The family unit is composed of pairs, with the offspring that is not mature yet. They use scent marking with vocal calls to defend territorial boundaries.  The unusual aspect of the pairing is that the night monkey offspring are raised by the male and usually one offspring is born per year.  This is different from most other types of primates where the female is the primary caregiver.

The variety of calls, whistles, hoots and other verbal communication is limited to about eight main types. The reason these are important is for use in defining territory, bounds and as warning about predators. The range of elevation these monkeys can be found at is large, and as a result, the amount of fur is greater among those living in higher forested elevations.

One of the reasons why the night monkeys are valued by humans is for medical research purposes. These are some of the species that are susceptible to the malaria virus that humans have, so they are used as test animals for vaccines. There are a variety of opinions as to the correct classification of the population of the owl monkey, with the most preferred classification being in one or two main groups. There are differences in chromosome varieties that lead more modern thinking naturalists to break up the species into a variety of classifications.  There are fossil species that are considered to be of a different species but the extant species are part of this classification. It is certain, however with a large range of forested areas in remote areas the night or owl monkey will remain alive and well for a number of years.

Night Monkey – South American Owl Monkey

Physical Characteristics

Badgers are short and fat and have short legs, small ears, long heads and a short tail. Their faces are black and white and their bodies are grey with white stripes. They get to around 35 inches long and weight an average of around 20 to 24 pounds. The ones in Eurasia, however, can get twice that size.

Habitat and Location

Badgers live in underground tunnels called setts that may even be hundreds of years old. They live in groups with rooms for sleeping, latrines, breeding and for taking care of the young.  Badgers live in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK and in Asia.

Diet

Most badgers eat worms, insects, grubs, small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and sometimes fruits. Some kinds also eat snakes or honey. They dig up great amounts of dirt at times with their sharp claws to get to their foods and can do this very quickly. They are particularly partial to peanuts and peanut butter sandwiches spread with a layer of honey on top.

Breeding Facts

Badgers are able to mate any month, but mostly do it in February or later in the year. They can have their first litter of cubs by the time they are a year old. The female’s body can take in the sperm and have a delayed implantation and the body will not start the growth of the fetuses until later on when the time is goo and food is plentiful.

Cubs are kept underground until about five weeks old when they open their eyes. After three months of age they are fed by the mother through regurgitated insects or worms and are finding their own foods a couples months later.

Physical Characteristics

Macaques range from light grey to dark brown in color, with the animals featuring nearly every shade between. Some have tails, such as the long-tailed macaque, while other species are tailless. Adult male macaques reach nearly two feet in height while females are shorter in stature at 18 inches. There is a significant weight variance between the genders as well, with full-grown males weighing as much as 38 pounds in comparison to 24 pounds for females.

Habitat and Location

Most species live in undisturbed forests, swamps and similar territory in the Asian region. The endangered Barbary macaque is the only species not found in Asia, instead residing Morocco. Macaques gravitate to areas bordering a reliable water source such as islands, riverbanks and high-density growth. Ideally, the monkeys select a region that is near a human settlement that provides easy access to gardens and crops for produce and sustainability. There is a large colony of macaques on Gibraltar.

Diet

The traditional diet of a macaque in the wild consists heavily of fruits, berries, leaves and twigs. Macaques that live near settlements will raid farms for fresh fruits and other crops. In the winter months and dry seasons when fruits are not as plentiful, the animals eat mushrooms, flowers, bird eggs and seeds.

Breeding Facts

Female macaques reach sexual maturity a full year before males. Mating season in the wild falls in the late fall and early winter months, typically occurring between October and January. In direct response to the winter mating season, new animals are born in the late spring and early summer, from the end of March through June. Groups of macaques vary in gender distribution with a common distribution of just under or just over one female per male.

Barbary Macaque Apes – Gibraltar Vacations – Macaques

The Red Kite is a fairly large sized bird of prey that comes from the Accipitridae family of birds.

Physical Characteristics

The Red Kite gets between 24 and 27 inches long and has a wingspan of  between 175 and 195 cm. It weighs between 800 and 1300 grams and the female is slightly larger than the male. It has a long forked shaped tail, and a red and white body.

Habitat and Location

Red Kites are known to live in Europe, Africa, Turkey, and even have appeared in Finland, Israel and Libya.

Diet

The Red Kite eats little mammals like mice, shrews, voles, rabbits and hares. It also will eat carrion, sometimes finding dead sheep or game birds. They also have been known to eat birds, reptiles, amphibians and earthworms.

Breeding Facts

The adult red kites prefer to live alone except during breeding season.  They are migratory and breed in the UK, or Spain to name a couple of places. They may maintain as many as five alternate nest sites. Male and female both help to build the nest, which is made of sticks and grass and lined with sheep’s wool or vegetation. The nest is built high up in a tree on a limb or in a fork.
Red Kites mate when they are two or three years old and they mate for life.

The nest is built in March or April. The female lays two to four eggs at intervals of one every three days. The female sits on the eggs and the male brings her food. They hatch in about a month.

Since the eggs are laid so far apart, it is common for some chicks to be bigger and stronger, which can result in the smaller one dying for lack of food or being killed by the stronger one.

Polar bears are related to brown bears, but are specialized to live in the freezing cold waters and lands of the Arctic. It is an endangered species.

Physical Characteristics

The polar bear is the world’s biggest meat eater on land and is the world’s biggest bear, although it may share that honor with the Kodiak Bear, which is about the same size. Adult polar bears weight up to about 1,500 pounds and the females are half as big as the males. Its body has been adapted to living in frigid areas and its paws are made to walk on ice and snow, as well as survive in open, freezing waters and with sharp claws to hunt with.

It has 42 teeth, and its paw pads have dermal bumps to give them traction when they walk over the ice. Their claws are shorter and stockier than other bears since they must handle heavy prey on the ice, plus they work well to dig in the ice. Its fur has both an under layer and an outer layer and they molt May through August.  An interesting fact is that the fur may turn green in captivity due to algae growing in the fur.

Polar bears can smell prey a mile away and can swim very fast.

Habitat and Location

The polar bear lives mainly in the Arctic Circle region around the Arctic Ocean. It stays mostly in the water and the land masses in and around it. The polar bear is many times called a marine mammal due to the fact it stays at sea for several months without going on permanent land masses. It prefers to live on the sea ice that covers the Arctic waters over the continental shelf areas.

Diet

Polar bears eat seals and live off their own fat reserves when hunting is lean. Grown polar bears normally only eat the seal’s skin and blubber, but younger bears eat the meat as well.

Breeding Facts

Polar bears have their mating and courtship rituals in April and May while on the sea ice. Males follow the females sometimes for more than 60 miles and may fight other males for the right to breed. The male and female remain together for about a week.  After mating, the egg is fertilized, but doesn’t start developing until August or September. The female tries to eat as much as possible until then and may double her weight.

The baby cubs are born sometime in-between November and February and are blind and their weight is less than two pounds. There are usually two of them.

The cubs and mother stay den bound until around Feb to April and the cubs nurse during that time. Cubs stay with the mother for about two years.

Polar Bear – The World’s Biggest Bear – Kodiak Bear

Physical Characteristics

The male peacock’s feathers are iridescent bluish green or green in color. Its tail, or train, can spread out into a colorful fan with what looks like eyes. They also have a crest on their heads. The female in contrast is very dull colored with greens and browns and grays. They don’t have the large train of feathers like the males. The male uses his brilliant plumes to attract females and can arch it way over his back and touch the ground if he desires.

Habitat and Location

Peacocks live in forests and build their nests at ground level, but they roost in the branches of trees. Wild ones are known to congregate in large groups of birds called parties. Blue peacocks are found in both India and Sri Lanka, and the green species lives in Java and Burma. The Congo peacock lives in Africa.

Diet

Peacocks eat things like plants, flowers, seeds, bugs, and even the occasional reptiles or amphibians. They are known to hunt in packs of 10 to 90 birds.

Breeding Facts

Males give out a loud and high pitched cry during mating season. The females pick their favorite male based on its size, color and how big and beautiful the train of tail feathers is. Males form harems and breed with multiple females and each might have up to five eggs.

Peacock – Indian National Bird – Peahen

Physical Characteristics

They are quite big birds and can get to 17 inches tall, can weigh as much as a pound and their beaks can grow to four inches long. Their feathers are considered dull in color and some have blue wings. They also have brown, black and white markings.

Habitat and Location

The Kookaburra has been found living in places from wet forests to dry deserts. It also is sometimes found in human residential areas. It lives in Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. It lives in a family set up in groups. It is a very territorial bird and have been known to sing in order to mark that territory. They are not known to migrate.

Diet

Kookaburras are meat eaters. They live on a diet of things like raw meat, worms, birds, lizards, mice, birds, and snakes. They are known to take food from human barbeques at times.

Breeding Facts

The Kookaburras normally nest inside of hollow trees or even dug out termite nests for laying their eggs. They have white eggs and lay between two and four eggs. Both the male and female sit on the eggs. The eggs take between 24 and 26 days to hatch out. The babies then stay in the nest for about a month before they learn to fly. Then, the mother and father bird also feed them for up to 40 days.

Kookaburra – Type Of Big Kingfisher – Australian Kookaburra

Physical Characteristics

The okapi has striped legs and a brown solid body and looks somewhat like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe with a short neck. It also has a long pointy tongue that is bright blue and sticky and used to eat leaves.  The males have small horns on their heads and big ears that develop at between one and five years old. Their coats are oily and can repel rain. They can weigh between 450 and 550 pounds.

Habitat and Location

The okapi come from the Ituri Rainforest in Central Africa.  They live at altitudes of between 500 and 1000 meters and prefer to live in forest areas or open woodlands.

Diet

Okapis are considered as herbivores and mostly eat leaves, buds, fungi, grass, fruit and ferns. They also consume salty red clay near their habitats that helps them to get the salt they need. Some of what they eat is actually poisonous to people, but doesn’t harm the okapis.

Breeding Facts

Okapis become sexually mature at about two years old and during courtship they display periods of sniffing each other, circling around and licking before copulating. Once pregnant, it takes about 15 months for the young to be born. They are weaned at six months old.  Sometimes young will nurse off of more than one female.

Okapi – Solitary Animals – Related To Giraffe

Physical Characteristics

The fairy armadillo is pale rose to pink in color and measures 3.5 to 4.5 inches long, excluding the tail, and weighs less than a pound. It also has a pointed nose and small eyes and ears.

Fairy armadillos have long front claws, which are used to agitate the sand, allowing them to essentially swim through ground as if it was water.They are shaped like torpedoes and have a shielded head to protect them from abrasion from the sand.

Their legs, undersides of their bodies, and under their shells are covered with soft, fine white hairs.The dorsal shell of a fairy armadillo is almost completely separate from the body; a bone plate in the shell at the rear is securely attached to the pelvic bones.

A fairy armadillo’s tail is distinctively spatula-shaped and protrudes from a notch in the rear plate. The tail drags behind the fairy armadillo as it walks, because the tail cannot be raised.

Habitat and Location

Fairy armadillos can be found in central Argentina, where they inhabit grasslands and sandy plains with thorn bushes and cacti. They tend to burrow small holes near ant colonies.

Diet

Fairy armadillos mainly feast on ants and ant larvae. However, they will also eat worms, snails, insects, larvae, and various plant and root material.

Breeding Facts

Baby fairy armadillos resemble their parents, but their shells do not completely harden until they are fully grown. The female armadillo usually gives birth to only one pup at a time. Although, fairy armadillos tend to live solitary lives, they are polygamous when it comes to mating.

The Fairy Armadillo – Ant Eater – Pink Fairy Armadillo -World Of Nature

Emperor penguins are the largest type of penguin, standing up to four feet tall and weighing between 70 and 90 pounds. They are distinctive by their yellow, gray, and black markings of the upper body and wings. To maintain insulation and waterproofing, a gland near their tail secretes oil into the feathers. The penguins preen their feathers to spread the oil. They can swim up to fifteen kilometers an hour.

Habitat and Location

Emperor penguins enjoy residing in the coldest climate on Earth, all around the Antarctic continent. On the Antarctic ice, temperatures can drop as low as -140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Diet

The emperor penguin mainly feasts on fish, crustaceans, and cephalopods. In particular, they enjoy Antarctic silverfish.

Breeding Facts

Once emperor penguins are four years old, they are ready to mate. After mating, the female penguin lays one large egg. Immediately, the egg is rolled to the top of the male penguin’s feet. A thick fold of skin hanging from the belly of the male keeps the egg warm, while it rests on his feet. The males stay huddles in groups for up to nine weeks, while the females return to the open sea to feed. During this time, the males can lose half of their weight due to not eating.

After the egg hatches, the female emperor penguin returns to care for the chick. It is now the male’s turn to go to the open sea to feed and regain his weight. In a few weeks the male returns to help keep the chick warm and fed from food in his stomach. Once the chicks are seven weeks old, they huddle together for protection and warmth, but are still fed by their parents. At the beginning of summer season in the Antarctic, the chicks are fully grown –typically they are at six months old.

Emperor Penguin – Facts – Emperor Penguin Habits