Category Plants & Animals

Meet the Mammals

What do a human being and a whale have in common with a cat? They all have hair or whiskers!

What does a mother cat have in common with a mother bat? They both feed their babies milk from their bodies.

What does a polar bear have in common with a camel? The body of each animal stays the same temperature no matter how cold or hot it is outside.

What do all of these animals have in common with one another? They are all mammals! If an animal drinks its mother’s milk when it is young, has hair or fur, and is warm-blooded, it’s a mammal.

Plants and Animals

Animals and plants are different. But they couldn’t live without each other! Plants capture energy from sunlight and use it to make roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Animals eat plants, or they eat other animals that eat plants. When animals die, their bodies break down and put nutrients, or food, back into the soil for plants.

Animals breathe in air. When they breathe out, the air is mixed with a gas called carbon dioxide. Plants take carbon dioxide out of the air to make food—and then release fresh air. In this way, the plants get the carbon dioxide they need, and the animals get fresh air.

Insects help plants by spreading pollen from one flower to another. The plants need pollen to form seeds and grow fruit. Other animals eat the fruit. They spread the seeds through their droppings. So animals help make new plants grow.

Picture Credit : Google

Animals Live in Different Habitats

A bear likes fish and berries. It lives near a forest stream. A panda eats the leaves of the bamboo tree. It lives in China, where bamboo is plentiful. Each kind of animal must live where it can find the food it needs.

The place where an animal lives is called its habitat. Each type of habitat is special. Habitats in the Polar Regions are bitterly cold. Desert habitats have very little water. Yet the animals that live in each habitat can find what they need to survive.

Animals such as earthworms, snails, frogs, and salamanders need damp, shady places to live.

Picture Credit : Google

All living creatures make new living things like themselves. They reproduce. Every baby animal comes from a grown-up animal like itself. A baby penguin comes from a penguin. A baby horse comes from a horse. A baby beetle comes from a beetle.

Animal babies are born in different ways. Some baby animals come right out of the mother’s body. Horses are born this way. So are cats, monkeys, whales, and some snakes. And so are people. Some baby animals hatch out of eggs that come from their mother’s body. Penguins are born this way. So are beetles, frogs, and most fish.

Many animals do not look after their babies after they are born. For example, some frogs and toads and many kinds of fish lay their eggs and let the babies take care of themselves.

Other animals stay with their babies for a long time. Many birds teach their babies to fly. Many mammals teach their young to hunt for food.

Some baby animals look just like their parents. Some look very different. But every baby animal grows up to be exactly the same kind of animal as its parents.

Picture Credit : Google

Animals Grow Up

The seeds of a tree take root in the ground. The new tree sprouts, grows roots, and produces leaves—all by itself. Plants can take care of themselves. But, unlike plants, many animal parents must teach their young how to survive on their own.

Each baby animal grows up to live the way its parents live. It looks, acts, and sounds like animals of its own kind—and like no others.

A lion cub learns to walk and then run. It learns to eat meat. It growls and it roars. It learns to hunt other animals for food. A baby spider grows up and does all the things spiders do. It crawls along and spins a sticky web that will catch insects to eat.

A young parrot learns to fly. It knows how to crack nuts and seeds with its bill. It squawks and whistles like other parrots.

Every animal learns to live like the other animals of its kind. Each animal does what it must do to stay alive. That’s the way of the animal world.

Picture Credit : Google

Animals Eat

All plants and all animals need food. Most plants make their own food from light, water, and substances in the ground and air. But animals cannot make their own food. They must eat plants or other animals to live. Different kinds of animals eat in different kinds of ways. A chameleon flips out its sticky tongue and catches insects. A lammergeyer, a type of vulture, uses its sharp claws and hooked beak to tear its food.

A butterfly has a part of its mouth like a built-in straw. It’s called a proboscis. The butterfly keeps its proboscis rolled up until it gets hungry. Then it unrolls its proboscis, puts it into a flower, and sucks up sweet nectar.

A ground squirrel has strong teeth for cracking nuts and seeds. It carries food home in its cheeks and “squirrels” it away.

A baleen whale fills its mouth with seawater. The water is full of tiny plants and animals. The whale lets the water run out of its mouth. Then it swallows the plants and animals that remain.