The word animal comes from a Latin word meaning "breath" or "soul." We tend automatically to think it synonymous with "mammal". However, to scientists and many others, animals include not only mammals but also birds, reptiles, fish, frogs, clams, lobsters, and insects - not to mention such humbler creatures as jellyfish and worms.
In the past, when the word seemed simpler, scientists classified all life into two kingdoms. Every living was either an animal or a plant. Today we know that life is far more complex, with a host of "lesser" species (such as myriad forms of bacteria) that fall into neither one kingdom nor the other.
- How long do animals live?
Through the life span of an animal depends on a number of factors (among others, the availability of food and exposure to disease), each species also seems to have a built-in biological clock that controls its aging. Turtles and tortoises, with their slow metabolisms, are apparently the longest-lived creatures. The oldest authenticated tortoise was captured on the Seychelles islands in 1766 and given as a mascot to the French garrison on the island of Mauritius. After falling from a gun emplacement 152 years later, it died. The age of the tortoise when captured is not known.
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Among mammals, man with his ability to control his environment and find cures for diseases, is the record setter. The great whales apparently have life spans approaching that of man; one fin whale, for exampls, is believed to have been an octogenarian. (The number of rings in a whale's waxy earplugs indicates its age.) Although in captivity elephants may live 60 or 70 years, their life spans are probably shorter in the wild. Among birds there are reliable records of parrots and swans more than 70 years old.
- Which animal is the biggest?
Measured but never weighed, the champion is the gigantic blue whale, which has been known to exceed 90 feet. Whales can grow as large as they do because their weight is supported by water. A land animal equally large would be crushed by its own weight, unless it were built so massively that it could barely move. And getting enough food on land to fuel such an immense bulk would be virtually impossible.
The largest living land animal is the male African elephant, which can reach a height of 12 feet at the shoulder and weigh 8 tons. However, as millions of Museum-goers know, the undisputed champions on land where the dinosaurs. Fossil remains prove that the well-known plant-eating Brontosaurus measured up to 70 feet from nose to tail. Scientist calculate that the animal when alive weighed some 30 tons. Even more massive was the gigantic Brachiosaurus, a browser that stood 40 feet tall and may have weighed as much as 80 tons. Others may have been largest still.
- Which animal is the smartest?
Measuring the intelligence of animals is difficult at best. One problem is that most test are based on things that we humans want the animals to do, such as setting up on command stepping on a treadle to get a reward of food. The animal's own needs and wishes are ignored.
Chimpanzees rank high, nearly everyone agrees. In the wild, they use sticks as weapons and as tools to extract termites from their burrows. In captivity they learn tricks readily, and they can reason well enough to pile up boxes in order to reach a high object, or to fit together sticks for the same purpose. Experimenters have even taught chimpanzees to communicate with them in sign language.
Dolphins and killer whales have learned elaborate routines to entertain aquarium audiences. Thought by some to be even more intelligent than man (their brains are proportionately larger), in scientific experiment they have shown great skill in telling the difference between objects of different sizes and shapes. Some observers claim that dolphins even can imitate human speech.
Other animal regarded as intelligent are elephants, horses, pigs, and domestic dogs and cats. Crows and pigeons have a limited ability to count. Parrots can imitate human speech, and mocking birds have a vast repertory of the songs of the other birds (they can mimic man-made sounds too) - but it is doubtful whether either talent helps the birds in the wild.
- Who has the biggest appetite?
In proportion to its size, the hungriest animal is the shrew, which must eat several times its own weight everyday because of its high metabolic rate. (A shrew's metabolism works so fast that its heartbeat sometimes goes as high as 1200 per minute.) A shrew is a creature, mouse-size or smaller, with a long pointed snout and a mouthful of sharp teeth. Active predators, shrews live mostly on insects and worms. Some have a poisonous bite.
In terms of total amount consumed, the great whales lead the list. A blue whale may devour upto eight tons a day of its preferred food - tiny, shrimp-like animals called krill. Yet even this titanic banquet amounts to only 4 per cent of the whale's total weight - quite a difference from the proportion consumed by the voracious shrew.
Among land animals, the elephant is the biggest eater, munching from 300 to 500 pounds a day of leaves, bark branches, grass, and other vegetable food. One reason for this high volume is that the elephant's food is low in nutritive value. In captivity, 100 to 150 pounds of hay, plus a few pailfuls of raw vegetables is enough.
From the tropics to the poles, there is almost no part of the earth where animals are absent. Even in bleak Antartica, wingless flies and springtails live on or around the edges of meltwater pools; and the frigid seas surrounding the continent support an enormously rich pageant of life. In deserts where the ground literally becomes scorching hot, burrowing animals find cool shelter beneath the surface. Even the deep ocean floor, veiled in perpetual blackness and with a paucity of food, is home to a thinly scattered population of creatures adapted to pressures of several tons per square inch.
One phenomenon noted by scientists is that many different species occur in tropical areas, but in relatively small numbers for any one species. In colder regions, the number of species is relatively small and the number of individuals large.
- How big are animal families?
An animal family may be as small as a mother dolphin and her single calf or as large as that of an old matriarch elephant, which includes her daughters and their offspring. The basic mammal family is mother and young, and that is true even among such harem-forming animals as the fur seals. A male fur seal jealously guards his females, but he pays no attention to their pups and cannot really be considered part of the family.
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