Animals

Many woodland mammals eat plants during the warm months. When winter comes, these plants die or are covered with snow, and the animals have nothing to eat. But nature has provided them with a way to survive the I winter. It's called hibernation, from the Latin word that means "winter."

Animals that hibernate eat much more than they need during
the summer, and the excess food is stored in their fat. Then when cold weather comes, the animals crawl into a hole and go to sleep.  read more »

There are many animals without teeth, but almost every animal has some kind of jaws it can open and close to take in food. Except the anteater!

This strange-looking creature from South America appears to have no mouth, for his snout is shaped like a tube and contains neither teeth nor jaws.  read more »

We eat every day, but some animals can go for so long without a meal that it might seem they never eat.

A snake often eats only once in two weeks or longer, penguins sometimes go a month without eating, salmon don't eat for long periods of their life, and snails have been known to live after not eating for three years!

But the answer to the question, even for these creatures, is still yes. Some animals can store extra food in their body for a long time. But no matter how long a period of time might pass between an animal's meals, sooner or later that creature must eat to live.  read more »

This animal is known to most people because aardvark is the first word in many dictionaries. But do you know what an aardvark actually is?

The aardvark is a strange creature indeed. It's about the size of a hog, with a long, pig-like snout and thick, gray-brown hair. It has long ears like a rabbit, sharp claws like a raccoon, and a long, sticky tongue like an anteater.  read more »

It's almost impossible for you to fall asleep while standing. The moment you began to doze, you're likely to fall down. But horses often seem to sleep while they're standing up — and they do!

When a horse stands perfectly still and relaxes, joints in his legs lock into position, holding the horse up even if he falls asleep.

Horses actually prefer to sleep standing up, as when they lie down, their weight presses them down heavily against the ground, which can make breathing difficult. So a horse rarely lies down to sleep, and can doze quite comfortably while standing in his stall.  read more »

The average dog lives about 15 years, Some dogs show signs of
age at six years old, while others remain active and youthful until they are ten or more.

The oldest dog on record was a Labrador who died in 1963, at the age of 27 years and three months. However, some people have claimed that their dogs lived longer than that.

A veterinarian operating on a dog once found 267 marbles in the dog's stomach!

It may be hard to believe, but the largest dogs on earth are almost 300 times as Davy as the smallest dogs! The breed of dog with the largest average size is the St. Bernard.

Full-grown St. Bernards may neigh more than 250 pounds, and the heaviest St. Bernard — the heaviest dog of kind ever weighed — tipped the scales a: 295 pounds!  read more »

If you thought yes, you're way off. The most common domesticated animal on earth is, by a long shot, the chicken.

Although this familiar bird is the descendant of a jungle fowl from Asia that wasn't domesticated until about 1500 B.C., there are now some four billion chickens on earth — about the same number as there are people!

The United States has almost 400 million chickens, but the nation with the largest chicken population is the Soviet Union, with more than 560 million.

The chickens of the world lay about 400 billion eggs each year!

If we use the word "cattle" not only for the cow and steer, but for other members of the cattle family — such as the yak and buffalo — then cattle are by far the most important domesticated animals on
earth.

This single creature provides man with his number-one work animal, half of all his meat, 80% of his leather, and 95% of his milk!

Cattle were one of the earliest animals to be domesticated, second only perhaps to the dog. Used at first only for milk and for work, cattle did not become man's source of beef until a few centuries ago.

Because many people think that lions and tigers both live in Africa, they may wonder which of these giant cats proves the strongest when they tangle.

But there isn't a single wild tiger in Africa! Tigers are native to Asia, with one kind living in the hot regions of India, and another kind inhabiting the colder regions of northern China and Siberia. So there's no way a lion and tiger can tangle in Africa.  read more »