Ask Me Everything4

Although some nocturnal animals have excellent night vision, most rely on other senses to find their way—and their prey.

Tell me morę: owi features

Head: Swivels almost all the way around, to pick up noises from any direction

Heat sensors

Pits beween a snake's eyes and nostrils can detect heat from its warm-blooded prey.

Echolocation

A bat’s squeaks echo as they bounce off objects, telling the bat where the objects are.

Soft feathers:

Muffle the sound of beating wings

Pouched night prowlers

Marsupials are mammals that give birth to tiny young that develop in a pouch on the mother’s body. Many are awake and out at night.

Though it hunts in the dark for insects and other smali prey, the gray four-eyed opossum doesn’t really live up to its name. Its two extra “eyes” are just white spots.

In the hot season, kangaroos rest in the day and feed at night. They have enough spring in their legs to leap over your head.

Koaias spend most of their time iounging in the fork of a tree. Their diet of eucalyptus leaves doesn’t provide much energy, so they snooze up to 20 hours per day.

Wombats leave their burrows at night to avoid losing water from their bodies in the hot daytime Sun.

The size of a smali dog, a Tasmanian devil scavenges dead prey at night, but will also hunt wombats and smali kangaroos. It gobbles down the fur and bones as well as the flesh.

Talons: Grip prey securely

believe it

A duck-billed platypus hunts underwater in the dark, but closes its eyes, ears, and nose each time that it dives. So how does it find its prey? Sensors in its bill detect tiny electric currents generated by shrimp, insects, and worms hiding in the mud.

0 Ul ■ Leopards will < patiently stalk prey for hours.

2 They’ve even dragged sleeping humans from their beds 2. without waking anyone else!

B. 02 ■ Tigers are soft-footed e* night hunters. They edge W slowly toward deer or other P) prey and then pounce!

x 03 ■ Foxes are cunning midnight raiders. Poultry J/5 farmers hate these notorious chicken snatchers.

04" White-tailed

mongooses make their attack in lightning-quick time. They have to, before their snake prey can inflict a venomous bite.

05    ■ Coyotes often hunt

and scavenge alone but sometimes work as a pack. They can bring down prey as large as adult elk but usually target newborns.

06    ■ Black caimans

hunt at night. These fearsome reptiles are 16.5 ft (5 m) long and, like other crocodilians, kill their prey by drowning it.

07: Whitetip reef

sharks hunt in the moonlight, then spend the day resting on the ocean floor or in caves.

Nocturnal animals

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