More Awesome Animals

by Cal, Colin and Yanni

Hey guys! Welcome back to AWESOME ANIMALS created and managed by Cal with Yanni as editor and Colin as chief writer, this is a MIND BLOWING edition featuring birds, mammals, shrimps, fish, and more!

Our first animal is a

swallow tailed kite

The swallow tailed kite has an extremely long tail averaging 37 centimeters in length! That's pretty long for a bird. Another cool fact about the swallow-tailed kite is it eats and drinks its food while it is flying! If humans tried that we’d probably barf. If you want to go try to see this amazing aviator they can be seen in Florida and on the edges of Florida's border states. here is a picture of a swallow tailed kite

The next animal is a swift. A swift is a bird with a cigar shaped body and wings like the ones you would see on an airplane. Swifts have very short legs which they use primarily for clinging to vertical surfaces. Some swifts even have tails that fork at the end of their tail, they are called fork-tailed swifts. They are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds. This might sound like utter rubbish but it is a good fact!

Enough birds (I love my birds don't get me wrong), let's move to one of the strangest animals on the planet, I give you the

axolotl

(Cal’s pronunciation ax-o-who knows). Who knows if anyone can see or spell it correctly, but it is down-right cool. Axolotls are rare in the wild. They can only be found in one lake (and 1,000 different tanks around the world) in Mexico City, Mexico. Who cares where they live, what's so cool about them? I’m getting there.

One of the coolest things about an axolotl (let's go! I spelled it right on the first try) is that if they lose a body part they can grow it back. True, so can worms, but can worms grow lungs, eyes, or even part of a heart back? Didn't think so.

https://images.app.goo.gl/rFcNp25H2DSzzQ6j7 here is a picture of one. Unfortunately, axolotolsnde (sorry) axolotls (there we go) are close to going extinct.

The third animal is a

mantis shrimp

The mantis shrimp looks like it is always ready for a party, with those bright eye popping colors. Now speaking of eyes this is the coolest part of the mantis shrimp, the mantis shrimp can see ultraviolet colors, ultraviolet is what gives sunburn. Mantis shrimp also have a pair of deadly claws that can kill another shrimp in one hit. Mantis shrimp eat live fish, crabs, worms and shrimp, including other mantis shrimp! So in other words they are cannibals! They are aggressive, violent predators, and they get their food using their sharp claws to spear or slice through prey with a quick, slashing motion.

https://images.app.goo.gl/Sg8qkWz4yeKqnxrU6 here is a picture of this big shrimp

The fourth animal is the

Harbor Seal

Harbor Seals are the most common marine mammal in Puget Sound, and their populations are healthy. Seals have large eyes to see in dark, deep water. They have long necks, which they can shoot out quickly to catch fish while swimming. In one breath a seal can exchange 90% of the air in its lungs. Humans can only change 20% of our air per breath. A seal's whiskers help it hunt and navigate by sensing pressure waves from fish and underwater objects. https://images.app.goo.gl/Dw5g5GciUPe3WFEL8 Here is a picture of an awesome harbor seal!

And the sixth animal is

Emperor Penguin

Emperor Penguins are the largest penguins in the world.They can dive deeper than any other bird, including other penguins. Like other penguins, emperors leap into the air while swimming, which is called porpoise. I’m not really a penguin type of guy but I really like this type of penguin.

https://images.app.goo.gl/NNDSeCMjSQgD5amy6

Cal here. Oh boy, I admit it, I really like fish, and, as you could guess, I have some favorite fish. So I have an idea, I am going to put one of my favorite animals in each time and, then at the end, you can decide is your favorite IN OUR FINAL ARTICLE (dun dun dunnnn.) and that might be in a year or in a month but who knows, I call these the Cool Fish Favs or CFF for short. Okay back on track, here is one of my favs and it is

the great barracudA

A great predator, reaching up to six feet they are a decent size fish! They can have short bursts of great speed, and have very few natural predators, the only ones are orcas, huge sharks and other bigger barracudas. They can either be a super small catch or the biggest of all time, say hello to grandpa barracuda it is the biggest at 102 pounds!. They have long slender, missile shaped bodies and sharp ripping teeth.

The next animal is the

Tuna Fish

This fish is BIG like BIG BIG (And can be, if the right species, like BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG.) They can grow to be more than 6 feet long (or 17 feet long) and over 500 pounds. That's pretty big, am I right? Tuna are pretty fast, going at speeds of 40+ miles per hour! They are also warm blooded. Here is a fact, all fish but sharks are warmblooded. This is a 700 pounder caught in Virginia, it took a crane to lift that big boy!

Well that's Cal, Colin, and Yanni sayin’ see y'all next time!