Where do most of the birds on Earth live?
Scientists think that there are about 9,500 species of birds in the world.
Birds are classified into 23 orders, such as passerines (song birds), accipters (eagles and hawks, for example), galliformes (game birds), and strigiformes (owls) etc.
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What is a collective group of birds called?
A group of birds of one species, or a group of different species together, is called a flock of birds, a flight of birds, or a volary of birds.
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Is there a limit to how big animals can grow?
Joshua A. Krish poses this question in his article in Live Science (March 2023) and he says that there is a limit – animals can’t grow indefinitely.
The largest land animal is the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) which is a mammal that reaches 250 centimetres (8 feet 4 inches) tall and 750 centimetres (25 feet) long, weighing about 6 metric tons (7 tons). It is not a meat-eating carnivore. It is an herbivore and eats grass, trees, bushes, fruit, and bark.
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What is an alula?
Birds have an alula on each wing.
An alula is a small projection – like a human thumb – on the edge of a bird’s wing. It means ‘winglet’ or small wing.
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Scientists have found that freshwater rivers are good for people, animals, and countries. As part of the New Scientist ‘Save Britain’s Rivers’ campaign, scientists have provided interesting information about the usefulness of rivers.
The regions that have the most river systems are (in order): Asia (31% of the world’s rivers), South America (28%), North America (18%), Oceania (15%), Sub-Saharan Africa (9%), Europe (7%), Australia (1%), and Middle East and North Africa (0.3%). It seems as though there is a lot of river water in the world, but only about 1% of all the land on the planet has fresh river water.
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World Wetlands Day is celebrated on 2 February annually. With 35% of the world’s wetlands having disappeared in the last 50 years, and nearly 90% degraded since the 1700s, the theme for the 2023 World Wetlands Day is Wetland Restoration – ‘revive and restore degraded wetlands.’ Wetlands are important ecosystems that contribute to biodiversity, climate mitigation and adaptation, and freshwater availability.
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Banded Mongoose females have a unique system of supersynchrony when they have their babies – they all give birth on the same night.
The Banded Mongoose (Mungos mungo) is a small carnivorous mammal found in central and eastern Africa – and one of 25 African species of mongoose. It is related to the Meerkat.
Most mongooses are solitary, but the Banded Mongoose lives in a colony of about 20 individuals, and up to 55 individuals. The colony lives underground in burrows, called dens.
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The Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine (saltwater) mammal, and the largest animal known on the planet.
The Blue Whale can grow to 30 metres (98 feet) in length. The female is larger than the male.
Continue reading “Blue Whale heart and tongue “
Kai Kupferschmidt, the author of the 2021 book, Blue: In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color says that the colour blue is rare in birds, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and fish, but even rarer in mammals.
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What is a brood parasite?
A brood parasite is an animal that does not raise its own young – it relies on other animals to look after its babies. The most famous brood parasite is the Cuckoo because some Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nest of other species of birds.
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What is a group of sardines called?
A group of sardines is called a school of sardines, or a family of sardines.
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How do birds manage to stand on cold ground, especially ice, and still keep themselves warm?
Birds in the coldest regions, with ice and snow, still manage to stand for long periods of time on the cold ground.
Birds in arctic and polar regions are adapted physically to extreme temperatures.
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The Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, America, is celebrating the birth of a baby Pygmy Hippo.
Born on 6 December 2022, the Pygmy Hippopotamus does not yet have a name. Its parents are Iris and Corwin. Iris was pregnant for 7 months before giving birth to her daughter.
She weighed 7 kilograms (16 pounds) and is growing rapidly. After a week, she was already 11 kilograms (24 pounds). When she is an adult, she will weigh up to 272 kilograms (600 pounds).
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What is a group of wrens called?
A group of wrens is called a herd of wrens, or a chime of wrens.
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What is a group of mules called?
A mule is a hybrid equine between a male donkey and a female horse. Generally, the foreparts (front part and the head) look like a donkey and the hindparts (back part and the tail) look like a horse.
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What is a group of geese called?
A group of geese is called a flock of geese, a gaggle of geese, or a plump of geese.
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Fossils in Scotland revealed information about the evolution of the Scorpion, an invertebrate arthropod arachnid – and how it left the ocean to live on land.
Most arthropods (insects, centipedes, and crustaceans, such as crabs) currently living on land are small. From the Scorpion fossils found in a rock quarry near Edinburgh in Scotland in 1984, scientists (palaeontologists) found large specimens, said Ian Rolfe from the Royal Museum of Scotland.
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Duck eyes are generally small, round, and dark.
Duck eyes are positioned at each side of a duck’s head – not in front of the face like human eyes. Why?
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How does an Australian bird eat a poisonous Cane Toad?
In Australia, the poisonous Cane Toad (Bufo marinus) is not native to the country. It is an introduced, invasive pest living in tropical northern Australia that has rapidly spread due to the lack of predators. Animals that eat the warty amphibian die from the toxic secretions from large glands on the Cane Toad’s shoulder. The cardiac toxins can give all predators, such as snakes, goanna lizards, and even freshwater crocodiles, a deadly heart attack.
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Ratites are flightless birds. They have wings but do not fly. Is it due to their size?
Ratites include emus and cassowaries in the Casuariidae family, kiwis in the Apterygidae family, ostriches in the Struthionidae family, and rheas in the Rheidae family.
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