Animal World

Author: Sun Qiuping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: When viewers of "Animal World" receive this book, they will feel the same sense of familiarity and joy as we do. We believe that the collection of nearly a million words of commentary will not only provide readers with rich and extremely valuable academic materials on wildlife, but also serve as a literary sourcebook for the vibrant and ever-changing artistic representations of nature's creatures. The anaconda is not venomous, but it possesses immense strength, and can easily crush a gazelle or a person with its coils. Fortunately, it rarely attacks humans. African anacondas can grow up to 5 meters long and weigh 100 kilograms. Reptiles grow throughout their entire lives. They must shed their skin frequently; small snakes can shed their entire skin at once, but large anacondas shed it in pieces. The palms and yellow spiny trees of provide nesting sites for sunbirds. For safety, sunbirds often build their nests on slender branches near the water, making it difficult for predators to approach. The small sunbird feeds on insects. A small grass snake can climb onto that branch and raid the bird's nest, so the sunbird calls out loudly, but the snake is actually after frogs, not birds. The snake considers the frog a special delicacy, while the frog's defense is to remain still and suddenly leap away at the critical moment. Another fascinating swimmer, like the crocodile, is a giant lizard. These giant lizards can be found in Africa and Eastern countries. Lizards vary in size, with the smallest being the 90-centimeter-long short-tailed lizard in Australia, and the largest being the 3-meter-long giant lizard in Indonesia. has the Nile monitor lizard. Like all other animals that rely on water for survival, this lizard has a brown or bluish-gray head, and its black and yellow spots gradually disappear with age. The monitor lizard is fierce, enjoys eating crocodile eggs, and sometimes tries to drive away the female crocodile incubating them. Most of the time, it prefers to lie in the sun, but when danger arises, it quickly escapes or climbs nearby trees. When cornered, it retaliates with its mouth, grabs with its claws, and whips with its tail. Although the monitor lizard has its home on land or in trees, it spends most of its time in the water. The Nile monitor lizard has a particularly flat tail that helps it swim. Its main diet consists of small animals like insects, snails, crabs, and fish, of course, along with crocodile eggs. For otters, is not only a place for swimming and foraging but also a noisy and playful area. They consider every part of to be a fun place. The spotted-necked otter is the smallest otter in the world, measuring only 90 centimeters long and being very timid, rarely seen during the day. Some large otters eat crabs, but they mainly feed on fish. They always start eating from the fish's tail, sometimes swallowing everything, including bones and scales. The yellow-billed kite is a scavenger bird that rarely hunts but often steals. It circles in the sky to distract otters' attention from food. Otters kill more animals than they need. They have abundant energy to find hunting opportunities. Otters not only feed themselves and scavengers like kites but also feed many other animals that scavenge on the leftovers. These animals often compete for food. Otters can be a bit rough with turtles. Only very hungry crocodiles will eat turtles. But in, turtles must be cautious. They retract their heads into their shells, which reduces the otters' interest in playing with them. An eel is eating a fish. It bites the fish with its powerful mouth, spins its body, and uses an unusual method to consume the delicious food. After the turtle escapes, it finds the food left by the otter and nibbles on it along with the fish, but unlike the fish, it needs to frequently surface to breathe air. Crocodiles are the most formidable and ruthless animals in. They not only eat fish but also prey on the carnivores that hunt these fish. If given the chance, they will also eat young hippos. Crocodiles are dangerous not only to animals that come to the water's edge to drink but also to insects and birds. Crocodiles spend most of their time regulating their body temperature. They sometimes enter the water and sometimes climb onto the shore. They are very patient, lying still until their prey comes into view before suddenly opening their mouths. The largest crocodiles in are about 3 meters long. Careless animals might not notice the crocodile lurking in the water. Once it grabs its prey, it drags it into the water. Crocodiles are very primitive animals with large mouths capable of swallowing entire prey. Unlike mammals, they do not tear their food. If they don't impale the impala on a branch and tear it apart, they can only rotate it in their mouths. Remember how the eel spins to eat? They use the same method. Sometimes, this method backfires for the crocodile, with a piece of impala meat tightly wrapped around its mouth, making it unable to open its mouth for days. All of this is due to the existence of Spring. On the savanna plain, the spring gushes out from the ground, creating ponds for hippos and providing a habitat for other animals. One animal helps another thrive. The things hippos leave behind enrich the land for other animals. The waste of carnivores becomes food for others. This ecological cycle is always repeating. There are few places in Africa like, free from human interference, machinery, roads, towns, and factories. Without places like to adorn our natural environment, what would our world be like? The Secret of Vipers Our understanding of snakes may still be vague. In some ways, our perception is still influenced by the long-standing mysterious legends surrounding snakes. If we can set aside our biases to observe snakes, we will find that they are an extremely remarkable creature. They have overcome countless challenges and survived successfully in this hostile world. We use the idiom "venomous as a snake" to describe the cruelty and cunning of some people. But if snakes could speak, they would say, "This is a libel." The adder is the only venomous snake in the UK. It has a "V" shaped mark on its neck. In early spring, adders just emerge from their underground hibernation burrows. Spring sunlight gathers these awakening snakes together. This is the legendary gathering of magical snakes. Hundreds of snakes roll into a ball, all males, while the females remain underground for two more weeks. But these snake gatherings have no sinister motives. These cold-blooded reptiles gather together for only one reason—to warm up. The annual activity of adders is shedding their skin. The first sign of shedding is when their eyes develop cloudy patches, as their subdermal glands produce a secretion that separates the old skin from the new skin. This physiological process occurs several times a year. The old skin peels off from the head first, and the final piece is a complete skin. Shedding helps snakes remove parasites and grow.