# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The dog is one of the most popular animals in the world. It was one of the first animals to be domesticated, or trained for use by humans. The dog’s scientific name is Canis…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris) are domesticated mammals, not natural wild animals. They were originally bred from wolves. Dogs are sometimes called "canines," which comes from the Latin word for dog - canis. Sometimes people also use "dog" to describe other canids, such as wolves.

A baby dog is called a pup or puppy. A dog is called a puppy until it is about one year old. Domesticated dogs have been bred by humans for a long time and were probably the first animals to be domesticated. Domesticated dogs eat both meat and vegetables, often mixed together with other ingredients and sold in stores as dog food.

Today, some dogs are used as pets while others are used to help humans do their work. Dogs are popular pets because they are usually playful, friendly, and listen well to humans. Thirty million dogs in the United States are registered as pets. Dogs are sometimes referred to as "man's best friend" because they are kept as domestic pets and are usually loyal and like being around humans. Dogs often have jobs, including police dogs, army dogs, service dogs, fire dogs, messenger dogs, hunting dogs, herding dogs, or rescue dogs.

Appearance and behavior

Dogs have four legs and make a "bark," "woof," or "arf" sound. Different kinds of dogs have different kinds of fur. Dogs often chase cats, and most dogs will fetch a ball or stick.

Dogs can smell and hear better than humans, but cannot see well in color. Their eye structure helps dogs to see better in dim light than humans can. They can also see further around before moving their eyes than a human can.

Like wolves, wild dogs travel in groups called packs. Packs of dogs are ordered by rank, and dogs with low rank will submit to other dogs with a higher rank. The highest-ranked dog is called the alpha male. Each dog in a pack helps and cares for others. Domesticated dogs often view their owner as the alpha male.

Origin of dogs

All dogs are descended from wolves, by domestication and artificial selection. This is known because DNA genome analysis has been done to discover this. Dogs have been bred by humans.

The earliest known fossil of a domestic dog is said to be from 31,700 years ago in Belgium. Scientists believe that dogs have lived with people for at least 30,000 years. In 2013, a study was published that showed that the skull and teeth of a canid, dated to 33,000 years ago, had characteristics closer to a dog than to a wolf, and the authors determined that "this specimen may represent a dog in the very early stages of domestication."

Another sign of domestication is that sometimes, dogs were buried together with humans. Evidence of this is a tomb in Bonn, where the remains of a man of about 50 years of age, a woman of about 25 years of age, a dog, and other artifacts were found. Radiocarbon dating showed that the human bones were between 13,300 and 14,000 years old.

Different dog breeds (kinds) have different lifespans. In general, smaller dogs live longer than larger dogs. The size and the breed of the dog change the average lifespan of a dog. Breeds such as the Dachshund usually live for fifteen years, while Chihuahuas can reach age twenty. The Great Dane, on the other hand, has an average lifespan of six to eight years; some Great Danes have lived for ten years.

Dogs and humans

Dogs are often called "man's best friend" because they fit well with human life. Dogs can serve people in many ways. For example, there are guard dogs, hunting dogs, herding dogs, guide dogs for blind people (along with other service dogs), and police dogs. These dogs sometimes help police in airports or other areas. Sniffer dogs (usually beagles) are sometimes trained for this job. Dogs were sent by Russians into outer space a few years before any human being was sent. The first dog sent up was named Laika, but she died within a few hours.

It is estimated that three-quarters of the world's dog population lives in the developing world as feral, village, or community dogs. Dogs are not usually pets in these areas.

Pet dog populations grew after World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, dogs were kept outside more often than they tend to be today and were still used as guard dogs, children's playmates, or walking companions.

Most modern dog owners describe their pets as part of the family. It is estimated there are 77.5 million people with pet dogs in the United States.

A 2014 study using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) comparing humans and dogs showed that dogs have the same response to voices and use the same parts of the brain as humans do. This gives dogs the ability to recognize emotional human sounds, making them friendly social pets to humans.

Best dogs for kids

The best dogs for kids are ones that have calm personalities and are happy to socialize with everyone in the family.

Having a family dog can also teach children cooperation and responsibility. For example, a child can help with chores such as walking, feeding, and brushing the dog.

Here are some of the most popular dog breeds for kids:

There are at least 800 breeds (kinds) of dogs. Dogs whose parents were the same breed will also be that breed: these dogs are called purebred or pure pedigree dogs. Dogs with parents from different breeds no longer belong to one breed: they are called , mixed-breed dogs, , or . Some of the most popular breeds are sheepdogs, collies, poodles, and retrievers. It is becoming popular to breed two different breeds of dogs together and call the new dog's breed a name that is a mixture of the parents' breeds' two names. A puppy with a poodle and a pomeranian as parents might be called a Pomapoo. These kinds of dogs, instead of being called mutts, are known as designer dog breeds. These dogs are normally used for prize shows and designer shows. They can also be guide dogs.

10 interesting facts about dogs

There are hundreds of different breeds of dogs and around 400 million dogs in the world.

The dog has earned the nickname "man's best friend."

The largest breeds of dog in the world are the Great Dane, Irish wolfhound, Scottish Deerhound, Neapolitan Mastiff, English Mastiff, Anatolian shepherd, Dogue de Bordeaux, Leonberger, and Boerboel. The smallest dog breed is the Chihuahua (dog).

The oldest dog who ever lived was a cattle dog from Australia named Bluey who lived to be 29 years and 5 months old.

A dog's nose print is unique; it is similar to human fingerprints in that no two are the same.

Dalmatian puppies are born completely white and develop their spots as they grow.

Dogs dream just like humans do.

Little dogs are often called toy dogs, or lap dogs - because they're so little they look like a toy and can easily fit on your lap.

A dog is as smart as a 2-year-old child and can recognize around 150 words and gestures.

Dogs should not eat raisins, grapes, onion, chocolate, or garlic because it makes them sick.

Images for kids

In Spanish: Canis familiaris para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The domestic cat, or house cat, is a small mammal that has lived among people for thousands of years. People have kept cats as pets, used them as hunters, and even worshipped…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bears are large, powerful mammals related to dogs and raccoons. The biggest bears are the world's largest animals that live on land and eat meat. There are several species,...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails.

While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varied diets.

Bears are typically solitary animals. They may be diurnal or nocturnal and have an excellent sense of smell. Despite their heavy build and awkward gait, they are adept runners, climbers, and swimmers. Bears use shelters, such as caves and logs, as their dens; most species occupy their dens during the winter for a long period of hibernation, up to 100 days.

Bears have been hunted since prehistoric times for their meat and fur; they have been used for bear-baiting and other forms of entertainment, such as being made to dance.

The English word "bear" comes from Old English and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages, such as Swedish , also used as a first name, that originate from an adjective meaning "brown".

Evolution and phylogeny

The family Ursidae is one of nine families in the suborder Caniformia, or "doglike" carnivorans, within the order Carnivora. Bears' closest living relatives are the pinnipeds, canids, and musteloids. Modern bears comprise eight species in three subfamilies: Ailuropodinae (monotypic with the giant panda), Tremarctinae (monotypic with the spectacled bear), and Ursinae (containing six species divided into one to three genera, depending on the authority).

Paleontology

The earliest members of Ursidae belong to the extinct subfamily Amphicynodontinae, including Parictis (late Eocene to early middle Miocene, 38-18 Mya) and the slightly younger Allocyon (early Oligocene, 34-30 Mya), both from North America. These animals looked very different from today's bears, being small and raccoon-like in overall appearance, and diets perhaps more similar to that of a badger.

The raccoon-sized, dog-like Cephalogale is the oldest-known member of the subfamily Hemicyoninae, which first appeared during the middle Oligocene in Eurasia about 30 Mya.

The New World short-faced bears (Tremarctinae) differentiated from Ursinae following a dispersal event into North America during the mid-Miocene (about 13 Mya). They invaded South America (≈1 Ma) following formation of the Isthmus of Panama.

The sloth bear is a modern survivor of one of the earliest lineages to diverge during this radiation event (5.3 Mya); it took on its peculiar morphology, related to its diet of termites and ants, no later than by the early Pleistocene. By 3-4 Mya, the species Ursus minimus appears in the fossil record of Europe; apart from its size, it was nearly identical to today's Asian black bear. It is likely ancestral to all bears within Ursinae, perhaps aside from the sloth bear. Two lineages evolved from U. minimus: the black bears (including the sun bear, the Asian black bear, and the American black bear); and the brown bears (which includes the polar bear). Modern brown bears evolved from U. minimus via Ursus etruscus, which itself is ancestral to the extinct Pleistocene cave bear. Species of Ursinae have migrated repeatedly into North America from Eurasia as early as 4 Mya during the early Pliocene. The polar bear is the most recently evolved species and descended from the brown bear around 400,000 years ago.

The bears form a clade within the Carnivora. The red panda is not a bear but a musteloid. The cladogram is based on molecular phylogeny of six genes in Flynn, 2005.

The phylogeny of extant bear species is shown in a cladogram based on complete mitochondrial DNA sequences from Yu et al., 2007. The giant panda, followed by the spectacled bear are clearly the oldest species. The relationships of the other species are not very well resolved, though the polar bear and the brown bear form a close grouping.

Physical characteristics

Bears include the most massive extant terrestrial members of the order Carnivora. Polar bears weigh up to 1,600 lb (730 kg). The smallest are the sun bears of Asia, which weigh up to 150 lb (68 kg). Body weight varies throughout the year in bears of temperate and arctic climates, as they build up fat reserves in the summer and autumn and lose weight during the winter. Head-and-body length can range from 150 cm (59 in) in sun bears to 244 cm (96 in) in polar bears.

Morphology

Bears are generally bulky and robust animals with short tails. They are sexually dimorphic with regard to size, with the males being larger. Relying as they do on strength rather than speed, bears have relatively short limbs with thick bones to support their bulk. The strong forelimbs are used to catch prey, to excavate dens, to dig out burrowing animals, to turn over rocks and logs to locate prey, and to club large creatures.

Unlike most other land carnivorans, bears are plantigrade. They distribute their weight toward the hind feet, which makes them look lumbering when they walk. Their front paws are flexible enough to grasp fruit and leaves. Bears' non-retractable claws are used for digging, climbing, tearing, and catching prey.

Their shaggy coat helps maintain body heat during winter hibernation and is shed in the spring leaving a shorter summer coat. Polar bears have hollow, translucent guard hairs which gain heat from the sun and conduct it to the dark-coloured skin below. They have a thick layer of blubber for extra insulation, and the soles of their feet have a dense pad of fur. Other than the bold black-and-white pelage of the panda, bears tend to be uniform in colour, although some species may have markings on the chest or face.

Bears have small rounded ears so as to minimise heat loss, but neither their hearing or sight are particularly acute. Unlike many other carnivorans they have colour vision, perhaps to help them distinguish ripe nuts and fruits.

The skulls of bears are massive, providing anchorage for the powerful masseter and temporal jaw muscles. The canine teeth are large but mostly used for display, and the molar teeth flat and crushing.

Bears have a fairly simple digestive system typical for carnivorans, with a single stomach.

Distribution and habitat

Extant bears are found in sixty countries primarily in the Northern Hemisphere and are concentrated in Asia, North America, and Europe. An exception is the spectacled bear; native to South America, it inhabits the Andean region. The sun bear's range extends below the equator in Southeast Asia. The Atlas bear, a subspecies of the brown bear was distributed in North Africa from Morocco to Libya, but it became extinct around the 1870s.

The most widespread species is the brown bear, which occurs from Western Europe eastwards through Asia to the western areas of North America. The American black bear is restricted to North America, and the polar bear is restricted to the Arctic Sea. All the remaining species of bear are Asian. They occur in a range of habitats which include tropical lowland rainforest, both coniferous and broadleaf forests, prairies, steppes, montane grassland, alpine scree slopes, Arctic tundra and in the case of the polar bear, ice floes. Bears may dig their dens in hillsides or use caves, hollow logs and dense vegetation for shelter.

Behaviour and life history

Brown and American black bears are generally diurnal, meaning that they are active for the most part during the day, though they may forage substantially by night. Other species may be nocturnal, active at night, though female sloth bears with cubs may feed more at daytime to avoid competition from conspecifics and nocturnal predators.

Bears are overwhelmingly solitary and are considered to be the most asocial of all the Carnivora. The only times bears are encountered in small groups are mothers with young or occasional seasonal bounties of rich food (such as salmon runs).

Most bears are opportunistic omnivores and consume more plant than animal matter. They eat anything from leaves, roots, and berries to insects, carrion, fresh meat, and fish, and have digestive systems and teeth adapted to such a diet. At the extremes are the almost entirely herbivorous giant panda and the mostly carnivorous polar bear. However, all bears feed on any food source that becomes seasonally available. For example, Asiatic black bears in Taiwan consume large numbers of acorns when these are most common, and switch to ungulates at other times of the year.

The sloth bear, though not as specialised as polar bears and the panda, has lost several front teeth usually seen in bears, and developed a long, suctioning tongue to feed on the ants, termites, and other burrowing insects they like.

Bears are prolific scavengers, stealing food caches from rodents, and carcasses from other predators.

For hibernating species, weight gain is important as it provides nourishment during winter dormancy. A brown bear can eat 41 kg (90 lb) of food and gain 2-3 kg (4.4-6.6 lb) of fat a day prior to entering its den.

Communication

Bears produce a number of vocal and non-vocal sounds. Tongue-clicking, grunting or chuffing many be made in cordial situations, such as between mothers and cubs or courting couples, while moaning, huffing, sorting or blowing air is made when an individual is stressed. Barking is produced during times of alarm, excitement or to give away the animal's position. Warning sounds include jaw-clicking and lip-popping, while teeth-chatters, bellows, growls, roars and pulsing sounds are made in aggressive encounters. Cubs may squeal, bawl, bleat or scream when in distress and make motor-like humming when comfortable or nursing.

Bears sometimes communicate with visual displays such as standing upright, which exaggerates the individual's size. The chest markings of some species may add to this intimidating display. Staring is an aggressive act and the facial markings of spectacled bears and giant pandas may help draw attention to the eyes during agonistic encounters. Individuals may approach each other by stiff-legged walking with the head lowered. Dominance between bears is asserted by making a frontal orientation, showing the canine teeth, muzzle twisting and neck stretching. A subordinate may respond with a lateral orientation, by turning away and dropping the head and by sitting or lying down.

Bears may mark territory by rubbing against trees and other objects which may serve to spread their scent. This is usually accompanied by clawing and biting the object. Bark may be spread around to draw attention to the marking post. Pandas are known to mark objects with urine and a waxy substance from their anal glands. Polar bears leave behind their scent in their tracks which allow individuals to keep track of one another in the vast Arctic wilderness.

Reproduction and life cycle

During the breeding season, males take notice of females in their vicinity and females become more tolerant of males. A male bear may visit a female continuously over a period of several days or weeks, depending on the species, to test her reproductive state. During this time period, males try to prevent rivals from interacting with their mate. Courtship may be brief, although in some Asian species, courting pairs may engage in wrestling, hugging, mock fighting and vocalising.

Gestation typically lasts 6-9 months, including delayed implantation, and litter size numbers up to four cubs. Giant pandas may give birth to twins but they can only suckle one young and the other is left to die. In northern living species, birth takes place during winter dormancy.

Cubs are born blind and helpless with at most a thin layer of hair, relying on their mother for warmth. The milk of the female bear is rich in fat and antibodies and cubs may suckle for up to a year after they are born. By 2-3 months, cubs can follow their mother outside the den. They usually follow her on foot, but sloth bear cubs may ride on their mother's back. Male bears play no role in raising young.

In some species, offspring may become independent around the next spring, through some may stay until the female successfully mates again. Bears reach sexual maturity shortly after they disperse; at around 3-6 years depending on the species. Male Alaskan brown bears and polar bears may continue to grow until they are 11 years old. Lifespan may also vary between species. The brown bear can live an average of 25 years.

Hibernation

As animals at the summit of the food chain, bears do not have many predators. The most important are humans, and as they started cultivating crops, they increasingly came in conflict with the bears that raided them. Since the invention of firearms, people have been able to kill bears with greater ease. The tiger is the only four-legged predator that regularly preys on adult bears, including brown bears, sloth bears, Asiatic black bears, and sun bears.

Relationship with humans

Conservation

In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats and illegal trade in bear parts, including the Asian bile bear market, though hunting is now banned, largely replaced by farming. The IUCN lists six bear species as vulnerable; even the two least concern species, the brown bear and the American black bear, are at risk of extirpation in certain areas. In general these two species inhabit remote areas with little interaction with humans, and the main non-natural causes of mortality are hunting, trapping, road-kill and depredation.

Laws have been passed in many areas of the world to protect bears from habitat destruction. Public perception of bears is often positive, as people identify with bears due to their omnivorous diets, their ability to stand on two legs, and their symbolic importance. Support for bear protection is widespread, at least in more affluent societies. Where bears raid crops or attack livestock, they may come into conflict with humans. In poorer rural regions, attitudes may be more shaped by the dangers posed by bears and the economic costs they cause to farmers and ranchers.

Several bear species are dangerous to humans, especially in areas where they have become used to people; elsewhere, they generally avoid humans. Injuries caused by bears are rare, but are widely reported. Bears may attack humans in response to being startled, in defense of young or food, or even for predatory reasons.

Entertainment, hunting, food and folk medicine

Bears have been hunted for sport, food, and folk medicine. Their meat is dark and stringy, like a tough cut of beef. In Cantonese cuisine, bear paws are considered a delicacy. Bear meat should be cooked thoroughly, as it can be infected with the parasite Trichinella spiralis.

The peoples of eastern Asia use bears' body parts and secretions (notably their gallbladders and bile) as part of traditional Chinese medicine. More than 12,000 bears are thought to be kept on farms in China, Vietnam, and South Korea for the production of bile. Trade in bear products is prohibited under CITES, but bear bile has been detected in shampoos, wine and herbal medicines sold in Canada, the United States and Australia.

Literature, art and symbolism

Artio ( Dea Artio in the Gallo-Roman religion) was a Celtic bear goddess. Evidence of her worship has notably been found at Bern, itself named for the bear. Her name is derived from the Celtic word for "bear", artos. In ancient Greece, archaic cult of Artemis in bear form survived into Classical times at Brauron, where young Athenian girls passed an initiation right as arktai "she bears". For Artemis and one of her nymphs as a she-bear, see the myth of Callisto.

The constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the great and little bears, are named for their supposed resemblance to bears, from the time of Ptolemy.

Bears are popular in children's stories, including Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Gentle Ben and " The Brown Bear of Norway". An early version of " Goldilocks and the Three Bears", was published as "The Three Bears" in 1837 by Robert Southey, many times retold, and illustrated in 1918 by Arthur Rackham.

The cartoon character Yogi Bear has appeared in numerous comic books, animated television shows and films. The Care Bears began as greeting cards in 1982, and were featured as toys, on clothing and in film. Around the world, many children-and some adults-have teddy bears, stuffed toys in the form of bears, named after the American statesman Theodore Roosevelt when in 1902 he had refused to shoot an American black bear tied to a tree.

The Russian Bear has been a common national personification for Russia from the 16th century onwards.

Organizations

The International Association for Bear Research & Management, also known as the International Bear Association, and the Bear Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission, a part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature focus on the natural history, management, and conservation of bears. Bear Trust International works for wild bears and other wildlife through four core program initiatives, namely Conservation Education, Wild Bear Research, Wild Bear Management, and Habitat Conservation.

Related pages

Images for kids

In Spanish: Ursidae para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cheetah Facts for Kids • Cheetah Conservation Fund

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get the coolest cheetah facts for kids from the world’s leading experts on cheetahs. Written for your reports, presentations, and personal enjoyment!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These cats are nimble at high speeds, able to make quick and sudden turns in pursuit of prey. Cheetahs' bodies are uniquely adapted to help them reach top speeds, from their long, slender limbs and hard foot pads to the flexible spine that gives them their long stride.

Cheetahs are famous for their tawny coats covered in black spots, each arranged in a unique pattern to help the animals identify one another. Bold black stripes streak like tears from the inner corners of their eyes down to both sides of their mouths, and the ends of their bushy tails have black rings.

The cheetah's excellent eyesight helps it find prey during the day. The cheetah is hard to see because its spotted coat blends with the tall, dry grass of the plains.

Cheetahs eat small- to medium-size animals, such as hares, impalas, wildebeest calves, and gazelles.

Because of their size, strength, and predatory skills, some scientists consider cheetahs to be one of the "big cats." Tigers, lions, leopards, and jaguars are also part of this grouping. Unlike the rest of the group, cheetahs can't roar, though they can they purr.

Although they typically prefer open grasslands, cheetahs live in a range of habitats across eastern and southern Africa.

Once found throughout Asia and Africa, cheetahs today are racing toward extinction. Loss of habitat and declining numbers of their prey combine to threaten the future of these cats.

Take the big cat quiz to see how much you know about these fierce felines. Then, just for fun, see which wild cat you're most like with our personality quiz.

(AD) Check out Hoops to Hippos!: True Stories of a Basketball Star on Safari by Boris Diaw for more animals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fastest mammal on land, the cheetah can reach speeds of 60 or perhaps even 70 miles (97 or 113 kilometers) an hour over short distances. It usually chases its prey at only about half that speed, however. After a chase, a cheetah needs half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The cheetah is the fastest land animal on Earth. This spotted member of the cat family can sprint faster than 70 miles (112 kilometers) per hour. The cheetah's scientific...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Penguins are the only birds that can swim but cannot fly. These black and white seabirds move about very easily in the water. On land they stand upright and waddle about....

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Penguins are seabirds in the family Spheniscidae. They use their wings to travel underwater, but they cannot travel in the air. They eat fish and other seafood. Penguins lay their eggs and raise their babies on land.

Penguins live only in the Southern Hemisphere of the world: Antarctica, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America. The furthest north they get is the Galapagos Islands, where the cold Humboldt Current flows past.

Physical description

All penguins have a white belly and a dark, mostly black, back. This is a type of camouflage to keep them safe when they swim, because it makes them blend in with their background. The white and black colors make an effect called countershading. When a predator looking from below sees the white belly and wings of a swimming penguin, they can not see the penguin well because the light is coming from above. However, when seen from above, the penguin's black back blends in with the dark water below, so they are hard to see.

The biggest penguins may stand nearly 4 feet tall (110 cm) and can weigh almost 100 pounds (40 kg). The smallest kinds are only about one foot (32 cm) tall.

Penguins have a thick layer of blubber that helps them keep warm, and their feathers are very tightly packed to make another cover. They also have a layer of woolly down feathers, under the outer veined feathers that are coated with a type of oil that makes them waterproof.

Penguins have webbed feet used for paddling in the water. They cannot walk well, so they waddle. Penguins cannot fly, but they can swim very well. Their wings have become stiff and small swimming flippers. They have good hearing and can see underwater.

Most penguins lay two eggs per year but emperor penguins lay only one. After the penguins mate, the mother lays her egg or eggs and soon goes in the ocean to eat. The father and mother take turns keeping the eggs warm, and the chicks warm after hatching. The parent on baby duty has nothing to eat. Parent penguins call to find each other amongst the thousands of birds when they return from the feeding grounds. The time one parent is alone with the eggs or chicks and going hungry may be weeks or months depending on what kind of penguin they are. If one parent does not return, the other must abandon the egg to go and eat.

Penguins eat krill, fish, squid, and other small animals from the ocean, which they catch. They are at home in the ocean. They come up on the land or ice to lay their eggs and raise the chicks. They don't eat there because they live in places where the land has no food for them. In most species the birds all nest together in a huge group, called a rookery. They usually make nests on the ground with rocks or mud.

Penguins cannot taste fish. This was discovered when a research team noticed they were missing some key genes for taste. A closer look at the DNA of penguins showed that all species lack functioning genes for the receptors of sweet, umami, and bitter tastes. It doesn't matter to them, because they swallow the fish whole.

Different kinds

There are 15-20 living species (types) of penguins. The white-flippered penguin is today generally considered a subspecies of the little penguin. It is still unclear if the royal penguin is a subspecies of the macaroni penguin. Scientists are also uncertain whether rockhopper penguins are one, two, or three species.

List of penguins

Subfamily Spheniscinae - modern penguins

Image

Genus

Living Species

Eudyptes Vieillot, 1816 - crested penguins

Images for kids

In Spanish: Spheniscidae para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A female tiger gives birth to a litter of three or four cubs, who she will care for until they are a year-and-a-half old. These cubs quadruple in size during their first month!

The powerful predator generally hunts alone, able to bring down prey such as deer and antelope. Tigers wait until dark to hunt. The tiger sprints to an unsuspecting animal, usually pulling it off its feet with its teeth and claws. If the prey animal is large, the tiger bites its throat to kill it; smaller prey is usually killed when the tiger breaks its neck. Tigers have been known to eat up to 80 pounds of meat in one night, but more often they consume about 12 pounds during a meal. It may take days for a tiger to finish eating its kill. The cat eats until it's full, and then covers the carcass with leaves and dirt. The tiger comes back to feed some more.

Tigers live far apart from each other. A tiger knows if it is in another tiger's territory based on the trees around him. Each tiger marks the trees in its area with urine and special scratches.

Unlike most members of the cat family, tigers seem to enjoy water and swim well.

Some tigers live where it gets very cold-in India and parts of southeast Asia. The whole species is endangered throughout its range.

Tigers have been overhunted for their fur as well as for other body parts that many people use in traditional medicines. Tigers' habitat has also dwindled seriously as humans have developed land for uses such as farming and logging. However, in the Siberian region of Russia, there's hope that these big cats are making a comeback.

Because of their size, strength, and predatory skills, tigers are considered one of the "big cats." Lions, cheetahs, jaguars, and cougars are also part of this grouping.

Tiger stripes are special to each individual, and their tails help them to keep their balance. The big cats share all but 4.4% of their DNA with domestic cats.

Take the big cat quiz to see how much you know about these fierce felines. Then, just for fun, see which wild cat you're most like with our personality quiz.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily recognized by its coat of reddish-orange with dark stripes, the tiger is the largest wild cat in the world. The big cat's tail is three feet long. On average the big cat weighs 450 pounds, about the same as eight ten-year-old kids.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The tiger is the largest of the cats. Like lions, tigers are very strong and fierce hunters. Tigers are found in the wild only in parts of Russia, China, and South and...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The tiger ( Panthera tigris) is the largest living member of the cat family, the Felidae. It feeds by hunting. It lives in Asia, mainly India, Bhutan, China, Korea and Siberian Russia. Tigers are solitary animals.

Appearance

Tigers have orange fur with black stripes, and a white belly. The black stripes usually extend to the white underside. The stripes are used to keep them camouflaged while hunting. Usually, two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.

There are never tigers with different colors. There are sometimes white tigers that have white fur with black stripes, or that even have pure white fur. They have orange or red eyes. Most Bengal tigers have orange fur. The white coat only appears once in every 100,000,000 births. The Bengal tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh and India.

Tigers vary in size depending on their subspecies. Siberian tigers are the largest. Males can grow to at least 9 feet (2.7 metres) long (body length) and weigh about 900 lb (410 kg). Females are a bit smaller. Record weight for males is claimed as 890 lbs (318 kg), but this cannot be confirmed.

Where they live

Tigers can live in a variety of habitats. Mostly they need to hide, be near to a water source, and have enough prey to eat. Bengal tigers in particular live in many types of forests. These include the wet, evergreen of Assam and eastern Bengal; the swampy mangrove forest of the Ganges Delta; the deciduous forest of Nepal, and the thorn forests of the Western Ghats.

Subspecies

As previously thought, the tiger had five living subspecies. In this context, 'recently' means in the last two centuries. Three tiger subspecies are extinct (†).

Subspecies of Tiger (Panthera tigris)

However, in 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group revised felid taxonomy and recognized the tiger populations in continental Asia as P. t. tigris, and those in the Sunda Islands as P. t. sondaica.

Captive tigers were bred with lions to create hybrids called liger and tigon. They share physical and behavioural qualities of both parent species. Breeding hybrids is now discouraged due to the emphasis on conservation. The liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. The less common tigon is a cross between a lioness and a male tiger.

The tiger is mainly diurnal. It does not often climb trees but cases have been recorded. It is a strong swimmer and often bathes in ponds, lakes and rivers, thus keeping cool in the heat of the day.

The tiger is a long-ranging species, and individuals move around over distances of up to 650 km (400 mi) to reach tiger populations in other areas.

Adult tigers lead largely solitary lives. They establish and maintain territories but have much wider home ranges within which they roam.

Facial expressions include the "defense threat", where an individual bares its teeth, flattens its ears and its pupils enlarge.

Like other , tigers roar, particularly in aggressive situations, during the mating season or when making a kill. There are two different roars: the "true" roar is made using the hyoid apparatus and forced through an open mouth as it progressively closes, and the shorter, harsher "coughing" roar is made with the mouth open and teeth exposed. The "true" roar can be heard at up to 3 km (1.9 mi) away and is sometimes emitted three or four times in succession.

When tense, tigers will moan. Moaning can be heard 400 m (1,300 ft) away. Chuffing-soft, low-frequency snorting similar to purring in smaller cats, is heard in more friendly situations. Other vocal communications include grunts, woofs, snarls, miaows, hisses and growls.

Tigers eat many types of prey, mostly other large mammals. Some examples are deer, monkeys, wild rabbits, wild pigs, tapirs, buffalo and other animals found in Asia. All tigers are carnivores (meat eaters). Some tigers may eat up to 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of meat a day. Tigers kill their prey by clamping down on the prey's throat and suffocating it.

Reproduction

Gestation ranges from 93 to 114 days, with an average of 103 to 105 days. The female gives birth in a sheltered location such as in tall grass, in a dense thicket, cave or rocky crevice.

Litters consist of two or three cubs, rarely as many as six. Cubs weigh from 780 to 1,600 g (1.72 to 3.53 lb) each at birth, and are born with eyes closed.

Around the time they are weaned, they start to accompany their mother on territorial walks and are taught how to hunt.

The cubs start hunting on their own earliest at the age of 11 months, and become independent around 18 to 20 months of age.

The oldest recorded captive tiger lived for 26 years.

Conservation

In the 1990s, a new approach to tiger conservation was developed: Tiger Conservation Units (TCUs), which are blocks of habitat that have the potential to host tiger populations in 15 habitat types within five bioregions.

In 2016, an estimate of a global wild tiger population of approximately 3,890 individuals.

Major threats to the tiger include habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and poaching for fur and body parts, which have simultaneously greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild.

Tigers have been studied in the wild using a variety of techniques. Tiger population have been estimated using plaster casts of their pugmarks, although this method was criticized as being inaccurate. More recent techniques include the use of camera traps and studies of DNA from tiger scat, while radio-collaring has been used to track tigers in the wild. Tiger spray has been found to be just as good, or better, as a source of DNA than scat.

Interesting facts about tigers

They are biggest cats in the world.

The can live up to 25 years

A Liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress. A Tigon is a cross between a lioness and a male tiger.

A tigers pee smells like buttered popcorn!

Tigers can't purr, but they can "chuff".

The stripes on a tigers fur are different for every tiger. No two are alike.

The smallest species of tiger is the Sumatran tiger and the largest is the Siberian tiger.

A tiger's roar is very loud and can be heard from miles away.

Images for kids

Tiger hunted by wild dogs ( dholes) as illustrated in Samuel Howett & Edward Orme, Hand Coloured, Aquatint Engravings 1807

Cover of the 1954 edition of Jim Corbett's Man-Eaters of Kumaon, illustrated by Raymond Sheppard

In Spanish: Panthera tigris para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lion prides can be as small as 3 or as big as 40 animals. In a pride, lions hunt prey, raise cubs, and defend their territory together. In prides the females do most of the hunting and cub rearing. Usually all the lionesses in the pride are related-mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and sisters.

Many of the females in the pride give birth at about the same time. A cub may nurse from other females as well as its mother. Each pride generally will have no more than two adult males.

While the females usually live with the pride for life, the males often stay for only two to four years. After that they go off on their own or are evicted by other males who take over the pride. When a new male becomes part of the pride it is not unusual for him to kill all the cubs, ensuring that all future cubs will have his genes. The main job of males in the pride is defending the pride's territory. A male's loud roar, usually heard after sunset, can carry for as far as five miles (eight kilometers). The roar warns off intruders and helps round up stray members of the pride.

Hunting generally is done in the dark by the lionesses. They often hunt in groups of two or three, using teamwork to stalk, surround, and kill their prey. Lionesses aren't the most successful of hunters, because they usually score only one kill out of several tries. After the kill the males usually eat first, lionesses next-and the cubs get what's left. Males and females fiercely defend against any outside lions that attempt to join their pride.

Because of their size, strength, and predatory skills, lions are considered one of the "big cats." Tigers, cheetahs, leopards, jaguars, and cougars are also part of this grouping.

Take the big cat quiz to see how much you know about these fierce felines. Then, just for fun, see which wild cat you're most like with our personality quiz.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For all of their roaring, growling, and ferociousness, lions are family animals and truly social in their own communities. They usually live in groups of 15 or more animals called prides. Prides can be as small as 3 or as big as 40 animals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The lion is the second largest member of the cat family after the tiger. Lions live in parts of Africa and India. Their loud roar is among the most terrifying sounds of the...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elephants are the largest living land animals. There are three species, or kinds: the African savanna elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They make…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Elephants are the largest living land mammals. The largest elephant recorded was one shot in Angola, 1974. It weighed 27,060 pounds (13.5 tons) and stood 13 feet 8 inches tall. Their skin colour is grey.

In the wild, elephants have strong family relationship. Their ways of acting toward other elephants are hard for people to understand. They "talk" to each other with very low sounds. Most elephants sounds are so low, people cannot hear them. But elephants can hear these sounds far away.

Modern elephants - the actual family Elephantidae - evolved from gomphotheres as the climate became cooler and drier in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. This includes the mammoth and mastodon as well as modern elephants.

Description

Elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals. African elephants stand 3-4 m (10-13 ft) and weigh 4,000-7,000 kg (8,800-15,400 lb) while Asian elephants stand 2-3.5 m (7-11 ft) and weigh 3,000-5,000 kg (6,600-11,000 lb). In both cases, males are larger than females.

Among African elephants, the forest form is smaller than the savanna form.

An elephant's skull is resilient enough to withstand the forces generated by the leverage of the tusks and head-to-head collisions.

Because of the size of the head, the neck is relatively short to provide better support.

Elephants are considered dichromats and they can see well in dim light but not in bright light.

The body temperature of an elephant averages 35.9°C (97°F), similar to a human. Like camels, elephants can raise or lower its temperature a few degrees from the average in response to extreme environmental conditions.

Elephant ears have thick bases with thin tips. The ear flaps, or pinnae, contain numerous blood vessels known as capillaries. To get rid of excess heat from the body, warm blood flows into the capillaries, allowing more heat to be released into the environment. This can occur naturally when the pinnae are still, but the animal can force this effect by flapping them. Larger ear surfaces contain more capillaries, and more heat can be released. Of all the elephants, African bush elephants live in the hottest climates, and thus have the largest ear flaps. Elephants are capable of hearing at low frequencies and are most sensitive at 1 k Hz.

An elephant's most obvious part is the trunk. The trunk is a very long nose, made from the upper lip. An elephant uses its trunk to grab objects such as food. Though the rest of an elephant's hide is strong and thick, its trunk is very soft and sensitive. Elephants avoid Acacia trees with symbiotic ants because they can bite the inside of an elephant's trunk.

African elephants are larger and have bigger ears. They are grazers who still do quite a lot of browsing: they eat leaves, branches and grass. These big ears have many , which carry blood throughout the body. Biologists think that the blood going through their ears helps African elephants to cool off. The weather is hotter in Africa than in Asia, so it is hard for elephants to stay cool. Female African elephants have tusks, but female Asian elephants do not. African elephants have a low place in their back. African elephants have two "fingers" at the end of their trunks, but Asian elephants only have one. Indian elephants eat mainly grass.

Grass wears down their teeth because it has a high concentration of silica and is very abrasive. Elephants use their teeth in sequence, not all at once. This means that, at any time, they only have one tooth in each jaw, a total of four.

In total, they have 24 teeth: 12 front teeth, called premolars, and 12 back teeth, called molars. When the last molar wears out, the elephant dies because it cannot eat. They can live for about 70 years. But in a zoo or circus, people can keep elephants alive by feeding them soft food.

The tusks of an elephant are modified incisors in the upper jaw. They replace deciduous milk teeth when the animal reaches 6-12 months of age and grow continuously at about 17 cm (7 in) a year.

Tusks serve multiple purposes. They are used for digging for water, salt, and roots; debarking or marking trees; and for moving trees and branches when clearing a path. They serve as weapons when fighting, both for offence and defence, and protecting the trunk.

Like humans, who are typically right- or left-handed, elephants are usually right- or left-tusked. The dominant tusk, called the master tusk, is generally more worn down, as it is shorter with a rounder tip. For the African elephants, tusks are present in both males and females, and are around the same length in both sexes, reaching over 3 m (10 ft), but those of males tend to be thicker. In the Asian species, only the males have large tusks. Female Asians have very small ones, or they are absent altogether.

The ivory of African forest elephants appear to be the hardest and most elastic. Hunting for elephant ivory in Africa may be leading to natural selection for shorter tusks.

An elephant's skin is generally very tough, at 2.5 cm (1 in) thick on the back and parts of the head.

Young elephants have brownish or reddish hair, especially on the head and back.

Normally the skin of an Asian elephant is covered with more hair than its African counterpart.

Elephants typically have grey skin, but African elephants look brown or reddish after wallowing in coloured mud.

Although tough, an elephant's skin is very sensitive. Without regular mud baths to protect it from burning, insect bites and moisture loss, an elephant's skin suffers serious damage. After bathing, the elephant will usually use its trunk to blow dust onto its body and this dries into a protective crust.

Legs, locomotion and posture

To support the animal's weight, an elephant's limbs are positioned more vertically under the body than in most other mammals.

Since the limb bones are placed on top of each other and under the body, an elephant can stand still for long periods of time without using much energy.

The circular feet of an elephant have soft tissues or "cushion pads" beneath the manus or pes. These pads help to distribute the weight of the animal.

As many as five toenails can be found on both the front and hind feet. Elephants appear to have a sesamoid, an extra "toe" similar in placement to a giant panda's extra "thumb", that helps support and distribute their weight.

When moving, the cushion pads expand and contract, and reduce both the pain and noise that would come from a very heavy animal moving.

Elephants are capable swimmers. They have been recorded swimming for up to six hours without touching the bottom, and have travelled as far as 48 km (30 mi) at a stretch and at speeds of up to 2.1 km/h (1 mph). While they may doze off while standing, elephants usually sleep lying down.

The African bush elephant can be found in habitats as diverse as dry savannas, deserts, marshes, and lake shores, and in elevations from sea level to mountain areas above the snow line. Forest elephants mainly live in equatorial forests, but will enter gallery forests and ecotones between forests and savannas. Asian elephants prefer areas with a mix of grasses, low woody plants and trees, primarily inhabiting dry thorn-scrub forests in southern India and Sri Lanka and evergreen forests in Malaya. Elephants are herbivorous and will eat leaves, twigs, fruit, bark and roots. African elephant are mostly browsers while Asian elephants are mainly grazers. They can consume as much as 150 kg (330 lb) of food and 40 L (11 US gal) of water in a day. Elephants tend to stay near water sources. Major feeding bouts take place in the morning, afternoon and night. At midday, elephants rest under trees and may doze off while standing. Sleeping occurs at night while the animal is lying down. Both males and family groups typically move 10-20 km (6-12 mi) a day, but distances as far as 90-180 km (56-112 mi) have been recorded in the Etosha region of Namibia. They go on seasonal migrations in search of food, water and mates. At Chobe National Park, Botswana, elephant herds travel 325 km (202 mi) to visit the river when the local waterholes dry up.

Because of their large size, elephants have a huge impact on their environments and are considered keystone species. Their habit of uprooting trees and undergrowth can transform savannas into grasslands; when they dig for water during drought, they create waterholes that can be used by other animals. They can enlarge waterholes when they bathe and wallow in them. At Mount Elgon, elephants "excavate" caves that are used by ungulates, hyraxes, bats, birds and insects. Elephants are important seed dispersers; in particular, ingestion and defecation of seeds by African forest elephants tends to have either no effect or a positive effect on their germination and they are typically dispersed in large amounts over great distances. In Asian forests, large seeds require giant herbivores like elephants and rhinoceros for transport and dispersal. This ecological niche cannot be filled by the next largest herbivore, the tapir. Because most of the food they eat goes undigested, their dung can provide food for other animals, such as dung beetles and monkeys. Elephants can have a negative impact on ecosystems. At Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, the overabundance of elephants has threatened several species of small birds that depend on woodlands. In addition, their weight can compact the soil, which causes the rain to run off, leading to erosion.

Family life

A female elephant will have a single baby (called a "calf") every four or five years. Calves are born 85 cm (33 in) tall and weigh around 120 kg (260 lb). An elephant's gestation lasts about 22 months. Another female elephant often stays with the new mother until its baby is born. The newborn elephant can often stand within a half hour after it is born. Mother elephants touch their babies gently with their trunks. It takes a baby a year or more to control its trunk and learn its many uses.

Baby elephants nurse for the first two years of their lives. After it is born, the first thing that the baby does is wobble in search of its mother's milk. It drinks about 10 liters of milk every day.

Elephants have long lifespans, reaching 60-70 years of age. Lin Wang, a captive male Asian elephant, lived for 86 years.

Communication

Touching is an important form of communication among elephants. Individuals will greet each other by stroking or wrapping their trunks. Older elephants use trunk-slaps, kicks and shoves to discipline younger ones.

Elephants will try to appear more threatening by raising their heads and spreading their ears. They may add to the display by shaking their heads and snapping their ears, as well as throwing dust and vegetation. They are usually bluffing when performing these actions. Excited elephants may additionally raise their trunks.

Elephants produce a number of sounds. Perhaps the most well known is the trumpet, which is made during excitement, distress or aggression. Fighting elephants may roar or squeal, and wounded ones may bellow.

Intelligence and cognition

Elephants are among the most intelligent species; their psychology is comparable to primates. They exhibit mirror self-recognition, an indication of self-awareness and cognition that has also been demonstrated in some apes and dolphins.

An Asian elephant was recorded modifying branches and using them as flyswatters. Tool modification by these animals is not as advanced as that done by chimpanzees.

Elephants are popularly thought of as having an excellent memory. This could have a factual basis; they possibly have cognitive maps to allow them to remember large-scale spaces over long periods of time. In addition, individuals appear to be able to keep track of the current location of their family members.

Conservation issues

Both African and Asian elephants are endangered species.

African elephants receive some legal protection in every country where they are found. However, 70% of their range exists outside protected areas. Conservation efforts in some areas have led to more elephants.

Large-scale culling (legal killing) ceased in 1988, when Zimbabwe stopped doing it. In 1989, trade in elephants and their products (ivory, meat) was made illegal. Appendix II status (which allows restricted trade) was given to elephants in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1997 and South Africa in 2000. In some countries, sport hunting of the animals is legal: Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have export quotas for elephant trophies. The IUCN estimates a total of around 440,000 individuals for 2012.

The total population of Asian elephants is about 40,000-50,000 (a rough estimate). Around half of the population is in India. Although Asian elephants are declining in numbers overall, particularly in Southeast Asia, the population in the Western Ghats may be increasing.

The poaching of elephants for their ivory, meat and hides has been one of the major threats to their existence. Historically, numerous cultures made ornaments and other works of art from elephant ivory, and its use rivaled that of gold. Hunting for ivory contributed to the African elephant population decline in the late 20th century. This prompted international bans on ivory imports, starting with the United States in June 1989, and followed by bans in other North American countries, western European countries, and Japan. Around the same time, Kenya destroyed all its ivory stocks. CITES approved an international ban on ivory that went into effect in January 1990.

Following the bans, unemployment rose in India and China, where the ivory industry was important economically. By contrast, Japan and Hong Kong, which were also part of the industry, were able to adapt and were not badly affected. Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Malawi wanted to continue the ivory trade and were allowed to, since their local populations were healthy, but only if their supplies were from elephants that had been culled or died of natural causes. The ban allowed the African elephant to recover in parts of Africa. In January 2012, hundreds of elephants in Bouba Njida National Park, Cameroon, were killed by Chadian raiders. This has been called "one of the worst concentrated killings" since the ivory ban. Asian elephants are potentially less vulnerable to the ivory trade, as females usually lack tusks. Still, members of the species have been killed for their ivory in some areas, such as Periyar National Park, India.

Elephants and humans

Working animal

Elephants have been working animals since at least the Indus Valley Civilization and continue to be used in modern times, with 13,000-16,500 working elephants employed in Asia as of 2000. These animals are typically captured from the wild when they are 10-20 years old, when they can be trained quickly and easily, and will have a longer working life. They were traditionally captured with traps and lassos, but since 1950, tranquillisers have been used as they are potentially less harsh. Elephants perform tasks such as hauling loads into remote areas, moving logs into trucks, transporting tourists around national parks, pulling wagons and leading religious processions.

Elephants were considered formidable instruments of war in antiquity. They were equipped with armour to protect their sides, and their tusks were given sharp points of iron or brass if they were large enough. War elephants were trained to grasp an enemy soldier and toss him to the person riding on them or to pin the soldier to the ground and impale him.

Zoos and circuses

Keeping elephants in zoos has been met with some controversy. Proponents of zoos argue that they offer researchers easy access to the animals and provide money and expertise for preserving their natural habitats, as well as safekeeping for the species. Critics claim that the animals in zoos are under physical and mental stress.

Cultural depictions

Elephants have been represented in art since Paleolithic times. Africa in particular contains many rock paintings and engravings of the animals, especially in the Sahara and southern Africa.

Despite this, some Europeans continued to portray them in a more stylised fashion. Max Ernst's 1921 surrealist painting The Elephant Celebes depicts an elephant as a silo with a trunk-like hose protruding from it.

Elephants have been the subject of religious beliefs. The Mbuti people believe that the souls of their dead ancestors resided in elephants. Similar ideas existed among other African tribes, who believed that their chiefs would be reincarnated as elephants. During the 10th century AD, the people of Igbo-Ukwu buried their leaders with elephant tusks. The animals' religious importance is only totemic in Africa but is much more significant in Asia. In Sumatra, elephants have been associated with lightning. Likewise in Hinduism, they are linked with thunderstorms as Airavata, the father of all elephants, represents both lightning and rainbows. One of the most important Hindu deities, the elephant-headed Ganesha, is ranked equal with the supreme gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Ganesha is associated with writers and merchants and it is believed that he can give people success as well as grant them their desires. In Buddhism, Buddha is said to have been a white elephant reincarnated as a human. In Islamic tradition, the year 570, when the Prophet Muhammad was born, is known as the Year of the Elephant. Elephants were thought to be religious themselves by the Romans, who believed that they worshipped the sun and stars.

The use of the elephant as a symbol of the US Republican Party began with an 1874 cartoon by Thomas Nast.

As characters, elephants are most common in children's stories. Many stories tell of isolated young elephants returning to a close-knit community, such as "The Elephant's Child" from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Disney's and Kathryn and Byron Jackson's The Saggy Baggy Elephant. Other elephant heroes include Jean de Brunhoff's Babar, David McKee's Elmer and Dr. Seuss's Horton.

Images for kids

Parable of the elephant and the blind monks; illustrated by Hanabusa Itchō. ( Ukiyo-e woodcut, 1888)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elephants are the largest living land mammals. The largest elephant recorded was one shot in Angola, 1974. It weighed 27,060 pounds (13.5 tons) and stood 13 feet 8 inches tall. Their skin colour is grey. In the wild, elephants have strong family relationship. Their ways of acting toward other elephants are hard for people to understand.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Frogs are small animals that can jump very well. Frogs are similar to toads. However, a frog has smooth skin and long legs. A toad has rough skin and shorter legs.

Frogs are found throughout the world except in very cold places. They are most common in rain forests. Frogs are amphibians, meaning that they can live in water or on land. Most frogs spend most of their lives in water. Some live in underground holes or in trees.

A frog has smooth, moist skin and big, bulging eyes. Its hind legs are more than twice as long as its front ones. Most frogs have webbed back feet to help them leap and swim. Tree frogs have sticky disks on the tips of their fingers and toes. These disks help them climb slippery surfaces.

Many frogs are tiny. They can be less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) long. The largest frogs are about a foot (30 centimeters) long. Most frogs are green, brown, gray, or yellow. Some are brightly colored.

A frog catches prey by flicking out its long, sticky tongue. Most frogs eat insects and worms. Some also eat other frogs, rodents, and reptiles.

Frogs have glands in their skin that make poison. But this poison does not protect them from snakes, birds, and other enemies. Instead, frogs most often protect themselves by blending in with their surroundings.

Frogs usually lay their eggs in water. There can be hundreds or thousands of eggs. Within a few weeks the eggs hatch into tadpoles. Tadpoles are fishlike creatures that breathe through gills instead of lungs. To become an adult frog, a tadpole loses its tail and develops lungs and limbs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Frogs are small animals that can jump very well. Frogs are similar to toads. However, a frog has smooth skin and long legs. A toad has rough skin and shorter legs. Frogs are...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Frogs are amphibians of the order Anura. There is not much difference between frogs and toads, and they are not classified separately. This is because the toad lifestyle, with its dry, rough, skin, is an adaptation to living in drier habitats. The toad form has evolved a number of times independently, an example of convergent evolution.

Frogs can live on land and in fresh water. They cannot survive in salt water. Their development is by metamorphosis. They usually hatch as tadpoles from eggs, which are laid by a female frog. The eggs are called frogspawn. Tadpoles have tails and gills. The next stage, the "froglet," develops lungs to breathe air instead of gills, but still have tails. The fully grown frog has long legs and no tail.

Adult frogs can jump with their legs. They have long tongues that they use to catch bugs. They make a sound called a croak. Some species live in trees, and some types of frog are protected by being poisonous. Frogs live all over the world. If a foreign species of frogs is introduced to another country, the local ecosystem might be affected.

Frog legs are sometimes eaten as food in France, China, and the Midwest of the United States. The killing of frogs might have an effect on the ecosystem. For example, frogs eat mosquitoes. If frogs are killed, then there are fewer frogs to eat mosquitoes, so more and more mosquitoes are born. Therefore, in these areas, there are more diseases that mosquitoes carry, because there are more mosquitoes. However, for this to apply, frogs would have to be a major predator of mosquitoes. This would only rarely be the case.

Frogs are members of the class Lissamphibia, the only class of amphibia which has survived to the present day.

Characteristics

Frogs are cold blooded animals. This means that they need heat to keep up their body temperature. If the temperature outside is cold, amphibians will not be active. Amphibians can get heat from the sun, usually indirectly: whereas reptiles can bask in the sun, amphibia usually do not, because it dries their skin. Some frogs aestivate during winter or during droughts. They usually look for underground place to aestivate. These include burrowing in muds and holes. They survive by getting oxygen through their skin. They come out when the weather outside is favourable.

The structure of the feet and legs varies greatly among frog species, depending in part on whether they live primarily on the ground, in water, in trees or in burrows. Frogs must be able to move quickly through their environment to catch prey and escape predators, and numerous adaptations help them to do so. Most frogs are either proficient at jumping or are descended from ancestors that were.

The call or croak of a frog is unique to its species. Frogs create this sound by passing air through the larynx in the throat. In most calling frogs, the sound is amplified by one or more vocal sacs. Some frog calls are so loud that they can be heard up to a mile away, the main reason for calling is to allow male frogs to attract a mate.

Frogs have skin with no scales or hair. They can take in oxygen from either water or air. Mucus that helps their skin to stay wet and slippery. Many amphibians have toxic skin. They have secretions which makes their skin poisonous.

Many frogs are semi- aquatic. They may live on both land and in water, and in any event prefer damp places. These include ponds, swamps, rivers and lakes. Most adults live where they grew up. Most amphibians lay their eggs in foam nests. Frogs can hear both in the air and below water.

Camouflage is a common defensive mechanism in frogs. Most camouflaged frogs are nocturnal; during the day, they seek out a position where they can blend into the background and remain undetected.

At the end of the tadpole stage, a frog undergoes metamorphosis in which its body makes a sudden transition into the adult form. This metamorphosis typically lasts only 24 hours, and is initiated by production of the hormone thyroxine. This causes different tissues to develop in different ways.

The principal changes that take place include the development of the lungs and the disappearance of the gills and gill pouch, making the front legs visible. The lower jaw transforms into the big mandible of the carnivorous adult, and the long, spiral gut of the herbivorous tadpole is replaced by the typical short gut of a predator. The nervous system becomes adapted for hearing and vision, and for new methods of movement and feeding.

The eyes are repositioned higher up on the head and the eyelids and associated glands are formed. The eardrum, middle ear, and inner ear are developed. The skin becomes thicker and tougher and skin glands are developed. The final stage is the disappearance of the tail, but this takes place rather later, the tissue being used to produce a spurt of growth in the limbs. Frogs are at their most vulnerable to predators when they are undergoing metamorphosis. At this time, the tail is being lost and movement by means of limbs is only just becoming established.

Variations in development

Even though it is true that most frogs develop from tadpoles, and tadpoles develop from eggs laid in water, though there are exceptions. Normally the eggs are fertilised after they are laid, that is, outside the body. However, some use internal fertilisation, though how the males do it is not known. When they are fertilised internally, they also lay eggs, but this time the eggs are already fertilised.

However, a new species has been discovered in Sulawasi, Indonesia, which gives birth to live tadpoles. The frog is now known as Limnonectes larvaepartus.

The Limnonectes family are known as 'fanged frogs' because of twin projections on their lower jaws that are used in fighting. Sulawesi is an island which is rapidly losing its forests. The tropical forest is where this frog lives.

The largest frog is the African Goliath frog (Conraua goliath). The maximum recoreded weight is 3.8 kg (8.4 lb), and a snout-to-vent length of 39 cm (15 in).

Paedophryne amauensis is not just the smallest frog, but the smallest vertebrate, 7.7 millimetres (0.30 in) long.

Distribution and habitats

Frogs are widespread, and have adapted to many climates, even deserts. They rely on specific adaptations to survive. Members of the genus live in the Australian central desert. They bury themselves underground where they create a waterproof cocoon in which to aestivate during dry periods. Once it rains, they come out, find a temporary pool, and breed. Egg and tadpole development is very fast in comparison to those of most other frogs, so breeding can be completed before the pond dries up.

Some frog species are adapted to a cold environment. The wood frog ( Rana sylvatica), whose habitat extends into the Arctic Circle, buries itself in the ground during winter. Although much of its body freezes during this time, it maintains a high concentration of glucose in its vital organs, which protects them from damage.

There are a number of tiny tree frogs which develop from eggs laid in water pools on tropical leaves many meters above the ground. Most of these species do not come to the ground except to mate. Tree frogs have evolved a number of times, but they all have almost identical adaptations. Many millions of years of convergent evolution have resulted in almost identical morphology and habits.

Overall, frogs are a successful and widespread group. There are about 4,800 recorded species, which is over 85% of living amphibian species. They are one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders.

Frog legs are eaten by humans in many parts of the world. French cuisses de grenouille or frog legs dish is a traditional dish. The dish is also common in French-speaking parts of Louisiana, particularly the Cajun areas of Southern Louisiana as well as New Orleans, United States. In Asia, frog legs are consumed in China, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

Chinese edible frog and pig frogs are farmed and consumed on a large scale in some areas of China. Frog legs are part of Chinese Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine. In Indonesia, frog-leg soup is known as or swike. Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of frog meat, exporting more than 5,000 tonnes of frog meat each year, mostly to France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Originally, they were supplied from local wild populations, but over-exploitation led to a reduction in the size of the supply. This resulted in the development of frog farming and a global trade in frogs. The main importing countries are France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the United States, while the chief exporting nations are Indonesia and China. The annual global trade in the American bullfrog, mostly farmed in China, varies between 1200 and 2400 tonnes.

The mountain chicken frog, so-called as it tastes of chicken is now endangered, in part due to human consumption and was a major food choice of the Dominicans.

Images for kids

Variegated golden frog ( Mantella baroni) in the Ranomafana National Park of Madagascar

Although frogs are most diverse in warm regions, a few species like the wood frog even live at the Arctic Circle

In Spanish: Anura para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The frog life cycle

Frogs are animal athletes, with strong powerful legs that allow them to leap out of harm's way. These powerful limbs are the secret to their success - and incredibly, it takes baby frogs weeks and weeks to grow them!

Like beautiful butterflies, frogs and toads undergo an astonishing transformation - which is called ' metamorphosis' - as they grow up. From jelly-like eggs laid in water, they grow into wriggling tadpoles, and finally grow legs suitable for land!

But how does this mesmerising metamorphosis work? Let's have a look at each stage of the frog life cycle in turn, to find out...

Stage 1: Extraordinary eggs

It all starts with adult frogs laying hundreds of tiny eggs, which clump together in groups known as frogspawn. This happens in early spring, when the weather is just starting to get warmer. Spotting frogspawn is often thought of as being a key sign of spring!

You can hunt for frogspawn in shallow, still water - a garden pond, for example! As the eggs are defenceless, they're usually laid among vegetation and just below the surface of the water, to give them some protection.

If you're lucky enough to spot some of these strange eggs, pay attention to their shape. Frogs lay 'frogspawn', which looks like a round cluster of eggs, while toads lay 'toadspawn', which comes in long ribbons.

DID YOU KNOW?
As far as scientists are concerned, there's no difference between frogs and toads! They have different characteristics, but share the same family tree.

In the frogspawn, the baby frogs start out as tiny black dots surrounded by a jelly-like substance. Over time, they become comma-shaped, as their tails begin to develop - amazing!

Stage 2: Teeny tadpoles!

After spending 1-3 weeks eating the yolk of their egg, the baby frog hatches into the big, wide world.

Now, the baby frogs are known as tadpoles. They have gills, a mouth, and a long tail, which they need for swimming!

DID YOU KNOW?
The tadpole stage of the frog life cycle is also known as the larval stage. Tadpoles are frog larvae, in the same way that caterpillars are butterfly larvae!

For the first week or two after hatching, tadpoles won't move around very much, as they're still absorbing some nutrition from the yolk of their egg. However, once the yolk is all gone, the tadpoles are big and strong enough to venture out into their watery world!

Unlike adult frogs, tadpoles can't go on land - so they feed on plant material filteredfrom the water, and tear off tiny chunks of nearby vegetation.

The legless, water-bound tadpoles slowly metamorphose into frogs over the next 14 weeks.

First, they grow back legs, then front legs too! Soon after, their body starts to change shape, and they're able to start eating insects.

Next, the tadpoles' tails shrink away, and skin grows over their gills, as they develop lungs and eardrums! These are super important steps, as they prepare the tadpole for life on land.

Once their gills and tails are gone forever, tadpoles undergo one last 24-hour push, where the metamorphosis completes. Once this stage is finished, the baby frogs emerge from the water as tiny adults!

Amazingly, tadpoles are able to control the timing of their transformation. If they're living in a dangerous environment, like a pond full of hungry fish, they will metamorphose more quickly, to make their escape! On the other hand, if their pond has lots of plants to munch through, and few predators - or if it's extra cold on land - tadpoles can delay their metamorphosis, and remain in the water for up to a year. Wow!

Stage 3: Fully-grown frog!

And there you have it - the frogs are all grown up, and ready to head out into the big wide world!

As adults, frogs and toads are much less reliant on water. So long as they stick to the shade and don't dry out, they can live on land - but they often return to ponds and lakes for a splash!

Before too long, the females will look for water to lay her own eggs. Once that's happened, the life cycle is complete - what a frog-tastic life they lead!

Thanks to S. Hermann & F. Richter; Jill Wellington; PollyDot; David Clode, and Venita Oberholster for the images used in this article.

Have you ever found frogspawn, or spotted a frog? Let us know in the comments below!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Frog Life Cycle for Kids - National Geographic Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From tiny tadpole to bouncing adult, we're learning all about the transformation that takes frogspawn to frog! Discover the frog life cycle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When a flamingo spots potential dinner-favorite foods include shrimp, snails, and plantlike water organisms called algae-it plunges its head into the water, twists it upside down, and scoops the fish using its upper beak like a shovel. They are able to "run" on water, thanks to their webbed feet, to gain speed before lifting up into the sky.

Flamingos build nests that look like mounds of mud along waterways. At the top of the mound, in a shallow hole, the female lays one egg. The parents take turns sitting on the egg to keep it warm. After about 30 days, the egg hatches.

Flamingo young are born white, with soft, downy feathers and a straight bill. The bill gradually curves downward as the flamingo matures. Both parents take care of the newborn flamingo, feeding it a fluid produced in their digestive systems. The young leave the nest after about five days to join other young flamingos in small groups, returning to the parents for food. The parents identify their chick by its voice. After about three weeks, the adults herd young flamingos into large groups called crèches where they start to look for food on their own.

Most flamingo species are not endangered, although the Andean flamingo is listed as vulnerable, and the Chilean, Lesser, and Puna flamingos are near threatened.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Flamingos are famous for their bright pink feathers, stilt-like legs, and S-shaped neck. When a flamingo spots potential dinner-favorite foods include shrimp, snails, and plantlike water organisms called algae-it plunges its head into the water, twists it upside down, and scoops the fish using its upper beak like a shovel.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Flamingos are tall, mostly pink birds with long legs. A flamingo often stands with its long, thin neck curved into an S shape. Flamingos fly and feed in large flocks of hundreds to even millions of birds.

Like storks, herons, and ibises, flamingos are wading birds. This means that they feed while standing or walking in shallow water. Flamingos live in warm regions near lakes and bodies of water called lagoons.

There are five species, or types, of flamingo. The most common type is the lesser flamingo. It is found mainly in eastern and southern Africa and India. Other types of flamingo come from Central and South America, Caribbean islands, southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.

A flamingo has webbed feet, a slender body, large wings, and a short tail. Its head is small, and its bill curves downward. It stands between about 3 feet (almost 1 meter) and 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

Flamingos feed with their heads down in shallow water or mud. A flamingo's bill has a series of hairlike plates inside that act as a filter. The bird uses its bill to strain food from the water. Flamingos eat tiny living things such as algae and small animals such as shrimp and snails.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Flamingos are tall, mostly pink birds with long legs. A flamingo often stands with its long, thin neck curved into an S shape. Flamingos fly and feed in large flocks of hundreds to even millions of birds. Like storks, herons, and ibises, flamingos are wading birds.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Foxes are mammals that look like small, bushy-tailed dogs. They live all over the world. Different kinds favor different habitats. The red fox likes farmland. The gray fox lives in forests. The silver fox is found in cold areas. The Arctic fox lives near the North Pole.

Foxes have pointed ears, short legs, and a narrow snout. They are about 32 to 57 inches (81 to 145 centimeters) long, including the tail. Foxes usually weigh 6 to 17 pounds (3 to 8 kilograms). They have long fur that varies in color. Red foxes are reddish brown. Silver foxes are black with gray-tipped hair. The Arctic fox is brownish in the summer and white in the winter.

Foxes usually live in dens. The den is often a burrow that another animal dug and left. Most foxes hide by day and hunt by night. Foxes will eat almost anything they can find. They like to eat birds, including chickens, and small mammals such as gophers and rabbits.

Most foxes mate once every year. The female gives birth to as many as 14 babies. The young open their eyes after about two weeks. They remain in the den for about five weeks.

The fox has few enemies except for humans. People hunt foxes for sport and for their fur. People also raise foxes on farms for their fur.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Foxes are mammals that look like small, bushy-tailed dogs. They live all over the world. Different kinds favor different habitats. The red fox likes farmland. The gray fox...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The sun starts to set in northern Virginia, and a red fox wakes up and stretches, ready to search for dinner. She hunts alone and steps silently through the bushes. In the shadows she’s almost invisible. Then she stops; she smells something. The red fox suddenly leaps up, over the edge of … an open garbage can. She tears through a plastic bag and snatches some scraps of grilled chicken. As the fox climbs out, the garbage can tips over with a crash. Bang! A dog barks. Backyard lights turn on, but the sly fox has already disappeared through the fence with her meal in her mouth.