My Science School

Bald Uakari is an old world monkey found in north-western Amazon basin. It has a striking bald head and a bright red face. It has brown shaggy fur and human-like ears.

It forages with its troop for fruits, leaves and insects during the day and sleep aloft, high in the rain forest canopy in groups of 50-200 individuals. Its tail is short unlike other primates. Its fangs are well developed to break open thick fruit skin.

It is generally a quiet, active and agile animal. But it makes loud shrieking calls to communicate and mark its home ranges.

Females give birth to just a single infant every two years. Reproductive ages are three (females) and six (males), so populations cannot experience rapid growth.

Unfortunately, these intelligent primates are hunted in their Amazon forest homes for food and sometimes captured by indigenous peoples. They are also threatened by the destruction of their environment, as the timber industry clears ever increasing swaths of Amazon forest.

Credit : National Geographic 

Picture Credit : Google

Arctic fox is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It has short legs, small ears and a bushy tail, which it curls around my body when lying down to keep myself warm in the cold Arctic.

Its body is covered with thick white fur during the winter and grey-brownish fur during the summer. Seasonal variations in the colour of the fur ensure camouflage.

It lives in burrows that have up to 100 entrances, and in a blizzard it tunnels into the snow to create shelter. Its diet includes lemmings, voles, sea birds and their eggs, seal pups and fish.

When it’s not trying to keep warm or avoid predators, an arctic fox is on the hunt for food. They prefer to eat small rodents called lemmings, but when times are tough they’ll eat whatever they can find: insects, berries, and even the droppings of other animals. Sometimes an arctic fox will follow a polar bear on a hunting trip and eat the bear’s leftovers.

If a fox can’t find food, or if the weather gets really bad, it can dig a snow den and hunker down for up to two weeks. As long as a fox is warm, it can slow down its heart rate and metabolism, which helps the animal save energy so it doesn’t have to eat as much. It’s sort of like how bears hibernate, but for a shorter period of time.

Once the animal emerges from its den, it’ll try to hunt again. With food in its belly, the arctic fox has a better chance of making it through another long, dark winter.

Credit : National Geographic

Picture Credit : Google

Antarctic Petrel is a seabird that lives and breeds in the southern oceans, and on the Antarctic islands. Its plumage is partly brown, partly white. The head, sides, throat and back are brown.

The bill is black and the feet are yellow. It has an elongated nostril indicating a well-developed sense of smell which is an unusual feature to be found in birds. Its diet includes krill, fish, and small squid.

It is a highly social bird. They roost on icebergs in flocks that have thousands of birds. It is known for producing foul-smelling stomach oil that it uses to feed itself on long flights, feed its young via regurgitation and to spray at predators.

The movement of Antarctic petrels is generally dependant on their reproductive cycles. Breeding and nest-building take place on the coasts of these islands, and they act as the central place for foragers during the breeding period. Since the population of the female bird is more than that of the male bird, some of the females are unable to mate every season. Their breeding starts in winter; they lay their eggs towards the end of November, and then the females incubate their eggs for two months. After their eggs hatch, the parents feed the chicks, and the chicks flee the nest after around three to four months. During this time, petrel parents must be aware of the south polar skua (Stercorarius maccormicki) as these birds are natural predators to their eggs and young ones.

Picture Credit : Google

Arctic ground squirrel is a native to the Arctic and Subarctic of North America and Asia.

It has a tan coat with a white-spotted back. It has a short face with white markings around its eyes. It has strong forearms and hind legs adopted for burrowing. During winter, its coat turns silvery. In the summer, it feeds on a lot of food, which includes tundra plants, seeds, and fruit to increase body fat for winter hibernation.

When it hibernates, its body temperature drops below freezing to survive long, cold winters without any food. It makes "tsik-tsik" calls in response to threats. It also makes variation in sounds for different predators.

These animals are primarily, although not exclusively, herbivorous and eat a variety of grasses, stems, roots, leaves, berries, seeds and mushrooms. They will also occasionally eat insects, small vertebrates (e.g., baby mice) and fresh carrion. Arctic ground squirrels begin storing food materials, such as willow leaves, grass seeds and berries, in their burrows during the summer months for use in the spring when they wake from hibernation. 

Picture Credit : Google