Amazing Animal Adaptations

Animals live almost everywhere on Earth — in deserts, in the deep sea, on ice. Each one has features that suit exactly where it lives. Those features are called adaptations.

They come in three kinds: how an animal looks, what its body can do, and how it behaves.

Camouflage: hide and seek masters

Some animals are hard to see, and that is the whole point. Camouflage helps an animal hide from predators — animals that want to eat it — or sneak up on prey.

• Snowy owls have white feathers, which disappear against snow.
• Stick insects look so much like twigs that you can stare straight at one and not see it.
• Arctic hares are brown in summer and grow a white coat for winter, so they match the ground in both seasons.

Body parts built for a job

• An elephant's trunk breathes, smells, trumpets and grabs things. One body part, four jobs.
• A giraffe's neck reaches leaves high in the trees that shorter animals cannot get to.
• An eagle's talons are sharp enough to catch and hold prey in mid-air.

Behavior counts too

Not every adaptation is part of the body. Some are things an animal does.

• Beavers build dams, which make ponds that give them both safety and food.
• Birds migrate, flying long distances to find food and warmer weather.
• Emperor penguins huddle through the Antarctic winter, and the birds stuck on the freezing outside edge take turns shuffling into the warm middle.

The pattern is always the same. Look at where an animal lives, and you can usually work out why it looks and behaves the way it does.