• Precocial birds like chickens, ostriches, ducks, and seagulls hatch ready to move around. They come from eggs with bigger yolks than altricial birds like owls, woodpeckers, and most small songbirds that need a lot of care from parents in order to survive.
• There are only about 4,000 kinds of mammals. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider there are 21,000 kinds of fish and a whopping 800,000 kinds of insects you’ll realize mammals are a pretty small class!
• The Blue Whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest mammal living today. It is also the largest mammal to have ever lived. In fact the Blue whale is the largest animal ever to have lived on the planet as far as we know; bigger by far than even the largest Dinosaur. The longest Blue Whale ever measured was a female, 110ft long. The heaviest weighed over 190 tons. We haven’t actually got a set of weighing scales big enough so weights are estimated from the cut up remains.
• Fish have been on the earth for more than 450 million years. Fish were well established long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. It is estimated that there may still be over 15,000 fish species that have not yet been identified. There are more species of fish than all the species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals combined. About 40% of all fish species inhabit fresh water, yet less than .01% of the earth’s water is fresh water.
• Most reptiles are carnivores, and eat whole prey or insects. Some reptiles (adult green iguanas, for example), are herbivores and eat green plants. The shape of a reptile’s pupil indicates whether the animal is active at night or during the day. Most reptiles active at night have slitlike pupils that can be closed almost completely in bright light. Reptiles active in daytime have round pupils. Most reptiles have good vision, and some can tell the difference among colors.
• Amphibians include frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians. The word means double life—many species spend part of their life in aquatic (water) and terrestrial (land) environments. Because their skin lacks a shell, scales or outer drier covering, most amphibians live in wet or damp situations to prevent dehydration.
• There are only about 4,000 kinds of mammals. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider there are 21,000 kinds of fish and a whopping 800,000 kinds of insects you’ll realize mammals are a pretty small class!
• The Blue Whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest mammal living today. It is also the largest mammal to have ever lived. In fact the Blue whale is the largest animal ever to have lived on the planet as far as we know; bigger by far than even the largest Dinosaur. The longest Blue Whale ever measured was a female, 110ft long. The heaviest weighed over 190 tons. We haven’t actually got a set of weighing scales big enough so weights are estimated from the cut up remains.
• Fish have been on the earth for more than 450 million years. Fish were well established long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. It is estimated that there may still be over 15,000 fish species that have not yet been identified. There are more species of fish than all the species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals combined. About 40% of all fish species inhabit fresh water, yet less than .01% of the earth’s water is fresh water.
• Most reptiles are carnivores, and eat whole prey or insects. Some reptiles (adult green iguanas, for example), are herbivores and eat green plants. The shape of a reptile’s pupil indicates whether the animal is active at night or during the day. Most reptiles active at night have slitlike pupils that can be closed almost completely in bright light. Reptiles active in daytime have round pupils. Most reptiles have good vision, and some can tell the difference among colors.
• Amphibians include frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians. The word means double life—many species spend part of their life in aquatic (water) and terrestrial (land) environments. Because their skin lacks a shell, scales or outer drier covering, most amphibians live in wet or damp situations to prevent dehydration.
• Teach, teach, teach-er is the song of the Ovenbird. Ovenbirds are found mostly in the Eastern parts of North America. The Ovenbird eats mostly insects and plant matter. Domed nests can be found on the ground or in deciduous and evergreen trees. A nest is shaped like an old-fashion oven.
• For more than 40,000 years before European navigators visited the shores of the Great South Land, Aborigines occupied Australia, including its arid deserts, tropical rainforests, coastal plains, mountains, and especially its major river systems. Estimates by anthropologists put the population of Australian Aborigines before 1770 at more than 300,000. They spoke 500 different languages grouped in thirty-one related language families.
Aborigines were completely at home in their surroundings and had no trouble "living off the land." This was mainly because of their intimate knowledge of the topography and natural resources of their tribal territories, and their complete understanding of the habits of the animals they hunted. The Australian aborigines extensively used insects from their surroundings as food, medicine, and as part of their cultural beliefs. However, most data concerning the use of insects by Australian Aborigines occur as scattered references in various anthropological, gastronomical, and pharmaceutical sources.
Insects have been consumed as food in many parts of the world, and insects consumed directly as food was probably the most important use of insects to the Australian Aborigines. An interesting example of mass harvesting of edible insects is the moth feasts that occurred in the Bogong mountains of New South Wales. The Bogong moth, Agrotis infusa, aestivated in large numbers every year in rock shelters of these mountains. From November to January, hundreds of Aborigines from different tribes would gather for huge feasts on these adult moths. Rock crevices were covered with layers of these moths, which were collected by dislodging and then collecting the moths from the cave of crevice floor. Moths were then cooked in sand and stirred in hot ashes, which singed off the wings and legs. Moths were then sifted on a net to remove their heads. In this state, they were generally eaten, although sometimes they were ground into a paste and made into cakes. As a food, the Bogong moth was rich in fat, with the average fat content of the male’s abdomens exceeding sixty-one percent, and of females, fifty-one percent of their dry weight.
