Seymour Simon - Animals Nobody Loves

The shark is the most feared animal in the sea. Some sharks are large and dangerous. Others are just a few feet long and eat small fish. Sharks come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors. Hammerheads, tiger sharks, and mako sharks have powerful jaws and razor-sharp teeth. Some sharks can bite three hundred times harder than a human.

The most dangerous shark is the great white shark. It usually swims in the open sea. But sometimes a great white shark may attack and kill swimmers with no warning. It may even attack small boats. Its large, saw-edged teeth can rip through wood and even metal. The great white shark has a huge appetite and will eat any animal or person that it finds in its path.

Bats look like mice with wings. They look like birds, too, but they are not. Bats wings have no feathersthey are covered with skin.

Some people think bats are blind because they fly back and forth so strangely. But bats are not blind. Bats can see, and they give off high-pitched sounds that echo back from objects to their ears. That helps the bats to navigate even in total darkness.

Some kinds of bats eat fruit. There are also bats that catch small animals such as mice, bats that can catch small fish, and vampire bats, which suck blood from animals such as cattle.

People have many strange ideas about bats. Bats do not attack people. They do not get stuck in peoples hair. In fact, most bats can be helpful to us, because they eat insect pests such as mosquitoes.

A large grizzly bear is one of the strongest animals in the world. A full-grown male is over eight feet long from nose to tail and can weigh more than seven hundred pounds. Grizzlies eat everything from squirrels to deer, and from berries to birds. Almost any animal in grizzly country may wind up as a meal for this mighty hunter.

Once, the grizzly was the most feared animal of the American Northwest. Many thousands of grizzlies lived all along the Pacific Coast. But now only a few hundred grizzlies are left. Even the grizzly was no match for a bullet from a high-powered rifle, or the loss of its hunting lands to people turning the range into farms and ranches.

There is no doubt that a grizzly bear is a dangerous animal and should be left alone. Any encounter with a bear can be frightening. If you see a bear that is far away or doesnt see you, turn around and go back. If the bear is close or does see you, remain calm. Do not run. Instead, stand tall or back away slowly and wave your hands and speak loudly. The chances are that the bear will not bother you and will disappear.

This Indian cobra is only about five and a half feet long, one-third the size of the largest poisonous snake in the world, the king cobra. Since Indian cobras are commonly found in populated areas and often go into houses to catch rats, they are the ones that most often bite people.

The fangs in the front of a cobras mouth inject a deadly poison that can paralyze a person or an animal. In about one of ten cases, cobra bites are fatal. In India alone, cobras are reported to kill thousands of people each year, more than sharks all over the world do in fifty years.

When threatened, a cobra spreads its hood by raising and pushing forward the long ribs behind its neck. The skin stretches across the ribs, forming a hood that may be four times as wide as the snakes body. Few sights are more terrifying than a fifteen-foot-long king cobra, its hood erect, preparing to strike!

Most people dont like vultures because they eat dead animals. The sight of vultures circling in the sky is a sign that an animal is near death. When the animal dies, vultures land and cluster in a group around the body, tearing at the flesh.

There are different kinds of vultures all over the world. Vultures are big birds, and some can spread their wings to twelve feet. Vultures heads are naked or covered by only a few feathers. They have hooked beaks like hawks and eagles. Vultures may be related to hawks and eagles, but they arent nearly as popular. In fact, most people think vultures looks and habits are downright repulsive.

Vultures may be ugly, but they fly beautifully. Vultures soar high on air currents in the daytime. They use their powerful eyesight to find food. They can sometimes spot a dying animal forty miles away.

Many people think spiders are horrible creatures. They are afraid that spiders will jump up and bite them. Some people run away when they see a spider. Others try to kill any spider they see.

But spiders do not normally bite human beings. Spiders usually trap insects they prey uponfrom flies and mosquitoes to grasshoppers and cricketsin beautiful silken webs. Then they bite the insect and inject a poison to quiet it down so that they can eat it. So we should remember that spiders do us a lot of good by getting rid of insect pests.

Of course, if you trap a spider and try to grab it, it may bite you. The bite of most spiders is harmless. But a few spiders, such as the black widow, are very poisonous. A bite from a black widow can make people sick or even kill them. Its a good idea just to watch spiders and not bother them.

The hyena looks like a large dog. Its front legs are longer than its back ones, so its body slopes downward. Another name for the hyena is the laughing hyena. Hyenas roam in packs on the plains of Africa. During the night, hyenas howl. When they come near their prey, they make noises that sound like crazy laughter.

The hyena has a good sense of smell that helps it find food. Like the vulture, the hyena eats dead and dying animals. It arrives after the vultures have feasted. The hyena uses its powerful jaws and teeth to crush the bones left over by lions, cheetahs, and leopards.