Research - Endangered Species
- Olivia Katrina Lucie Goodenough
- Feb 13, 2017
- 6 min read
Brown Bears are found in many parts of North America and Eurasia, where the bears inhabit wooded and mountainous areas. The brown bear is also the national animal for a number of states in North America, Europe and Asia.
Brown bears tend to feed on vegetation, fish and small land mammals, but the bears will only occasionally hunt bigger mammals like deer. Brown bears dont seem to be a great threat towards humans, although the mother brown bears will protect their young bear cubs.
There are thought to be around 200,000 brown bear individuals left in the wild over half of which are found in Russia. Around 95% of the brown bear population found in the USA is in the northernmost state of Alaska. Most of the brown bears that inhabit regions of Canada are found in the west of the country in the Rocky Mountain range.
Brown Bear Foot Facts
The brown bear has four large paws and each of the paws of the brown bear has five toes that result in long claws.
The two front paws of the brown bear have toes that have longer claws than on the back paws, as the brown bear uses its front paws for digging.
The two back paws of the brown bear are larger than the two front paws as the brown bear often stands on its hind legs to either survey their surroundings or to get food out of higher places.
The brown bear uses its front paws with their enormous claws to rip open logs that have bugs inside so that it can eat them.
The brown bear uses its specially structured paws and legs in order to help it run fast, climb trees and swim well.
Brown Bear Teeth Facts
Brown bears do not normally bite their prey but instead grind and crunch with their enormous teeth to get their meal into them.
The brown bear has approximately 42 teeth including large predatory teeth that the brown bear uses to shred meat and skin.
The brown bear uses both its large, strong paws and its sharp teeth to catch and kill its prey and will either bite the neck of the animal or swipe it with its immense forearms.
The molar teeth of the brown bear increase in size as they go further in the mouth of the brown bear and the brown bear predominantly uses its largest molar to grind up tough food.
The size of the teeth of the brown bear are dependant on the size of the bear itself, so bigger bears will have bigger teeth than smaller bears.
African Forest Elephant Distribution and Habitat
The African Forest Elephant mainly lives in central and southern Africa in nomadic herds that wander through the forests and grasslands of Africa grazing for food and searching for waterholes. They are most commonly founds in the tropical dense jungles, where their smaller size allows them to move through the thick vegetation more easily than the larger African Bush Elephant. African Forest Elephants are threatened throughout much of their natural habitat today mainly due to deforestation and climate change and have been pushed into smaller and smaller pockets of their native lands.
African Forest Elephant Behaviour and Lifestyle
The African Forest Elephant mainly uses its immense tusks for digging for roots in the ground and to strip the bark off trees. The African Forest Elephant also uses its tusks to defend itself from predators such as Lions, and to fight with other male African Forest Elephants during the mating season. Males are generally fairly solitary but females and their young form small family groups known as herds. This allows the more vulnerable offspring to be more easily protected. African Forest Elephants communicate through a series of low-frequency calls which they are able to detect from a few kilometres away.
African Forest Elephant Interesting Facts and Features
The tusks of the African Forest Elephant are pretty straight instead of curved to help them move through the thick jungle with greater ease. This, along with their pinkish tinge, has made the ivory of the African Forest Elephant's tusks in high demand on the black market. Despite African Forest Elephants being able to communicate with one another through a couple of miles of dense jungle, the sound they make is so low that it cannot be heard by Humans. They are an essential tool in the spreading of seeds throughout Africa's forests and are therefore vital to the running of their native eco-systems.
Killer Whales (orca) are found in all the worlds oceans both hot and cold from the freezing waters of the North and South poles to tropical seas. The killer whale is the biggest member of the dolphin family, and there are about 5 different species of killer whale in the oceans.
Killer whales hunt in groups called pods that normally contain from 6 to 40 killer whales. The killer whales hunt larger fish, seal and sea lion and often sea birds and mammals.
Killer whales are sadly hunted worldwide for their meat and whale blubber, which is used as an old form of fuel. Due to whaling bans in recent years, the killer whale population can begin to recover again.
The tawny owl is a small to medium sized bird of prey that is found across Europe and in parts of Asia but tawny owls are mainly found in woodlands across Eurasia. The tawny owl is the most widespread owl in Europe and is the most of common bird of prey found in the UK.
Tawny owls tend to be around 40cm tall with a wingspan of about 100cm, with the tawny owl therefore being a much stockier bird than many other species of owl in the world.
The tawny owl is a nocturnal bird of prey, that takes advantage of their fantastic night vision to quickly catch their prey. Tawny owls prey on small rodents such as voles and mice, and also insects and small reptiles. In the same way as other species of owl, the tawny owl swallows it's prey whole and then regurgitates the bones that it cannot digest within a few hours of eating, in the form of a small pellet.
Typically, tawny owls can be found nesting in tree holes during the daylight hours when they are resting. During the breeding season in the early spring, the male tawny owls can be seen hunting during the day as well as at night as they are collecting food to present to their mate.
The Red Panda is found inhabiting the temperate forests in the Himalayas at altitudes of between 1,800 and 4,000 meters. These high mountain slopes tend to be covered in deciduous hardwood forest with a bamboo under-storey that is crucial to the Red Panda's survival. Their historical range extended through Bhutan, Nepal, India, Myanmar and China where their range overlaps that of the even rarer Giant Panda, but today the Red Panda is extinct from certain areas and population numbers are rapidly declining in others. Due to the fragile ecology of their native, mountain forests and their reliance on eating bamboo, the Red Panda is being pushed into smaller and more isolated pockets of their once wide range with other factors including climate change affecting the lack of abundance of bamboo.
Red Panda Behaviour and Lifestyle
The Red Panda is a nocturnal and generally solitary animal with the exception of males and females coming together to mate during the breeding season. Red Pandas spend the daylight hours sleeping in the branches high in the tree canopy with their long, bushy tail wrapped around them to keep them warm. Although they are known to feed in the trees, they usually come down to the ground after dusk to begin foraging in the safety of the darkness. The Red Panda is a territorial animal that marks its patch with droppings, urine and releasing a musky secretion from its anal glands. They are also known to communicate between one another using short whistles and squeaks. The Red Panda is a strong and agile climber that not only sleeps safely in the branches during the day but also can dart up a trunk if threatened by predators aided by its sharp claws.
The honey bee is a small sized bee that inhabiting quiet forests, jungles, meadows and gardens all all over the world.There are only 7 recognized species of honey bee out of 20,000 different bee species found worldwide, but these individual species often contain their own subspecies. There are 44 known subspecies of the 7 species of honey bee.
The honey bee is primarily involved in the production of honey and is today found worldwide. The honey bee is thought to originate from the jungles of south east Asia, where wild honey can still be found and the honey bee eventually took up residence in numerous countries.
The honey bees build and inhabit a hive, run by their female queen honey bee who populates the hive. The honey collects nectar from flowers which it takes back to the hive to be turned into honey. At the height of the summer, over 40,000 honey bees can be found inhabiting just one hive.
Honeybees communicate with each other through 'dance language', which consists of movements made by the honey bee's tail. Honey bees primarily use this form of communication to warm other honey bees of oncoming danger.
The honey bee is a herbivorous animal and therefore lives purely on the nutrients from plants. Honey bees prefer to ingest the sweeter plant produce such as nectar, pollen, fruits and even honey.
Due to their small size, honey bees have a number of predators in their natural environment. Birds, small mammals, reptiles and other insects are known to prey on the honey bee and larger mammals such as bears are notorious for destroying the hive of the honey bees in order to eat the honey inside.
