How big and how small can a mammal be? The Etruscan shrew is the smallest mammal and is 40 mm long and weighs 2 g. The blue whale is the largest mammal and is 29.9 m long and weighs 199 tons. The African elephant is the largest land animal and is about 4 m tall […]
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How does animal camouflage work? It works by upsetting the edges, mimicking shadows and background, copying shapes, scattering light and countershading, and hiding movement. Camouflage is obviously an evolved trait. All animals have gradually become the color and the shape that they are because it offered an advantage in that they weren’t eaten and got
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Can a tortoise live without its shell? No. Tortoises and turtles are not just inside their shells. They are the shells. The shells are part of their skeletons. Tortoises and turtles actually come from the same family. In fact, tortoises are turtles. They all come from the family testudines, which are reptiles with a shell
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Why are some animals cold-blooded? It lets them go for longer without eating, which means they can survive in more inhospitable areas. There are three types of animals: warm-blooded, cold-blooded, and those in between. Warm-blooded animals are called endotherms and they are able to maintain their body temperature by using their metabolism. We are endotherms.
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What is the difference between a crocodile and an alligator? There are many differences, including their color, size, snout shape, where they live, behavior, the strength of their bite, and many more. Both crocodiles and alligators come from the family crocodilian. They appeared about 94 million years ago and have a thick scaly skin. They
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How do pythons kill their prey? They squeeze their prey to constrict blood flow before consuming the prey whole. Before we start, pythons are not boa constrictors. I always thought they were the same thing, but they aren’t. Pythons are longer than boa constrictors and they come from different areas. Boa constrictors are found in
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What is the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores? Amongst other things, they have differences in their teeth, mouths, eyes, saliva, intestines and their stomachs. Herbivores obviously live off plants. They are known as primary consumers because they eat the energy that the plants have produced through photosynthesis and introduce it into the food chain.
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Why are hammerhead sharks shaped like that? The location of their eyes on the end of the hammer give them a greater ability to locate and catch stingrays. There are several different types of hammerhead shark, but they all have the same hammer-shaped head. This hammer shape is called a cephalofoil. The hammerhead shark with
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How do fireflies glow? They combine a chemical called luciferin, an enzyme called luciferases, oxygen, and fuel. Fireflies are not actually flies; they are beetles. They are also not one single type of beetle. They come from a family of beetle called Lampyridae, which contains about 2,000 different types of beetles and nearly all of
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What makes our hands different to other animals? We have an opposable thumb. We have four fingers and a thumb on each hand. We are not the only animals to have this many fingers, and we are not the only animals to have an opposable thumb, but the reach of our thumb sets us apart.
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