Steep slopes with very little soil cover; rugged rocks, snow, and ice are the habitat in high mountains. Although the plant cover above the tree-line is scanty, you can still find animals living there. In the Alps, we find the climbing chamois, ibexes, and groundhogs.
Most of the forest ants build hills at sunny forest edges from needles, twigs, and moss. The well-organized huge colonies of ants are called ‘hills’. Several hundred queens live with their ‘community’ in these hills. The ants divide the work among themselves. While the queens lay eggs, the soldier ants must provide protection for the eggs and the worker ants get food for the larvae. In the month of June, the winged male and female ants hatch. The males die after the nuptial flight. The impregnated young queens look for a new ground or return to the old one to lay eggs.
Ticks transmit dangerous diseases so we should be on the look out for them while walking in the forest or in a large field. If they have bitten and are still attached to the blood in the skin, they should be removed carefully by forceps. The ticks release food remains in the blood of the ‘host’ when they bite. Sometimes disease-causing germs are transferred to our blood in this way. Ticks are responsible for many diseases such as Lyme disease, Colorado tick fever, tularemia, tick-borne relapsing fever, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, tick-borne meningoencephalitis, and bovine anaplasmosis.
It is easy to distinguish between the large fallow deer, the red deer, and the small deer. The male red deer has royal antlers with several ends, while a roebuck (male roe deer) has only one small horn. The small deer, red deer, and fallow deer belong to the biological family of the stag, which also includes the moose and the reindeers. The small deer, weighing about 15 kg, are the most frequently seen today. They live in the area between forest and arable land. The female doe can give birth to two to three fawns, which bear three long series of white spots on the back. Red deer weigh up to 150 kg and prefer to live in forest clearings. The hinds (female red deer) can give birth to a maximum of one calf in a year.
A forester takes care of the forest and ensures that it remains healthy. He plants new trees and removes the sick ones and the ones that are growing too close to each other. He maintains the forest paths, sets up benches for the wanderers, and decides which trees have to be cut for their wood and which for the paper industry. Forest management objectives include direct extraction of raw material, outdoor recreation, conservation, hunting, and aesthetics. Emerging management practices include managing forestlands for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and air quality.
A forest is a large area of land covered with trees. Forests can be classified into many types, some of which are the mixed temperate forests with both coniferous and deciduous trees, the temperate forests, the subtropical forests, the tropical forests, and the equatorial rainforests. The trees that make up the forest create a special environment which, in turn, affects the kinds of animals and plants that can exist in the forest. Large and small animals such as the stags, deer, wild boars, foxes, badgers, marten, and squirrels live in the forests.
Along with rabbits, moles or mice that make their homes in the soil, numerous small animals like earthworms, pill bugs, snails, spiders, insect larvae, and the tiniest living organisms like springtails or mites also live in the soil. We can see all these creatures under a magnifying lens. These organisms eat the remains of plants and animals, which decompose in their intestines. When they excrete their waste matter, the nutrients are transferred back to the soil and can be used by plants and animals. This is how new soil is created by these organisms. Soil inhabitants also make the soil loose and porous.
Although an oak apple looks like a fruit, it is actually a deformed leaf hanging by its stem or petiole on the underside of oak leaves. Gall wasps form oak apples. In summer, the female wasp injects its eggs into the leaves of oak trees. The larvae that hatch inside the leaf are small and round. As they grow, they cause a chemical reaction that forms a gall around the larvae. These larvae eat and grow within the gall before emerging as adult wasps.
Many birds such as starlings, cranes, and swallows migrate to the south in autumn because they do not find enough food in winter. It is not good to feed the birds because it may disturb their regular habits of finding food for themselves. Their destination and the migratory path is the same every year. For years, scientists puzzled over the birds’ ability to take exactly the same path every year but now it is assumed that birds possess a ‘magnetic sense of direction’ and orient themselves to the magnetic field of the Earth, using the position of the sun during the day, and the stars at night.
Moles spend a large part of their lives in a self-dug burrow system below the ground. The animals push the loose earth that is a result of digging to the earth’s surface after every 50-100 cm. The result is a typical molehill, about 20 cm high. Sometimes we also come across huge hills with air holes all around. Below these molehills the moles make a nest in which they give birth to their young ones.
Many people find spiders disgusting or are afraid of them because they do not know much about these eight-legged creatures. However, there are very few species of spiders that are harmful to humans. Contrary to popular belief, spiders are not insects themselves, but feed on insects.
A lot of activities are carried out in our gardens by animals and insects living underground, such as moles, rats, and earthworms. Upon a closer look, we can also find animal tracks on the leaves of the spherical oak-apple tree or the fine webs with which spiders catch their prey. Besides the animals hidden underground, there are birds that chirp and fly around in the gardens.
