Category Plants & Animals

          Almost all mammal babies grow inside their mother until they are able to breathe and feed outside, but mammal babies differ very much in the kind of help they need after birth. Human babies, for example, need the attention of their parents for many years before they are able to fend for themselves completely. Most grazing animals, on the other hand, have adapted to life on wide, open grasslands, where they are constantly at risk from attack by predators. It is important that these animals give birth to young that can stand on their own feet and run from danger almost immediately.

          Spring is the perfect time for baby animals to be born! Many animals have babies in the spring since the warmer weather makes it is easier for them to find food to feed them. Warmer weather also makes it easier for small babies to survive. Polar bears, which live in climates that are always very cold, actually have their babies during the winter while they are hibernating. When spring comes and warms things up a little, a mother bear will bring her cubs out of their cozy den for the first time and teach them how to find food for themselves. Other kinds of bears and some other large mammals also have babies during the winter, since they can nurse their babies and not have to leave their den to find food.

          There are lots of different kinds of animals living on earth. That means that there lots of very different kinds of baby animals! Even though we usually think of babies as being small and helpless when they are first born, that isn’t true for all animals. Some animals are very large even when they’re first born. Sometimes even the smallest ones are able to live on their own without any help from their parents when they are born. Keep reading to learn about some different kinds of animals and different ways that their babies are born and cared for.

          Mammals are animals that have hair or fur, are warm-blooded, and feed their babies with milk. Mammals give live birth, meaning that their babies are born from the mother’s body instead of hatching from an egg. However, there are two animals that lay eggs but are still considered mammals! They are echidnas and platypuses. Humans, elephants, cats, mice, pigs, rhinoceroses, gorillas, and many other animals are all mammals. Some are huge and some are tiny.

          Marsupials such as kangaroos, koalas, wombats, and opossums are mammals, too! When baby marsupials are born, they are very tiny and not as well developed as other mammal babies. They live in a fur-lined pouch on the outside of their mother’s belly where they nurse (drink milk) and stay safe and warm until they are big enough to come out. Even after the babies can come out of their mother’s pouch, they will still ride around on her back while they grow and learn how to survive on their own. Marsupial babies are called joeys. Almost all marsupials are nocturnal, which means they are awake at night and sleep during the day. Australia is home to most kinds of marsupials, but opossums do live in other parts of the world. In fact, the only marsupial that lives in North America is the Virginia Opossum, which can have up to 13 babies at once!

          Reptiles are cold-blooded, have backbones, have skin covered with scales, have claws on their feet, and baby reptiles’ hatch from eggs. A few kinds of snakes and lizards give live birth to their babies, but most lay eggs. Reptiles are born looking like smaller versions of their parents and are on their own almost as soon as they hatch. Their parents do not stay around to take care of them, because they aren’t really needed.

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          Warm-blooded animals are able to control their internal temperature to a greater degree than cold-blooded animals, so that they are less dependent on the temperature of their surroundings. While reptiles slow down when the weather is cold, mammals are able to lead an active life. Mammals have adapted to life in all parts of the world where there is food for them to eat.

          Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment. To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-blooded animals, to maintain a constant body temperature. Only a small amount of the food that a warm-blooded animal eats is converted into body mass. The rest is used to fuel a constant body temperature.

          Cold-blooded creatures take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold. In hot environments, cold-blooded animals can have blood that is much warmer than warm-blooded animals. Cold-blooded animals are much more active in warm environments and are very sluggish in cold environments. This is because their muscle activity depends on chemical reactions which run quickly when it is hot and slowly when it is cold. A cold-blooded animal can convert much more of its food into body mass compared with a warm-blooded animal.

          To stay cool, warm-blooded animals sweat or pant to loose heat by water evaporation. They can also cool off by moving into a shaded area or by getting wet. Only mammals can sweat. Primates, such as humans, apes and monkey, have sweat glands all over their bodies. Dogs and cats have sweat glands only on their feet. Whales are mammals that have no sweat glands, but then since they live in the water, they don’t really need them. Large mammals can have difficulty cooling down if they get overheated. This is why elephants, for example, have large, thin ears which loose heat quickly. Mammals have hair, fur or blubber, and birds have feathers to help keep them warm. Many mammals have thick coats of fur which keep them warm in winter. They shed much of this fur in the summer to help them cool off and maintain their body temperature. Warm-blooded animals can also shiver to generate more heat when they get too cold. Some warm-blooded animals, especially birds, migrate from colder to warmer regions in the winter.

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          Most birds can fly, but there are also some flightless species. These all have other ways of escaping from predators. The larger flightless birds, such as ostriches and emus, can run very fast. Penguins cannot fly but can swim and dive at great speed, using their wings as flippers to power them through the water.

          Most birds fly. They are only incapable of flight during short periods while they molt, or naturally shed their old feathers for new ones. There are, however, several birds that do not fly, including the African ostrich, the South American rhea, and the emu, kiwi, and cassowary of Australia. The penguins of the Southern Hemisphere are also incapable of air flight. They have feathers and insulation for breeding purposes, but use a different form of motion: their sleek bodies “fly” through the ocean using flipper-like wings. All of these flightless birds have wings, but over millions of years of evolution they have lost the ability to fly, even though they probably descended from flying birds. These species may have lost their ability to fly through the gradual disuse of their wings. Perhaps they became isolated on oceanic islands and had no predators; therefore, they had no need to fly and escape danger. Another possibility is that food became plentiful, eliminating the need to fly long distances in search of food.

          No list of flightless birds would be complete without the penguin. All 18 species of penguin are unable to fly, and are in fact better built for swimming and diving, which they spend the majority of their time doing. Their short legs and stocky build give them a distinctive waddling walk. While people tend to associate penguins with Antarctica, most species live in higher latitudes. A few even live in temperate climates, and the Galapagos penguin actually lives at the Equator. These birds are also remarkably romantic—penguins are largely monogamous and seek out the same mates each season, even among the hundreds or even thousands of birds that might live in their colony.

          Three out of four species of steamer duck are flightless, but four out of four species should not be messed with. Even within the flighted species, some males are too heavy to actually achieve liftoff. These South American ducks earned their name by running across water and thrashing their wings like the wheels on a steamboat. They use them for other forms of thrashing, too. Famously aggressive, steamer ducks are known to engage in epic, bloody battles with each other over territory disputes. They have even been known to kill waterbirds several times their size.

          The Weka is another bird of New Zealand. This brown, chicken-sized bird was an important resource for native New Zealanders and European settlers, but is now decreasing in number. While they may look unremarkable, weka have a loud call that males and females sing as a duet. They’re also known as clever thieves and will steal food and small objects to their liking and make off with them. Weka are skilled swimmers, too.

          The kakapo, also known as an “owl parrot” is also a native of New Zealand. This nocturnal parrot has an owl’s face, penguin’s stance, and duck’s gait. It is truly a strange bird—but also a beautiful one, with bright green-brown feathers. It can grow up to 2 feet in length, and is the world’s heaviest parrot. The males make a distinctive booming call that sounds like a one-bird jug band, which can be heard up to half a mile away!

          The cassowary is a bird you don’t want to mess with. This giant bird, a native of Australia and the surrounding islands, is in the heavyweight class. The only bird heavier is the ostrich. As if that isn’t enough, the cassowary sports a wicked daggerlike claw that can grow up to 4 inches long on the middle toe of each foot —and they’ve been known to kill humans. If deadly power isn’t your thing, though, you can still admire the cassowary’s style. These birds sport colorful helmets, or casques, made of keratin (like human fingernails). And their plush back feathers kind of look like glamorous fur capes.

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          The ostrich, running in herds in southern Africa, is the largest bird in the world. As well as being able to run at enormous speed from danger, the ostrich has powerful legs and sharp claws, which can deliver a kick hard enough to kill many predators.

          The largest extant bird species, a member of the struthioniformes, is the ostrich (Struthio camelus), from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of 2.8 metres (9.2 feet) and weigh over 156 kilograms (344 pounds). A mass of 200 kg (440 lb.) has been cited for the ostrich but no wild ostriches of this massive weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh 1.4 kg (3.1 lb.) and are the largest eggs in the world today.

          The largest extant bird by wingspan is the Wandering Albatross of the sub-Antarctic oceans. The maximum dimensions in this species are a length of 1.44 m (4.7 ft.) and a wingspan of 3.65 m (12.0 ft.).

          The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar, whose closest living relative is the kiwi. They exceeded 3 m (9.8 ft.) in height and 500 kg (1,100 lb.). The last of the elephant birds became extinct about 300 years ago. Of almost exactly the same upper proportions as the largest elephant birds was Dromornis stirtoni of Australia, part of a 26,000-year-old group called mihirungs of the family Dromornithidae. The largest carnivorous bird was Brontornis, an extinct flightless bird from South America which reached a weight of 350 to 400 kg (770 to 880 lb.) and a height of about 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in). The tallest bird ever however was the giant moa (Dinornis maximus), part of the moa family of New Zealand that went extinct around 1500 CE. This particular species of moa stood up to 3.7 m (12 ft) tall, but weighed about half as much as a large elephant bird or mihirung due to its comparatively slender frame.

          The heaviest bird ever capable of flight was Argentavis magnificens, the largest member of the now extinct family teratornithidae, found in Miocene-aged fossil beds of Argentina, with a wingspan up to 5–6 m (16–20 ft.), a length of up to 1.26 m (4.1 ft), a height on the ground of up to 1.5–2 m (4.9–6.6 ft.) and a body weight of at least 71 kg (157 lb.). Rivaling Argentavis in wingspan if not in bulk and mass, another contender for the largest known flying bird ever is Harpagornis moorei, which had a wingspan of up to 7.3 m (24 ft.).

          There are around 4000 species of mammal. Some spend their whole lives swimming in the ocean, while others never venture into the water. Most have fur or hair on their bodies at some time in their lives. Some walk on two legs and some on four. What all mammals have in common, however, is that they are warming blooded and breathe air. Mammal mothers feed their young on milk from their mammary glands. Mammals also have lungs, a heart with four chambers and well-developed brains.

Mammal, (class Mammalia), any member of the group of vertebrate animals in which the young are nourished with milk from special mammary glands of the mother. In addition to these characteristic milk glands, mammals are distinguished by several other unique features. Hair is a typical mammalian feature, although in many whales it has disappeared except in the fetal stage. The mammalian lower jaw is hinged directly to the skull, instead of through a separate bone (the quadrate) as in all other vertebrates. A chain of three tiny bones transmits sound waves across the middle ear. A muscular diaphragm separates the heart and the lungs from the abdominal cavity. Only the left aortic arch persists. (In birds the right aortic arch persists; in reptiles, amphibians, and fishes both arches are retained.) Mature red blood cells (erythrocytes) in all mammals lack a nucleus; all other vertebrates have nucleated red blood cells.

          Except for the monotremes (an egg-laying order of mammals comprising echidnas and the duck-billed platypus), all mammals are viviparous—they bear live young. In the placental mammals (which have a placenta to facilitate nutrient and waste exchange between the mother and the developing fetus), the young are carried within the mother’s womb, reaching a relatively advanced stage of development before birth. In the marsupials (e.g., kangaroos, opossums, and wallabies), the newborns are incompletely developed at birth and continue to develop outside the womb, attaching themselves to the female’s body in the area of her mammary glands. Some marsupials have a pouchlike structure or fold, the marsupial that shelters the suckling young.

          The class Mammalia is worldwide in distribution. It has been said that mammals have a wider distribution and are more adaptable than any other single class of animals, with the exception of certain less-complex forms such as arachnids and insects. This versatility in exploiting Earth is attributed in large part to the ability of mammals to regulate their body temperatures and internal environment both in excessive heat and aridity and in severe cold.

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          Birds show extraordinary variety and ingenuity in the nests they build. An untidy mound of sticks, simply dropped on top of one another, is all that a mute swan requires. House martins, on the other hand, literally build their homes. They skim over puddles and ponds, picking up little pieces of mud, which are built up into round-walled structures on the sides of buildings. Cuckoos, of course, are renowned for the fact that they use other birds’ nests in which to lay their eggs. They are able to mimic the size, shape and colour of the host-bird’s eggs to some extent, so that the additional egg is not immediately obvious.

          It should come as no surprise that hummingbirds, our smallest birds, make the smallest nests. Hummingbirds build on top of tree branches, using plants, soft materials and spider webs. Ruby-throats decorate theirs with flakes of lichen. Anna’s hummingbirds may lay eggs before a nest is completed, continuing to build the sidewalls during incubation. Most impressive is how these nests stretch. Hummingbirds usually lay a pair of eggs the size of black beans inside a nest about the diameter of a quarter. As the babies grow, the nest expands, keeping things tight and cozy.

          Orioles are the seamstresses of the bird world. Their iconic pendant nests dangle from outermost tree branches. The nests are impossible to miss among the barren winter branches and nearly as impossible to spot, surrounded by leaves, during the breeding season. Orioles use whatever material is available to stitch their bag nests: long grasses, twine, even horsehair. The nests are lined with soft materials such as plant fibers, feathers or animal wool. The Altamira oriole of extreme south Texas and Central America constructs one of the longest dangling nests, which can hang down more than 2 feet.

          It’s the exception rather than the rule, but a few species of birds get away with building hardly any nest at all! This doesn’t mean they are haphazard in their approach to laying eggs, though. Beach nesting birds (including black skimmers, many species of terns, and piping, Wilson’s and other plovers) lay eggs in shallow depressions scraped out in the sand. The remarkable thing about the eggs of these species is their cryptic camouflage coloration. Eggs are often speckles and match the sandy granules of the makeshift nests. Sometimes these birds will line the shallow scrape with shells or sand to add to the camouflage. As beaches get more developed, some of these beach nests have adapted to laying eggs on nearby rooftops.

          Huge colonies of murres and guillemots nest on rocky coastal cliffs. Most lack any structural nests, instead laying eggs that are extra pointy on one end. This shape helps the eggs pivot around the point instead of rolling over the edge. These ledge nesting sites are also more protected from predators. Cliff nesters aren’t found only on coasts. Lots of species, including condors, ravens and falcons, use cliffs, but they build stick nests in the crevices.

         Some waterbirds, including many ducks, nest in upland grasslands far from water. Others, such as loons, grebes, coots and gallinules, nest directly on top of the water. Eggs will sink, so the birds build floating platform nests out of cattails, reeds, other aquatic vegetation, or mud. They anchor the nests to emergent vegetation to conceal them and to keep them from drifting away.

          Holes in trees and cacti are nest cavities; underground nests are burrows. Burrowing owls in Florida will sometimes dig their own burrow, while the burrowing owls in the west usually rely on spots excavated by prairie dogs, badgers, tortoises or other diggers. Other underground nesters include bank swallows, belted kingfishers and Atlantic puffins.

          It is hard to say officially whoop lays the first eggs each year, but my pick for favorite nest is the great horned owls. Sure, many species can begin nesting in January in southern states, but it is still winter in the nothern states when great horned owls start incubating their eggs in nests made of sticks, often in trees. It’s essential that these owls get an early state on nesting, because the species is slow to hatch and fledge. It is remarkable to think of the owls sitting on eggs as snow piles up during frigid nights.

          The grand champion nest-builder is… the bald eagle! In 1963, an eagle’s nest near St. Petersburg, Florida, was declared the largest at nearly 10 feet wide, 20 feet deep and over 4,400 pounds. That nest was extreme; most bald eagle nests are 5 to 6 feet in diameter and 2 to 4 feet tall. Nest construction can take three months. Eagles typically use the same nest year after year, adding to it each season.

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