Black Rhino

The word Rhinoceros comes from the Greek word rhino, meaning nose, and ceros, meaning horn. The Black Rhinoceros is the most well-known of the five living rhinoceros species. Like the White Rhinoceros, the Black Rhinoceros is brownish gray in color.


A main feature of the Black Rhinoceros is its prehensile lip; its lips look like a hook and work like fingers, grasping and pulling leaves and shrubs into its mouth. This huge animal can run fast at 40 miles per hour, almost as fast as a car on the highway! They look for food in the early morning and late afternoon; the rest of the day, they rest in the shade or go "swimming" in the water pools, coating their skin with mud for their "sunscreen" and to make biting flies avoid them.

There are two horns on the Black Rhinoceros; the front horn is the much larger one. Rhino horns grow as much as three inches a year and can grow up to 5 feet! Female rhinos use their horns to protect their babies, while male rhinos use their horns to fight off attackers.

In 1970, there were 70,000 Black Rhinos in the world. Today, there are only 3,600. This drastic fall in the Black Rhinoceros population is the main reason why this huge animal is a CRITICALLY ENDANGERED SPECIES. Some reasons why they are endangered:

1. Hunting - Poachers hunt the Black Rhinoceros for its horn. People in Asia use the horns for medicinal use, while people in North Africa and the Middle East want the horn material to make knife handles.

2. Habitat destruction -The Black Rhino lives in open grasslands and plains. As the people move into these places and develop them for homes and buildings, the White Rhino is left with smaller and smaller places to live.

Black Rhino Fast Facts
Scientific Name: Diceros Bicornis
Type: Mammal
Diet: Herbivore
Height: 11 to 13.75 feet
Weight: 3,168 to 7,920 pounds
Range: Africa, India, Southeast Asia
Diet: Watergrass and leaves

To make a Black Rhinoceros Paper Model, click on the image or here.

Short-Eared Owl

When we think of owls, we think of them as nocturnal, coming out at night. The Short-Eared Owl, however, also flies during the day ("diurnal") and is the most diurnal of all the owls. They are mostly seen in the late afternoon and at dawn. When it flies, the Short-Eared Owl flies like a moth or like a bat, flying low over grasslands or marshes, flying back and forth with slow, irregular wingbeats.

Short-Eared Owls are medium-sized owls with small ear tufts that look like two short ears sticking out of its head. The Long-Eared Owl has ear tufts almost three times as long. The Short-Eared Owl usually lets these ear tufts lie flat on its head, giving it the appearance of being bald. When it is surprised or scared or on the defensive, the ear tufts stand straight up.

The Short-Eared Owl has large eyes, a big head, a short neck and wide wings. Feathers are brown and the upper breast is streaked. Females of the species are slightly bigger than the males. The yellow orange eyes are emphasized by black circles around each eye and its white face.

This Owl hunts frequently throughout the day, especially in the early morning and late afternoon. It flies between one to ten feet above the ground, will hover above its prey for a few seconds before pouncing on its meal. The Short-Eared Owl uses its excellent hearing to locate prey. It feeds on small rodents, insects, and small birds.

Despite the fact that the Short-Eared Owl is present in most continents, its rate of decline has alarmed researchers. These birds have decreased in numbers from 3.5% to as much as 11.5% each year. This is a main reason why the Short-Eared Owl had been listed as VULNERABLE worldwide, but is a STATE-ENDANGERED SPECIES in the northeastern United States. Some reasons for the fast decline in numbers include:

1. Loss of habitat - The large, open and undisturbed areas where the Short-Eared Owls breed are being replaced by homes and buildings.

2. Pesticides - The presence of pesticides in the Short-Eared Owl's prey may cause harm to the bird.

Short-Eared Owl Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Asio Flammeus
Type: Bird
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 13 to 17 inches
Weight: 7.27 to 16.77 ounces
Range: Most continents
Diet: Small rodents, insects, and small birds

To make Rock Owl Paperweights, click on the image or here.

Tiger Salamander

The word "salamander" is a name for amphibians that have tails when they are adults. Most animals in the salamander order look like a mixture of frog and lizard. They have the wet, smooth skin of frogs, and a long tail like lizards. Other names for a salamander include olm, axoloti, spring lizard, water dog, mud puppy, hellbender, triton, and congo eel.

The Tiger Salamander has the stripe pattern of their mammalian namesake. The Tiger Salamander is usually brown or greenish or gray in color and has yellow stripes or yellow dots or dark brown splotches throughout its body. Some have no markings at all.

The Tiger Salamander is the largest land-dwelling salamander on earth. They have thick bodies with short snouts, sturdy legs and long tails. They live in burrows (deep holes) up to two feet below the surface. They go out of their burrows at night to hunt for worms, insects, frogs and even other salamanders.

This amphibian is listed as Least Concern in the endangered species list because researchers have a hard time recording numbers for the Tiger Salamander since they spend a lot of time in their burrows underground. However, Least Concern is a a step before Near Threatened, so if people started early enough, the Tiger Salamander MAY be kept off the endangered list altogether! Some threats to the life of the Tiger Salamander include:

1. Predatory fish - The Tiger Salamander cannot live with predatory fish in its environment. Bass, catfish and other such species pose to threat to the Tiger Salamander, who is small enough to be eaten by these fish.

2. Bait - Tiger Salamanders, when caught, are used as bait to catch other fish.

3. Loss of habitat - Deforestation and loss of wetland areas, places where the Tiger Salamander lives. The decrease in the area of these places means that the Tiger Salamander also has less places to live and survive in.

4. Vehicles - As the Tiger Salamander scurries from place to place in search of food, it crosses roads and highways, proof of how people are getting closer to the living places of all animals and their environment. The chances of the amphibians being run over by vehicles increase as more and more people take over the land.

5. Pollution - People not only take the lands from animals, the presence of people alone means more pollution in the ponds and other habitats of the animals. Polluting the area poses a threat to the Tiger Salamander (and other animals in the area) because it can eat or be killed by pollutants in the air and water.

Tiger Salamander Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Ambystoma Tigrinum
Type: Amphibian
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 7 to 14 inches
Weight: 4.4 ounces
Range: North America
Diet: worms, insects, frogs, other salamanders

To make a 3-D paper model of a Salamander, click on the image or here.

Philippine Tarsier

Known locally as the Maumag in Cebuano, the Philippine Tarsier is found in the southern part of the Philippines, in the islands of Bohol, Samar, Letye and Mindanao. The name of the tarsier is taken from the animals "tarsus", or ankle bone.


When you look at the Philippine Tarsier, all you'll see mostly is its eyes. It has the biggest eyes relative to their body weight of any mammal! Its eyes are fixed in its skull; they cannot turn in their sockets. To look around, the Philippine Tarsier must turn its head, up to 180 degrees! The Tarsier's huge eyes does provide it with excellent night vision, which allows it to hunt at night.

The Philippine Tarsier has wavy brownish gray fur with a silky texture. The powerful and long legs, whcih are twice as long as its body), are useful for leaping from tree to tree. It has fingers, with flattened nails and claws used for grooming. There are pads on the Philippine Tarsier's fingers and toes to help them cling to branches. The Tarsier spends its day hiding in trees and brances and only come out at night to hunt for food.

Numbering less than 1,000 animals, the Philippine Tarsier is an ENDANGERED SPECIES. Concentrated in a small area of the world, we want to be able to keep this animal, with links to a 45 million year history in the rainforests of the world, healthy and living in large numbers. As with all endangered animals, there are several reasons for their enviornmental status:

1. Habitat loss - The destruction of the natural resources in the Philippines, most especially deorestation and logging will affect these small primates. As more and more people demand space for homes and buildings, the Philippine Tarsier's environment will continue to shrink.

2. Petting - Because of their size, the Philippine Tarsier has been reported to be kept as pets. This is dangerous, since keeping a Tarsier as a pet, they may spread worms and other parasites to their human owners.

Philippine Tarsier Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Tarsius Syrichta
Type: Mammal
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 3.8 to 5.2 inches
Weight: 2 to 5.4 ounces
Range: Philippine islands of Bohol, Samar, Leyte and Mindanao
Diet: insects, worms, lizards

To answer an online quiz on the Philippine Tarsier, click on the image or here.

Black Tern

Humans approaching the nest of a Black Tern may come with a serious headache because these birds have been known to attack humans that come too close. Technically, a "tern" is a seagull, but the Black Tern lives in marshy areas instead of by the ocean; it is a marsh tern.

The Black Tern is a small dark bird. It has short legs and a short bill, which is almost as long as its head. The Black Tern has a dark gray back, with a white forehead. Black head, black neck and belly....it's the only color of this bird, along with a few shades of white and gray. No wonder it's the "Black" Tern!

The Black Tern flies around North America. While flying, it will swoop down when it spies a tasty meal of insects and fish, frogs and tadpoles, earthworms and small crustaceans. It will also catch insects while flying.

Although the Black Tern is not on the world endangered list, it IS on the ENDANGERED SPECIES list of the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Maine, United States. From a population of hundreds of thousands in North America, the Black Tern's numbers have decreased significantly in the last 40 years, some say to only a mere third of what it once was. Some reasons for this decrease:

1. Raiding of nests - Tern eggs and chicks are being killed by herons, raccoons and other animals in all stages of the marsh ecosystem.

2. Flooding - Rising water levels carry away Black Tern nests in the marshes.

3. Pesticides - Insects, a main food of the Black Tern, absorb pesticides from the air. When the Black Tern eats the insects and fish from the water, it is putting pesticides in its body as well, which will harm the bird.

Black Tern Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Chlidonias Niger
Type: Bird
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 9 to 10 inches
Weight: 50 to 60 grams
Range: North America
Diet: insects, frogs, fish, tadpoles, earthworms, crustaceans

To make an origami of a flapping bird, click on the image or here.

Leatherback Sea Turtle

The Leatherback Sea Turtle is the largest among the turtles, with its shell up to 8 feet long! It is also the heaviest among the turtles, weighing as much as 1,800 pounds! The Leatherback Sea Turtle is also the fastest, swimming as fast as 22 miles per hour! This huge turtle is a daredevil, too: it eats jellyfish, even the poisonous ones!

The Leatherback Turtle's shell is very different from other turtle shells. While other turtles have a hard protective shell, the Leatherback Turtle has a shell covered with a leathery skin supported by tiny bones. This allows the Leatherback Turtle to dive up to 3,000 feet below the ocean surface. A regular turtle would be crushed from the water pressure if it went this deep.

The Leatherback Sea Turtle is dark in color with white and pink spots. It has a large, flat, round body with two pairs of very large flippers, and a short tail. Once born, Leatherback males never leave the water once they enter it. Female Leatherbacks crawl on land to nest and lay eggs.

Leatherback Sea Turtles are among the most endangered animals on earth. With 35,000 turtles left in the world, this number is fast declining. On the CRITICALLY ENDANGERED SPECIES list, these largest reptile needs to be saved, and saved now. Some reasons for their endangered status:

1. Raiding of nests - Some people collect turtle eggs for food and other reasons. An average of only ONE Sea Turtle lives for every 1,000 eggs!

2. Plastics and pollution - Pollution in the waters and on the beaches, especially plastic, are a main reason why Sea Turtles die. The turtles mistake the plastic for jellyfish, their food, and they eat the plastic, causing the plastic to choke them.

3. Habitat loss - Noise and activity on the beaches, where the Leatherback Sea Turtle nests, causes the hatchlings to crawl away from the ocean, leading to their deaths. More people on the beaches also take away from beach space that the Leatherback needs to make a nest.

4. Accidental capture - Fishing gear like nets and explosives cause much harm to the Sea Turtle population.

5. Hunting - Sea Turtles are hunted for their meat and shells, used to make combs, eyeglass frames and other products.

Leatherback Sea Turtle Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Dermochelys Coriacea
Type: Reptile
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 6 feet long
Weight: 600 to 1, 800 pounds
Range: Oceans of the world
Diet: Jellyfish and soft-bodied animals

To make your own Sea Turtle puppet/marionette, click on the image or here.

Sperm Whale

Remember Moby Dick? He was a Sperm Whale. The Sperm Whale is the largest of the toothed whales. It has the largest brain of any living animal. Sperm Whales have a huge head, almost a third of its entire body length. The scientific name of the Sperm Whale is Physeter Macrocephalus, where "macrocephalus" really means "big head"!

Another unique part of the Sperm Whale is the single blowhole on the left side of the head instead of the top, like other whales. The Sperm Whale also has a large hump on the back, followed by smaller bumps. Gray in color, the Sperm Whale's skin is not smooth like other whales but very wrinkly.

The Sperm Whale's huge head has a large space in it (called the spermaceti organ) filled with a waxy liquid called spermaceti oil. This oil can be cooled or heated by the water through the blowhole and can shrink and increase in weight, helping the whale sink; or expands and decreases in weigh, helping the whale rise to the surface of the ocean.

Although numbering close to 2 million whales today, the Sperm Whale is classified as VULNERABLE in the endangered species list. Two million seems like such a large number, but scatter that number throughout all the oceans on Earth, and the number looks very small. Some reasons why the Sperm Whale is on the endangered list include:

1. Hunting - The Sperm Whale has always been hunted for its spermaceti; whalers sell them to people who make cosmetics and candles. Japan continues to hunt Sperm Whales despite the ban on whaling by the International Whaling Commission.

2. Threats from fishing equipment - Sperm Whales also get entangled in nets and fishing gear, and collide with fishing boats.

Sperm Whale Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Physeter Macrocephalus
Type: Mammal
Diet: Carnivore
Height: 49 to 59 feet long
Weight: 35 to 45 tons
Range: Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans
Diet: Squid, fish, octopus

To make your own Whale Sock, click on the image or here.