Tag: terrestrial
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Meet the giant anteater
It’s summer here in Boston, which means the dreaded return of ants. We’ve been getting ants in our house lately (although they seem to be gone after we set out some traps!). But you know what else can get rid of ants? Anteaters. Anteaters are animals in the order Pilosa, an order that includes sloths. There…
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Meet the dik-dik
Some animals just have names that are fun to say. Like this week’s animal: the dik-dik. And, to make dik-diks even more fun, they’re also super cute! And as if dik-diks couldn’t be cuter, I have some good news for you: a baby dik-dik was recently born at the Edinburgh Zoo! The baby is a female named Petal, and…
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Meet the secretary bird
I’m excited to tell you all about this week’s animal. It holds a special place in my heart because it’s so cool: the secretary bird. First off, just look at that face. Absolutely fierce. And secondly, they hunt in such a cool way. I’ll talk about it at the end of this post, but here’s…
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Meet the naked mole-rat
It’s a weird one this week, folks. I was preparing for a lab presentation when I stumbled across a paper looking at pain insensitivity in mole-rats. I was absolutely taken with this paper – who knew that naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) didn’t feel pain from peppers or citrus? (more on this later). Why are they…