Unusual Animals
Well, hey there! My name is Phil, and I'm a Naked Mole-Rat! I come from the
African underground, but I'm touring the world to meet interesting animal
friends from all over the place. Now I call Barrie, Ontario home!I'm very proud of being naked. Naked Mole Rats are born and stay almost completely hairless their entire lives. Our tunnels in Africa are plenty warm enough, and being naked helps us to stay parasite-free. No fleas or ticks make for a happy mole-rat! I did, however, have a sweater made for me out of my friend Ali the Alpaca's hair so I can hang out in the Canadian winter and not freeze my tail off.
I come from a colony of 123 mole rats and am the middle child of 10! All of the members of my colony are related because we all have the same mother, though a lot of us have different fathers. That's because we live like bees and ants do - we have a queen, and she's the only one who has babies. You can tell my mom from everyone else because she's a lot longer and bigger than the rest of us. And she's beautiful. (Well, I think so, anyway.) Mother's day is a big occasion around my family! I was born April 01, 2000, so I'm 8 years old. That's not too old considering I can live as long as 32 years and maybe even longer.
My home is in tunnels that I dig with my 4 long front teeth. My dentist says they're the strongest teeth he's ever seen and since I can chew through concrete with them, I'd have to agree. But that's not the only interesting thing about my front teeth - they actually grow right through my lips so they're on the outside of my face!! Wild, huh? This is so I can keep my mouth closed while I'm chomping through the dirt and don't end up with a mouth full of soil. I may live in dirt, but I sure don't like to eat it!
Actually, what I do like to eat are roots and tubers, especially sweet potato. That's kind of made my type of mole-rat unpopular in Africa, because a lot of farmers grow sweet potatoes and we like to eat so much of it. We Naked Mole-Rats aren't endangered - there're a lot of us out there, but we're just doing what we're meant to do. When you're underground, and you just happen to bump into food, you don't get picky - especially when you could tunnel for hours and not find anything. It's kind of like you groping around your entire house in the dark. You don't know where anything is and you can't see, so the best you can hope for is to just stumble on to some food!
Yup. Lots of people think I'm ugly, or weird looking, but if you look a little closer you can see the beauty beneath the wrinkly skin to the incredible adaptations Mother Nature has given us so we can survive.
Hiya! My name is Frances and I'm a Star-Nosed Mole! You can find moles like me hanging out in marshy areas in almost all of Ontario, Quebec, and some of the northern States. Yeah, I know. You think my nose looks pretty crazy, huh? But believe it or not, this is my greatest adaptation to finding my food underground. As you can imagine, we don't have a lot of light underground and I can't see very well anyway. Since we moles still haven't figured out how to make electricity, we have to rely on Mother Nature to help us out.My nose has 22 fleshy tentacles and I can feel everything around me with them. Everywhere I go, my 22 little friends go first, and I can actually map out my tunnel and figure out what's dirt, and what's dinner. Talking about dinner...there's nothing better than a nice fat juicy worm. Mmmmmmm! I'm sorry, I'm always thinking about food. I have such a high metabolism that I have to eat constantly or I'll starve!
I tunnel around underground with my great big front feet. I have really long hard claws to help me do this, and my chest muscles are HUGE to help me plough through the dirt. This is what I was made to do, and my dark waterproof fur stays pretty clean through it all. I don't ever have to bring my fur coat to the dry cleaners!
I don't hibernate in the winter like a lot of other animals do. I'd starve to death! I stay near water, and sometimes you can see me swimming under the ice looking for crayfish, leeches, minnows, and just about anything else I can get my teeth on. I may have a tiny mouth, but I have 44 very sharp little teeth in there. Humans only have 36!! And believe it or not, but I can hold my breath underwater for up to 3 minutes and can dive down almost 3 feet! That's something I'm pretty proud of considering I'm less than 10 inches long!
A lot of humans don't like me and my kind very much. They get upset because we dig tunnels in their lawns and on their golf greens. But a mole's gotta eat! And we do a lot of good for people by eating those leeches you hate so much, and the grubs that kill your plants. Unfortunately, some people think that using chemicals to kill the grubs is a good idea, but a lot of my family has died from eating poisoned grubs and other insects. Bug poison kills all kinds of animals, not just the insects it was meant for.
Maybe you can learn to love us little guys. We may not be big, but I think we're pretty cool. Now...who's ready for a nice helping of big fat, juicy earthworm?
Hi! I'm Hannah and I'm a Pink Fairy Armadillo. Yes, I am a real critter. Lots of people think maybe someone just glued me together out of leftover parts as a joke. If you go to my homeland of Argentina and Buenos Aires and look really hard, you might actually find me! We're pretty rare, though, because we're losing much of our habitat to people coming in and ploughing up our homes. I don't know why people want to make life so hard for us because we eat a lot of pesky insects that you don't seem to have any use for.
Hello there! Im Ed and I'm an Aardvark. My friends tell me I look like a rabbit with an elephant's snout and a kangaroo's tail. I dunno...I think I look pretty handsome, and all these weird parts do me a lot of good.My big ears not only help me hear when someone might be coming, (very important because that someone might be looking for dinner...ME!!) but they also help keep me from over-heating in the hot African sun. My blood travels under the thin skin of my ears to cool down, and then the cooler blood goes back into my body. They're like having my own air conditioning unit!
My long snout holds my even longer tongue that is specially adapted for eating my favourite food...ants and termites!! Yum, yum, yum! Ok, so maybe they're not what you might call a great meal, but to me, they're delicious and very nutritious to boot.
I also have really powerful front legs that help me tear apart concrete-hard termite mounds. It's pretty wild to see how they all swarm out and bite me to get me to go away, which eventually I do, but not before I eat a few thousand! I can really only take their painful bites for so long before I have to get out of there, so I have to eat as many as I can as quickly as I can. My long tongue is all sticky with saliva, and termites get stuck like flies to fly paper. I know it sounds gross, but it's pretty neat too, don't you think?
You'd think people would like having a termite eating machine like me around. After all...termites cause a lot of damage to human homes every year. But for some reason, people still destroy our habitats and force us out of our homes. Maybe if I was cuter??
I'm Ed the Aardvark's friend, Peter. I'm a Temmincks Ground Pangolin, and yes, I'm weird looking. I eat ants and termites; just like Ed, but I don't look a lot like him. That's because he's active in the daytime (diurnal), and I'm active at night (nocturnal). I live in Africa, too, and a lot of people think Africa is hot all the time. But the truth is that it gets awfully cold here at night. If I had ears like Ed they'd freeze!My tongue is so long...believe it or not, it's 50% longer than my head and body put together! Because of our amazing tongues, we're really efficient ant and termite eaters. Over 200 000 have been found in one pangolin stomach alone! My long, strong claws make short work of any termite mound or ant hill, and stay curled up when they aren't in use so they stay sharp.
My scales are actually specially adapted hairs, kind of like a rhino's horn, or your finger nails. They help keep me warm and protect me from my enemies; the leopards and the bears, but unfortunately my belly is unprotected. If a pangolin is on his back, it means he's in trouble! My scales also make it a little more difficult for the ants and termites to bite me on any exposed skin. They always seem to find some, though, so I never go away from a hill without a few good chomps on my poor body and face.
Some of my relatives live in Asia, but we're all endangered because people think we're special. They think our scales are good for charms and decoration, they eat our meat and some people even think our blood cures internal bleeding in sick people! I don't know about that, but I do know a lot of my Pangolin family has died because of it. Maybe soon people will realise that we're much more valuable to them alive than dead.
It's so nice to meet you! My name is Conan and I'm a Crested Porcupine. I live in Africa, and some say I have the funkiest hairdo ever! Maybe I do, but this wild hair helps keep me safe by protecting me from my enemies. The long, hollow hairs on my rear end are called quills, and they don't have barbs like my North American relatives, but they are VERY sharp. I can have as many as 30 000 of them, and each one can get up to 2 ½ feet long. And no, I don't shoot them at people. That's just a big myth. But I can stomp my feet and rattle them around and make a lot of scary noises to scare my enemies away. As the biggest porcupine in the world, my size scares animals away, but that also makes me kind of a slow runner. I also can't see too well, and I don't climb trees like my North American cousin, either, so I can't use that trick to escape predators. I can get really mean when I'm cornered so you'd better be ready for a fight if you want to take me on! Most of the time I'm pretty relaxed, so there's nothing to worry about - especially if you bring me some cabbage.I don't eat meat, just vegetables. I'm what scientists call an herbivore, so I only eat seeds, nuts, fruits and veggies. I have very strong teeth so I can eat the things I do, and I can even chew through strong nuts and seeds.
People think it must be pretty painful for us to give birth, but it's not so bad. We're born with soft, flexible fur and it takes a couple of days for the quills to harden on our backs. My mom's glad for that, I can tell you!
People often kill us so they can eat us and take our quills to use them for decorations. I think they look better on us - but that's my opinion. A lot of us are also killed on highways every year because we aren't quick enough to get out of the way of traffic. Humans sure do a lot of damage to wildlife all over the world with their cars - even in Africa. I don't know why you all want to go so fast anyway. You should all slow down and smell the melon bushes.
Nice to meet you, I'm Gerry the Giraffe and I'm from Africa, too. I'm the tallest mammal in the world, and I think I'm the tallest I know. I stand at 19 feet and can see for miles, and weigh 2000 pounds, or almost a tonne. A male giraffe is called a bull and that's what I am. I'm 10 years old and am in my prime. I roam around by myself, but herds of bachelors aren't uncommon, and we get along pretty well, until a female shows up. Then we slug it out for her attention by swinging our heads at each other and thumping our rivals with the hard, knobby horns on our heads. Believe me; it hurts a lot more than it looks even though it's called necking.Baby giraffes have a really shocking welcome into the world. We start out life by dropping 6 feet to the ground behind our mothers when we're born! We're pretty vulnerable for the first few years of our lives to lion and hyena attacks, but once we're full grown, no one really bothers us unless we're hurt or sick. Our herds help protect us by banding together to fight off the predators.
Females and young usually travel in herds, so they're pretty easy for us bachelors to find. We just look for all the heads bobbing around the acacia trees. Acacia tree leaves are one of our favourite foods, and our long blue-black tongues and the insides of our mouths are tough enough to withstand the acacia's 3 inch long spines. The spines are all along the branches; kind of like rose bush thorns only a lot longer, skinnier, and straight and sharp! Other animals can't eat the leaves because it hurts them too much. It's like chewing a mouthful of needles!
The most common type of giraffe is called a Reticulated, which is what I am. But there are actually about 8 different subspecies of giraffe out there. Unfortunately all of us are in trouble because humans keep taking our homes and putting farms on them. One of these days, we might not be found in the wild at all, and who can imagine Africa without giraffes? Not me!
