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Some animals eat both plants and animals. They are omnivores.
The grizzly bear eats berries, roots, fungi, grasses, fish, carrion, small mammals and insects.
Unlike the black bear, the grizzly bear is a hunter. It is very good at catching fish and it often uses its long claws to dig insects out of rotting logs and small mammals out of their burrows.
Some grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies hunt larger animals like moose, elk and goats.
Omnivores include mammals like grizzly bear,
striped skunk and raccoon and birds like the crow,
the blue jay and the woodpecker.
Elephants are herbivores, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food.
Their diet is at least 50% grasses, supplemented with leaves, bamboo, twigs, bark, roots, and small amounts of fruits, seeds and flowers.
Elephants eat between 149 and 169 kg of vegetation daily.
Sixteen to eighteen hours, or nearly 80% of an elephant’s day is spent feeding. Elephants consume grasses, small plants, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark, and roots.
Tree bark is a favorite food source for elephants.
It contains calcium and roughage, which aids digestion.
Tusks are used to carve into the trunk and tear off strips of bark.
To supplement the diet, elephants will dig up earth to obtain salt and minerals.
The tusks are used to churn the ground. The elephant then places dislodged pieces of soil into its mouth, to obtain nutrients. Frequently these areas result in holes that are several feet deep and vital minerals are made accessible to other animals.
The large flapping ears of an elephant are very important for temperature regulation. Elephant ears are made of a very thin layer of skin stretched over cartilage and a rich network of blood vessels. On hot days, elephants will flap their ears constantly, creating a slight breeze. This breeze cools the surface blood vessels, and then the cooler blood gets circulated to the rest of the animal's body. The hot blood entering the ears can be cooled down several degrees before returning to the body. Differences in the ear sizes of African and Asian elephants can be explained, in part, by their geographical distribution. Africans originated and stayed near the equator, where it is warmer. Therefore, they have bigger ears. Asians live farther north, in slightly cooler climates, and thus have smaller ears.
The ears are also used in certain displays of aggression and during the males' mating period. If an elephant wants to intimidate a predator or rival, it will spread its ears out wide to make itself look more massive and imposing. During the breeding season, males give off an odour from the musth gland located behind their eyes. Joyce Poole, a well-known elephant researcher, has theorized that the males will fan their ears in an effort to help propel this "elephant cologne" great distances.
In the wild, tigers mostly feed on larger and medium sized animals.
Sambar, gaur, chital, wild boar, nilgai and both water buffalo and domestic buffalo are the tiger's favored prey in India.
Sometimes, they also prey on leopards, pythons, sloth bears and crocodiles.
In Siberia the main prey species are manchurian wapiti, wild boar, sika deer, moose, roe deer, and musk deer.
In Sumatra Sambar, muntjac, wild boar, and malayan tapir are preyed on.
In the former Caspian tiger's range, prey included saiga antelope, camels, caucasian wisent, yak, and wild horses.
Like many predators, they are opportunistic and will eat much smaller prey, such as monkeys, peafowls, hares, and fish.
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family;
the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera.
Native to much of eastern and southern Asia,
the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore.
Reaching up to 3.3 metres in total length
and weighing up to 300 kilograms.
Aside from their great bulk and power,
their most recognizable feature is the pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur.
Some rodents, like spiny mice and porcupines, have special sharp hairs called "quills" that help protect them from danger. Each porcupine has tens of thousnads of quills, making them some of the best-armored mammals ever.
Porcupines don´t purposely shoot quills off their bodies, the quills are so ligthly attached to the porcupines body that they immediately adhere to any predator that touches them. Ouch!
The Titi-monkey lives in South America.
Monkeys and apes
Have two unique characteristics
Among animals:
Hands that can grab
And eyes that face straight ahead.
Foreward facing eyes allow them
To see precise distances
As they jump and grab at branches,
Which is useful for animals
That hang out in trees!
Japanese macaques live in the snowy regions of Japan
And have thick coats of hair to keep them warm.
The cheetah is an a typical member of the cat family
that is unique in its speed, while lacking climbing abilities.
It is the fastest land animal,
reaching speeds between 112 and 120 km/h
and has the ability to accelerate from 0 to 110 km/h
in three seconds, faster than most supercars.
Recent studies confirm the cheetah's status as fastest land animal.
A mammal’s body makes its own warmth.
It can keep its temperature the same
weather it is hot or cold.
This is called being warm- blooded.
Chimpanzees are mammals.
They live in the forests of Africa.
Chimpanzees have been kept as pets for centuries
in a few African villages, especially in Congo.
The male common chimp is up to 1.7 m high when standing,
and weighs as much as 70 kg; the female is somewhat smaller.
All mammals have fur or hair.
Hair or fur is a characteristic that's only seen in mammals.
All mammals develop fur or hair at some point during their development,
though not all keep their fur or hair throughout their lifespan.
Mammals are all warm-blooded,
and all mammals are vertebrates
(meaning they have vertebrae, forming a spine).
All Mammal Mothers feed their babies milk.
They make their milk in the mammary glands
on their chest or bellies.
Milk is a rich food which is easy for a baby to swallow.
Mammals produce milk to feed their young.
Female mammals possess a modified sweat gland
– a mammary gland –
that is activated by hormonal changes that occur with pregnancy.
In fact, this trait is what inspired the term “mammal,” a derivation of “mammary.”
Shooting stars, or meteors,
are the streaks of light you sometimes
see at night.
They are made by pea-sized bits of rocks or metals
called meteoroids, which fall from space
and burn in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Comets are huge clouds of gas and dust,
much bigger than the Earth,
with a rocky core a few kilometers across.
Halley’s comet is named after the English scientist
Edmond Halley (1656-1742),
Who worked out that its orbit around the Sun
brings it close to Earth every 76 years.
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The Sun is a star.
It is like a blowing ball of hot gasses
producing a vast amount of energy which streams
through space in waves of light and heat.
This energy is essential to life on Earth.
Without it our planet would be so cold and dark
for plants and animals to survive.
The Sun is about 150 million km from Earth.
The Sun is made of a gas called Helium.
Much of the Sun is made of a gas called Hydrogen.
A satellite is something that orbits a planet.
Until the Space age began,
the Earth’s only satellite was the Moon.
Now it also has many artificial satellites-
machines which orbit it,
doing all sorts of jobs.
Some satellites relay TV and telephone signals.
Some study the stars,
others the Earth and its weather.
It is the Earth’s atmosphere that makes stars twinkle.
On its way to Earth, starlight passes through bands
of warm and cold air in the atmosphere.
These heat currents make the stars flicker.
The Moon is lit by the Sun
and doesn’t give any light of its own.
However the Sun only lights half of the Moon,
Leaving the other half dark and invisible.
We can only see one face or side of the Moon from Earth,
Because we see this face from different angles
During the 29 1/2 days the Moon takes to orbit Earth.
Sometimes the Sun lights all of the face of the Moon that we see.
At other times only part is lit.
Although we can’t feel it,
The earth is always moving.
It orbits, or goes round, the Sun,
And this journey takes a whole year.
At the same time the Earth itself is spinning-
one whole spin every 24 hours.
As the Earth spins, the Sun comes into view
And it seems to move across the sky.
The Earth spins from West to east,
So the Sun is in the East when we first see it in the morning,
and in the West when it sets in the evening.
People who travel into space are called astronauts.
They have to train for many years before their trip.
This astronaut wears a space suit to “walk” in space.
A star is a blazing ball of very hot gas.
The Sun is a star.
The moon travels around the Earth.
The Earth travels around the sun.
The moon is very different form Earth.
There is no air and no life.
It is boiling hot during the day
and freezing at night.
The surface of the moon is covered
with sauce-shaped holes called craters.
It is huge!
It is 109 times as wide as the earth,
Or wider than the length of 15.000.000 football fields!
In fact the sun is big enough to hold 1 million Earth’s inside it!
Most planets have an atmosphere –
a layer of gas that covers the surface.
The Earth’s atmosphere is made of air.
It stretches 400 km above us.
It also provides air to breathe,
And helps protect us from the sun’s heat.
A day is the time it takes for a planet to spin around once.
Earth’s day lasts 24 hours.
A year is the time it takes for a planet to go all the way around the sun.
Earth’s year lasts 365 days.
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