Interesting Animal Facts

• Penguins live only in the Southern Hemisphere and never in the Northern Hemisphere.

• A single porcupine is known to kill 100 trees in one winter. It uses it's sharp claws to climb a tree, sits on a limb to gnaw away at the bark and twigs and then stuffs them all into its mouth at once. Because of it's liking for bark, the porcupine causes much damage to forests.

• A scallop moves by sucking water into its shell and then squirting it out suddenly. It likes to wander around and this gives it enough force to push it in front in a zig zag manner.

• A male garibaldi damselfish attract females for mating by covering a rock with a thick layer of alga. A male which clean off a rock to allow only algae to live have a higher chance of mating. The algae is also used to protect the eggs of the fish.

• To prevent the nest from getting soaked, the rare white-chinned swift, which nests behind the waterfalls of Latin America plant pieces of moss in the nest which then grow and reinforce the nest.

• A porcupine loves salt so much that it would walk into a camp and gnaw on anything that has been touched by salt or even by perspiring hands.

• Despite having a shell of armour for the body, an armadillo has teeth that do not have enamel and thus have very soft teeth. It can only eat soft food such as ants, termites, grubs and bugs.

• The tip of an elephant's trunk is so sensitive and flexible that it can pick up a pin.

• If a mole does not find food within 12 hours, it will die. Its chief food consists of insects and earthworms.

• A male nightingale stops singing when its eggs have hatched so as not to attract unnecessary attention to the nest. However he gives short calls to tell the female that all is well or danger is approaching.

• Bolas spiders snare moths by producing chemicals similar to pheromones used by several species of female moths to attract mates.

• The webbed feet of the stormy petrel enable it to 'walk' on water. It spends almost its entire life over the ocean and only comes to land to breed. If a storm arises, they can't walk on water and are forced to remain in the air all day and night.

• Some giant land turtles are able to bellow.

• No one knows what happens to the seahorse during winter as it is only seen during the summertime.

• There is a species in the river Nile in Egypt that avoids its enemies by swimming with its black belly up and its white back down.

• The arctic tern, a migrating bird is able to travel back and forth as much as 22000 miles in a course of a year.

• The Amazon army ants raid nests of certain black ants and carry back to cocoons and larvae to their own homes. When the cocoons hatch, they will become the slaves of these army ants and do all their work.

• The nest that an osprey is a huge and attractive one which is unhidden from sight and the bird adds new material each year to the same old nest. The nest can weigh up to 450 kilograms.

The Rainforest Facts

• In Peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in 125 acres of Tropical Forest than in the entire North America.

• In Peru a single bush may contain more ant species than in the British Isles.

• A study has shown that there are possibly over 30 million species of insects dwelling in the canopies of tropical forests.

• 63,000 square miles of Rainforests are being destroyed each year.

• Rainforests higher than 3,000 feet above sea level are called cloud forests.

• Already over half of the world's tropical forests have been lost.

• Madagascar is the home to a rainforest where 60 percent of it's 12,000 different plant species are unique to that island.

• When you visit a pharmacist, one in every four purchases will have come from a tropical forest.

• Medicine produced in tropical forests bring in commercially 30 billion dollars a year.

• Large areas of South and Central America are cleared and burned for cattle ranching. This is so that farmers can provide cheap beef to consumers in the West.

• Every year approximately four billion tons of carbon accumulates in the air each year, about 30% of this comes directly from the continued burning of the rainforests.

• More than anything else, rainforest is destroyed by peasant farmers. However, the responsibility for this lies largely with the governments who fail to promote land reform and sustainable agricultural practices as an alternative to forest clearance.

• Greater than a quarter of our rainforest is in Brazil.