Giant Anteaters use a variety of habitats, including swamp, forests, and grasslands.
Anteaters eat ants and termites in vast quantities, sometimes up to 30,000 insects in a single day. The anteater will rip open a termite hill with its clawed hand and work its tubular snout into the opening, sticking its long, worm-shaped tongue down into the heart of the colony and trapping the insects on its tongue’s sticky coating.
Can you imagine that their tongue is attached to the sternum and moves very quickly, flicking 150 times per minute!!!

(They are so inoffencive by nature…)

The sad fact about them is that giant anteaters are increasingly killed in car accidents. They are also hunted for food, fur, and sport by people…

And for the last – excellent joke about anteater:
“Why don’t anteaters get sick? Because they’re full of anty-bodies!”

Webbed feet enable the platypus to swim well. Each hind foot of the male has a poison spur that can kill small animals and inflict painful wounds on larger ones. Crushing its food with the horny plates of the bill and mouth, the platypus each day eats about half its own weight in worms, insect larvae, mollusks, crustaceans, and vegetation, all consumed underwater.

The male Platypus has venomous ankle spurs which produce a cocktail of venom!!! This venom is not lethal to humans, but does produce excruciating pain; so intense that the victim may be incapacitated. And one mo fact about platypus, which confirm their leading position in the list of strange animals: platypus reproduction is unique. It is one of only two mammals (the echidna is the other) that lay eggs!

Owls can turn their heads at 360 degrees, because of this – they can break a neck, that is why they do it very carefully, but this turn provides perfect opportunities for hunting.

Owls are birds, very clever and profound birds. Owls belong to birds of prey, as a rule, they live lonely lives, being flesh-birds, they hunt other smaller birds, insects and small animals. There are 2 families of owls: the typical and the barn owls. And in these two families can be counted near 165 species of owls. Owls are hunters, they are night creatures. So, owl sleep at day time and awake at night. Their hunting is active, owls try to astonish their victim, to surprise it.

If you meet an owl, you will never confuse it with another bird, any owl had a distinctive appearance. First of all, it has large eyes and ears, interesting beak (it looks more like hawk’s beak), flat face, big head, claws, fluffy feathers and, of course, feathers around eyes. In order to see the whole picture, owls (actually, like the rest of the birds) have to turn their heads. Moreover, owls produce very funny sounds, each kind produce its own sound. So, if it is impossible for you to distinguish owls as to their appearance you can make it by hearing to their sounds.

There are a lot of beliefs and misbeliefs as to owls. Some people believe that owls bring only misfortunes and bad luck. Such suggestions are based on their nocturnal way of life and very popular scream. But some believe that owls are symbols of wisdom and nourishing, that they bring luck and for many years were friends with people. In the ancient Egypt there were an hieroglyph with owl. Ancient Americans (namely Aztecs and Mayans) treated owls as signs of death and bad luck. Because, the Aztec God of Death had an owl-face. In Japan owls considered to be both messengers from the God and messengers from the Devil. In Greece owls were companions of the Goddess Athena, she was the goddess of art and wisdom, so owls became symbols of wisdom.

As far as I know, owls are protected by the law in the USA and in the United Kingdom, nobody can kill, injure or hunt them. Also, nobody has the right to disturb owls, when their are sitting on the eggs, because it can harm the future population, actually, it can prevent owls from … birth.

Have you ever read any story written by Rudyard Kipling? And do you happen to know anything about “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”? Yeah? Can you imagine him? And who do you think he was? You do not know, but it is so easy, he was a mongoose!!! And, no doubts, for us a typical mongoose is the Indian mongoose and the dwarf mongoose. It is no easy to describe them, as they do not possess any specific features.But, to put it in a nutshell, an average mongoose looks like this. They are small to a certain extent carnivores, covered with a warm fur coat, 15 to 17 inches long, a tail can grow up to 10 inches. Each mongoose has war colours at his pointed face and stripes on its back. Mongoose’s legs are rather short. As a rule, they live in Africa, woods, deserts, Europe (southern part) and Asia. Sometimes even in Spain.They live mostly in families, up to 25 members, but sometimes they can live either alone or in pairs.

Mongooses live near water: streams, ponds; in hedges, and fields; they can occupy burrows and caves. as well. As a rule they eat mice, rats, lizards, snakes, insects, spiders, frogs and eggs. The Indian mongoose is very popular because of his courage and his manner of behaving: he kills cobras, he can do so due to his very quick movements and long, thick fur. In ancient Egypt a man goose considered to be a sacred animal. The reason is nowadays very funny to us and was extremely important to the Egyptians. Mongooses helped to control the population of crocodiles. How? In a very interesting way. As it was already told, they were fond of eggs eating, so, as a rule, they eat eggs of crocodiles in the Nile River and gained the popular name “Pharaoh’s Mouse.” The attack of mongoose is rather exciting and breathtaking. While attacking a snake, mongoose provokes it. So, a after a series of constant attacks and provocation from the side of man goose, a snake gets tired and it is an exact time for mongoose to attack his or her opponent. A man goose swallows snake’s head and crushes the skull. So, pay attention! They are very ancient animals!

Mongoose’s babies are very interesting, it takes a long time to breed a so-called “child” – a year and 8 months, but a baby grows very quickly. In 6 months it is not a baby anymore, it is an adult. Sometimes one mother can have up to 10 babies.

Man gooses are fond of traveling, they can run rather fast, it helps them and makes them excellent hunters, there are some cases when a mongoose ran faster than a reptile did. As a rule, they haunt at hight. But, mongooses can be dangerous and eat all the possible eggs and even more a lot of ground-living animals. So, nowadays, it is illegal to import mongooses to the USA.