Posts in “Animals” Category

Is that sound a violin? Nope! You are hearing the vibrating feathers of the male club-winged manakin. This tiny songbird lives in the cloud forests of the Andes in South America. It vibrates one type of wing feather against another at twice the speed of a hummingbird's wings to "sing" to potential mates. The sound this vibration makes sounds like a violin.



Learn more about the club-winged manakin on National Geographic News.

Check out the dance the riflebird performs to attract a mate on National Geographic Kids.

Make a bird feeder to feed hungry birds in your area this winter.

Photograph courtesy Cotswold Wildlife Park


Did you get some good treats this Halloween? The lemurs and meerkats at the Cotswold Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom did, too! These pictures show some of the park's critters enjoying carved pumpkins as a tasty snack instead of decorations.

Photograph courtesy Cotswold Wildlife Park 


Visit the Cotswold Wildlife Park website.

Get the facts on meerkats in the Creature Feature.

Get the facts on ring-tailed lemurs in the Creature Feature.

Nephila komaci is the world's largest web-spinning spider. Or at least the female is! Her legspan can be as big as five inches (12 centimeters) wide. The males, however, is less than a quarter of the female's size. Males have legspans that are only one inch wide (2.5 centimeters). There are bigger spiders on the planet (think tarantulas like the goliath birdeater), but they don't spin webs.

Nephila komaci is a member of the golden orb-weaver family. All of these spiders are known to spin very big webs. They can be up to three feet (one meter) wide! The spider's habitat is limited--it lives in small areas in Madagascar and South Africa. Although the spider was first identified at a museum in 2000, scientists didn't know if it still existed in the wild until a field survey in 2007.

Read more about Nephila komaci on National Geographic News.

Put together puzzles featuring spiders on National Geographic Kids.

Get the facts on tarantulas in the Creature Feature.

Chimpanzees are more like humans than researchers previously thought. In a new study performed in Japan, chimps helped other chimps get juice by passing them objects such as straws (to drink the juice) or sticks (to reach straws they couldn't reach). Researchers noticed that related chimps were more likely to help each other.

The chimps were trained to use sticks or straws to get juice, but they were not trained to pass things to each other.



Find out more about the research on National Geographic News.

Get the facts on chimpanzees in this Creature Feature.

Watch a video of a chimp solving a computer puzzle on News Bites.

Photograph by Beverly Joubert


Africa's lion population is quickly getting smaller and smaller, and action must be taken immediately to save these majestic animals.To raise awareness, the National Geographic Society launched the Big Cats Initiative this month. This project will support programs and education that will help the big cats of the world, with a special focus on lions.

Dereck and Beverly Joubert are one of the big forces behind the project. They are National Geographic Explorers-in Residence who have spent over 25 years studying and working to conserve Africa's animals, especially the big cats. They want people to understand that when it comes to saving the big cats like lions and leopards, the time to act is now. ""We no longer have the luxury of time when it comes to big cats," Dereck says.


Learn more about the Big Cats Initiative on National Geographic.

Get the facts on lions on National Geographic Kids.

Play Crittercam: African Adventure on National Geographic Kids.

Photograph by Robert L. Curry


Did you know that there are more than 40,000 species of spiders, but only one species is known to be vegetarian? The jumping spider is named Bagheera kiplingi after the character of Bagheera the panther in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

Bagheera kiplingi lives in Mexico and Costa Rica and eats the buds that grow on acacia plants. Ferocious acacia ants live in the acacia's hollow thorns and defend the plants from intruders such as Bagheera kiplingi. The spider must leap from thorn to thorn to collect its food while avoiding the ants, according to Christopher Meehan the biologist who led the study. "It is utterly surreal to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant," he added.

Read more about this plant-loving spider on National Geographic News.

Put together puzzles featuring spiders on National Geographic Kids.

Watch a video of a jumping spider on National Geographic Kids.

Photograph by Newspix/Rex USA


Violent storms can be disastrous for baby flying foxes in Australia. Strong winds can knock the babies from the protection of their mothers' wings, and many have not learned how to fly. Luckily for the bats, there are volunteers to swoop in and rescue them.

One particularly fierce storm sent hundreds of baby bats helplessly to the ground. Over three days, volunteers transported the babies to the Australian Bat Clinic & Wildlife Trauma Centre. Doctors at the clinic treated the bats for injuries and broken bones and monitored them until they learned to fly.

Read the full story by Scott Elder in the October 2009 issue of National Geographic Kids, on newsstands now.

See a video of flying foxes on National Geographic Kids.

Read a story about Dunia, a rescued baby gorilla, on National Geographic Kids.

Photograph by Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo


Happy the hippo was born at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and lived there for 28 years. In recent years, he has been the zoo's only hippo and shared a habitat with the elephants. On Monday, September 28, Happy moved out in preparation for the Asian elephant exhibit expansion. His new home is at the Milwaukee County Zoo in Wisconsin. Zoo visitors in Washington, D.C. will miss him, but at least Happy will finally have some company--two female hippos named Puddles and Patti.

Learn more about Happy's big move on the National Zoo's website.

Get the facts on hippos on National Geographic Kids.

This is one weird-looking fish! It's six feet (2 meters) long, has tiny teeth, a long tail, and it doesn't have scales. Guy Marcovaldi captured video footage of the fish while working on the TAMAR project, which is involved in sea turtle conservation. The fish was found off of the shore of Brazil's Bahia coast. It was dead and floating near the water's surface.

At first the fish was reported as being a newly discovered species, but David Johnson, an ichthyologist with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, says that the fish probably belongs to a group of fish known as Jellynoses. Jellynoses are mysterious fish that live at the bottom of the ocean. Catch a glimpse of this large, gelatinous fish in this video!



Read more about this discovery on National Geographic News.

Check out pictures of more strange ocean dwellers on National Geographic Kids.

Giant pandas could be extinct in two to three generations unless development around their habitat in China is controlled,  according to a World Wildlife Fund spokesperson based in China.

Read the story on National Geographic News.

Get the facts about Giant Pandas.

See photos of Playful Pandas.