14 A2 weird animals

CHAPTER 1 What's so Weird About That? THE WAY AN ANIMAL LOOKS OR BEHAVES MIGHT BE WEIRD TO US, BUT IT WORKS FOR THEM! Let's look at the warthog. To our eyes, it looks very weird! But to another warthog, this animal looks normal, maybe even beautiful. Maybe warthogs think people look weird. But some animals also look strange to other animals. This helps them survive. For example, some scientists believe that a zebra's stripes are not for camouflage but to make an optical illusion. When a lion sees a group of zebras, it can't see where one zebra ends and another begins. It doesn't know where to bite. So, a zebra's stripes help it to survive.

Sometimes animal behavior seems very strange to us, but it's normal in the animal's world. When some kinds of male penguins want to find a mate, for example, they look for just the right female. This is not easy because penguins sometimes live in groups of thousands. When he finally finds the "girl of his dreams," he doesn't do a dance or sing like other birds. He looks for rocks! He picks up a rock and puts it at the feet of the female he wants to be his mate. If the female takes the rock and puts it in the nest, it means she wants him as her mate. The rock is like a wedding ring!

CHAPTER 2 Look at That! ANIMALS HAVE STRANGE ADAPTATIONS TO HIDE FROM PREDATORS, TO FIND PREY TO EAT, OR TO FIND A MATE. Some animals don't look like animals. They look like part of the environment around them. Camouflage is a good way to hide from predators and survive. One animal with amazing camouflage is the leafy seadragon, which lives in the waters near Australia. The leafy seadragon is an animal that hides by moving. When it moves through the water, it looks like a piece of seaweed. This is good because its environment has a lot of seaweed! The leafy seadragon's body is green, orange, and gold, and it has small pieces on its body that look just like seaweed. What is the only thing that shows it's an animal? Its eyes!

Leafy seadragons also behave in a weird way. The male carries the eggs! After the female lays from 100 to 250 eggs, the male picks them up and carries them in a special place under its tail. It keeps them for four to six weeks until the eggs hatch and the babies come out. And leafy seadragons don't have teeth or a stomach. To eat, they suck very small animals into their long mouths. What a weird and wonderful animal! Another animal with great camouflage is the walking stick. A walking stick is an insect that looks like a stick that can walk. Walking sticks go out at night. During the day, they hide in plants and do not move. Look at the picture. Can a predator see this walking stick? Probably not.

Some insects look like other animals. When the snake caterpillar sees a predator, it puts its legs under its body, and makes the front of its body bigger. Then it looks just like a snake! Predators want a delicious caterpillar, but they see a snake and stay away. There are many insects that look like flowers and plants, but some reptiles do, too. One example is the leaf-tailed gecko. It's a kind of small lizard that lives in Madagascar. When a predator looks for its lunch and sees this gecko, it thinks it's just an old, brown leaf and goes to look somewhere else.

Some animals use venom to keep predators away. The saddleback caterpillar of eastern North America looks like a leaf, but it also has sharp hairs with venom on them. When a predator touches these hairs, it gets hurt! The blanket octopus doesn't have anything on its own body to keep it safe. It takes something from another very dangerous animal— the Portuguese man- of-war. This animal has tentacles with venom on them. The venom can make animals and people very sick, but it doesn't hurt the blanket octopus. So, when the blanket octopus swims by a Portuguese man-of-war, it takes a tentacle. Then it can hit its predators with the tentacle. That's a very smart octopus!