• Question: what animal fascinates u the most and why?

    Asked by thedazinator to Andrew, Aggelos, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 11 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by eoghan123, amybyrne, ivan.
    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 11 Nov 2012:


      my answer to this would change all the time. But right now, my favorite animals are the bears. I want to know why there are no bears in Africa. They are pretty much everywhere else on the Earth so why not Africa? They are also really big and strong and can adapt to live in the most difficult of places – for example the polar bears are able to live up in the frozen Arctic.

      I have asked some of my students to research this further and they are busy reading all the science that has been published about this to see if we can find an answer. If we cant find an answer, then we might design some new science investigations to see if we can come up with an explanation ourselves. We would then share our findings by writing up our ideas and sharing them with other scientists and any one else interested in this question too.

      Ask me again next week though and i might have a new favourite animal! In the past its been pangolins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin), african army ants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorylus_wilverthi) or starlings (http://vimeo.com/31158841)

      – andrew

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 14 Nov 2012:


      Ooooh, good question! Like Andrew, my answer changes – I have a hard time deciding. I like animals that have interesting facts about them. Like the other day, I learned that crocodiles and alligators skin is more sensitive than human fingertips! I think thats really fascinating, because their skin looks so rough and leathery. So usually when I hear something like this, that’s the most fascinating animal until I hear something new about a different animal!

    • Photo: Aggelos Zacharopoulos

      Aggelos Zacharopoulos answered on 14 Nov 2012:


      @thedazinator,
      desert animals or animals that live in the polar regions fascinate me the most. I really admire the ways they have adapted to deal with the extreme environments that they are in. As humans we have conquered most of the habitats on earth but we still struggle to live in deserts or the polar regions.

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 14 Nov 2012:


      Like the others, my answer to this changes all the time. It’s a toss up between elephants and chimpanzees.

      Elephants I adore – they’re so graceful and cute, but so HUGE. I find them really interesting because they are so clever, and also because they have a high level of emotional interaction with each other. They mourn when their herd-mates die, and leave softer grass for the older elephants. Chimpanzees I’m not quite so fond of, as they are vicious – they’ve even evolved a special thumb to disembowel their enemies. But they’re our closest cousin genetically and I like seeing how they behave – in zoos, chimps have toys sometimes which they very quickly develop as tools or weapons. I remember a zoo in spain where a zookeeper threw in a few old pieces of cloth and within a few minutes the chimps in the enclosure had developed three different uses for them. One was grooming itself, another was swinging out of it, Tarzan style, and two young males were fighting over it!

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