Diet: Desert succulents, grasses, herbs, shoots, and tubers.
- Desert dwellers – they have widespread hoofs adapted to soft sand, and are slow runners.
- Rarely drink water. Instead they get moisture from dew and the desert plants they eat.
- Primarily nocturnal in the wild and rest during the heat of the day.
- Both males and females have horns.
Conservation status: Critically endangered
Diet: Carnivore: Antelope, zebras, wildebeests and other large animals of the grasslands. Sometimes they will hunt hippos, rhinos or elephants if food is scarce.
- Lions are the only large cats that live in social groups. The pride is made up of a dozen or so females, their young, immature males and the head male.
- The females do the majority of the hunting and the male defends the pride and their territory which is, on average, over 100 square miles.
- Cubs start hunting when they are a year old.
Black and White Colobus Monkey
Diet: Primarily leaves, stems, buds and shoots, fruit and aquatic plants.
- Colobus monkeys spend most of their life in trees. Their thumbs are tiny or absent which allows for quick movement and their long tails may act as parachutes as they leap up to 50 feet through the trees.
- They have a complex multi- chambered stomach. This helps them digest mature foliage and unripe fruit that other monkeys cannot.
Krider’s Red-Tailed Hawk
Diet: Mainly small mammals
- The red-tailed hawk, which can be identified by its red tail, is one of the most common raptors in North America and has many different colorizations across the United States. The Krider’s is a unique pale version.
- Call is a raspy scream. Their call is commonly used for movies and TV shows even if a red-tailed hawk is not the bird shown.
Diet: Small rodents
- They get their name due to the feathers that extend down their legs to their feet. This is an adaptation for living in northern climates.
- Hunts from the air or an elevated perch and frequently hovers.
- Nests along cliff faces. Nests are lined with grasses, sedges, small twigs and sometimes caribou bones.
Short Tailed Python
Diet: Mammals and birds
- In the wild these snakes can be a multitude of colors, depending on what area and island they are found on, and can range from red to brownish yellow to black.
- These are short, heavy bodied snakes. Females are roughly 4-6 feet in length and males are a little shorter. But, on average, they weigh 25 lbs.
- Like other pythons these snakes will lie in wait for their prey and then kill it by constriction (squeezing).
Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth
Diet: Leaves and fruit.
- Sloths spend the majority of their life in trees and only come to the ground to move to a different tree or to defecate. They do not move very well on the ground but are good swimmers.
- Their long coarse fur allows rain to shed off their body and stay dry. Blue-green algae can grow on their fur giving it a bluish-green hue and helps camouflage sloths from predators.
- They have the lowest body temperature of any mammal with a range of 76-96 ° F. By adjusting their body temperature they are able to conserve energy.
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Colombian Black-Faced Spider Monkey
Ateles fusciceps robustus
Diet: Fruits, leaves, seeds, spiders and insects.
- These monkeys do not have thumbs, but they do have a prehensile tail which acts as an extra limb and is able to grip branches as well as pick up and hold objects.
- At the tip of the tail is a hairless patch which has unique markings (like human fingertips).
- These monkeys live in large social groups of about 30 individuals. When the group gets too large it will break into smaller groups.
Diet: Small rodents, birds, reptiles and berries.
- Swift foxes are nocturnal and spend most of the day underground in their burrows.
- They are smaller than other canids weighing only 5-7 lbs, stand 12-16 inches high and 31 inches long. They got their name ‘swift’ due to their speed since they can run up to 30 mph.
- Well adapted to life in areas without a lot of water. They get most of the water they need from their food.
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