H A M M E R H E A D S H A R K
What advantage is there to extending your eyes
straight out and far away from your skull?
You can see everywhere at once except for
directly in front of your snout. Your one
blind spot is in the direction you are headed.
Your head acts like a rudder, enabling you to
pivot and twist at high speed to capture an
energy meal, like another shark or a ray.
Hammerhead's dive to extreme depths in
order to feast on a favorite, giant squid.
They hold their breath while hunting at
great depths because the icy waters passing
over their gills can dangerously lower the shark's
core body temperature.
R E D - E Y E D T R E E F R O G
What is it about a rain forest that attracts flamboyance?
This frog is easy pickings for a passing hawk or
nearby snake when displaying itself in full regalia.
However, by tucking its limbs under its green body
and masking its red eyes with a membrane, the frog
becomes invisible, lost in the surrounding jungle foliage.
Red-Eyes needing a mate complicates their survival.
Nature has provided a relatively few females with
an abundance of males to chose from. The date night
frenzy begins with a passing rainforest downpour.
Males everywhere hop about to dazzle the ladies.
Being chosen for mating doesn't end the competition.
Matters get ever more ugly as desperate rivals
attempt to pull the male off his bride's back,
even on their honeymoon night.
A L L I G A T O R
Dine with ancient reptiles that preceded the dinosaurs
by a hundred million years. Spend the day among
a thousand alligators lounging pondside in a beautiful
garden setting. What a wonderful destination for a
family picnic. Just twenty-five cents brings you the
Experience of a Lifetime!
The California Alligator Farm opened in 1907,
enduring until 1953. The farm supplemented
its income at the gate by renting alligators to
movie studios in the early days of Hollywood.
H O R S E
Gallop - the fastest of four gaits.
It has four beats to a cycle, one for each hoof
hitting the ground separately. Four thuds and
a silent moment when the horse's legs are
all lifted above the ground.
The Trot has a two clop gait, with two legs
striking the ground at once, then the other two
doing the same.
Cantors, the second fastest, have three clops
to their cycle. The mosey along gait is Walking.
One leg moves at a time. Each when it is
good and ready.
T R I C E R A T O P S
A three-horned dinosaur that makes its appearance
in the fossil record two million years before Earth's
catastrophic collision with an asteroid the size of
Mount Everest. The result is an immediate course
change for life on this planet. Nocturnal mammals,
small and timid, rapidly diversified to fill all the roles
once dominated by the now extinct reptiles.
Chance has given life a new path to follow.
F L Y C A T C H E R
You'll easily go through two sets of flight feathers a year.
Your first set comes just in time for the breeding season,
when you need to be at your sharpest. But as summer
closes out and the family has left the nest it is time to
replace rough, worn-out feathers with shiny and new.
Most birds lose their flight feathers one at a time
on each wing in a symmetrical pattern.
This process provides the least interference with
the bird going about its daily routine.
Waterfowl like geese and ducks, on the other hand,
lose their flight feathers all at once, leaving them
limited to paddling about the pond for the next
two to four weeks, waiting for their new feathers
to arrive.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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