My Science School

Animal Pretenders

Sometimes, in the world of animals, it’s eat or be eaten. To stay safe from predators, some animals hide in clever ways or pretend to be something else.

It’s hard to see a green grasshopper on a leaf, a striped tiger in tall grass, or a brown lizard on the bark of a tree. Their colour makes them hard to see in their habitats. Some insects are also experts at hide-and-seek. Their bodies are shaped like leaves or twigs, or even like bird droppings. These ways of blending into the background are called camouflage. It makes the animals hard to find, so they are safe from predators.

Other animals are actors they trick predators into leaving them alone. When the Australian frilled lizard is frightened, it unfolds a big flap of skin around its neck and opens its mouth wide. The small, harmless lizard suddenly looks big and dangerous. The opossum and the eastern hognose snake lie on their back and “play dead” when they feel threatened.

How well some animals can hide or act often decides whether they will be able to look for food or become food themselves!

Animal Armour

If you saw a pangolin you might say it looked like a pine cone with legs and a long tail.

A pangolin is one of the animals that is protected by armour. It’s covered with scales like those on pine cone, only bigger. When a pangolin is frightened, it rolls itself into ball. Then it tucks its head between its legs and covers its stomach with its tail. Its sharp-edged scales stick up. Not even a tiger would dare to bite through it.

The armadillo is another animal in armour. An armadillo is born with soft skin. But as it grows, its skin becomes covered with small, flat pieces of bone. This bony armour covers much of the armadillo’s body. The armadillo protects itself by rolling up into a hard, bony ball that even a wolf finds hard to bite.

Porcupines, hedgehogs, porcupine fish, and sea urchins wear a sort of armour, too. Their bodies are covered with sharp spines that keep other animals from biting them. These animals can’t run fast or fight well. But wearing armour helps they stay alive.

Amazing Animals

Do you know of a mammal that lays eggs? A bright blue lizard with stubby legs? Or a fish that can walk on land? There are millions of different animals, and some are truly fantastic.

The platypus and the echidna are mammals that seem to be part bird. The platypus looks like it has the body of a beaver and the bill and feet of a duck. The echidna looks like a porcupine with a pointy snout. Female platypuses and echidnas feed their young with milk, like all mammal females, but they also lay eggs, like all female birds.

The bright blue lizard called an ajolote looks like a worm with legs. It uses its two tiny front legs to crawl and dig holes.

The walking fish will drown if it stays underwater too long. It has to come to the top of the water to gulp air. Sometimes it even crawls out of the water. It pulls itself along with its fins.