Don’t Splat the Rat!

Fun?!

I was slightly suprised when I realised that my school is now encouraging animal cruelty. A letter arrived today which was about a poster competition for the summer fair and I was furious to see that they were going to have a game called Splat the Rat. I have never played this horrible game, I only know what you have to do because I saw it played once.  Having dropped a toy rat down the pipe you have to whack it with a hammer! And if you manage to hit it you get a prize!  So I said I am definitely not entering the competition because I’m not advocating animal cruelty.

Pugs

An adorable pug puppy

Latin name: Canis farmiliarus

Pugs have a short, flat face and a curled tail. They are short haired dogs and they are quite small. Their coat can either be fawn, silver or black and sometimes with a bit of brown on them and all pugs have a black mask (even the black ones but you can’t see it on them. They are very friendly and kind to children which makes them a very  good pet exept they need a lot of looking after. Pugs usually live for about 11 years.

Pugs are wonderful pets but unfortunateley they have a lot of problems and need a lot of care. They take up a lot of time so if you can’t spend a lot of time with your pet then a pug is not the right type of pet for you.

Bald eagles

a bald eagle

latin name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus

In their latin name hali means salt,  aeetus means eagle, leuco means white and phalus means head.

Adult bald eagles are brown with a white head and tail. The younger ones are brownl. They have quite a long tail and a yellow beak and feet. Their legs are featherless and they have very sharp talons for catching slippery fish, they catch the fish by swooping down and grabbing it, then they fly up to a tree to eat it. They are quite heavy.

They usually live near seas, rivers, lakes and oceans and they also need lots of tall, strong trees with lots of branches for perching on. They live in North America, Canada and Northern Mexico. They are the national bird of the USA.

a bald eagle with a salmon

Bald eagles mainly eat fish like salmon and trout but they also some mammals and other birds. the mammals they eat are  rabbits, hares, raccoons, muskrats, beavers and deer fawns. The birds they eat are grebes, alcids, ducks, gulls, coots, egrets, geese and swans. They also sometimes eat reptiles, amphibians and crustaceans. To eat they hold their prey in one foot and with the other foot they rip it into small enough pieces to eat.

A bit about about flamingoes

that's what flamingos look like before they eat enough blue-green algae

Flamingoes don’t have a latin name for  just flamingoes, they only have a Latin name for different types of flamingoes.  There are six different types of flamingo Greater flamingo, Lesser flamingo, Chilean flamingo, James’ s flamingo, Andean flamingo and American flamingo. Flamingoes eat brine shrimp and blue-green algae. They’re born a greyish colour, but the blue-green algae that they eat turns them pink or a pale orangey colour.

Tawny owls

Latin name: strix aluco

Tawny owls are also called brown owls (because they’re brown) The reason they’re brown is because they use it as camoflague from predators, they usually have lots of different  shades of brown on them because it makes very good camoflague. Tawny owls are one of the few owls that live in the UK but they also live in a lot of other places aswell. When Tawny owls breed they usually mate for life. They usually  nest in a hole in a tree , but sometimes they nest in other places like Old nests left by other birds, Old squirrel dreys, holes in buildings or nest boxes. They usually  lay a clutch of  2-3 white eggs. The owlets leave the nest before  they have their adult  feathers but unfortunately that means they can get spotted by predators more easily.

Their predators are Ural Owls, Eagle Owls, Northen Goshawks, Golden Eagles, Common Buzzards and Pine Martens. Most of their predators don’t hunt the adults they just raid their nests and kill the owlets.

That's a Tawny owl on a branch

It has lots of different shades of brown

Tawny owl owlets

Tawny owls hunt at night, by  watching from a perch and then swooping down to grab  their prey. They eat mainly rodents but also other mammals that are about the size of  a young rabbit, small birds, earthworms, beetles, mallard and kittiwake.

A bit about Reindeer

Latin name: Rangifer tarandus

It is thought that reindeer are the only mammals that can see ultraviolet light.It helps them to survive in the arctic.In winter reindeer eat mainly lichen but they also eat willow and birch leaves aswell as seges and grasses and they will also eat mushrooms  in late summer.

Their predators are Polar bears, Brown bears, gray wolves, foxes ravens and hawks.

There are different types of reindeer they are Arctic reindeer, svalbard reindeer, Mountain reindeer and Finnish Forest reindeer.

That's what a reindeer looks like when it's running

Walruses

Their Latin name is Odobenus rosmarus

Walruses are very strange creatures, walruses live in cold places and spend a lot of their time either in the water or sunbathing on the beach. Walruses often lie together, to keep them warm, in a colony of about 1,000 creatures. Another thing that keeps them warm is that they don’t have toes, fingers or ears. Walruses look like they have moustaches but actually they have about 700 whiskers called vibrissae which they use to search for food in the sand. There are two types of walruses, pacific walruses and atlantic walruses. If a Walrus can’t get to its food easily it sucks up a big mouthful of water and squirts it at the sand like a big water drill to get to the creature underneath. Walruses eat shrimps, crabs, tube worms, soft coral, mollusks, clams and even other pinnipeds!

That walrus is so cute!

They are some of the strangest living mammals, their tusks can grow up to 20 inches long! They use them for fighting, cutting through ice, hooking on to ice when they’re sleeping, anchoring themselves onto the ocean floor while they’re hunting and for getting a grip when they’re climbing out of the water, they are often called tooth walkers.

Look at all those walruses!

Baby walruses are called calves and they are usually born on the ice. They are born grey with a thin layer of  fur. Mother walruses carry their calves around on their back in the water and probably on land too.

It's probably like riding a horse.

Polar bears

Polar bears are amazing, and they can be  rather different from what some people think they are like because at times they can actually be rather play full. Polar bears often playfight, especially when they are young. Polar bears don’t intend to hurt each other when they playfight because they’re just playing. Polar bears don’t normally bite each other when they playfight, only if the other polar bear starts fighting properly. At times polar bears can even start  playing with other creatures.In the north pole polar bears spend a lot of time swimming in the water so sometimes people call them marine mammals. They eat musk ox, reindeer, birds, eggs, rodents, shellfish, crabs and other polar bears but in summer when there is no ice they turn vegetarian and eat berries, roots and kelp. Polar bears  aren’t territorial, if polar bears get into fights they normally preferere to escape.

polar bears can even play with huskies!

Polar bears enjoy playfighting.

Arctic Wolves

Now I've found an arctic wolf with blue eyes!

Arctic wolves live in the northern part of Greenland, the Canadian arctic, and parts of Alaska. Like all wolves they hunt in packs and eat caribou, muskoxen, arctic hares, seals, ptarmigan and lemmings. The adults have 42 teeth which they use mainly for hunting. They eat all of their food even the bones! Even though some people think wolves attack humans they actually almost never do. Since there is barely any food They often follow migrating caribou in the winter.

The latin name is Canis lupus arctos

Snowy owl

Snowy owl with unusual blue eyes!

There are a lot of different types of owls but snowy owls are my favourite type. They usually live in cold places but visit Scandinavia for the summer. Snowy owls are partly diurnal and  female snowy owls are more spotty than male owls which are mainly white. Snowy owls have ear tufts and often sit down and make themselves look really fluffy. Snowy owls feed lemmings to their babies because they help give them adult feathers. They also eat hares, muskrats, marmots,squirrels,  rabbits,  raccoons, prairie dogs, rats, moles, ducks, geese, shorebirds, ring-necked pheasants, grouse, american coots, grebes, gulls and songbirds.