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A Unit8 Page75+190

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Tuan Anh Tran
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10 views1 page

A Unit8 Page75+190

Uploaded by

Tuan Anh Tran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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One of a kind

The Aye-Aye resembles a cross SHIPS OF THE


GOBI DESERT
between a small monkey and
a rat because of its rodent-
like front teeth. It lives in
the canopy of trees in the
Madagascan rainforest, usually
nesting in a fork of the tree.
As well as fruit and vegetation, The wild Bactrian camel is found in the Gobi desert of
it also eats small worms and Mongolia and China, which ranges from boiling sand
insects living in the trees, dunes to frozen hills and mountains. It has evolved to
which it finds in a similar way withstand the extremes of heat and cold as well as the
to a woodpecker. It taps on arid landscape. It has thick eyelashes that close to form
the trunk until it detects a hollow sound, then gnaws away a protective barrier against sandstorms and it can also
at the bark with its teeth to make a hole before inserting its completely close its thin, slit-like nostrils to prevent dust
elongated middle finger in through the hole to pull the grubs entering. It eats snow in the winter months and, unlike
out. There is only one other animal that uses this technique: any other camel, can also drink salt water. It is still
the striped possum. unknown how it processes the salt water.
When foraging for food, Aye-Ayes may cover over four Excess water is stored not in its humps but in the
kilometres a night as they leap from treetop to treetop. Aye- bloodstream. The humps are largely made up of fat.
Ayes are generally solitary creatures that only socialise in The camel draws upon these fat reserves in times
order to mate, with the female of the species being dominant. of drought and famine. Like other camels, it reduces
The males will often aggressively compete for a female’s water loss by hardly sweating or urinating. It also has a
attention. remarkably tough tongue, capable of eating the sharp
The Aye-Aye is endangered because of a number of factors. thorns of desert shrubs. These camels are incredibly
Firstly, its habitat is being destroyed, increasingly forcing it resistant to disease, which may surprise people
to raid villages for food. It is quite fearless in approaching considering their numbers are dwindling.
humans, but unfortunately humans are not always friendly
towards it. Villagers not only kill Aye-Ayes because they are The wild Bactrian camels roam widely in small herds of
a nuisance and eat farm crops, but also because they are two to fifteen members and will travel vast distances in
believed to be evil – capable of creeping into homes and search of food and water. However, they are threatened
puncturing a person’s heart while they sleep. from a number of angles. They were heavily hunted
Although laws exist against killing them and several reserves in previous years and continue to be so where there is
in the jungle have been set up, their numbers continue to competition for water sources from domestic herds. They
decline. Captive breeding programmes are also working to have also suffered poisoning as a result of the use of
preserve them. dangerous chemicals in illegal mining activities. Finally,
they often interbreed with domestic Bactrians, which
leads them to lose the capability to drink salt water.
Despite efforts to crack down on illegal mining and
hunting, the wild Bactrian camel has become one of the
rarest mammals in the world. There are now captive
breeding programmes aimed at restoring populations.

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