Squids are amazing sea animals with soft bodies, ten arms, and three hearts. They can zoom through the water like rockets using jet power and hide from danger by changing their colors or shooting dark ink. [1, 2, 3]

Super Swimmers and Body Facts

• Ten arms: Squids have eight short arms and two longer arms called tentacles to catch food.

• Three hearts: They have three hearts to pump blood through their bodies.

• Jet power: Squids squirt water out of a special tube to zoom backward or forward very fast. [1, 2, 3]

Cool Squid Superpowers

• Color changing: They can change their skin color to match rocks or sand so enemies cannot see them.

• Inky cloud: When scared, they squirt dark ink to confuse predators and swim away safely.

• Giant eyes: Some squids have eyes as big as basketballs or dinner plates to help them see in the dark deep ocean. 

VIDEO

The blue whale is the largest animal to ever live on Earth. It can grow up to 100 feet long (the size of three school buses) and weigh as much as 30 elephants. Even though they are huge, they eat tiny shrimp-like animals called krill. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Super Size Facts

• Heart: The size of a small car.

• Tongue: Weighs as much as a whole elephant.

• Blood Vessels: So wide that a small person could swim through them. [1, 2]

Diet and Eating

• Tiny Food: They eat tiny creatures called krill.

• Baleen: They have hair-like plates instead of teeth to trap food.

• Big Appetite: They eat up to four tons of krill every single day. [1, 2]

Ocean Life

• Loud Sounds: They make deep, rumbling calls that travel for hundreds of miles.

• Breathing Air: As mammals, they must come to the surface to breathe air through their blowhole.

• Baby Whales: A newborn baby calf is already 23 feet long at birth and drinks 50 gallons of milk a day

VIDEO

Fun Bee Facts

• Six legs and three body parts: Like all insects, bees have a head, middle part, and bottom part, plus six legs.

• Five eyes: Bees have two big eyes on the sides and three tiny eyes on top of their head to help them spot flowers.

• Super flyers: A single bee can visit up to 5,000 flowers in just one day!

• The waggle dance: Bees do a special wiggle dance in the air to tell other bees where to find the best flowers. [1, 2]

Who Lives in a Beehive?

Honeybees live together in large groups called colonies. Inside a hive, every bee has a special job: [1, 2]

• The Queen: There is usually only one queen, and her super important job is laying eggs to grow the family.

• The Workers: These are all girl bees! They build the hive, clean it, protect it from danger, and fly out to collect food.

• The Drones: These are the boy bees, and their job is to help the queen. [1, 2]

VIDEO

How Alligators Help Humans

Alligator meat in Orlando

Alligators are raised on farms for their meat and skin. Alligator skin is used to make things like bags and shoes. Alligators also help the economy through tourism. Visitors can take swamp tours where they can see alligators. Their most important benefit to humans might be controlling animals like coypu and muskrats. Louisiana spends a lot of money to control coypu using alligators.

Alligator meat is also eaten by humans. The meat is often described as tasting like fish.

Protected Status

An American alligator

American alligators were once an endangered species in the United States. Today, they are no longer endangered. However, they are still a "protected species." They are protected because they look similar to some types of crocodiles and caimans, which are still endangered. The Fish and Wildlife Service lists the American alligator as “threatened due to similarity of appearance.”

The goal of this protection is to stop people from accidentally killing endangered crocodiles and caimans. This happens when people mistake them for alligators. Because of this, killing alligators and selling products made from alligator meat or skin are controlled by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Interesting Facts About Alligators

• Alligators are smart. They have been seen holding sticks and branches on their heads. They do this to trick birds looking for materials to build their nests.

• Alligators do not have vocal cords, but they use many different calls to talk to other alligators.

• Alligators never stop growing throughout their lives.

• They can eat almost a quarter of their own body weight in just one meal.

• An alligator’s stomach can dissolve bone. This means they do not need to eat around the bones of their prey.

• Alligators eat more than just meat. They also like to eat fruit.

about goats  

  Goats on the Go     the goat squad