Endangered Animals

By Aishling White

Introduction

Hi there! My name is Aishling and

today I am going to tell you about

different animals in the world that are

endangered and some, nearly extinct. I

hope you enjoy my project.

Traveling the world

First, we are going to go to China to visit our pandas, then we’ll go to

Africa to see the elephants, after that lets see some tigers. Then, lets

come back home to Ireland to see the sea otters. So, get ready to travel

the world!

Pandas

We arrived at our first destination, China. The giant pandas live here! Giant pandas (often known as pandas) are black and white animals that are usually found in bamboo forests. They eat small animals and fish, but 99 percent of their diet is bamboo. That explains why they live in bamboo forests. Pandas love to eat. They eat up to 12 hours a day! They eat about 12 kg of bamboo a day!!! Giant Pandas can be 1.2 – 1.5 meters tall and can weigh between 75kg to 135kg. That’s very heavy! They can also live up to 30 years! Baby pandas are born pink and are 15cm tall (about the size of a pencil). They are also born blind and open their eyes for the first time when they are six to eight weeks old. Unlike most other bears, pandas do not hibernate. When winter comes, they head lower down their mountain homes to warmer temperatures, where they continue to chomp away on bamboo! Sadly, these beautiful bears are endangered, and there’s only around 1,000 remain in the wild. That’s why we need to do all we can to protect them!

ElephantsHere we are, Africa. Home to most of the earth’s elephants. When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much 7.5 liters of water into its trunk

at a time. Then it curls its trunk down, sticks the tip of its trunk into its mouth, and blows. Out comes the water, into the elephant's

mouth. Since elephants live in Africa where the sun is hot, they use their trunks to keep cool. First, they squirt a trunkful of cool water

over their bodies and then they sometimes sprinkle a protective layer of dust over their bodies and they do all this with their trunks.

Elephants are social creatures; this means that they like to be around other elephants. They sometimes hug each other by wrapping their

trunks together! One elephant can eat 136 kilograms of food in one day. They are vegetarians and eat leaves. African elephants can live

up to 70 years! That’s a lot older than the pandas in China! People hunt elephants mainly for their ivory tusks. And they're very

endangered now so we must do all we can to protect them!

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

Tigers

In the wild today, there are six types of tigers known to roam the earth. There are Sumatran, Bengal,

Indochinese, South China, Malayan and the Amur or Siberian tigers. Some of these tigers are extinct,

which means that there are no more of that species anymore. For example, lets take the south China tiger,

it hasn’t been seen by anyone for 25 years. A tiger’s life is for around 20-25 years long. The tiger that we

are going to be focusing on today is the Siberian/ Amur tiger. Siberian tigers are the biggest land

predators in the world. They can reach the maximum size of 13 feet and weigh up to 660 pounds. They

like to eat hoofed-mammals and they have cubs in sheltered caves or dens. Siberian tigers are mostly

found in the Russian Far East, eastern Siberia, and the north-eastern China. China is home to 18 to 22

amur tigers. There are less than 600 amur tigers remaining in the wild because humans are hunting them

down. They are very endangered and that’s why you don’t see them that much.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

Sea Otters

We are at the last stop on our tour. We are back home, in Ireland. There are a few sea otters here. Sea otters float in

what we call rafts. These rafts are usually male-based, meaning that boy sea otters like to hang out together and girl sea

otters like to hang out together. The girls raise their pups without help from the males. Sometimes, they like to hold

hands. When they hold hands, they keep each others delicate paw pads warm. The pups are born with a type of fur that

doesn't allow them to sink.( Like a life jacket) They float like corks on top of the water unable to dive so, they are really

dependent on the mother sea otter to get food. Sea otter pup fur is known as a lanugo. It is very soft! Sea otter fur

stared to shed when they are 13 weeks old. They are also born with 26 baby teeth, but you can only see 10 of them.

Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters don’t have blubber so they must consume 25-30% of their body weight every

day in order to survive in the cold ocean. Sea otters like to eat lots of thing like sea urchins, abalone, clams, crabs,

mussels, starfish and fat innkeeper worms which they find all beneath the ocean. Sadly, these beautiful creatures are

endangered but luckily, there are people who help them, and we must do all we can to help them.

Thank you for reading.

So, we are finished our

tour. There are a lot more

animals that are

endangered aswell but

luckily, people are doing all

they can to help them.

Thank you so much for

listening to my project.