Animals

A filter, not a plan

Why Do Animals Fit Where They Live?

Animals fit their homes because the variations that survived best got passed on, over and over.

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Chemical trails

How Do Ants Find Food?

Ants find food by laying scent trails that automatically favour the shortest path.

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Shouting at the world and listening back

How Does a Bat See in the Dark?

A bat finds its way by shouting and timing the echoes — and it is the only mammal that truly flies.

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A deal, not a favour

Why Do Bees Visit Flowers?

Bees visit flowers for food, and carry pollen between them as payment.

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One animal in every four

Why Are There So Many Kinds of Beetle?

Beetles are the most numerous kind of animal on Earth, and a pair of armoured wing cases is a large part of why.

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Everything about it is built for lightness

How Does a Bird Stay Up?

A bird flies on curved wings that bend passing air downwards, carried by hollow bones and enormous chest muscles.

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Instinct plus practice

How Do Birds Build Nests?

Birds build nests by instinct, and improve at it with practice.

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Rebuilt from the inside

How Does a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly?

A caterpillar dissolves inside its chrysalis and is rebuilt as a butterfly.

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Breaking up the outline

How Does Camouflage Work?

Camouflage works by breaking up an animal's outline so no shape is recognised.

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Both, in a way

Is Coral a Rock or an Animal?

Coral is a colony of tiny animals living inside a stone skeleton they build.

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Legs that bend the wrong way

Why Does a Crab Walk Sideways?

A crab walks sideways because its leg joints only hinge side to side — going sideways is the fast way, not the odd way.

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A comb and a scraper

How Does a Cricket Chirp?

A cricket sings by scraping a row of ridges on one wing with a hard edge on the other, and hears with its knees.

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Reading bones

How Do We Know About Dinosaurs?

We know dinosaurs from fossils, read by comparison with living animals.

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A pond in a box

Why Do Animals Lay Eggs?

An egg carries water, food and air for a growing animal inside a shell strong enough to sit on and thin enough to breathe through.

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A nose with forty thousand muscles

What Can an Elephant Do With Its Trunk?

An elephant's trunk is a boneless nose and upper lip with tens of thousands of muscles, used to breathe, drink, grab, smell and talk.

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One structure, many jobs

Why Do Birds Have Feathers?

Feathers are branching structures that zip into light, stiff sheets for flight, warmth and display.

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Taking oxygen out of water

How Do Fish Breathe Underwater?

Fish use gills to pull dissolved oxygen out of the water flowing past.

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Two lives, one animal

Why Do Frogs Start as Tadpoles?

Frogs start as water-adapted tadpoles and rebuild into land-adapted adults.

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Holding onto still air

Why Do Animals Have Fur?

Fur works by trapping a layer of still air against the skin, and animals fluff it, shed it and grow it back as the seasons change.

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Seven bones, same as yours

Why Is a Giraffe's Neck So Long?

A giraffe reaches leaves nothing else can, and needs an extraordinary heart and valves to pump blood that high.

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Turning the engine down

Why Do Animals Hibernate?

Hibernating animals slow their whole body down to survive winter without food.

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Sticky feet and a very fast eye

How Does a Fly Walk on the Ceiling?

A fly sticks to ceilings with clawed, glue-footed pads, sees the world far faster than you do, and tastes with its feet.

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No brain, no heart, no bones

How Does a Jellyfish Live With No Brain?

A jellyfish has no brain, heart, bones or blood — a ring of nerves and a bag of water do the whole job.

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Getting your energy back

Why Does a Kangaroo Hop?

A kangaroo's tendons store and return energy like springs, so hopping costs it barely more at speed than at a crawl.

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Following the food

Why Do Birds Migrate?

Birds migrate to follow food supplies that move with the seasons.

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It is not the bite, it is you

Why Does a Mosquito Bite Itch?

A mosquito's spit stops your blood clotting so it can drink — and your reaction to that spit is the itch.

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A very old rule, badly broken

Why Do Moths Fly Into Lights?

Moths navigate by keeping a distant light at a fixed angle — a rule that works with the moon and fails badly with a lamp.

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A whole second shift

Why Do Some Animals Only Come Out at Night?

Night-living animals avoid heat, hide from daytime hunters, and get the food that daytime animals leave alone.

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Skin that works like a screen

How Does an Octopus Change Colour?

An octopus changes colour with millions of tiny colour bags in its skin, squeezed open and shut by muscle.

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Hearing in three dimensions

How Do Owls Hunt in the Dark?

Owls hunt by sound, using lopsided ears to pinpoint prey in total darkness.

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Four layers and a good idea

How Do Penguins Stay Warm in the Snow?

Penguins beat the cold with packed feathers, a fat layer, a clever blood trick in the feet, and taking turns in a huddle.

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Senses you do not have

How Does a Shark Find Its Food?

Sharks hunt with a stack of senses — smell, ripples, and electricity — that reach far past what eyes can do.

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One foot, one shell, no hurry

How Does a Snail Carry Its House?

A snail glides on a single muscular foot over a trail of slime, inside a shell that grew from its own body.

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A whole body doing the work of feet

How Does a Snake Move With No Legs?

A snake moves by pressing its body against the ground and pushing sideways, with ribs and scales doing the work of legs.

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Only some threads are glued

Why Don't Spiders Stick to Their Own Webs?

Spiders avoid sticking because only some web threads are coated in glue.

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Thousands of hiding places

How Does a Squirrel Find Its Buried Nuts?

A squirrel remembers roughly where it buried each nut, then finds the exact spot by smell — and the ones it forgets become trees.

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An animal built the wrong way round

How Does a Starfish Grow a New Arm?

A starfish walks on hundreds of tiny water-powered feet, has no brain or blood, and can regrow a lost arm.

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Nobody is in charge

How Does a Flock Turn All at Once?

A flock, shoal or swarm moves as one because each animal follows a few simple rules about its nearest neighbours.

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One part, a dozen jobs

What Is a Tail For?

Tails do whatever an animal most needs — steering, balancing, gripping, signalling or keeping warm.

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It depends on who does the delivering

Is Venom the Same as Poison?

Venom is injected by the animal, poison is only dangerous if you eat or touch the animal — and both are made of the same kinds of chemicals.

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The biggest animal there has ever been

Why Is a Whale Not a Fish?

Whales are warm air-breathers that feed their babies milk, which makes them nothing like the fish they swim beside.

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Free soil engineering

Why Are Earthworms Useful?

Earthworms improve soil by eating dead matter, mixing layers and making tunnels.

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