Awesome Animals

Hi everybody! I am starting a new article called

AWESOME ANIMALS^TM

by Cal (with help from Colin and Yanni, but just a pinch, and I will have helpers each time.)

I personally think animals are super cool with their adaptations (structural and behavioral ways animals survive in the wild) and habitats. I will focus on a range of different crazy, wacky, cool, AWESOME ANIMALS!

Not much is known about our first animal. It is called PERRY THE PLATYPUS! Well, just a platypus, but they have a ton of cool adaptations and a ton of cool facts about them! Like this, did you know (oh no, did you know? sigh) that a male platypus has a small venomous spine sticking out of where its heel would be? If you knew that, give yourself a pat on the back, cause that was a little known fact! Wow! Did you know that platypuses are the only mammals that lay eggs? If you knew that you are either a genius or a high school student. They are also amphibious mammals which means they like to go in water, and that people used to think they were a hoax when they first saw them and said somebody either carved one or put a ducks bill on a log!

Okay that was our first animal and I think these are one of the least known animals on our planet!

Our second animal is a Greenland shark, and they are BIG: reaching up to 24 feet long! People mostly are only able to name 4 sharks or 3 sharks (bull, great white, tiger, hammerhead) but there are hundreds of other shark species like wobbegongs, angels, frilled, sleepers, cows, makos, threshers, river sharks, (pant, pant) epaulettes, megamouths, whales, and hundreds more! Personally sharks are one of my favorite animals, but I’m getting sidetracked. Greenland sharks live in, you guessed it, Greenland, and will eat anything from caribou to polar bears! But mostly they eat carrion which is dead fish, whales and other animals (ack!). Most have bacteria on their eyes which makes them blind, they also do not move that fast, in fact a baby crawls faster than it! But it uses a sneaking technique to catch prey.They are one of the longest living things on the planet.

Our third animal is a golden eagle and they are bigger than their cousin, the bald eagle, with a wingspan of up to ten feet! They are similar to the bald eagle except for their size and the color of their head and their body, and they eat hares, rabbits, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and marmots. Their talons are about 2 inches long, that's longer than your pinky finger! They usually live in Montana. Another difference with bald eagles is that their leg is more well covered than its cousin. Wow. Speechless, ay?

Our fourth animal is a green anaconda and they are big, big snakes, they go well over 20 feet at about 26 feet! They are also the world's heaviest snakes and weigh 1,100 pounds! Along with sharks these are another one of my favorite animals! They use a technique called constriction, along with pythons, which means squeezing every time an animal has another heartbeat and, once it is dead, it eats it whole. Anacondas don't need much food for a while because the food they eat is much bigger than their bodies, but their stomach expands, leaving room for more food. They live in Brazil in the Amazon rainforest.

The fifth animal is a common basilisk lizard. The common basilisk’s claim to fame is to run on water, no joke people have actually filmed it (still don't believe me? If it's ok with your parents you can watch this video and it's from a cool site called rate my science: https://youtu.be/JF-UMgdkph4.) Believe me now, do ya?) They use a bicycle motion to “pedal” across the water making pockets of air under their feet just like standing on inner tubes and running which the basilisk makes look really easy (I recommend not to try that at home, kids and adults). And that is the basilisk lizard for you.

Our next animal is a snow tiger. They live in Asia but most of them live in India. They like living in forests and grassy areas can weigh up to around 570 pounds, which is a little more than the weight of two giant pandas, and from head to tail they can grow to be 10 FEET LONG, that's as tall as a basketball hoop. The snow tiger looks just like a regular orange tiger, it's just white and that's how it camouflages with the snow. It waits for prey to come by and then CHOMP! It takes a generous bite.

Well, that's the end of or first issue, but be sure to check out the next edition of awesome animals.

Sayonara, from Cal, Yanni and Colin