Mother Nature

The red-whiskered bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus) is native to India, Burma, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Java and Sumatra (islands in Indonesia), North and South Vietnam. Photograph taken by Mohan Kumar Kalaiah Red-whiskered bulbul is about 20 centimeters long, and have brown back wings, white breast and long tail. It has a prominent tall pointed crest, white cheeks with red whiskers behind their eyes and thin black moustach. It feeds on variety of fruits (berries etc.), nectar and small insects. Both sexes work together for several days to weave an open cup nest. Red-whiskered bulbuls weave the nest using leaves, twigs, root, bark strips etc. Both birds incubate the eggs and care for the young birds. Its life span is about 11 years.

Spiders are arthropods. An arthropod is an animal with a hard outer shell (exoskeleton or external skeleton), a segmented body (body divided into segments), and limbs with joints. Arthropods constitute more than 90% of the animal kingdom and include insects, spiders, centipedes, shrimp, and crayfish. Spiders live almost everywhere on earth, they live in forests, plains, mountains, deserts and underwater. Some spiders live on animals! There are about 36000 kinds of spiders and it is believed that there may be as many as 170,000 kinds of them. Spiders have two main body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen) and have eight legs. Most spiders have eight eyes, but some have as many as 24 eyes!! and others do not have any eyes. Most spiders eat insects and some eat fish and frogs, birds and lizards, large spiders may eat smaller spiders. Spiders bite their prey with their sharp fangs and the poison from the fangs slows or kills the prey. Young spiders are called spiderlings.

Snails are the oldest known animals in the world (evolved more than 600 million years ago). Snails are very small animals that are only a few inches long and weigh only a few ounces. They have adapted to a variety of habitat such as land, dessert, ocean etc. As a snail moves it leaves behind a trail of slime. This allows them to move easily across any type of land without injuring its body.