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This is one cat that doesn’t need any help getting down from a tree. The leopard is so comfortable up there that it often stalks prey and even hauls its kills up into the branches. Leopards are powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars. They live in sub-Saharan Africa, northeast Africa, Central Asia, India, and China. However, many of their populations are endangered, especially outside of Africa. You can identify most leopards by their light color and distinctive dark spots. Those spots are called rosettes, because they resemble the shape of a rose. These patterns camouflage their bodies as they move through the grass and trees. Black leopards, which appear to be almost solid in color because their spots are hard to distinguish, are commonly called black panthers. Unlike lions, leopards are solitary creatures. Males are almost entirely solitary and females only break their solitude when they are raising cubs. But, like lions, leopards roar. Male leopards defend their territory by roaring and scent marking, while females use their roar to attract mates and call their cubs. A leopard roar is a rough rasp, like a handsaw cutting wood. Leopard cubs are born with barely visible spots. The mother hides her cubs and moves them from one safe location to the next until they are old enough to begin playing and learning to hunt. When the cubs are about two years old, they live on their own. But the maternal bonds are strong, and offspring sometimes have reunions with their mothers.
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There are more than 200 species of squirrels living all around the world, including kinds of tree, ground, and flying squirrels. You may have seen the eastern gray squirrel in parks, your backyard, or in a forest in the eastern half of the United States. Eastern gray squirrels forage for nuts, seeds, buds, and flowers of trees. Like other tree squirrels, the eastern gray squirrel plays an important role in what’s known as seed dispersal. As winter approaches, squirrels carry their food and bury it in several locations. They hide more food than they will recover or eat. The buried seeds and nuts sprout and begin to grow in these locations the following spring. Eastern gray squirrels have an excellent sense of smell, which they use to help locate food that they’ve hidden away. They can also pick up information about their fellow squirrels by smelling them. They communicate with each other by making sounds and body movements, such as tail flicking. When predators such as red foxes and red-tailed hawks are nearby, eastern gray squirrels will sound warning calls to alert other squirrels. Female eastern gray squirrels may start having babies at as young as five and a half months old. Females can have litters twice a year, each usually consisting of two to four babies. They gather leaves and twigs and build nests high in the trees to house their young offspring, or use tree cavities as dens. Newborn eastern gray squirrels don’t have fur when they are born and are not able to see. They often weigh as little as half an ounce (14 grams). They leave the nest by around ten to twelve weeks old and they become fully grown by around nine months.
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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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The ostrich is the tallest and the heaviest of all birds. While the huge ostrich is a bird, it does not fly. Instead it runs. One stride can cover up to 16 feet (4.9 meters)—about the length of a mid-size family car! The bird is speedy, too. It can run just over 40 miles (64 kilometers) an hour for a short distance, and can keep up a speed of more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) an hour over longer distances. The ostrich uses its short wings for balance, holding them outstretched when it runs. Strong legs can also be used for self-defense. An ostrich will kick with a force mighty enough to kill a lion. When danger approaches, an ostrich will often lie low to hide, stretching its neck along the ground. Its feather colors blend with the sandy soil where it lives. From far away, it looks like the ostrich has buried its head in the sand. Many people thought that was what ostriches did when they were trying to hide, but that is a myth. Ostriches live near grazing animals such as wildebeest, antelopes, and zebras. The grazers stir up insects and rodents for the ostriches to eat, and the ostriches warn the grazers to dangers such as approaching lions. An ostrich group, called a herd, numbers about 12 individuals. Male ostriches compete for control of a group of several females. A herd has a dominant male and a dominant female. She mates only with him, though he may mate with other females as well. All the egg-laying females, called hens, lay their eggs in the nest of the dominant female. Then that female—whose eggs are positioned in the center of the nest, the most well-protected spot—and her mate take care of all the eggs in that one nest. Each egg can be up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and weigh 3 pounds (1.5 kilograms)!
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Also known as woodchucks, groundhogs spend much of their days alone, foraging for plants and grasses and digging burrows up to 66 feet long.
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You can boil them, bake them, deep-freeze them, crush them, dehydrate them, or even blast them into space. It doesn’t matter—tardigrades can survive practically anything. These eight-legged aquatic animals may be small, but they’re nearly indestructible.
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Dive in to discover seven species of sharks with mind-blowing traits.
"In that deep, dark environment, the sharks need to be able to find each other,"