Animals

The March of the Red Crab
A Moth Find a New Home
Suicidal Birds
A leopard and A cheetah
The Spectacular Hornbill
The Antelope with an extraordinary nose
Masquerading Males
Tiny But Powerful
Electric Fishes
Paternal Care
Hairless Cat
Passionate Parrot
Calling Out To Mother
Hot Wheels
Discs On Their Wings
Two-humped Camels
Frozen Frog
Silken Chambers
Earth Pig
Swordsman of the Sea
The Ostrich Trick
Electrifying Meal
Bizarre Turtle
Grey Whales
The Flying Lemur
The Winged Fishing Creature
Llamas
A Different Sort of a Parrot
The Tailless Cat
The Ancestor Of The Rhino
Acquisitive Wood Rats
The Butterflyfish
The Amazing Jumper
The Largest Deer
The Devil’s Coach-Horse
The Porcupine With A Prehensile Tail
The Irritating Fencing
The Acrobatic Otter
The Busy Termite Colony
Superb Mimics
The Canary
Snow Monkey
Jumping Spiders
Glass Lizard
Beetle Rhino
The World’s Smallest Bear
Hygienic Ants
Flat as a Pancake
The Carpet Shark
The Centipede Walk

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Electrifying Meal

The duck-billed platypus of Australia feeds on live prey, such as shrimps, worms, snails, tadpoles and small fish. When it dives, its eyes close and its eyelids cover its ear holes. Scientists thought that it used both its acute sense of smell and ultra-sensitive bill to catch prey.
In 1986, a German scientist named Henning Scheich found that platypuses could find shrimps hidden in hollow bricks. Shrimps show an increase in the weak electrical charge all animals emit, when they flick their tails. To test if the platypuses were able to detect this, he let them choose between a charged torch battery, a dead battery and a shrimp.

The animals ignored the dead battery but attacked the charged battery more times than the shrimp!
The secret was in the sensors platypuses have in their bills. These are connected to a point in the brain that is specially sensitive to electrical stimulation. That enabled them to detect the tiny electrical charge given off by their prey.

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Last updated on :3/28/2006