m
- The nightingale is the
sk, favorite bird of writers
(remember Oscar Wilde's fairy
tale "The Nightingale and the
Rose"?). But many mistakenly
write that the nightingale
sings only at night. In fact, you
can hear the bird morning,
noon and night — but only
the male. He sings as he
courts his sweetheart, then
again as she lays her olive-col-
ored eggs. Once the baby
birds are born, however, the
nightingale is silent, so as to
keep away enemies.
- You can find an owl in
Texas as tiny as a spar-
row.
When an octopus needs to
escape in a hurry, it throws
out a kind of a "smoke
screen," an inky substance
that makes the water appear
cloudy.
Knock knock
Who's there?
Orangutan.
Orangutan who?
Orangutan
times but
you didn't
answer:
You can
r find porcu-
-
pines mentioned in the
Shakespeare play Hamlet,
where a line reads, "Like
quills upon the fretful porcu-
pine."
Thousands of years ago,
penguins stood more than 6-
feet tall, and they could fly.
(Today, the largest penguin is
about 3 1/2-feet tall). Do you
know why these animals
don't get cold diving into the
ice? Because they have a
heavy coat of fat that keeps
them warm. Another interest-
ing fact about penguins:
Mother penguins will starve
to death before they let their
children go without food.
- Q is for quail, which
the Torah mentions in
Exodus 16:14. Just before the
Jews receive the manna from
heaven, quails suddenly ap-
pear at their camp site, fol-
lowed by a
"layer of
dew."
Queen
bees are the
only member of
the colony
that live
through the winter.
- Rats have many internal
organs that function just
like a human's, which is why
they are often used in medical
experimentation.
Starfish
have
eyes
10
at the ends
of their arms.
Unlike al-
most every
other ani-
mal, it's the
male sea-
horse who
carries his children. After the
mother lays her eggs, she car-
ries them to the father who
holds them under his tail until
they hatch.
If along comes a spider to
sit down beside you, be care-
ful — but don't panic! While
all spiders carry poison (to
use for self-de-
fense), there are
only two in the
United States that
are very danger-
ous: the black
-
widow and the brown
recluse.
With a single piece of paper
and some crayons, you can
make a fun snake toy which
will provide you with many
great opportunities to torture
your little brother or sister. Be-
gin with a single sheet of pa-
per, which you cut into a
circle. Next, make a small
cut into the circle,
leaving a strip about
1" wide. Cut in a cir-
cular motion, around
and around, until you
have come to the
middle. Paint
the coil with green
and black, then affix a tongue
and googly eyes. Hold the
snake from his tail and let go;
he'll seem to pop out at un-
witting passersby.
Did you know there's an
animal that has only one
foot? It's the
snail, the bottom
0
part of which is
flat and smooth
and releases a oca
slimy substance
that allows a snail to
move.
m - Turtles and tor-
toises are not the same
creature. Both are reptiles, but
turtles live in the sea, while
tortoises prefer the land.
_ The unicorn is proba-
bly the best-known
mythical beast, but there are
others, including the
dragon, the cen-
taur (half-man,
half-horse) and
the griffin
(which was a
combination
of a lion and
T
an eagle). According to leg-
end, the unicorn had the
back legs of an
antelope and
the tail of a
lion. Supposed-
ly, its single
horn was filled
with a magic po-
tion that could de-
tect poison.
(Incidentally, you can
even find stories about uni-
corns in ancient Jewish texts.
A 15th-century collection of
animal tales by Isaac ibn Sahu-
la feature an illustration of a
battle between a lion and a
unicorn.)
- You can find four kinds
V of vulture mentioned in
the Torah. They are the beard-
ed vulture, the black vulture,
the Egyptian vulture
and the grif-
fon vulture
(see Leviti-
cus 11:13-
18).
- The
whale
is a warm-blooded
animal descended from
creatures that once lived
on land. What is now a
whale's spout was, at one
time, a pair of nostrils. When
a whale seems to shoot out
water from this
spout, he is in
fact "exhaling," ,c(
in a sense,
the air from
his lungs.
Usually,
this happens about
once every 10 min-
utes, though whales have
been known to stay under wa-
ter for 45 minutes.
- See what animals
you can make out
of the letter X. Some
ideas: A butterfly, a giraffe
(lengthen one top part of
the X to make his
head, the other part
can be his tail) or a
bumblebee.
Have you ever
heard of the
xenops? It's a
breed of bird found from Mex-
ico to Argentina.
- What do you know
i about the yak? Well,
yakety, yak, here are some
facts: There are two kinds of
yaks, the black (which is wild)
and the black-and-white
(which is usually tame). Yaks
reside, for the most part, in Ti-
bet. They have bushy tales,
and some wild yak have been
known to grow as big as 6-feet
tall.
7 - The zebra is the most
Li obvious, but not the only
animal who begins with this
letter. You also should know
about the zebu (a kind of ox
with a hump on its shoulders),
the zebrafinch (an Australian
bird with a gray back and a
white head), the zorilla (an
African weasel) and the zebra
fish (popular in aquariums).
Zoophobia is the abnormal
I X fear of animals.