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Giant otter
Giant otters are the largest otters in the world and live in the Amazon and parts of Peru. They can weigh 55kg and be 2m long, the biggest otter in the world. Their prey consists of fish such as piranhas and catfish, but when they work as a team they can kill anacondas 5m in length. They are very protective of their young and they shall viciously attack and sometimes even kill black caimans. But one predator that is hard to fight off is the jaguar, which can kill a black caiman itself. They have the biggest bite of any big cat and could easily kill an adult otter if they…
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Loggerhead turtle
The loggerhead turtle is large sea turtle native to coasts around Europe with a weight of 160kg. Like other turtles, they eat fish and jellyfish. Their status is endangered.
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Fallow deer
The fallow deer is a large deer native to Europe and was introduced to Britain by the romans. A male fallow deer is called a buck, a female is called a doe and young ones are called fawns. The male can weigh 110kg, can be 1.7m long and be over 1m tall. Does can weigh a smaller 70kg and can be 90cm tall. They are the only European deer with palmate antlers. Top: buck with does.
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Great skua
The great skua is the largest of the skua family and lives across the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctica. They can be as big as a buzzard with a wingspan of nearly 1.3m. These large seabirds eat puffins, young penguins, gannets, petrels, gulls and small mammals.
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Silvered langur
These medium-sized monkeys are native to South-East Asian islands such as Sumatra, Borneo and Malaysia. They are grey in colour and their young are a light orange. They have a very funny crest on the tops of their heads!
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Red legged partridge
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Bat falcon
The bat falcon is a small, colourful falcon native to forested mountain regions of South America. They eat swifts, small mammals, bats and small birds. These orange booted falcons have black heads and wings, a black chest with thin white bars across, a yellow eye, legs and beak and an orange rump and legs. They can measure 30cm, the same as Britain’s smallest falcon, the merlin.
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Sparrowhawk
The sparrowhawk is a medium sized hawk that is found across Europe and northern Asia. They weight around 400g and have a quite short wingspan of 80 cm so they can slip threw the trees after their small prey. They can measure 43cm. Incredibly, female sparrowhawks can weigh nearly twice as much as the males. The females are about the same size as a male goshawk. As their name suggests, these small hawks mainly feed on small garden birds such as finches, sparrows and blackbirds. The smaller male’s largest prey are blackbirds, but the much larder female can take down prey as big as themselves such as wood pigeons. They…
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Smilodon
The smilodon was a large sabre-toothed cat, and some people know it better as the sabre-toothed cat or sabre-toothed tiger. They had fangs nearly 25cm long and if they were shattered, the cats wouldn’t be able to hunt. Scientists believe that these lion-sized beasts hunted in groups and they ate young mammoths, wild horses, ground sloths(a grizzly bear-sized animal that had long claws) and antelopes. To kill their prey, smilodons couldn’t bight into their prey like modern day cats but had to stalk, run up and pounce on their prey, and then slash its neck open with their massive 25cm long teeth. They measured almost 3metres long and could be…
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Pronghorn antelope
The pronghorn antelope is a medium-sized speedy American animal. They are the second fastest animal on land and can reach speeds of up to 60mph, nearly as fast as the cheetah. This is fast enough to outrun their main enemies, wolves and coyotes. Although the pronghorns are faster, the wolves and their cousins have stamina on their side, enough to run down young and weak adults. Like other herbivorous animals, pronghorn calves can be up on their feet quickly and start running in just under an hour. These antelopes can weigh 70kg. Like other antelopes, pronghorns migrate.
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Green woodpecker
The green woodpecker is the largest of the British woodpeckers and is found across Europe. They are very fond of ants and unlike the other common European woodpeckers, the great and lesser spotted, they drum, but as well they feed on the ground. These woodpeckers are mainly green in colour and have a bright red eye stipe. Their closest relative is the almost identicle grey-headed woodpecker, which, unlike the green is not found in Britain. Left:green woodpecker being held.
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Ingham’s World Friday 11th September-Reds squirrel has money!
Last month in August, John Ingham found a bedraggled young blue tit in his kitchen sink. It just blinked at him when he lifted it up and clung on precariously with its claws and when he scattered some sunflower seed around, it realised it had better things to do than be his friend! Carin Bondar’s new book, The nature of sex, explains that blue tits are among the least faithful of birds. While albatrosses and swifts are models of long flight, 90 percent of blue tit broods have more than one father. This reveals that they are more flirty! Meerkats may look cute, females with no kits will kill any other young…
