This doubtful honour belongs to the South American howler monkeys. They indulge in their vocal performances at intervals throughout the night, and will make the forest resound with their cries for several hours on end. The reason they are able to ...

Two things led to the near extinc­tion of the American buffalo or bison. The first threat to them came when the Indians began hunting on horseback, instead of following the migratory hordes and killing them on foot. But this was still of small account com...

Lepidoptera is the name given to butterflies and moths. It means"scaly-winged," and refers to the tiny scales which cover the wings of these fascinating insects. As they belong to the same order of insects, it is not always easy to tell moths and butterflies apart. One ...

It is the crested grebes that have the strange habit of regularly eat­ing their own feathers, and it is thought that this makes it easier for them to regurgitate sharp fish bones in the form of pellets. But it is their spectacular and compli­cated courtship danc...

The Great Auk was a species of wild fowl that was gradually exterminated by man, the last of them being killed in 1844 on a group of islands off the southwest coast of Iceland. In the 18th century these birds were common to the Faroes and the Iceland seas, fro...

By the action of weather on rock, also by the presence of vegetation and movement of animals. Frost, ice and wind, and running water break the rock into smaller pieces and dying vegetation releases a substance called carbon dioxide which, when dissolved in water, attacks ...

This is the seahorse which looks like the knight from a chess set. This oddity of nature spends much of its time with its tail wrapped around seaweed from where it snaps up any creature small enough to enter its mouth. Its eyes are on tu...

Centipedes do not always have 100 pairs of legs as their name implies. Some have more than that, while others only have 28. The flat bodies are made up of many segments joined together and each segment has a pair of legs growing out of it. The two types ...

When a gaucho, as the South American cowboy is called, has to capture a steer he uses a bolas which consists of two round stones attached to each end of a hide rope. Connected to the centre of this rope is another much longer rope. To bring down...

No. When an ostrich is being pursued, it may drop down in a heap so that from a distance it looks like a pile of stones or a hil­lock in the desert. On doing this it puts its long neck forward, flat on the ground, so that its head cannot be ...