travel adventures for kids

FREE magazine of travel adventures

Send this Page to a Friend

Can A Leopard Really Change Its Spots?

When someone says they are busy as a bee, ever wonder just how busy bees really are? When your friends say you eat like a bird, they would never imagine you need to watch calories. And are owls really wise or birdbrains in disguise?

Quiet As A Mouse - Most mice may be pretty quiet, unless they are frightened into squeaking, but one species is known for the noise it makes. The grasshopper mouse of the American Southwest and Midwest marks its territory in part by unleashing long, high-pitched squeals, like tiny howling wolves. Only these wolves weigh less than half an ounce.

Blind As A Bat - In fact, all bats can see, but most species augment their vision with echolocation where the sounds they emit bounce back to them, identifying what lies ahead as they flit through the air. In experiments, bats have been known to fly across rooms crisscrossed with string without becoming entangled, even when their vision has been obscured. Some bats in Africa and Asia do not echolocate however and have large eyes to help them navigate.

Hungry As A Bear - In the fall when salmon first arrive in the streams and grizzlies are most hungry, a large male can eat up to 90 pounds of fish in a single day! Now that's hungry. A hungry polar bear may be able to eat 100 pounds of whale blubber and meat in a day. So if you have friends who eat like polar bears, tell them to watch their cholesterol. Remind them that grizzlies also eat plenty of greens, fruit and roots.

Eyes Like A Hawk - This is what you want your optometrist to tell you. A hawk can see a rabbit from two miles away, or a dime from 1,200 feet. The smallest object a human can see from 1,200 feet is a grapefruit.

Busy As A Bee - The busiest bees are the worker bees that gather nectar to make into honey, build the wax combs in which larvae are raised, defend the hive and feed the queen and the larvae. As if that weren't enough, when the hive gets too warm, they cool things down by flapping their wings -up to 11,000 flaps per minute. And you think you've had a rough day! A big hive will include as many as 60,000 worker bees, each of which may live only for about 35 days. That's really working yourself to death!

Big As A Moose - That's plenty big. The moose is the world's largest member of the deer family. The biggest moose come from Alaska, where large males may weigh more than 1,800 pounds and stand more than seven and half feet tall.

Eats Like A Bird - If someone says you eat like a bird, you might consider going on a diet. Most birds eat 25 to 50 percent of their body weight daily. Birds have high metabolisms, burning up calories faster than a long-distance runner. Hummingbirds are probably the metabolic champs, putting away a meal of flower nectar and insects every 10 minutes! They eat twice their body weight daily, the equivalent of a 150-pound man chowing down about 1,000 Big Macs a day.

Wise As An Owl - Often thought of as the quiz kids of the bird world, owls really aren't avian geniuses. But they have eyes that face forward, always looking calm, indifferent and scholarly, like a judge. The owl's reputation for wisdom traces to Greek mythology. Athena, goddess of wisdom, traveled with an owl on her shoulder.

Lazy As A Sloth - Sloths, those tree-hanging creatures of Latin American rainforests, aren't lazy, they're just slow. On average, a sloth will move about 125 feet per day due to slow metabolism. It takes them a month to digest the food in a full stomach.

Crazy As A Coot - Because their wings are stubby, coots, a black water bird with a white beak, can't get off the ground efficiently when trying to fly. They run along the surface of the water, flapping and squawking and looking a bit crazed.

No, leopards can't change their spots but every leopard has a distinct spot-pattern the way that fingerprints identify individual people. Scientists say that a leopard's face spots are almost as distinctive as human facial features. Some leopards called black panthers are almost all black but you can still see their spots.

For more interesting facts about wildlife and what you can do to protect the wild in our world, check out NWF's National Wildlife Week website . With a theme of Exploring Nature in Your Neighborhood, Wildlife Week brings kids and their families together to explore nature and wildlife in their community with fun interactive games and activities. The nation's largest member-supported conservation education and advocacy group, the National Wildlife Federation unites people from all walks of life to protect nature, wildlife and the world we all share.

Send Your Can A Leopard Really Change His Spots?

Click Here for Children's book Reviews

Real Travel Adventures Web Magazine

Thanks for visiting us!

Add to Bookmarks

Home Previous Page Next Page

___________________

If any links don't work

PLEASE NOTIFY US.