laying.  Chickens produce the most eggs during their first laying year.  After a year or so, they are usually sold as stewing chickens, and the egg farmer buys a new flock of pullets.–Dick Rogers

What is a called blooded animal?

Cold Blooded Animal

Many animals such as fish, frogs, snakes and lizards are often called “cold-blooded,” as opposed to “warm-blooded” mammals and birds.  

This does not mean their blood is always cold.  Unlike warm-blooded animals, they do not have built-in temperature controls that keep their bodies evenly warmed.

Instead, their body temperature is usually near that of the surrounding air or water air or water.  The cold-blooded animal is hot in hot weather, and cold in cold weather.  

Many depend on the sun for their body heat. Lizards, for example bask in the sun to warm their bodies.-Dick Rogers

Where does the electric eel get its electricity?

An electric eel gives off electricity from special battery-like organs inside its body.  The electric eel that lives in the rivers of South America has a very unusual weapon.  It can turn on a powerful electric current at will.  It make its electricity with special electric organs inside its body.

These electric batteries are powerful enough to light a neon sign and strong enough to knock out an animal as large as a horse!  An enemy first that swims too near may receive a paralyzing shock from these living electric batteries.

The electric eel uses its shocking organs to stun small fishes and frogs it eats, as well as to defend itself.  The electric ray, or torpedo found in warm seas is another well-known electric fish.

The batteries of the electric ray are on the sides of the fish’s head.  They are much like the batteries of the electric eel.  The electric catfish, which grows to be about three feet long, is found in the river of Africa.

Its electric power is used up after a number of short shocks.  Then it must eat and rest before it can shock again.-Dick Rogers

Can fish drown?

Fish can drown under certain conditions.  It isn’t the water that keeps fish alive, but the oxygen in the water.  Fish breathe oxygen, just as we do.  The water contains oxygen that comes from the air or is given off by water plants.  A fish takes the oxygen out of the water by means of its gills.  

When a fish is placed in a small tank of water, however, it may soon use up all the oxygen that is in the water.  If this happens, the fish suffocates.  This is why, if you keep pet fish, you must change the water frequently in order to give them a fresh supply of oxygen.–Dick Rogers

How can a fly walk on a ceiling?

Two sharp claws and sticky pad under each foot help the fly cling to ceilings and other smooth surfaces.  If you were to look at the feet of fly through a microscope, you would see that each foot is equipped with tiny claws and sticky pads of hair.

These enable the fly to walk upside down on the ceiling and cling to the slippery surfaces of windows and mirrors.  When walking upside down, the fly picks up three of the feet at a time, while the other feet hold the fly to the ceiling until it is their turn to step forward.

Flies have great strength for their size and can run along a ceiling with the greatest of ease. Most kinds of spiders and insects have claws on their feet that help them cling to ceilings and smooth walls.

Wherever the spider goes it lays down a thin, silken dragline, to help prevent falls or to escape from enemies.  If danger threatens, it can drop to the floor below, or it can simply hang there until the danger has passed.  

Then it climbs back up on its dragline and continues on its way.  Many of the duty cobwebs you see hanging from the ceiling are discarded draglines.-Dick Rogers

Why are some birds more brightly colored than others?

Color makes some birds stand out and helps to hide other birds. Though there are a great many things in nature that we can explain, we can only guess why some things are as they are.

One idea – and there are many exceptions – is that birds with brighter colors spend most of their time in place where their bright colors make them stand out, so they can easily be seen by other birds of their own kind.

Birds with duller colors live mostly on or near the ground.  Their dull-colored feathers match the grass and leaves of their surroundings and make them hard to see.  This protects them from enemies.

This may also be why nature gave the duller colors to most female birds.  Since she must sit on the nest to hatch the eggs, the mother bird must be better hidden.

A male bird may court his mate by singing and displaying his flashing colors, in order to persuade the quiet little female that he is the finest bird in the world.

During the nesting time, he perches on a limb some distance from the nest.  With his bright colors, he draws all the attention to himself, and away from the nest and young ones.-Dick Rogers

What is salamander?

A salamander is a harmless creature that looks like a lizard, but it is related to the frogs and toads. Salamanders’ bodies and long tails make them look so much like lizards that they are often mistaken for them.  It is easy to tell them apart.  Lizards are covered with dry scales.

Salamander has smooth, shiny skin that always looks wet.  Salamanders are timid, harmless creature.  They love to live in streams and ponds, on land beneath stones and rotting logs where it is cool, dark and moist.

They live in a stream or a pond as tadpoles and breathe with gills like fish.  But when grown-up, they have  legs and come ashore and breathe air with lungs.  Salamanders have a special name because they start life in the water then crawl out onto land.  They are called “amphibians,” which means “leading a double life.”

There are many kinds of salamanders.  Mud puppies, newts, and hellbenders are the names of the few.  Not all salamander live a double life.   The mud puppies and hellbenders spend their entire life in the water.-Dick Rogers

Why does a mosquito bite itch?

The itchy welt you welt you get from a mosquito bite is caused from the saliva the mosquito injects into the skin.  The saliva keeps the blood from clotting so that the mosquito can easily sip your blood.

Most of us are allergic to the mosquito saliva, and the itchy welt that forms on the skin is very irritating. Only the female mosquito “bites.”  The male mosquito feeds only on plants juices.  The female mosquito does not really bite. To the eye, her needle-like beak looks like a think tube.  Actually, it holds daggers with saw-like tips.

As soon as she settles on your skin, she starts sawing.  Into the tiny hole she injects the saliva that helps her to sip the blood. If you swat her before she can suck back the irritating saliva, your itching will be worse.

Next to its bite, the hum of a mosquito is probably most annoying – especially when we are trying to sleep.  The hum of a mosquito is the sound of its wings beating rapidly as it flies.  The humming “song” helps the female mosquito attract a male mosquito.-Dick Rogers

What is an albino?

True albinos, like the white, pink-eyed rabbit pets, are born without any coloring matter in their bodies. An albino is a person born without any coloring matter or pigment, in his skin.  In such a person the skin is milky-white and the hair is very light.

A person who is a true albino also has pink eyes because the iris (the colored part of the eye) is so clear that the tiny blood vessels of the eye shines through.  In normal eyes, the color of the iris serves to hide the pinkness.

The color of our skin is chiefly due to the presence of a color pigment called “melanin,”  which gives the skin what we call “flesh color.”

When melanin accumulates in small spots in the skin, freckles appear.  And when you spend a few days in the sun, the sunlight darkens the melanin in your skin and this results in a “suntan.”

Albinism is found not only in man, but among all kinds of animals and birds, and it is even found in plants.  Perhaps the animal albinos we are all most familiar white mice and rats and rabbits that have pink eyes.

White ducks, chickens and horses are not true albinos, because most of them have color pigments in eyes, beaks or legs.-Dick Rogers

How do fish breathe in the water?

As the fish forces water past its gills tiny blood vessels lining the gills  absorb oxygen out of the air that is dissolved in the water.

Just as  our lungs take oxygen from the air.  Fishes take oxygen from the water.  But fishes breathe with gills instead of lungs. By watching a fish in an aquarium,  You can see it open and close  its mouth constantly as though drinking in gulps of water.

Each time the fish opens its mouth a mouthful of water is drawn in. Then the fish closes its mouth and the water is forced back out through the gill openings, which  are the slits located on the side of the fish’s head. The gills are very  thin tissues.  They are bright red because they contain many tiny blood vessels.

As the water passes over  the gills the oxygen dissolved in the water is absorbed  into  the tiny blood vessels and is carried by the blood to other parts of the fish’s body. (Fishes have nostrils which they use only for smelling.)

Fish live wherever there is water, except in  very salty  water, such as the dead sea and  the great salt lake of Utah, or in water polluted by man. In such water fish cannot find enough oxygen to breathe. – Dick Rogers

How does a spider spin its silk?

A spider spins its silk by releasing a liquid through its spinnerets.  The liquid hardens into a silk thread as soon as it touches the air.

Spiders are small, eight-legged animals that are best known for the silken webs they spin. Spiders have spinning organs called spinnerets on the underside of their stomachs.

Through the spinnerets, spiders release a liquid that hardens to silk as soon as it touches the air. The spider cannot force the silk from its silk glands in a stream.  When it is spinning a web it pulls the silk from the spinnerets with a hind leg.

Spiders use their silk in many ways.  Some spin webs to catch insects for fond.  They also line their retreats and nests with it.

Most spiders enclose their eggs in a protective eggs sac, or cocoon of silk.  The newly hatched spider lings may migrate to new homes by spinning silken, gossamer threads carried by the wind.

The spider traits a drag line wherever, it goes.  It can swing down to the ground from high places or swing out of reach of any enemy.-Dick Rogers

How do bees make honey?

It is a mistake to image that bees get readymade honey from flowers.  The honeybees make honey from nectar, the sweet juice found in blossoms.

The reason bees make honey is that it serves them as food.

To make honey, the honey bee sips the sweet nectar from blossoms with its long tongue, and stores it in its honey stomach.

Inside its honey stomach the bee adds special chemicals to the nectar.  The bee puts the treated nectar into a wax cell in the honeycomb, where it ripens into honey.

The bees that gather nectar also gather pollen from the blossoms.  Pollen, too, makes good bee food.

The dusty pollen from the blossoms brushes off upon the bee’s hairy body.  The bee scrapes it off with its legs and moistens it with a little nectar to make a clump, and then pushes it into pollen baskets on its back legs.

Bee pollen is sometimes called “bee bread,” and with pollen bees help plants bear good fruit and seeds.  They help the plants by carrying pollen from one flower to another of the same kind.-Dick Rogers

How do hummingbirds hum?

Usually, the only sound of a hummingbird is the whirring or humming sound it makes with its rapidly beating wings.

A hummingbird flaps its wings nearly 60 times in the time it takes you to blink your eyes.  The wings move so fast that only a misty outline can be seen.  They make the air vibrate, and we hear a humming sound.

The delicate and brightly colored hummingbird usually measures less than four inches from bill to tail and weights about as much as a copper penny.

No other bird can fly in so many ways as the hummingbird.  It can quickly dart up, down, backward, forward or it can hover nearly motionless in the air like a helicopter.

The active little bird must eat every 10 to 15 minutes it is awake to maintain its tiring pace. It flits from flower to flower and hovers above each blossom.  

It sips the sweet nectar through its long, tube-shaped tongue and picks up any small insect that it may find in the flower. Most, but not all hummingbirds are tiny.  The largest is the giant hummer.  It grows nearly 9 inches long.-Dick Rogers

What is a lynx?

Lynxes are wild members of the cat family. They can easily be distinguished from the other cats by their stumpy tails, long legs, and long tufts of hair on their pointed ears.

Primarily a forest animal, the North American Lynx Lives mainly in the great Canadian forests from Labrador to Alaska.

If you live in the United States south of Canada you may know another kind of lynx better by the name of “bobcat” or “wildcat.”

Bobcats are found running wild in many parts of the United States and Mexico.  They are smaller than their northern cousins and have shorter ear tuffs.  Bobcats get their name from their “bobbed” tails.

In winter, the big feet of the northern lynx serve as snowshoes, allowing it to run swiftly over the snow. The rabbits on which the lynx preys try to escape notice by lying perfectly still.  The lynx, unable to tell exactly where the rabbit is, emits a piercing howl.

The timid rabbit, startled by the fearful sound cannot help jumping; thereby disclosing its hiding place to the crafty lynx.-Dick Rogers

What is a leech?

Leeches are bloodsuckers which belong to the worm family.  Most leaches live in water, where they attach themselves to fishes, animals and even to people. Some swamps and ponds contain leeches, worms that can cling to fishes, animals and ever to persons.

Leeches may grow from ½-inch to 4 or more inches long.  Like many worms, they have soft, flat bodies divided into segments. On the leech’s head is a sucker like mouth equipped with three saw-shaped teeth.  A second sucker is located at the hind end of the leech.

The leech attaches itself to the host by means of its suckers.  Then, with the mouth sucker, it sucks up the blood through three little holes which it makes in the skin with its sharp teeth.

In a single meal a leech may eat three times its own weight in blood.  One meal may fast several months. Not all leeches suck blood.  Some feed instead on worms and other small animals that live in the water. 

During medieval times bloodsucking leeches were used by physicians to draw blood from patients in attempts to cure them. - Dick Rogers

What was a saber-toothed tiger?

Saber-toothed tigers were big cats with long, saber like teeth. In the Old Stone Age, there lived a bit cat, more ferocious in appearance than any known today.

This was the saber-toothed tiger.  It was not really a tiger.  But it resembled a tiger and had two long teeth curved like swords called sabers—which accounts for its name of “saber-toothed tiger.”

Sometimes its teeth were as long as 8 inches and could easily slash the thick skins of the large mammoths upon which it preyed.

Perhaps where you live today, saber-toothed tigers stalked their prey long ago.  They prowled most parts of the world and found plenty to eat in North America.

The last of them died out thousands of years ago. Some people think they became extinct because their teeth grew so long that they could no longer open their mouths wide enough to eat.

But it is more likely that they died out when the big animals upon which they depended for food became scarce. - Dick Rogers

How does a turtle get into its shell?

Everyone knows a turtle when he sees one.  Turtles are easy to recognize by their shells.  A baby turtle is born with a shell just the right size for its body.  As the turtle grows, its shell grows too.

The hard shells of most turtles are made up of a “bony box”  covered by horny plates.  A turtle can’t crawl out of its shell.  The shell makes up much of a turtle’s skeleton, and is firmly attached to its body.  Turtles are well-protected by their shells.  Some turtles, such as the box turtle, can pull their heads, tails, and legs into their shell when frightened.  Then, very few enemies can get at them.

All turtles hatch from eggs.  The mother turtle lays the eggs in a hole she has dug.  She then leaves them.  The sun’s warmth hatches the eggs in about two months.  As soon as the baby turtles are hatched, they are on their own.  They must be able to tend for themselves. - Dick Rogers

What is a quetzal?

The quetzal is a brilliantly plumed bird of Mexico and Central America, and sacred bird of the Aztec.

The quetzal is pronounced ket SAHL.  The male, hardly larger than a dove, has glittering, emerald green-and-crimson feathers, with graceful tail streamers over three feet long.

This inactive bird sits quietly for long periods on a perch in the dense forest, darling off only to capture insects.  The ancient Mayas and Aztecs found the quetzal so impressive that no one was allowed to harm it.

They used the long tail feathers (plucked without harm to the living bird) as symbol of authority and religion.  Only chiefs and priests were allowed to wear them.

Today the quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, where it appears on postage stamps, coins and on the state seal.  Guatemala is sometimes called the “Land of the Quetzal.” - Dick Rogers

What are musk oxen?

Musk oxen are shaggy-haired mammals which resemble a small buffalo.  They line in the arctic barrens of North America.

The musk ox, is an odd-looking animal that resembles a small, shaggy-haired buffalo. A fully grown musk ox may be little over four feet high at the shoulders and weight 700 pounds.

The musk ox is not really as ox.  It is a relative of goats and antelopes. The first part of the animal’s name is also inaccurate – it has no musky odor, as was once believed.

In the wild, must oxen are found on the treeless tundra and snowfields of Canada and Greenland. They travel in small herds.  When threatened by wolves that, prey upon them, the herd forms a protective circle around the young.  No wise wolf would attack such a fortress of tossing honors!

Once united almost to extinction, the now-protected musk oxen are being raised much like sheep for the silky wool, called “quiviut” that grows underneath their shaggy coats. Garments made of quiviut are very warm and tight in weight. - Dick Rogers

How did the secretary bird get its name?

The quills on the secretary bird’s head make it look like an old-time secretary with quill pens stuck behind his ears. The odd-looking secretary bird is a South African bird of prey.

The reason for this bird’s name is easy to guess because of the tuft of long, stiff feathers that stick out from the back of its head.  The tuffs resemble the quill pens that old-time secretaries and clerks once carried behind their ears.

The secretary bird has a long neck and very long legs.  It is about four-feet tall and its plumage is gray and black.  It usually prefers to run instead of fly and is the only bird of prey that hunts on foot.

An inhabitant of Africa’s grassy plains, the secretary bird feeds chiefly on snakes, which it kills by stamping on the snake with its strong  feet and biting it with its hooked bill.

In their native home, farmers often tame secretary birds and keep them to kill rats and mice.  Another name for the secretary bird is “serpent eagle.” - Dick Rogers

What is a Yak?

Yak

The yak is the shaggy-coated wild ox of Asia. There are not many places that are less pleasant to live in than the high, windswept plateaus of Tibet.

The winters are bitterly cold and food is scarce.  Yet this bleak land, in which few other animals can endure, is the home of the yak.  The wild yak may stand over 6 feet high at the shoulders and weigh more than 1,000 pounds.

Its thick, woolly hair may grow so long that it may even drag on the ground.  Its heavy coat is good protection against the cold. Despite its large size, the yak is as sure-footed as a goat on the sleep mountain-sides.

Some yaks have been tamed.  Tibetan people depend on the yak for their meal, drink their pink milk, and weave their long hair into ropes and cloth and use yaks for pack animals.  

Domesticated yaks are sometimes called “grunting oxen” because they grunt when overloaded. - Dick Rogers

How did the pack rat get its name?

A wood rat is popularly called “pack rat”  because of its habit of stealing and “packing off” shiny objects, such as buttons, bottle tops or other bright objects with which to decorate its nest.

Sometimes the rat will trade a pebble or something equally useless it is carrying for a more attractive ring or coin.  For this reason it is also called a “trade rat.”

The wood rat is native to the Western world.  It looks much like the common house rat, but its tail is furry, instead of naked and scaly.

Unlike most rats, the wood rat does not live in sewers and garbage dumps.  It makes its home mostly in wooded country and on rocky hillside and builds its nest in a large heap of twigs.

Its home may tower three to four feet high and resemble a badly-made beaver lodge.  The pack rat goes out only at night to look for berries and other plant food, or any nice, shiny object it can “pack off” to its nest. - Dick Rogers

What are barnacles?

A barnacle is a short salt water shellfish that attaches itself to ship hulls, rocks, docks and other underwater objects. Anyone who goes to the seashore is likely to see barnacles.

A barnacle hatches from an egg as a tiny, free-swimming creature.  But soon it fastens itself to any convenient object, such as the hull of a ship, pilling, rock, or even a passing whale.

Once attached, a hard, limy shell grows around the barnacle. The barnacles stay for the rest of its life in the place where it settles.

It eats by waving its feathery legs through an opening in the shell to pull tiny sea creatures and plants into its mouth.  The shell has a lid that can be closed in case of danger.

To sailors the barnacle is a trouble.  Masses of them clinging to a ship’s hull reduce the ship’s speed.  The only way to remove barnacles’ shell is to put the ship in dry dock and scrape its bottom. - Dick Rogers

Why does a peacock raise its feathers?

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?

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 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?

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?

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?

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?

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