Tamim Ansary Illustrations by Derrick Williams i
Amazing Creatures Table of Contents Introduction.............................. v Bats: Masters of Sound...................... 1 The World of the Ants...................... 12 The Great Locust Mystery................... 22 How Smart Are Dolphins?................... 31 Do Cats Have Strange Powers?............... 42 iii
Amazing Creatures Introduction Is there a planet on which birds can talk? On which fish can walk? On which cats can read minds and insects can build cities? Yes, there is. You re living on it. That planet is called Earth. Earth may have as many as 20 million different kinds of animals. Each species is amazing in its own way. Consider the dog and its nose. A dog can recognize 100 different smells at the same time. Consider the vulture and its eyes. It can spot a mouse from 1,000 feet up in the air. The sloth is so slow that mold grows on its fur. Some animals are wonderful in strange v
Amazing Creatures ways. You will read about five such animals in this book. Some, like the cat, may seem ordinary. But wait until you learn what cats can do. The tiny ant may seem like one of the weakest animals. But wait until you learn what lots of ants can do together. Bats may seem creepy, but there is more to them than you think. Locusts seem to appear in swarms out of nowhere. In this book, you ll find the answer to that mystery. And let us not forget the friendly dolphin someday you may be exchanging e-mails with one of these creatures. Enjoy these stories about the wonders of the animal world. They may change the way you look at animals from now on. vi
Trail of Paper The Bible tells the story of the plagues of Egypt. The wicked pharaoh has refused to let Moses people go. So God 22
punishes the pharaoh. He brings 10 plagues down on Egypt. Rivers are turned to blood. Boils break out on the Egyptian people. Many other terrible things occur. And one of these 10 plagues is locusts. We don t hear much about locusts anymore. But they have caused some of the great disasters of history. Locusts are flying insects. They have long wings and strong back legs for hopping. They also have busy little jaws. All they do is eat crops. Now that doesn t sound so bad. But the trouble is, they come in millions. An attack of locusts may begin slowly. One day a farmer sees one or two of them 23
in his field. Then he sees 10 or 20 more. Those first locusts are like the beginning of a hurricane. When the full swarm arrives, it can blot out the sunlight. The locusts settle over the landscape like a blanket. They cover trees, bushes, and crops. As they move on, they leave bare sticks behind. One swarm of locusts can cover 500 square miles. It can eat 50,000 tons of vegetation a day. That s more than enough to cause a famine. In fact, in 1889, one big swarm covered 2,000 square miles. Then it flew out over the Red Sea, where it more or less vanished. 24
Locusts were a mystery for most of history. They seemed to spring from nowhere by the millions. After shaving the earth bare, they seemed to vanish. Where did they come from? Where did they go? The mystery was solved in 1921. And the answer was a strange one. Locusts, as it turns out, are the same as 25
grasshoppers. Yet, the two neither look nor act the same. Grasshoppers have short wings, long legs, thin shoulders, and big heads. They change their color to match their background. They move slowly. And they live alone. You never see many of them in one place. They are quite harmless to humans. Locusts have long wings, short legs, small heads, and thick shoulders. They have a black-and-yellow color that makes them stand out. And, of course, you never see just one. They come in swarms. It turns out that these insects live as grasshoppers most of the time. But in 26
certain years, their numbers grow. As they increase, they run into more and more of their kind. When this happens, a creepy transformation begins. The harmless grasshoppers change color. The shape of their bodies changes, too. Each one goes looking for others of its kind. In a short time, they gather a crowd. This is the seed of a locust swarm. It keeps moving. It keeps gathering strength. Within a few short days, all the grasshoppers in a region have changed into locusts. Now they begin cutting across the 27
landscape, eating everything that grows. Once the process starts, not much can be done. People have tried covering their crops. They have tried putting up screens that the locusts will run into. Nothing works very well. The locusts themselves can t stop moving once they start. If they come to a big body of 28
water, they just start across it. One swarm was found 1,200 miles out at sea. It was just going to go until it ran out of energy. Usually it takes a force of nature to stop a locust swarm. A storm might do it. Even a sudden shift in the weather might do it. The swarm breaks up. The locusts turn back into grasshoppers. In Utah, legend has it that a swarm of locusts was stopped by a very unusual force of nature. For some reason, huge flocks of seagulls showed up. They started eating the locusts. They didn t stop until the insects were gone. Today there is a statue in Salt Lake 29
City, Utah. It honors the seagulls that saved the city from a plague of locusts. 30