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Crossing a beach to get to the sea, a two-foot-tall Humboldt penguin waddles over what appears to be a cluster of large boulders. Suddenly one of the rock-like objects rises up and barks! The penguin is stepping on sea lions lounging on the shore. Sea lions prey on Humboldt penguins in water but are too slow to catch them on land. The bird continues to ruffle feathers as it climbs over more annoyed sea lions. But it finally makes it to the ocean and dives in for a swim. A GOOD SPORT Humboldt penguins live along the shores of Peru and Chile, two countries in South America. Named for a chilly water current that flows through their coastal range, these birds are excellent swimmers. Their torpedo-shaped bodies can shoot through the water at speeds of 30 miles an hour. And they can dive up to 500 feet underwater in search of snacks such as fish, shrimp, and squid. When the birds need a break from swimming, they come ashore. Getting around on land isn’t always easy. Parts of their habitat feature rocky seaside cliffs. Luckily the animals have some built-in climbing gear: They use sharp claws on their webbed feet to grip onto rocks as they move across the rugged landscape. The animals also put their climbing skills to use when they have to scramble over sunbathing sea lions blocking their path to the ocean. THINK PINK During the hottest months of the year, temperatures in the Humboldt penguin’s home can reach triple digits. The animal has ways to beat the heat though. It sports patches of bare, pink skin around its eyes and at the base of its bill. The bird expels body heat through these featherless spots. This little guy’s athletic abilities and its pink patches make it one colorful penguin! Check out the book Penguins vs. Puffins for more about these amazing birds! Watch a YouTube playlist all about penguins. Text by Andrea Silen, NGS Staff
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A female red-eyed tree frog has laid a batch of eggs on a leaf. She chose the spot carefully—the leaf hangs over a pond. When the eggs are ready to hatch, the tadpoles inside start swirling around vigorously. The activity breaks each egg open, releasing the little tadpoles. All the tadpoles wash down the leaf in a little stream of moisture from the hatching eggs, and—plop! plop! plop!—they land in the pond below. Feeding on tiny insects, the tadpoles live in the water they fell into until they metamorphose, or develop, into little brown froglets. At this point they leave the water and climb up nearby trees to live as tree frogs. By the time they’re adults, the frogs have turned a striking green, with blue-and-yellow striped sides, orange or red feet, a flash of blue on their thighs, and big red eyes. The bright colors are a defense mechanism. Being green helps the red-eyed tree frog blend in with tree leaves. If the green camouflage fails and a predator spots a sleeping frog, it swoops in for what it thinks will be a tasty meal. But the awakened frog’s eyes pop open, revealing their startling bright red color! Also, when the frog rushes to get away, it untucks its brightly colored legs. The predator is often so surprised by these sudden flashes of color that it is momentarily confused and hesitates. And while it does, the frog has a split second to make its escape!
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Goblin Shark
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Axolotls (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhls) are salamanders! Thes amphibians spend their whole lives underwater. They exist in the wild in only one place on Earth—the lake complex of Xochimilco (pronounced SO-chee-MILL-koh), a network of artificial channels, small lakes, and temporary wetlands that help supply water to the millions of residents in nearby Mexico City. Axolotls have long fascinated scientists for their ability to regenerate lost body parts and for their rare trait of neoteny, which means they retain larval features throughout life. Rather than undergoing typical metamorphosis, axolotls keep their youthful appearance, including their tadpolelike dorsal fin and feathery external gills that fan out from the head. As they age, axolotls simply get bigger and bigger, like amphibious Peter Pans. In rare cases, axolotls have matured past the larval stage and emerged onto land as adult salamanders. Neoteny doesn’t affect the axolotl’s ability to breed. Females mate with males and lay eggs underwater. As Mexico City has grown, the lake complex has shrunk and parts have become contaminated, distressing the axolotl population. The introduction of large numbers of carp and tilapia fish, which compete with axolotls for food and also eat axolotl eggs, has further lowered their population. A 2009 survey suggests there are fewer than 1,200 axolotls in the Xochimilco Lake complex. Axolotls feast on a menu of mollusks, worms, insect larvae, crustaceans, and some fish.
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When a great white shark is born, along with up to a dozen siblings, it immediately swims away from its mother. Born on the east and west coasts of North America, the south of Africa and southwest Australia, baby sharks are on their own right from the start. Their mother may see them only as prey. At birth the baby shark is already about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long; as it grows it may reach a length up to four times that. The pup (which is what a baby shark is called) will live its life at the top of the ocean’s food chain. But before it grows larger, the pup must avoid predators bigger than it is—including other great white sharks. Many baby sharks do not survive their first year. Young great white sharks eat fish (including other sharks) and rays. As they grow, the sharks’ favorite prey becomes sea mammals, especially sea lions and seals. Sharks count on the element of surprise as they hunt. When they see a seal at the surface of the water, sharks will often position themselves underneath the seal. Using their tails as propellers, they swim upward at a fast sprint, burst out of the water in a leap called a breach, and fall back into the water with the seal in their mouths. They can smell a single drop of blood from up to a third of a mile (0.53 kilometers) away. Sharks don’t chew their food; they rip off chunks of meat and swallow them whole. They can last a month or two without another big meal.
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It’s a good thing sloths don’t have to go to school. They’d never make it on time. These drowsy tree-dwellers sleep up to 20 hours a day! And even when they are awake, they barely move at all. In fact, they’re so incredibly sluggish, algae actually grows on their fur. Sloths live in the tropical forests of Central and South America. With their long arms and shaggy fur, they resemble monkeys, but they are actually related to armadillos and anteaters. They can be 2 to 2.5 feet (0.6 to 0.8 meters) long and, depending on species, weigh from 8 to 17 pounds (3.6 to 7.7 kilograms). There are two main species of sloth, identified by whether they have two or three claws on their front feet. The two species are quite similar in appearance, with roundish heads, sad-looking eyes, tiny ears, and stubby tails. Two-toed sloths are slightly bigger and tend to spend more time hanging upside-down than their three-toed cousins, who will often sit upright in the fork of a tree branch. Three-toed sloths have facial coloring that makes them look like they’re always smiling. They also have two extra neck vertebrae that allow them to turn their heads almost all the way around! Some scientists think sloths developed their slow-motion lifestyle so they would be less noticeable to predators such as hawks and cats, which rely heavily on their eyesight when hunting. The algae that grows on sloths‘ fur also helps them avoid predators by letting them blend in with green leaves. They rarely come down from the trees. About once every week, they descend to go to the bathroom, slowly moving about by digging their front claws into the dirt and dragging their bodies. If they are caught by a predator, sloths turn from sluggish to slugger, biting fiercely, hissing, slashing with their claws, and shrieking.
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Balanced on a rock in the middle of a river, a black bear lowers her head to the water and … chomp! A wriggling salmon is no match for her strong jaws. She’s spent the summer eating berries and roots—now she’s eating all the salmon she can catch to gain as much weight as possible. She needs enough stored fat for her body to make milk for newborn cubs this winter.
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Thought to be some of the smartest animals on Earth, bottlenose dolphins send messages to one another in many different ways. They squeak, squawk and use body language—leaping as high as 20 feet in the air, snapping their jaws, slapping their tails on the surface of the water, blowing bubbles and even butting heads. Each dolphin has a special whistle that it creates soon after it is born. This whistle is used for identification, just like a human’s name. Dolphins also produce high frequency clicks, which act as a sonar system called echolocation (ek-oh-low-KAY-shun). When the clicking sounds hit an object in the water, like a fish or rock, they bounce off and come back to the dolphin as echoes. Echolocation tells the dolphins the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object. Bottlenose dolphins have a sharp sense of hearing. Scientists believe that the sounds travel through the dolphin’s lower jaw to its inner ear and then are transmitted to the brain for analysis. Dolphins grow to be anywhere from 6 to 12 feet long. They shed their outermost layer of skin every two hours. Very social and playful mammals, bottlenose dolphins form friendships that last decades hunting, mating and protecting each other. They like to surf in the waves and wakes of boats and swim through self-made bubble rings. They can swim up to 22 miles an hour. These sea mammals feed on fish, squid and shrimp. A group of dolphins will cooperate to make a mud ring to trap fish. Then, some of the dolphins in the group will wait outside the ring for the fish that try to escape, gulping them up as a snack. Bottlenose dolphins are found in warm water all over the world. They live both in shallow water close to shore and far out in deep dark water. Dolphins face a lot of problems with getting trapped in the garbage humans leave on the beach.
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Seahorses are tiny fishes that are named for the shape of their head, which looks like the head of a tiny horse. There are at least 50 species of seahorses. You’ll find them in the world’s tropical and temperate coastal waters, swimming upright among seaweed and other plants. Seahorses use their dorsal fins (back fins) to propel slowly forward. To move up and down, seahorses adjust the volume of air in their swim bladders, which is an air pocket inside their bodies. Tiny, spiny plates cover seahorses‘ bodies all the way down to their curled, flexible tails. The tail can grasp objects, helpful when seahorses want to anchor themselves to vegetation. A female seahorse lays dozens, sometimes hundreds, of eggs in a pouch on the male seahorse’s abdomen. Called a brood pouch, it resembles a kangaroo’s pouch for carrying young. Seahorse young hatch after up to 45 days in the brood pouch. The baby seahorses, each about the size of a jelly bean, find other baby seahorses and float together in small groups, clinging to each other using their tails. Unlike kangaroos, baby seahorses do not return to the pouch. They must find food and hide from predators as soon as they’re born.
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