How many different kinds of animals live on earth?

 The story of Noah’s ark tells us that to save the earth he took a pair of every kind of animal on his ark and saved the earth from total destruction.

But if this could really have happened, then the ark must have been too big indeed! The number of different species or kinds of animals that live on Earth is much more than most of us imagine.

There are about 5,000 species of mammals. The number of kinds of birds is over 15,000. There are more than 3,000 kinds of snakes. The sea animals and the mollusc family have a variety of more than 100,000 members.

 The protozoa or the one-cell living creatures are of about 15,000 kinds. And the insect family has an unbelievable variety of 750,000 different kinds!

All this makes us realize that there are at least three million different kinds of living beings on Earth.

Why do we see earthworms on rainy days?

You must have seen a great number of earthworms around your house, on the roads and on the playground after a rainfall. Most people think that they come out from their underground homes after rain because their burrows are flooded with water. But earthworms aren’t afraid of water. They can live in water for months together, and in fact, die if their skin is dried out.

What these earthworms are actually afraid of is the waterlogged soil which contains carbonic acid. This is formed when certain chemicals in the soil are combined with water. Carbonic acid enters the body of the earthworm through the openings in its skin and can kill it.

So it’s not the rainwater but the chemical substance that brings the earthworms out after rainfall.

How slow does a snail run?

The story of the rabbit and the tortoise tells us how the slow and steady tortoise defeated the fast-running rabbit. But more animals travel at a slower pace than even the tortoise.

The snail must be the slowest-moving animal on earth. Some ‘fast running’ snails can crawl 150 feet in an hour, but the ordinary land snail the fastest took three minutes to travel just two feet! This means a speed of 40 feet per hour or about 7/1000 of a mile per hour! And remember that is the speed of the fastest snail. Slower ones sometimes at a rate of two feet an hour!

How many legs do centipedes have?

Centipedes are supposed to have one hundred legs each. The word centipede has been derived from the Latin word cent which means one hundred.

But in reality, only rarely a centipede will have exactly a hundred legs. Some have 30 or 42 legs and a few have been found with more than 160! The number, you may have noticed, is always an even one.

This is because all centipedes have many segments in their bodies and one pair of legs for each body segment. So if a centipede has 30 body segments, it will have 60 legs, if 50 then 100 legs, and so on. Millipedes too have two pairs of legs for each body segment, and most of them have about 700 legs.

What is a walking leaf?

Many extraordinary things exist in nature. Insects and animals change their size and colour according to their requirements. In nature, ‘camouflage’ means a disguise used by animals or plants to conceal themselves from their enemies. One of the best camouflages to be seen in the animal world is that used by an insect known as the walking leaf!

This insect spends its life in trees and shrubs, feeding on leaves at night and resting quietly during the day. Nature has given it a set of green wings which are shaped and ribbed exactly like the leaves of the trees in which it lives. This helps it hide away from its enemies.

How fast can an insect fly?

Birds, insects and some other animals have wings that help them reach from one place to another faster than us. Insects are very light and can fly very fast.

The flying speed of most of the insects is about 25 to 35 miles per hour. Scientists have studied many of these and found out that dragonflies-also called darning-needles are the fastest flying insects, and can fly at about 60 miles per hour when some other insect or bird is chasing them!

The dragonfly flies with its legs held together, forming a basket to capture insects. And it eats them while flying (without getting indigestion).