On Friday 28th February, Pre-Prep had an exciting day. They had some visitors of the exotic animal form. They had a corn snake, a tree frog, an African millipede, a hissing cockroach, a dumbo rat and an African giant snail join Barrow Hills for the day. The children could not wait to meet the exotic animals. They took part in an age appropriate session handling the animals. They were all fascinated by all the different facts about them and everyone was very brave with the snake particularly. Thank you to Abbie Peterson from Zoolab for a fantastic day.
There are several carousels of fabulous photos below, enjoy!
FUN FACTS!
1. Shelley the African land snail
Shelley had four things poking out of her face which are tentacles! The top two are her eyes – she can’t see very well so she has two noses at the bottom to feel her way around. The shell is her home and her protection.
She has 10,000 teeth (more than a great white shark!) and they’re all on her tongue. Teeth shaped liked hooks. Her favourite food in the whole world is cucumber. Whatever she eats, her poop is the same colour – if she were to eat something rainbow coloured, this still applies!
2. Charlie the Madagascan hissing cockroach
Charlie can hold his breath underwater for 45 minutes. He can run so fast he can run through fire and if he was put in the freezer he could survive for two years. Charlie can eat everything we can eat and lots of other things we can’t eat – soap, carpet, smelly socks, paint, glue… The main thing he likes to eat is bat excrement.
He’s called ‘hissing’ because he doesn’t breathe through his nose and mouth like we do; he has holes (spiracles) down his back and breathes through them. If he’s scared he forces air out through the holes to make a hissing sound like a snake, so that mice (which like to eat cockroaches) are frightened away.
3. Maura the giant African millipede
She has 272 legs.
She has two antennae poking out of the top of her head – she can’t see very well either on the rainforest floor. When she was put on the floor we saw how slowly she moves – her legs aren’t built for speed. When she’s scared she curls up into a spiral; she looks like poop and covers her body in a smelly liquid to stop other animals wanting to eat her.
4. Claire the white tree frog
The white tree frog was discovered by Dr Henry White who named her after himself. The children couldn’t hold her because she breathes in a funny way – through her skin. When Abbie got her out of her tank this morning she was brown. She can change colour to blend in to her environment. She can turn green to camouflage herself among leaves; brown on the wood.
She blinks her food into her stomach – her eyes disappear into her stomach and pushes the food down into her stomach.
5. Sidney the corn snake
There are three things that define reptiles: scaly skin, laying eggs and being cold-blooded. The children met Sidney – a corn snake who comes from America. They were able to stroke him down his back in same direction as his scales. Sidney has 450 bones in body – we’ve only got 206 bones.
What do you think he’s doing when he’s hissing? He is sniffing.
Sidney liked being on the floor so he could wiggle. Where does he live? In a cornfield. Farmers like having snakes in the field, because they eat the mice that eat the corn.
He opens his mouth to three times the size of his own head and swallows whole. If we could do that, we could swallow a watermelon whole.
He eats once a week, on Fridays! He could go six months without eating.
6. Peanut the dumbo rat
Peanut is only five months old and her hearing is twenty times as sensitive as ours. ‘Dumbo’ rats are names as they have ears like the well known elephant.
Peanut has still got her baby fur; she is lovely and soft.
Peanut likes to stay awake at night – ‘nocturnal’. She has big eyes for seeing, big ears for hearing and whiskers. She uses her whiskers to feel her way around and uses her tail to cool herself down and to balance. She can even wrap it around things. Her species are classified as the seventh most intelligent animals on the planet – she could do every trick a dog could do (sit, fetch, come to her name).
Rats like to have friends and can’t be kept on their own; they would get too sad.