Unbelievable Animals
by James Meyers
Lingest-Lived Animals of All: Turtles
The turtle may be one of the slowest animals. But what if it does move slowly? The turtle makes up for it in long life. This cousin of the early dinosaurs lives longer than any other animal on earth! Strange as it may seem, giant turtles have been known to live well over two hundred years. Scientists believe that some turtles may even reach the age of three hundred!
How do these hard-shelled animals live so long? Taking things easy enables them to do it. A turtle eats slowly, moves slowly, and grows slowly. It takes more than a year just for its shell to become hard. And some turtle eggs take as long as a year to hatch!
High Jumpers and Far Travelers: Fleas.
Anyone who owns a pet is likely to know all too well a little insect called the flea. These impolite insects live in the hair of many animals. They can go from one animal to another quite easily. But did you know that fleas do not have wings? They cannot fly - but they are wonderful jumpers. They can jump one hundred times their own height. That is the same as a person jumping a 40-story building. Fleas are truly unbelievable jumpers.
Terns
The Arctic tern leads a strange life. It spends three months of each year near the North Pole, three months near the South Pole - and almost six months in the air! This small bird makes one of the longest trips of any animal.
The tern summers in the North. In the fall it heads south. Traveling at 50 to 55 kilometers an hour, stopping to rest and eat on the ocean and on land, the tern flies south for three months. After a trip that may cover 18 thousand kilometers, the tern reaches the South Pole.
But when spring comes the tern is off again. It makes another 18 thousand-kilometer trip, returning to its home in the North. This little bird, then, flies a round trip covering as much as 36 thousand kilometers. And it repeats the trip each year!
Seals
Alaskan seals are the best long-distance swimmers in the world. In late spring and summer, they bear their young on the rocky islands off Alaska. Then they take to the water. They swim south to avoid the cold of winter. For eight months they stay in the ocean. Sometimes they swim as much as 10 thousand kilometers without once touching land before they return to Alaska in the spring.
Other Unbelievable Animals
The Cheetah
The swiftest person cannot run much faster than 40 kilometers an hour. The fastest dog darts along at 65 kilometers an hour. Racehorses can run from 72 to 80 kilometers an hour. The antelope can fly along the ground at close to one hundred. But no animal can keep up with the swiftest of all the world's runners - the jungle cat known as the cheetah.
Of all the great cats, the cheetah is the swiftest-looking. Its golden coat is covered with black spots. Its legs are longer than the legs of the lion or the tiger. When hunting an antelope, the cheetah can race at 115 kilometers an hour! Once the cheetah decides to attack, there is no animal that can get away from it.
Nature's Thermometer, the Cricket.
The cricket makes its chirping noises by rubbing its front wings together. The warmer the air, the greater the number of chirps it makes. So, you can measure how warm it is by counting a cricket's chirps! If the thermometer reads between 45 and 80 degrees, count the number of chirps you hear in 15 seconds. Then add 37 to this number. The number will tell you just how warm the air is at that time!
The Tree Climber
The walking fish has the best of two worlds. In the water it swims like any other fish. But this fish's fins are bent in such a way that they can be used for walking, too. And the walking fish often does take a walk, right out of the water. It climbs the lower branches of trees near the water. This strange fish can live quite well out of water, and even eats insects it finds in the trees. | 
