Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025, Issue 132 i Eco Kids Planet Magazine

Far above our heads, satellites act as spies in the sky, sending scientists crucial data to save animals and their habitats. Ready to fly? Super-spy satellites save the giant pangolin Deep in Kenya’s Nyakweri Forest in East Africa, elephants, monkeys and countless other creatures share their home with the rare giant pangolin – a shy scaly animal that curls into a ball when scared. Scientists thought they lived only in West and Central Africa, but surprise: they were recently discovered in Nyakweri, too! Yet the forest is in peril. Trees are being cut down, roads are breaking up habitats, and electric fences built to protect crops are often deadly to pangolins. In South Africa alone, researchers think around a thousand pangolins may die this way each year. With the help…

ARE OCTOPUSES ALIENS? Hi, Rusty fans! Rhona’s writing about Earth animals, but I’m sticking to the outer space theme! We’ve just discovered that octopuses are incredible multitaskers. That means they can do lots of different jobs at the same time. I’m a great multitasker, too. I can play my Jurassic World video game, eat my annoying sister Rhona’s biscuits, and stroke our cat Luke Skywhisker with my foot all at once! Well, octopuses use all their arms to perform different tasks, including tiptoeing (like me sneaking to nick Rhona’s biscuits), eating and grasping. They mostly use their front arms for exploring and their back ones to move around. They can make them shorter and longer, and bend and twist them in all sorts of weird ways. (I’d use them to…

COSMIC CROSSWORD Across: 6. A giant space telescope that sees galaxies’ baby photos. 8. A creature that might live beyond Earth (but, so far, there is zilch evidence!). 9. Icy moon of Jupiter that may hide a huge ocean. 10. How plants (and Charlie’s alien sap-strider!) make food from sunlight. 12. The process that powers the Sun by squashing hydrogen into helium. Down: 1. A massive collection of billions of stars, like our Milky Way. 2. The path Earth and other planets follow around the Sun. 3. Tiny ocean drifters; some scientists think alien life could be this small. 4. The Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, touched by the Parker Probe. 5. A space rock we track to make sure it doesn’t clonk into Earth. 7. A collapsed star with gravity…

We’ve been hurling satellites into space for decades! Like robot spies, they orbit Earth, snapping pictures and taking in data to show us what’s going on down here. Some can be lifesavers, spotting hurricanes spinning long before they reach land. That gives people time to get to safety. Some are like smoke alarms in the sky, spotting wildfires the moment they flare up. And others monitor climate change, keeping a watchful eye on ice sheets, showing us how much they shrink. Many watch over the animal kingdom for us, too. Protecting marine life means knowing where the creatures are. Not so easy when they vanish beneath waves or slip away into the vast blue. So we tag lots of sea creatures with tiny trackers for our satellites to follow. They…

Hello, Amy here! I’ve been investigating the only star in our solar system, aka the Sun! Here’s what I’ve discovered… The Sun is a HUMONGOUS 4.6-billion-yearold ball of gas, made mostly of hydrogen and helium. It’s not solid, so you couldn’t land a spacecraft on it. Besides, it’s so fantastically hot that any spaceship would melt long before it got close enough to land! (See my ‘We’ve Touched the Sun’ box ontheoppositepage…) The centre of the Sun is approximately 15,000,000°C. That’s seriously scorchio! Earth is exactly the right distance from the Sun for life to flourish here. If the Sun were closer or bigger, we’d fry to a crisp. Any further away and we’d freeze! I used to imagine it was a giant ball of fire in the sky, but…

Web of Life Detectives - Winners! Thank you to everyone who took part in our Web of Life competition. We asked you to head outdoors and uncover the hidden connections in nature – and your entries showed just how clever, creative and eco-minded our readers are! Congrats to our three winners: Buzzy Baking! We also loved receiving this brilliant photo from Lily, age 10, who tried out our Biscuit Beehive baking project. Here she is with her tray of biscuits, ready to go into the oven. Lily told us she made them with her mum, found the recipe fun to follow, and that they taste delicious! Answers Cosmic Crossword Out of this World Quiz 1. B, 2. D, 3. B, 4. A Find the Correct Shadow Spot 10 Differences Space…

It’s me, Charlie, the Eco Kid who can chat with animals. This time, I met some truly otherworldly creatures – or at least I thought I did! Charlie: Eco Kids Planet has sent me to some truly wild places before, but this tops them all. They’ve teleported me to a distant planet! I can see two bright suns in the sky – let’s hope I don’t get double sunburn. Hey, maybe I’ll get the chance to interview some alien animals. One’s coming. Or is it a big plant? Hmm, looks like a walking tree to me, stomping along on root-like legs! Hey, are you a plant, an animal or, er, both? Sap-strider: I’m a sap-strider. And what under the twin suns are you? Charlie: An Earth kid – and I…

RHONA REPORTS! N0. 68 This issue is full of cosmic wonders, but I’ll focus on what wildlife is up to here on Earth. Although I wouldn’t mind sending my annoying little brother Rusty into outer space! Rhona’s helper: JD Savage AMAZING PHOTO ENTRIES! The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition folks gave me a sneak peek at their best pictures so far! They’re showcasing 100 powerful nature photos at the Natural History Museum, London, from Friday, 17th October. They have a record-smashing 60,636 worldwide entries to choose from! This one, No Place Like Home, was taken by Emmanuel Tardy from France. He snapped this brown-throated, three-toed sloth in El Tanque, Costa Rica. Emmanuel watched traffic kindly slow to a crawl as the sloth crossed the road and found a fence…