Monkey

Monkey is a common primate. A monkey is any cercopithecoid or platyrrhine primate. All primates that are not prosimians such as lemurs and tarsiers or apes are monkeys. The 264 known extant monkey species represent two of the three groupings of simian primates. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent and, unlike apes, monkeys usually have tails.

The New World monkeys are classified within the parvorder Platyrrhini, whereas the Old World monkeys form part of the parvorder Catarrhini, which also includes the apes. Thus, scientifically speaking, monkeys are paraphyletic and Old World monkeys are actually more closely related to the apes than they are to the New World monkeys.

Due to its size the Mandrill is often thought to be an ape, but it is actually an Old World monkey. Also, a few monkey species have the word ape in their common name.

Bats

There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, which represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal species. Bats are flying mammals in the order Chiroptera. The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than fly, and only for short distances. Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread out digits which are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium. Chiroptera comes from two Greek words, cheir hand and pteron wing.

About seventy percent of bats are insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species feed from animals other than insects. Believe it not, bats can eat up to 300 hundred bugs an hour! These bugs include mosquitoes, moths, locus, grasshoppers. Such bugs can destroy crops and spread disease. One bat can eat 20 female moths a night reducing the number of crop eating caterpillars. Bats are present throughout most of the world and perform vital ecological roles such as pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Many tropical plants depend entirely on bats for the distribution of their seeds.

Tiger

The tiger also known as Panthera tigris is a member of the Felidae family, the largest of the four big cats in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. Reaching up to 11 ft in total length and weighing up to 300 kilograms, the larger tiger subspecies are comparable in size to the biggest extinct felids. Aside from their great bulk and power, their most recognisable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes that overlays near-white to reddish-orange fur, with lighter underparts. The most numerous tiger subspecies is the Bengal tiger while the largest subspecies is the Siberian tiger.

Highly adaptable, tigers range from the Siberian tiger, to open grasslands, to tropical mangrove swamps. They are territorial and generally solitary animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey demands. This, coupled with the fact that they are endemic to some of the more densely populated places on earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Of the nine subspecies of modern tiger, three are extinct and the remaining six are classified as endangered, some critically so. The primary direct causes are habitat destruction and fragmentation, and hunting. Their historical range once stretched from Mesopotamia and the Caucasus through most of South and East Asia. Today it has been radically reduced. While all surviving species are under formal protection, poaching, habitat destruction and inbreeding depression continue to threaten the species.

Tigers are among the most recognisable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and literature. Tigers appear on many flags and coats of arms, as mascots for sporting teams, and as the national animal of several Asian nations, including India.

Ostrich

The Ostrich with the scientific name Struthio camelus, is a large flightless bird native to Africa. It is the only living species of its family, Struthionidae and its genus, Struthio. Ostriches share the order Struthioniformes with the kiwis, Emus, and other ratites. It is distinctive in its appearance, with a long neck and legs and the ability to run at maximum speeds of about 72 km/h, the top land speed of any bird. The Ostrich is the largest living species of bird and lays the largest egg of any living bird, extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and giant moa of New Zealand laid larger eggs.

The diet of the Ostrich mainly consists of plant matter, though it also eats insects. It lives in nomadic groups which contain between five and fifty birds. When threatened, the Ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground, or will run away. If cornered, it can attack with a kick from its powerful legs. Mating patterns differ by geographical region, but territorial males fight for a harem of two to seven females.

The Ostrich is farmed around the world, particularly for its feathers, which are decorative and are also used for feather dusters. Its skin is used for leather products and its meat marketed commercially.

Crocodile

Crocodile is a species belonging to the family Crocodylidae sometimes classified instead as the subfamily Crocodylinae. The term can also be used more loosely to include all members of the order Crocodilia such as the true crocodiles, the alligators and caimans or family Alligatoridae and the gharials or family Gavialidae, or even the Crocodylomorpha which includes prehistoric crocodile relatives and ancestors.

Crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodiles tend to congregate in freshwater habitats like rivers, lakes, wetlands and sometimes in brackish water. They feed mostly on vertebrates like fish, reptiles, and mammals, sometimes on invertebrates like mollusks and crustaceans, depending on species. They are an ancient lineage, and are believed to have changed little since the time of the dinosaurs. They are believed to be 200 million years old whereas dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, crocodiles survived great extinction events.

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae, Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today, the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant also known as the Indian Elephant. All other species and genera of Elephantidae are extinct, some since the last ice age: dwarf forms of mammoths may have survived as late as 2,000 BC. Elephants and other Elephantidae were once classified with other thick-skinned animals in a now invalid order, Pachydermata. The African Elephant is the largest land mammal on earth, weighing up to 8 tons.

The elephant has appeared in cultures across the world. They are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence, where they are thought to be on par with cetaceans and hominids. Aristotle once said the elephant was the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind. The word "elephant" has its origins in the Greek ἐλέφας, meaning ivory"or elephant.

Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators, although lions may take calves or weak individuals. They are increasingly threatened by human intrusion and poaching. While the elephant is a protected species worldwide, with restrictions in place on capture, domestic use, and trade in products such as ivory, there has been an increase in poaching in recent years, perhaps attributable to the reopening of "one time" ivory stock sales. Certain African nations report a decrease of their elephant populations by as much as two-thirds, and populations in even some protected areas are in danger of being eliminated.

Do not purchase ivory. Poaching to meet ivory demand is one of the greatest threat to elephant today.