Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i National Geographic Kids

One comet is shaped like a rubber duck. Some squirrel species remember where they buried nuts, even under snow. PATO, THE NATIONAL SPORT OF ARGENTINA, IS A MIX OF POLO AND BASKETBALL. Some horned frogs can lift 3 times their own weight with their tongue. HONEYPOT WORKER ANTS, WHICH STORE NECTAR IN THEIR BODIES, CAN SWELL TO THE SIZE OF A GRAPE. LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC CAN HELP DOGS RELAX, A STUDY FOUND. CHECK OUT THE BOOK!…

Madison, New Jersey Love might have been in the air when these shelter pups asked, “Will you be my valentine?” Olga, Indy, and Aurora had been waiting a long time to be adopted from St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center. As Valentine’s Day approached, shelter volunteer and photographer Kelsey Dubinsky had an idea: a super-sweet photo shoot. She dressed the dogs in feather boas and pink bandannas, then photographed them in front of a pink backdrop. “At first the dogs were a little shy,” Dubinsky says. “But after I offered them some treats and they felt comfortable, their personalities really came out.” The shelter shared the photos on social media, where Cynthia and Jeff Forster saw Olga’s picture and fell in love. “It was a total glam shot,” Cynthia Forster says.…

A 10-day-old harp seal pup peers off the edge of a piece of sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the coast of Canada. Its mom yelps at it from the water, encouraging the pup to join her. The pup looks at me with its big black eyes as if to ask, “Should I do it?” I’ve been in Canada for 10 days filming these newborns during their first days of life. These pups are born into an icy world where they must quickly learn how to survive—and I want to show how tough these cute creatures are. I especially want to film a pup in a major moment: diving into the ocean for its first ever swim. I shiver; I’ve been in the 29-degree water for nearly…

JANUARY GARNET REPRESENTS LOYALTY No one would describe you as a flaky friend. You stick up for your BFFs if others put them down, and you’re always ready to listen when a pal has a problem. OLD-SCHOOL MYTHS People once believed that garnets offered protection from poisons, wounds, and even scary dreams. ROCK-SOLID FACTS You can find garnets in streams where water has worn away rock, exposing the gems. Before they’re polished, garnets look like small pebbles. They come in shades of red, black, and green (the rarest). Some are even colorless. FEBRUARY AMETHYST REPRESENTS SINCERITY Being two-faced or half-hearted isn’t your thing. What you say to your friends and family is genuine and honest. OLD-SCHOOL MYTHS Amethysts supposedly had good powers. It was believed that they helped people stay…

MAN GOES SKYSURFING This guy definitely doesn’t have a fear of heights. Keith Edward Snyder holds the record for the most helicopter-style spins while skysurfing. First the daredevil dived headfirst out of an airplane above Giza, Egypt, with a surfboard strapped to his feet. Then he twirled upside down 190 times in midair before opening his parachute. POCKET POOCH This tiny pup set a big record. About the height of a toilet-paper-roll tube, Pearl the Chihuahua is the world’s shortest living dog. Her favorite foods are chicken and salmon, but her tiny belly can’t hold too much at once. So she gets four small meals a day. The four-inch-tall pooch weighs only about as much as a can of beans! SUPERSIZE SAVER You’d need a giant shelf to store this…

Cape Crozier, Antarctica In a colony of an estimated 600,000 Adélie penguins, one waddler stands out. Instead of having black feathers on its back and face, this bird is blond. “The penguin looks like it was bleached,” says P. Dee Boersma, a penguin expert and National Geographic Explorer. This pale penguin has a condition called leucism (LOO-sism), in which the pigments that create color in skin, hair, and feathers can’t be distributed to all parts of the body. Adélies are one of the most common species of penguin to have the condition—about one in 114,000 animals. Scientists think this penguin and others with leucism live normal lives, and predators don’t hunt them more than other penguins. Photographer Jeff Mauritzen, who snapped the peculiar penguin pic, says that nature is just…

The 15-day-old leopard cub doesn’t make a sound as he sits in a sugarcane field in western India. The youngster is waiting for his mother to return from hunting rats, hare, and deer. Most of the year, the eight-foot-tall sugarcane stalks provide a safe, quiet place for cubs to hide in until their mom returns. But it’s March—harvest season in India—and people are working in the field. With so many humans around, Mom is too nervous to return to her baby. As the workers slice through the sugarcane with three-foot-long knives, they find the lonely cub sitting on the ground. He’s so young that his eyes haven’t opened yet. The humans don’t know how long the little one has been alone, but they know that he won’t survive for more…

Mongolia and China A captive newborn foal wobbles to its mother. This Przewalski’s horse born in Texas is actually a cloned foal—and it might help the species survive in the wild. Przewalski’s horses became extinct in the wild by the 1980s, after competing with livestock for food and habitat. So zoos began breeding Przewalski’s horses that were already captive and releasing them back into Mongolia and China. Today, over a thousand wild horses roam their homeland, and another thousand live in zoos. But scientists are worried. Since all living Przewalski’s horses descended from a small group, they have similar genes. That means they’re vulnerable to the same diseases. In 2020, scientists in Texas used DNA taken from a Przewalski’s horse over 40 years ago to make a foal named Kurt…

GAMES, LAUGHS, AND LOTS TO DO! PLAY! 1 BIGGEST APPETITE By startling prey out of tall plants before pouncing, these small African animals can capture about a dozen birds or rodents in a single night—making the creatures super-successful hunters. 2 TRICKIEST TRAP The inside of this Antarctic animal’s beak is covered with hooks that prevent fish from wriggling away. And fish beware: These creatures can dive down 575 feet and swim faster than nine miles an hour. 3 GUTSIEST GRAZER More people are hurt by this grazing animal each year than by sharks. If this 1,500-pound animal feels threatened, it might kick or trample people in its grassy habitat. 4 SNEAKIEST EATER This creature blends in with its surroundings and sneaks up slowly and quietly on prey like crickets. Then…