20 Feeding Time The Feeding Habits of Animals

CHAPTER 1 Eat to Live EVERY LIVING THING NEEDS FOOD. WHAT DOES THE BODY DO WITH FOOD? WHAT DOES FOOD DO FOR THE BODY? All animals need to eat food. The food gives them energy to run, fly, live, and grow. But how much do different animals eat? Some animals need to eat more than others. Most birds need a lot of food. They eat from half to all of their weight in a day. For example, a bird that weighs two kilograms eats one to two kilograms of food. Scientists watched one bird bring food back to her babies 1,200 times in one day! Koalas weigh 5—14 kilograms. They are not large animals, but for how much they weigh, they don't eat very much. They only eat about 1.3 kilograms of leaves from the eucalyptus tree a day. The leaves don't have many nutrients. Koalas sleep 16 to 18 hours a day because the leaves don't give them much energy. Bears often sleep all the time in the winter. Before the bears go to sleep, they must eat a lot of food. They can eat 40 kilograms of food in the week before they go to sleep. They need to get very fat because they can't eat when they are sleeping! When they sleep, the fat becomes energy. Without this energy, the bears can't live through the winter. And some big animals eat a lot all year. At night, a hippopotamus leaves the river where it sleeps most of the day. It eats plants and grasses for about five hours. It eats about 40 kilograms of food a night.

每一种生物都需要食物。 身体如何处理食物？ 食物对身体有什么作用？ 所有的动物都需要食物。 食物给了它们奔跑、飞翔、生存和生长的能量。 但是不同的动物吃多少呢？ 有些动物需要比其他动物吃得更多。 大多数鸟类需要大量的食物。 它们一天吃掉体重的一半到全部。 例如，一只体重两公斤的鸟吃一到两公斤的食物。 科学家们观察到一只鸟在一天内把食物带回给她的孩子1200次！考拉重5-14公斤。 它们不是大型动物，但就它们的体重而言，它们吃得并不多。 它们每天只吃大约1.3公斤的桉树叶子。 叶子没有很多营养。 考拉每天睡16到18个小时，因为树叶不能给它们提供太多能量。 熊在冬天通常会一直睡觉。 在熊睡觉之前，他们必须吃很多食物。 他们可以在睡觉前一周吃40公斤的食物。 他们需要变得很胖，因为他们睡觉的时候不能吃东西！当他们睡觉时，脂肪变成能量。 没有这种能量，熊就无法度过冬天。 一些大型动物全年都吃得很多。 晚上，河马离开它白天大部分时间都在睡觉的河流。 它吃植物和草大约五个小时。 它一晚上吃大约40公斤的食物。

CHAPTER 2 The Mouth THE MOUTHS OF ANIMALS ARE VERY INTERESTING. DO YOU WANT TO LOOK INSIDE? Sucker fish get their name from their mouths. They use their mouths to suck food into their bodies. People with pet fish sometimes use sucker fish to clean the water for their fish. The sucker fish sucks and eats the very small things in the water to make it clean. The mouth of a bird is called a beak. One kind of hummingbird has a beak that is longer than its body! The hummingbird's beak goes down into flowers to drink the juice. Inside the beak is a long, slim tongue that gets the juice out of the flower. The chameleon's tongue is longer than its body. The chameleon moves its long tongue quickly out of its mouth to catch insects. The tongue then brings the insects into the chameleon's mouth. The tongue of the blue whale is so big that 50 people can stand on it! Whales eat a lot. The blue whale eats more than 3,000 kilograms of fish every day. First, it takes a big drink of water and catches a lot of fish in its mouth. Then its big tongue pushes the water out through little spaces under its mouth. The fish can't get out. Then the whale eats all the fish.

动物的嘴很有趣。 你想看看里面吗？ 吸盘鱼的名字来源于它们的嘴。 它们用嘴把食物吸进身体。 养宠物鱼的人有时会用吸盘鱼来为他们的鱼清洁水。 吸盘鱼吮吸并吃掉水中非常小的东西以使其清洁。 鸟的嘴叫鸟嘴。 有一种蜂鸟的喙比它的身体还长！蜂鸟的喙伸进花里喝汁液。 在鸟喙里面有一条细长的舌头，用来从花中吸取汁液。 变色龙的舌头比它的身体长。 变色龙把它的长舌迅速地伸出嘴去捕捉昆虫。 然后舌头把昆虫带进变色龙的嘴里。 蓝鲸的舌头太大了，50个人都能站在上面！鲸鱼吃得很多。 蓝鲸每天要吃掉3000多公斤的鱼。 首先，它喝了一大口水，在嘴里抓了很多鱼。 然后，它的大舌头把水从嘴巴下面的小空隙里挤出来。 鱼出不来了。然后鲸鱼吃掉了所有的鱼。

Many sharks have 40 to 90 teeth. The whale shark, however, has thousands of teeth. Sharks' teeth are dangerous. They're long and sharp like knives. They use their teeth to kill fish and other animals. When a shark loses a tooth, a new tooth grows in the space. A shark can have more than 30,000 teeth in its life! Snakes use their teeth to catch animals, but they don't use their teeth to eat. First, the snake opens its mouth, so it's very big. Then the snake swallows all of the animal without chewing! A snake can eat animals that are much bigger than it is! Saliva makes it easier for animals to swallow their food. But it also helps some animals catch their food. The Gila monster and the Komodo dragon are lizards. They both have saliva with poison in it. After a Gila monster or Komodo dragon bites an animal, the poison makes the animal sick. Soon, it stops moving, and the lizard can eat it. The Gila monster eats eggs, insects, smaller lizards, and other small animals. The Komodo dragon can kill and eat very big animals, even pigs, horses, or people!

许多鲨鱼有40到90颗牙齿。 然而，鲸鲨却有数千颗牙齿。 鲨鱼的牙齿很危险。 它们又长又尖，像刀一样。 它们用牙齿杀死鱼和其他动物。 当鲨鱼失去一颗牙齿时，一颗新的牙齿会在空隙中长出来。 鲨鱼一生中可以有3万多颗牙齿！蛇用牙齿捕捉动物，但它们不用牙齿吃东西。 首先，蛇张开它的嘴，所以它非常大。 然后蛇不加咀嚼地吞下了所有的动物！蛇可以吃比它大得多的动物！唾液使动物更容易吞咽食物。 但它也能帮助一些动物捕捉食物。 吉拉怪和科莫多龙都是蜥蜴。 他们的唾液都含有毒素。 吉拉怪物或科莫多龙咬了动物后，毒液会使动物生病。 很快，它停止了移动，蜥蜴就可以吃掉它了。 吉拉怪兽吃蛋、昆虫、小蜥蜴和其他小动物。 科莫多龙可以杀死并吃掉非常大的动物，甚至是猪、马或人！

CHAPTER 3 The Stomach FOOD CHANGES INTO ENERGY IN THE STOMACH. DO YOU KNOW WHY ANIMALS HAVE DIFFERENT KINDS OF STOMACHS? After an animal chews and swallows, the food travels to the stomach. The stomach does most of the work of digesting the food. A liquid comes out of the walls of the stomach. This liquid has important things in it that take nutrients out of the food. These nutrients give the body energy. Most animals have stomachs. Some animals have stomachs with several parts. And other animals have no stomach! The cow's stomach is different from ours. It has four parts. Why is this? Well, a cow eats a lot of grass quickly. First, the cow swallows the grass but does not chew it very much. This food goes into the first part of the stomach. Later, parts of this food, called the cud, go back up to the mouth of the cow. The cow chews the cud and swallows it down again. The cud can go up and down 40 to 60 times! Then, the other parts of the stomach digest the cud.

第三章胃里的食物在胃里转化为能量。 你知道为什么动物有不同种类的胃吗？ 动物咀嚼并吞咽后，食物进入胃。 胃完成了消化食物的大部分工作。 一种液体从胃壁流出。 这种液体中含有重要的物质，可以从食物中吸收营养。 这些营养物质给身体提供能量。 大多数动物都有胃。 有些动物的胃由几个部分组成。 而其他动物没有胃！牛的胃和我们的不一样。 它有四个部分。为什么会这样？ 牛很快就会吃很多草。 首先，牛吞下草，但不怎么咀嚼。 这些食物进入胃的第一部分。 后来，这些被称为“反刍”的食物的一部分又回到了牛的嘴里。 母牛反刍着，又把它吞了下去。 反刍可以上下40到60次！然后，胃的其他部分消化反刍物。

A seahorse is a beautiful little animal that lives in the deep waters of the ocean. Seahorses have no stomach at all! They also have no teeth. Seahorses eat very small fish. They suck and swallow the fish without chewing. How much time does the stomach of an animal need to digest its food? Some animals need a lot of time because of the kind of food they eat. For example, a dog eats a lot of meat. The stomach of a dog needs to work a lot to digest this kind of food. A dog's stomach needs about eight hours to digest meat. But birds that eat fruit are different. These birds only need 30—60 minutes to digest fruit. And what about seahorses? They suck in water with fish into their mouths. They have no stomach, so the food goes out again very quickly. They need to eat all the time!

海马是一种美丽的小动物，生活在海洋的深水区。 海马根本没有胃！它们也没有牙齿。 海马吃非常小的鱼。 他们不嚼就把鱼吸下去。 动物的胃需要多长时间来消化食物？ 有些动物需要很多时间，因为它们吃的食物的种类。 例如，狗吃很多肉。 狗的胃需要大量的工作来消化这种食物。 狗的胃大约需要8小时来消化肉。 但是吃水果的鸟就不一样了。 这些鸟只需要30-60分钟就能消化水果。 那海马呢？它们把有鱼的水吸进嘴里。 它们没有胃，所以食物很快就会被消化掉。 他们需要一直吃东西！

CHAPTER 4 Waste HOW CAN SOMETHING SO BAD BE SO GOOD? An animal's body takes some nutrients out of food. The rest is waste. Animal waste is dirty, and it must leave the body so the animal does not get sick. But animal waste has other nutrients in it. These nutrients are good for the soil. Farmers use dung the waste from animals that eat grass— to help grow plants. People also use animal waste, dead plants, and old food to make compost. Compost is like dung—full of nutrients for the soil. People use compost in their gardens to make the soil better. It helps them grow vegetables, plants, and flowers. The waste of zoo animals is also very good for the soil. Today, zoos sell waste to farmers and gardeners. For example, Zoo Miami in Florida, USA, gets 635 kilograms of waste from elephants, 340 kilograms from rhinoceroses, and 226 kilograms from giraffes every day! These animals also eat grass, so their dung is good for the soil. Maybe someone you know uses elephant dung to grow their flowers or food!

第四章浪费这么坏的东西怎么会这么好？ 动物的身体从食物中摄取一些营养。 剩下的都是浪费。动物的粪便很脏，必须离开身体，这样动物才不会生病。 但动物粪便中含有其他营养物质。 这些营养物质对土壤有益。 农民使用粪便——吃草动物的排泄物——来帮助种植植物。 人们还使用动物粪便、死植物和旧食物来制作堆肥。 堆肥就像土壤中充满养分的粪堆。 人们在花园里使用堆肥使土壤更好。 它帮助他们种植蔬菜、植物和鲜花。 动物园动物的排泄物对土壤也很有好处。 今天，动物园把废物卖给农民和园丁。 例如，美国佛罗里达州的迈阿密动物园每天从大象那里得到635公斤的废物，从犀牛那里得到340公斤的废物，从长颈鹿那里得到226公斤的废物！这些动物也吃草，所以它们的粪便对土壤有好处。 也许你认识的人会用大象的粪便来种花或种植食物！