Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Central East Africa's Black Rhino is Disappearing

Photo by Craig Newton/FreeImages.com

There is one animal that lives in Central East Africa that that looks like its mother was a unicorn and its father was an elephant. Do you know what it is? It's the Black Rhino.


The Black rhinoceros is a mammal, and it's not really black. It is a dark gray or brown. But it is big! An adult can weigh over 3,000 pounds. They also have poor eyesight. They can't see very far, but they have great hearing and sense of smell.


Black Rhinos are browsers. They eat all kinds of plants, and are usually seen with their heads down close to the ground so their pointed lips can pull in their food. The sun is very hot where they live, so they eat at night or in the early morning. When it's hot, they lay in the shade or find a mud hole to stay cool. They also have two horns. One is large and one is small. It is the large one that has made them critically endangered.

Photo by Kym Parry/FreeImages.com

Poachers kill rhinos to cut off their large horn and sell it. People believe it can be used in medicine and all types of things. They even use the horn as a handle on a knife.  For more information see Save The Rhino.


Some think this is cool, but I think it's cruel!


Tuesday, March 1, 2016

This is a Mysterious Cat That is Endangered

Deep on the southern tip of Florida lives an amazing cat. 


It has rotating ears that gives it great hearing, fantastic night vision which is key to survival, retractable claws, and hind legs that lets them jump 15 feet into the air. Want to know which animal this is? It is the Florida Panther, and there only about 100 of them left in the wild.


The Florida Panther makes its home in the Cypress Swamps. They hunt for raccoon, opossum, white-tail deer, wild pigs, wild turkeys, and sometimes even baby alligators. Mother panthers keep their cubs in dens, and are very protective. Male panthers, alligators, and even hunters are dangerous to panther cubs.


Like other endangered animals, the Florida Panther is losing its home. Agriculture and development are taking land that once belonged to the animals that lived there. The Florida Panther needs room to roam. One panther's territory can be the size of 1,000 football fields, and they don't like sharing it with other panthers. For more information, check out Defenders of Wildlife website or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's new book, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, available at Amazon.


Let's not lose another amazing animal in this world. The Florida Panther needs to be protected so it will not disappear.


"Some think it's cool, but I think it's cruel." Animalgirl