|
D:\M J\Sanjit pers\4kids\httpdocs\sidebar.html
|
For different
species, Land offers different habitat and the variace may fe fascinating. For instance,
grassland, forest, mountain, desert and coastal lands. Each of these life zones has its
own kinds of creatures. In fact, almost all are somehow linked with one another by what
they eat or what eats them. The biologists call this link a food chain. Thus each of these
creatures offers food chains making
up a food web special to that place.
Most of the sizeable animals on land are known to us. Yet there are many more we are not
aware of. There are some thousands which move on the grounds but beyond the range of our
sight. Starting from a stroll down the meadow in the morning you will find a great
variety.
As you put your steps you run into some hundreds of movements around you. Some shrew
pops down holes, a spider scuttles through the grass, an earthworms squirms its
way
beneath your feet.

The springtails will dance around in a great fuss. Advance yet another step. Maybe a
ground rodent downs its head to burrow deeper into the hole. And strange you come to
know very little, if at all, about these fuss. What you see at best is those birds
hopping on the twigs of a nearby tree. Keep your eyes wide open. And many more
creatures will be caught in your eyes.
Say the pupa sticking to a grass leaf, a grass hopper playing around, a dragon fly buzzing in its
aimless loops of flight. And so on. Indeed these are just a sample of what comprise
the animals on land. These animals can be classified into various groups.
Based on food habit there are two types herbivorous and carnivorous.
Those who eat plants are herbivorous. The carnivorous 
live on the flesh of other animals. Human consume both and may be called omnivorous.
The classification may also be done on the basis of the habitat they live in. Let us start
with
the life in the grasslands. In every continent except Antarctica there were
once vast areas of grassland. Some have been ploughed up and sown with crops. Some have
been populated indiscriminately by turning them into villages and cities. Still others
survive,
with all their wild habitations.
Though trees grow here and there, forests cannot thrive. There is too little rain for
their
thirsty roots. And the thick bed of soil, that helps the plants to grow, is also
absent.
Grasslands house many creatures like rodents, lizards and snakes, seed eating birds and
insects. For grass eating mammals, these lands are huge food bowls. But some creatures
lack hiding places from big cats or wolf-like animals that prey upon them.

Grasslands variety | Deserts
variety | Forests variety | back
to land animals main
|