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WHAT DOES A CAN A PIRANHA PIRANHA EAT? SCAREDY FISH Piranhas are known for having a taste for flesh, but plants are Piranhas have huge EAT ME? I A H S actually a common part of many P R N A teeth, but there are still piranhas’ meals. Some of them plenty of larger, fiercer are even vegetarian! predators that can eat A piranha certainly wouldn’t turn its nose up at Piranha means 'tooth fish' in Tupi, an indigenous Seeds, nuts and riverweeds make them, including caimans nibbling on human flesh, but the human would have tasty snacks for piranhas. language of Brazil. It’s no surprise they were – relatives of alligators. to be dead or very close to it before piranhas made named after that particular feature – they have Travelling in crowds Meaty prey commonly includes a proper meal of them. They generally only go after makes them feel less things like worms, crustaceans, seriously fearsome grins. They live in freshwater large prey such as humans or capybara if they’re dead open to attack – there’s snails, fish and any dead animals or severely injured. If there isn’t a lot of other food lakes and rivers, including the Amazon River, safety in numbers! or birds that they find in the water. around and you splash noisily into a piranha-infested and they can also commonly be found in the If there isn’t much food around, river with a bleeding foot, you might be risking a W W they can turn to cannibalism and piranha bite. That said, people regularly swim in rivers A nightmares of people petrified of being eaten A T A FISH OR start eating each other! with piranhas without it turning into a bloodbath. T E alive while swimming. True, piranhas are E R A DOG? R incredible hunters that are attracted to the Red-bellied piranhas smell of blood, but you’d be surprised at the bark to frighten off RUNCH ! YU predators. C M! things they’d choose to eat before sampling P your toes! Wimple piranhas swim quickly at their prey, P I barrelling up and taking a firm bite before FISH I R R A their hapless prey knows what’s hit them. SCALES A N They aren’t actually going after flesh, N H H though – their favourite food is fish scales. A WHERE CAN I A S SEE A PIRANHA? They ram into fish to dislodge their S scales, which they crunch down Piranhas live in on as their frightened prey South America. swims off (a few scales lighter!).

Red-bellied piranhas are mouthful out of their shared great at sharing! They look dinner. Piranha dinnertime TEAMWORK for food together, often isn’t always so polite, though. lurking in underwater plants These fish can go into a MAKES THE and waiting to spring out to feeding frenzy when they’re A g surprise unsuspecting prey. hungry and come across prey roup of piranhas When one fish comes across in the water, with masses of DREAM something meal-worthy fish thrashing and flipping is called they let the rest of the shoal around to fight for a bite a shoal. WORK know, and everyone gathers before their friends gobble it around to take turns tearing a all down. 8 9 BIG FLANNERY FILE AND SMALL AND Some time ago I was working in a very remote village in The smallest frog is the R G O D New Guinea. One day, a woman brought in a gigantic frog F O S T A S , Paedophryne amauensis which only grows up to and sat it down on the table in front of me. This frog was the Frogs and toads are more similar 7.7 millimetres long. The size of a dinner plate! I thought maybe it was dead, because entire frog is the same it was completely still. Then, with no warning, it leapt off the than you’d think. They’re both size as a pea! table and onto my chest! It got me right around the throat amphibians and even share a scientific The largest frog is the , which is about with its arms, kind of like a big frog-hug. Everyone in the name, Anura, which means ‘without tail’ goliath frog 30 centimetres long and village screamed – they thought I’d been attacked by this in Latin. Anurans with smooth skin are can weigh more than 3 giant frog. But I couldn’t stop laughing – the frog was just usually called frogs, while ones with kilograms – the same as a W brand new human baby, like a big baby. I picked it up and popped it back on the table, W A warty skin are usually called toads. A T but a whole lot slimier. and it quickly bounded away. T E But both smooth and warty-skinned E R R types can occur within the one Anuran family. Frogs and toads are a lot more brutal than they look. Did you F know there’s a frog that can inject poison into THE F R perfect R O its attackers using the horns on its head? Or one O G G S that breaks its own bones to use as weapons? NAME S + And they’re only the modern ones – ancient + Rocket frogs have a pointy downhill just like a loose Wolverine frogs are also T species were tough enough to tangle with baby T O WHERE CAN nose that looks like the tip of pebble. known as hairy frogs or O

A dinosaurs! G a rocket ship – and they can horror frogs. They have A D I SEE A FRO Little devil frogs are bright D launch like a rocket, too. The masses of hair-like growths S OR TOAD? red, the same colour as a S Australian rocket frog can sticking out near their back cartoon of the devil, and Frogs live on every jump 4 metres high! legs, a bit like Wolverine’s they’re packed full of poison, continent except shaggy sideburns. But that’s Ornate Pac-Man frogs have Antarctica. too. not all! Just like the comic super-wide jaws, just like the have lumpy skin book character, these frogs famous yellow computer game Mossy frogs have the ability to snap their character they are named that is covered in mottled own bones and force the after. They snap up their prey green patches. They look just bone spikes out through the just as enthusiastically, too! like a tiny, moss-covered rock! A group of skin of their feet to protect frogs is called Venezuelan pebble toads have Glass frogs have completely themselves. Once they’ve see-through skin, so when an army, a bumpy, pebble-coloured skin. neutralised the threat they group When these tiny mountain- you’re looking at them you can pull the broken bones back of toads is called dwelling toads feel threatened see all of the organs working inside their bodies a knot they roll up and bounce away away inside. and start to heal. INCREDIBLE! 10 . 11 HOW DO TURTLES AND BREATHE? TURTLES Some turtles come to FR EE the water’s surface WORMS regularly to breathe, but certain freshwater turtles hibernate all winter TORTOISeS underwater, and others barely come up for air year-round. So, how do Turtles and tortoises are both types of Testudines they do it? (say that tongue twister three times fast!). The mata mata turtle uses W ‘Testudines’ means ‘shell’, and you can’t miss that WHERE CAN I its bizarrely long snout like W A SEE A TURTLE you would use a snorkel. A T feature on these creatures – their shells cover T E OR TORTOISE? The common musk turtle FOR E R most of their bodies. So how do you tell the has a special tongue which WHAt’S DINNER? R difference between turtles and tortoises? It all There are turtles or is covered in little buds Tortoises eat plants, and some out they get spiked! These tortoises on every that draw oxygen out of turtles are partial to plant- turtles can eat more than 100 comes down to where they live – turtles can the water, so it breathes continent except based snacks as well, but kilograms of jellyfish each Antarctica. through its tongue as it spend time on land, but they generally prefer the for the most part turtles are day, so they play an important T swims. T U water. Some live in the ocean, others prefer fresh carnivorous – and they’ve come part in controlling jellyfish U R The Australian Fitzroy up with some pretty ingenious populations. R T T water. Tortoises always live on land. River turtle absorbs L ways to catch their meals. Cantor’s giant softshell turtles L E Turtles and tortoises have been oxygen through its cloaca, bury themselves in the mud E The alligator snapping turtle S or, in simple terms, it in the water, leaving just their S around since the dinosaurs, so lives in rivers and lakes in the + breathes through its butt. eyes and mouths poking out. + they’ve had plenty of time Yes, seriously. United States. It has a sneaky T They only go to the surface to T CLEVER! way of hunting that involves O to develop some weird breathe twice a day! They stay O R poking out its long, pink R completely still, and then when T habits, including tongue and wiggling it around T O a fish or crab wanders past O so it looks like a worm. Passing I breathing through their they snap it up with lightning I S Stink attack creatures that are lured in speed. Their dinner never sees S E butts, imitating worms to try to eat the ‘worm’ get E S Musk turtles, also called them coming. S and growing green snapped up in the turtle’s stinkpot turtles, are small Wood turtles love eating powerful, beak-like jaws. mohawks. enough to sit in your worms, and they’ve developed hand. When they feel Leatherback turtles have a a clever way to catch them. threatened, they release whole lot of spiny barbs inside The turtles stomp their feet to an overpoweringly bad their throats that help them imitate the sound of raindrops smell from musk glands eat jellyfish. The barbs point hitting the ground, luring underneath their shell. It towards their stomach so it’s earthworms out into the open smells so bad that most easy for jellies to slide down, where they can be gobbled up predators will back off. but if they try to slither back by the waiting turtle. 54 Sneaky! 55 WHAT ARE FULL OF MOVE OVER, MUD BATH FEELINGS TUSKS Elephants love to swim in water, but they’ll also wallow around MICHAEL PHELPS! very happily in a pool of mud. A mud bath helps elephants to Elephants are D FOR? keep cool and rid themselves of bugs. The mud has another incredibly clever, D E special benefit, too – it coats their skin and helps protect them sensitive creatures. E S Elephants are excellent swimmers. In fact, they’re the best S E Tusks are kind of like the swimmer of any land mammal – except for professional from the hot sun. Yes, even elephants can get sunburnt! They have excellent E R elephant version of a human swimmers! They are able to float quite well in the memories and can R T T pocketknife – they’re strong, water, and can also use their trunk like a snorkel and swim recognise up to 1,000 & & pointy and can do a whole with their body completely FLANNERY FILE other elephants! They G G lot of nifty things. African submerged underwater. have been known to R R A elephants have the biggest remove spears from A S tusks. wounded friends and S S Once I was in a bush camp in Botswana, and there was a cry when a loved one S L T usks are perfect for digging L little swimming pool there. A young elephant came right dies, just like humans A up roots to eat or drilling A N do. They often bury N down to reach underground into the camp and started playing with a hose that was D their dead; in one case, D S water. S being used to refill the pool. The people running the camp a group of elephants Elephants can use their were a bit nervous – they said an elephant had never come broke in and raided tusks to strip the bark off into their camp before. But it turned out to be harmless a shed filled with the trees so that they can body parts of illegally munch on it. – and hilarious. The elephant was having so much fun! He E slaughtered elephants, E L I f an elephant needs to grabbed the end of the hose out of the pool and squirted removing the ears L E E intimidate or fight predators, and feet (which were P himself all over, and then started waving it around wildly P or even other elephants, destined to be turned H and squirting everything else! I was standing a few metres H A tusks are perfect for the job. into umbrella stands) A N N As you can imagine, being away from him, so I got completely drenched. and burying them. T T S on the other end of a pair of S long tusks would be pretty terrifying!

CONSER VATION GOT MILK? STATUS CLIMATE CHANGE Baby elephants survive on their WA AA mother’s milk for two years. When H they’re being weaned ! ENDANGERED Different elephant species used to breed with each other, they throw tantrums that and sharing their genes in that way helped them become rival those of the wildest Asian elephants are stronger and more able to adapt to living in different two-year-old humans, endangered and places. Scientists worry that because the last three living screaming, trumpeting African elephants are elephant species no longer breed outside of their own and poking their mothers threatened. species, they may be less adaptable and more vulnerable with their tiny tusks. to climate change. 186 187