50 Fun Facts About Habitats

Polar bears look white against the Arctic sea ice, but what color is the skin beneath their fur?

Black skin soaks up the sun's heat, and the fur is not truly white either: the long guard hairs are transparent and hollow, which helps trap warmth.

A camel can go days without a drink in the desert, yet its hump stores what instead of water?

Fat in the hump is an energy store for lean times. When a thirsty camel does find water, it can gulp down about 140 liters in one go.

Which continent is Earth's driest, mostly desert yet holding about 70% of the world's fresh water?

Antarctica is the world's largest cold desert: precipitation tops 200 mm a year only along the coast, with far less inland, and that water stays locked up as ice.

Which Australian marsupial sleeps up to 20 hours a day and feeds mostly on eucalyptus leaves?

Koala meals are so low in energy that the animal dozes most of the day, and eucalyptus leaves contain toxins that put off most other mammals.

Almost all wild penguins live in which half of Earth, with only one species reaching the equator?

Southern Hemisphere coasts are home to almost all penguins, so wild penguins and polar bears never meet. The Galapagos penguin, right on the equator, lives farthest north.

Coral reefs, home to about a quarter of all sea species, are built by colonies of which tiny animals?

Polyps are soft-bodied animals that each lay down a hard chalky skeleton, and a reef is countless skeletons cemented together over the centuries.

Flamingos turn pink from pigments in the algae and shrimp they eat, pigments that also color which vegetable?

Carrots and flamingos both owe their color to carotenoids. A flamingo chick hatches grayish and only turns pink as the pigments from its meals build up.

Which Central and South American rainforest mammal has green algae growing in its fur as a disguise?

Sloth fur has grooved hairs where the algae take hold, and it also shelters moths, some of which live nowhere else but on the animal.

Which rodent builds its own pond habitat by felling trees with its teeth to dam streams?

Beaver dams flood the land into wetlands that many other species then move into, which is why the animal is called a keystone species.

Giant pandas live in a few mountain forests of China, where which plant makes up nearly all they eat?

Bamboo makes up about 99% of what a giant panda eats, even though scientists class the animal among the carnivores, alongside the other bears.

Which African desert, the largest hot desert on Earth, has sand dunes that rise more than 180 meters?

The Sahara has not always been dry: it has swung between desert and green grassland about every 20,000 years as a wobble in Earth's axis moves the monsoon rains.

Which rainforest, the largest on Earth, is home to about one in ten of all the world's known species?

The Amazon holds more than half of all the rainforest left on Earth, and about 60% of it lies inside a single country, Brazil.

Clownfish hide from predators among the stinging tentacles of which sea creature, unharmed by its venom?

Sea anemone stings fail to fire at a clownfish, and the evidence points to the fish's slimy coat, which seems to copy the mucus of its host.

Frogs, toads and newts belong to which animal group, whose Greek name means 'both kinds of life'?

Amphibians usually lead a double life: the young hatch in water breathing through gills, then change shape and move onto land with air-breathing lungs.

Which desert plants, such as the saguaro, store water in thick stems and have spines in place of leaves?

Cacti carry spines that are really highly modified leaves, and they do a second job: shading the stem and slowing the air around it so less water escapes.

Which leafy rainforest layer, formed where the treetops meet, is home to most of the animals living there?

The canopy is only about 10 meters thick yet soaks up around 95% of the sunlight, which is why the ground far below it stays dim and fairly bare.

Which cold, treeless habitat across northern Russia and Canada has subsoil that stays frozen all year?

Tundra soil holds so much frozen plant matter that it acts as a carbon store, and as the ground thaws those greenhouse gases escape into the air.

Lions, zebras and giraffes share which grassy African habitat, where trees grow but never form a closed forest?

Savanna trees leave gaps overhead, so enough light reaches the ground to keep an unbroken carpet of grass growing beneath them.

Which word describes owls, bats and the many desert creatures that sleep by day and feed at night?

Nocturnal habits are common in deserts because staying hidden through the hot, dry daytime stops an animal from losing precious water.

Which winter state lets hedgehogs and ground squirrels slow their heartbeat and breathing to save energy?

Hibernation lets body temperature fall almost to that of the surrounding air, though the sleepers still rouse briefly now and then before settling back.

Which survival trick does an Arctic hare use when its coat turns from brown in summer to white in winter?

Camouflage follows the seasons for most Arctic hares, but those in the far north of Canada, where summer is very short, simply stay white all year.

The fennec fox of North Africa's deserts sheds body heat through which unusually large body part?

Ears on a fennec fox are the biggest for body size in the whole canid family, and they double as a way to hear prey moving underground.

Monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles from Canada and the United States to winter in which country?

Mexico's wintering monarchs never make the round trip themselves: it takes the second, third and fourth generations to work their way back north.

Which great ape, named from Malay words for 'person' and 'forest', now lives only on Borneo and Sumatra?

Orangutans are the most tree-dwelling of the great apes, spending most of their time off the ground, and they once ranged across Southeast Asia into South China.

Lemurs are native only to which island nation off the east coast of Africa?

Madagascar lost its biggest lemurs after people arrived about 2,000 years ago: at least 17 species died out, every one of them larger than any lemur alive today.

Which seashore animal guards its soft body inside empty snail shells, swapping to bigger ones as it grows?

Hermit crabs sometimes gather around a spare shell and form a queue by size, then all trade homes in sequence, each moving up to the next size.

Which fish hatches in a stream, grows up at sea, then swims back upriver to breed where it hatched?

Salmon have to retune their body chemistry on the way out, lingering in half-salty water until they can cope with the open ocean.

Which whale of Arctic waters is known for the long spiral tusk, up to 3 meters, grown by males?

The narwhal's tusk is really a canine tooth that pushes out from the left side of the upper jaw, and nobody is sure whether it is a weapon, a feeding tool or a sensor.

Which insects build some of the world's largest mounds, up to 9 meters tall, with chimneys and ridges?

Termites of some species build wedge-shaped mounds lined up north to south, so the nest warms quickly in the morning but avoids overheating in the midday sun.

Which northern forest of pines, spruces and larches, also called boreal forest, is the largest land biome?

Taiga covers huge areas of Russia and Canada, and its mix of trees shifts by region: in eastern Siberia it becomes one vast forest of larch.

Which coastal habitat, among Earth's most productive, forms where a river's fresh water mixes with the sea?

An estuary works as a nursery for the young of many sea fish and shellfish, and most existing ones formed when rising seas flooded river valleys about 10,000 years ago.

Which tropical coastal trees stand on stilt-like roots in salt water that would kill most plants?

Mangroves filter out salt and take in air through roots that poke above the mud, and the underwater tangle becomes a nursery for the young of larger sea animals.

Sea otters hunt among towering underwater forests of which brown seaweed, able to grow half a meter in a day?

Kelp forests depend on those otters: where they vanish, sea urchin numbers explode and the grazers can strip the seabed down to bare 'urchin barrens'.

Which Florida wetland, nicknamed the 'River of Grass', is really a broad, shallow sheet of slowly flowing water?

The Everglades shelter both American alligators and American crocodiles: south Florida is the only place where the two species live side by side.

Which big cat of Asia's high mountains, from the Himalayas to Mongolia, has broad paws and a thick, bushy tail?

The snow leopard uses that thick, furry tail like a blanket, wrapping it over its face while asleep, and as a counterweight for balance on rocky ground.

Which burrowing rodents of North American grasslands live in 'towns' that can span hundreds of acres?

Prairie dogs are really ground squirrels, named for a warning call that sounds like a bark, and their burrows become nest sites for burrowing owls.

Which name for a network of rabbit burrows once also meant a moated farm where rabbits were raised?

Warren has kept stretching: by 1649 it was being used for cramped, crowded human housing, and office workers now talk about a maze of cubicles the same way.

Which word, meaning 'tending to fall off', describes oaks, maples and other trees that shed leaves in autumn?

Deciduous trees turn yellow and orange because the green chlorophyll in each leaf breaks down as the days shorten, letting other pigments show through.

Which term describes a small home within a larger one, such as a fallen log or a patch of moss?

A microhabitat differs from its neighbors in light, humidity, temperature or air movement, so a wood with more variety has room for more kinds of them.

Deep-sea anglerfish dangle a glowing lure in the dark, an example of which kind of light?

Bioluminescence is rare near the coast but normal in open water: about three-quarters of the animals logged in one Pacific survey, from the surface to the deep sea, could make light. An anglerfish's glow comes from bacteria in its lure.

Giant tube worms live without sunlight around which hot, mineral-rich openings in the deep ocean floor?

Hydrothermal vents support life with no sunlight at all: bacteria there turn chemicals from the hot water into energy and form the base of the food chain.

Orchids and bromeliads that perch on rainforest branches, taking nothing from the tree, are known as what?

Epiphytes are nicknamed 'air plants' because they never root in soil, drawing moisture and nutrients from the air, the rain and the debris that collects around them.

Which waterlogged wetlands cover about 3% of Earth's land yet form the largest natural carbon store on land?

Peatlands hold over 600 gigatons of carbon in their soggy soil, more than all the world's other vegetation put together, forests included.

Which nickname is given to the dim ocean layer about 200 to 1,000 meters down, where the last light fades away?

The twilight zone sends many of its animals on a daily commute up to the surface waters and back, a trip that carries carbon-rich matter down into the deep.

Many cave food webs depend entirely on the nutrient-rich droppings of bats, a deposit known by which name?

Guano feeds the bacteria, fungi and small animals at the base of a cave's food web, so when the bats go, species that rely on it can die out.

Which word, once meaning a wall recess for a statue, names the role a species plays in its habitat?

A niche cannot be shared for long: if two species with the same role compete, one will eventually drive the other out.

Which reef fish grinds up coral rock as it feeds and excretes it as sand, helping to build beaches?

Parrotfish scrape algae off coral with teeth packed into a beak that never stops growing, and all that grazing keeps algae from smothering the reef.

Which Namib Desert insect drinks by tilting its bumpy back into morning fog until drops roll to its mouth?

The beetle faces the breeze at a 45-degree angle, and its wing cases carry water-loving bumps set among waxy troughs, so each drop swells on a bump until it rolls off.

Peregrine falcons now nest on skyscrapers and cathedrals, which stand in for which natural nesting sites?

Cliff edges and tower blocks suit the falcon equally well, and cities add a bonus: feral pigeons, which are a staple meal for many urban peregrines.

Which African region, whose name is said to mean 'endless plains', hosts the great wildebeest migration?

The Serengeti herds travel in a clockwise loop each year, setting out from the south in Tanzania and swinging north toward Kenya before coming back around.