Animals 16-20 in our '50 incredible animals series'

Hello and welcome to another 50 incredible animals post where we are sharing 5 more animals that you (hopefully) haven't heard of or know much about! Enjoy!

16. Mantis shrimp

Mantis shrimp are colourful but deadly sea-dwelling creatures that live in tropical and sub-tropical seas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

They may look pretty however, they have a surprisingly strong punch. They can punch up 50 miles per hour with a force of over 1 500 newtons. That's enough to go destroy crab shells and punch their way straight through the glass of an aquarium. The punch is as fast as a bullet and is 2 500 times the force of the animal's on weight. If humans could do that, we would be able to punch through steel! Also mantis shrimp are thought to have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom!

All in all, mantis shrimp are pretty incredible animals!

17. Clownfish

Clownfish are one example for the amazing corporations in the natural world. They live in a close relationship with anemones. The anemone protects them against predators and gives them a place to live. In return, the clownfish bring food and remove parasites from the anemone. This is called a symbiotic relationship.

Anemones are actually poisonous, but these fish have developed ways to stop the anemones from stinging them. This makes anemones the perfect place to hide from predators.

18. Axolotl

What axolotls are best known for, is the fact that they never turn into adults. This is kind of true. Axolotls certainly never undergo metamorphose and therefore look like children for their whole lives. Also, when amphibians turn into adults, they normally leave the water and live on land. Axolotls live in water for their whole lives. So in some sense, they don't turn into adults. However, at some point they mate and lay eggs. It really depends on how you define adulthood.

To make these animals sound even more weird, they can regenerate limbs and organs! Axolotls are territorial and often bite limbs off trespassers. If the trespasser happens to be another axolotl, the limb will grow back later. However these animals are not immortal and they will die of old age when their time comes.

19. Electric eel

These truly are incredible animals as they can grow up to 2.5 meters in length, and sorry to disappoint but they aren't actually eels at all, they are just similar in shape! The shock of these remarkable animals has been known to knock a horse off its feet, which is just amazing! They live in South America, populating the murky pools and basins of the area. A website called aqua states that 'Juveniles feed on invertebrates, such as crabs and freshwater shrimp. As adults, they eat amphibians, fishes and crustaceans.' which sums up their diet. They are able to leap out the water and get most of their oxygen by breathing through their mouth at the surface of the water, which is something they've developed as a result of the muddy, poorly oxygenated waters where they live. To me, these are extremely interesting animals!

20. Desert locusts

These creatures live (surprise surprise) in the desert, mainly in Africa and stretching across to India too. They eat plant material which means that they strip an area of crops when they strike, for they are in fact a real threat to us. Worldbank puts it very nicely saying that 'The growing swarms spread to new areas, disrupting the food supply, upending livelihoods and requiring substantial resources to address. Decimated crops and pasture mean that food security and livelihoods for millions of people—especially in countries marked by fragility, conflict and violence—are at stake.'. They can travel at 21mph and a large swarm can contain about 80 million members! This is another very interesting fact: they change color as they gather in numbers. Neutral-coloured locusts are solitary, but bright yellow locusts are ready to swarm! I think it's incredible how they change colour!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post with another 5 animals and we'll be back soon!

Sources:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/mantis-shrimp
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/clownfish
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/facts/axolotl
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/electric-eel
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/desert-locust
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/the-world-bank-group-and-the-desert-locust-outbreak

Images:
Mantis shrimp: This image, owned by prilfish (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Clownfish: This image, owned by Teddy Hartanto (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Axolotl: This image, owned by john (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Electric eel: Elizabeth (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Comments

16.08.2020 Animal of the week: Elephant

Hello. On the 12th of August it was International Elephant Day, so we decided that this week's post should be about elephants. Elephants are the largest living land mammals. There are three types of elephant; the African bush elephant; the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant. African elephants have larger ears, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears. Elephants use their trunks to breath, bring food and drink to their mouths and to grasp objects. Elephants' legs are like pillars. They carry the Elephant's massive weight. African bush elephants weigh 6000kg, Asian elephants weigh 4000kg and African forest elephants weigh 2700kg. Basically, they are very heavy.Elephants eat grasses, small plants, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark, and roots. Elephants can live up to 70 years old in the wild. They communicate by sight, touch and smell. Sadly, these wonderful mammals are in danger. African elephants are listed as vulne...

15.11.2020 Animal Of The Week: Red Squirrels

Hello Everyone, This week's animal of the week is the red squirrel. There are lots of different types of squirrel (about 200 as this includes marmots and prairie dogs). I have some grey squirrels in my garden and you might too. We often see them so hopefully you can learn about red squirrels today. Habitat As you might know, squirrels live mainly in woodland areas. The red squirrel can live in all types of woodland, even if it is quite small. See the maps below for more information on where they live. Diet They feed on mainly nuts, fruit, fungi and other plants. They need to chew as their teeth grow continuously and so can grow so long that they can't eat if they don't chew often. When food is scarce they can eat some insects and small vertebrates. What is thought of them Squirrels are sometimes seen as pests, but not usually as much as many other rodents. They can raid bird feeders (they manage to get in to mine even if ...

Factfile-November 2021

Hello, Welcome to the November Factfile! Finally, it is December, and Christmas is just around the corner! Settle in, and read all the hot info from November. Here's a quick reminder to vote about the fact file's future. It closes in a month! Thanks, and enjoy! News COP26 Quickly for everyone who does not know: COP stands for "Conference of the Parties" and is a conference hosted by the UN, which brings together the members of the UN to discuss climate issues and come up with agreements regarding these issues. This year, COP was held for the 26th time-hence COP26-in Glasgow from October 31st to November 13th. These are the main outcomes from this conference: The nations agreed on four main topics to take action on Mitigation, Adaption, Finance and collaboration. Apart from that, they agreed on keeping the 1.5 degrees limit but also stated that action must be taken immediately to make it. Mitigation is about reducing carbon emis...

Dara McAnulty | inspirational young naturalist

Hi, Today, I'm going to talk about a young naturalist from Northern Ireland. We haven't had one of these for quite a while (the last one was Wangari Matthai in late August 2021 ), so I'm really excited to write this new one about the inspirational naturalist Dara McAnulty! General information Dara McAnulty was born in 2004. He comes from Northern Ireland, where he lives with his parents and siblings. He is a writer, blogger, activist and naturalist. Dara, his mum and his siblings are all autistic and Dara says that this is the reason he sees the natural world as he does. Books and blogs Dara wrote his blog ' Naturalist Dara '. His first book ' Dairy of a Young Naturalist ' (which we reviewed here ) was published in 2020. It documents a year in his life and how he connects with nature. His second book, ' Wild Child ': A Journey Through Nature' came out in 2021, it again describes nature, this time 'go...

Ozone layer

Hi everyone, What even is ozone? And the ozone layer? Where does the hole in the ozone layer come from and what does it mean? Is it dangerous? What can be done? Often the ozone-talk can be complicated and confusing, keeping an overview is hard and understanding all the problems always difficult. Let us break it down a bit for you: What is the ozone layer? We'll start with the basics: The ozone layer is part of the stratosphere, which is the second layer of the Earth's atmosphere, between 10 and 50 km above the Earth's surface and made up of protective gases. One of these protective gases is ozone. There is not much ozone in the atmosphere, only 0.3 molecule of ozone per 1 million molecules of air. This is because ozone is chemically unstable and only forms when ultra violet radiation (UV light) hits oxygen and breaks the bonds between the atoms. It fact it is so unstable that even when it has formed, it breaks down again relatively quickly. This leads to ozone turning back ...

Linking climate change and inequality - 'The Great Carbon Divide'

Hey everyone, Have you heard of 'The great carbon divide‘? It is often referred to as the 'carbon footprint gap' or the 'emissions imbalance‘, and produces frightening numbers. The great carbon divide describes the huge gap between the amount of carbon dioxide the rich versus the poor emit, and these numbers shocked even us. What does this mean? There have been many different studies, and all of them show terrifying results. One study from the Guardian and Oxfam, reports that the richest 1% of the world's population emit more carbon than the poorest 66%. The richest 1% consist of 77 million people, which may seem like a lot at first, but the poorest 66% refers to over 5 billion people! Africa, which is home to 17% of the world's population, only causes 4% of the world's emissions. This top 1% emitted 16% of global CO2 emissions in 2019, that's 5.9 billion tonnes of CO2. Modelling suggests that it would take someone who isn't in the top 1% about 150...

Animals 36-40 in our '50 incredible animals' series

Hi, As you probably noticed, we took a break from this series, mostly due to having just too much to do. But we're back now with the last three posts. 36. The Pinocchio frog The Pinocchio frog can be found in the Foja Mountains in Indonesia. They mainly eat insects, although little is known about them. They are named because the males have a spike on their noses. They were only discovered in 2008, and this was completely by accident! It remained unnamed scientifically until over ten years later when it was given the name " Litoria pinocchio " . There is very little information about them but Wikipedia states that "the male Pinocchio frog inflates its nose when calling, and the nose decreases in size when the frog is calm and quiet," which I think is hilarious and so interesting! 37. Snub-nosed monkey Especially noticeable due to their curious looks, the snub-nosed monkeys can be found in the forests of central China and northern...

Coral reefs

Hello! We would love to introduce you to the topic of coral reefs and especially coral reef bleaching, as it is a greatly ignored but certainly significant topic. Have fun! 5 coral reef facts 1. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet and is 2300 km long! 2. Less than 0.1% of the world's ocean surface is covered in coral reefs. 3. At least 25% of all marine animals live there. 4. Coral reefs are often known as the rainforests of the ocean. 5. In 1 square kilometre of coral reef, up to 35 tons of fish can be 'produced'. The 5 biggest coral reefs in the world 1. Great Barrier Reef (near Australia) 2. Red Sea Coral Reef (near Egypt, Israel and Djibouti) 3. New Caledonia Reef (Pacific Ocean near New Caledonia) 4. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (near Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras) 5. Florida Reef (Atlantic Ocean/Gulf of Mexico near Florida) What is coral? Coral is actually made up of small anim...

Climate change: what is it and what's the problem

Hello, I've noticed that we are always mentioning climate change. Not only us blog editors but also politicians, activists and so on. The words climate change are bounced around in the media and probably in your households, but do you actually know what it is or how it works? I know that for a long time, I didn't know what it really meant. I hope that this post changes that. What is climate change and how does it work? The words climate change describe a slow shift in the earth's temperature and changes in the weather patterns. Having a single warm winter does not instantly mean climate change. Climate change happens over a long period of time. If you look at a temperature graph over the years, it doesn't go up in one day and then stay the same for another hundred years. It curves up slowly but steadily. This is a average temperature graph from 1880 to just after 2000. You can see how the temperature gradually gets warmer....

Ecosia

We all need to do something to save our planet: it is no use just leaving it to Greta Thunberg! She is very inspirational, yes, but she can only do so much. She isn't superhuman! The climate crisis is up to us; up to you. We all have to get stuck in. Research, learn, discover and most importantly: never give up! The world's animals need us. The world's trees need us and a simple way to do this is to switch to Ecosia. Ecosia is a search engine but it plants trees while you search the web. Okay, it doesn't have as many websites as google so you may want to have google as a backup but it plants trees: this is your opportunity to make a simple change. Just google Ecosia and search to plant trees. Make a difference. Image: This image is owned by Binyamin Mellish on pexels.com .

Green World

Search This Blog