Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022, issue 90, Fabulously Furry! i Eco Kids Planet Magazine

The fuzzier an animal is, the cuter it looks, but you wouldn’t want to cuddle this puss caterpillar. They’re the USA’s most venomous caterpillar – and not too fur-iendly!! Their fuzz hides small toxic spines that can stick in a person’s skin. It feels like a bee sting – but worse! Britain has its own kind of fuzzy puss caterpillar, but it doesn’t have those toxic spines. (Mind you, it can spray formic acid, which can burn if it hits you!) There are many truly fuzzy moths, too. The silkworm moth looks almost like a sheep in its white woolly coat. Sadly, they no longer exist in the wild, but people keep them for their silk-spinning skills. And who said moths look dull compared to butterflies? The beautiful rosy maple…

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a charity that works hard to protect our planet. Nicola Loweth is a senior programme advisor at WWF-UK. She works with WWF-China to help protect the giant panda. Joey: Why are giant pandas black and white? Scientists aren’t 100% sure. When giant pandas are born, they have pink and black skin with very little fur. As they grow older, the pink skin grows white fur, and the black skin grows their dark patches. One idea is that pandas developed black and white fur as camouflage. In their dense bamboo forest home, trees look speckled black and white in the sunlight. Another idea is that the panda’s black fur absorbs heat while the white fur reflects it. This may help giant pandas stay…

1,000 BUMS! Hi, Rusty fans! I’ve discovered the best animal ever (except for dinosaurs and our cat, Luke Skywhisker). Why? Because it has 1,000 bums! The Beast with a Thousand Bums. Sounds like an old monster movie, doesn’t it? Think of what I could do if I had 1,000 bums. I bet I could pong out an entire mansion in seconds flat. Anyway, here’s how I found out about it. Over 95% of animals have no backbones. But many of them do have weird and wonderful bums. In early March, science fans took a week to celebrate the best of their bums online. There were lots to choose from. Planthopper bugs look like they have flashy fireworks shooting out of their bums. These ‘hairs’ detach if a predator grabs them!…

Imagine meeting a gigantopithecus! This giant, prehistoric ape reached about three metres high when it stood upright. It roamed Southeast Asia for almost a million years before dying out 100,000 years ago. And some people surely did meet them – because they lived at the same time as humans! But do people encounter huge, unknown, ape-like creatures today or are they just myths? Remember, people outside Africa once saw gorillas as mythical. European explorers visited African jungles and reported seeing hairy, human-like monsters with incredible strength – but not everyone believed them. There was no proof they existed until a missionary found gorilla bones in 1847. And mountain gorillas were thought of as cryptids until 1902! Many people believe that hairy, human-like creatures named Bigfoot stalk the deep forests of…

DECODING PIG GRUNTS Do you get annoyed when people say animals have no emotions? I do. I mean, look at pigs. They’re intelligent animals with strong feelings. But can their oinks, grunts and squeals tell you how they’re feeling? A team of researchers claims to be the first ever to decode those piggy noises! They created a ‘pig translator’ to discover whether pigs are happy, excited, stressed or scared. Then they studied over 7,000 recordings made throughout pigs’ entire lives. They found that squeals and screams show negative feelings, while barks and grunts can be positive or negative. (But when they’re positive, the calls tend to be far shorter.) Next, they hope we’ll be able to study the emotions of other animals, too. NEWSFLASH! In Australia, magpies outwitted scientists by…

Fur is fantastic stuff! It’s not only lovely to stroke on your pet but also extremely important for the survival of most mammals. Fur keeps them warm. It also helps them to stay cool. Fur protects and camouflages. And it’s one of the characteristics that make an animal a mammal. Some mammals have fur that turns them (almost) invisible. And I discovered some very strange super-furry facts, too. Did you know that sloths grow algae in their fur, or that the fur of a giraffe fights off fungi? Let’s take a closer look at fur Fur and hair are made of keratin, which is the same stuff nails, claws, beaks, feathers and scales are made of. Mammals have several different types of hair, each with a different job to do.…

FURRY CROSSWORD Down: 1. What is a panda’s favourite food? 2. A furry animal of the Andes 3. The fluffiest rabbit in the world 5. Sensory hairs 9. An animal’s underfur Across: 4. Which animals have algae growing on their fur? 6. Brush and clean the coat of an animal 7. The skin and fur of an animal 8. One of fur’s superpowers 10. Home to the red ruffed lemur 11. What is fur made of? MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUIZ Test your knowledge with these multiple-choice questions. 1. Which animal has the thickest fur? A. Sea otter B. Polar bear C. Musk ox 2. Which of these creatures is endangered? A. Giant panda B. Arctic fox C. Chinchilla 3. What is the typical habitat of lemurs? A. Desert B. Rainforest C. Lakes…

Charlie: Hi, you Arctic foxes have really warm-looking fur. Fox: It is! Charlie: It looks so lovely – why do you dye it? Fox: Eh??? Charlie: Well, I’ve seen photos of Arctic foxes that are snowy white – then, in later photos, they’re brown. Fox: Ha! Our fur changes colour with the seasons, Charlie. In winter, it’s white so we blend in with the ice and snow. In summer, it changes to an earthy colour. Then we can hide among rocks and plants. Perfect camouflage!…

Giraffes really pong. But this strong aroma has a super-powerful antifungal purpose. It stops harmful bacteria growing on their fur. This is the opposite of sloths, which have no body odour at all. The sloth’s fur makes a comfy, slow-moving home to a special type of moth, called the sloth moth. The female moths lay their eggs in the sloth’s dung – which gives food and home to moth larvae. And in turn, the moth poop helps algae to grow on the sloth’s fur. This means a sloth’s favourite snack grows right on them – how convenient!…

Thanks to everyone who took part in our Animal Kitchen Creations competition. Your delicious entries were both amusing and mouth-watering. We hope you had lots of fun creating and eating them! Congratulations to our four winners! Runners-Up To see more animal kitchen creations, go to ecokidsplanet.co.uk/animal-kitchen-competition…