自然英语

Sometimes, the names of animals are just random and don’t tell a buch about the birds, but this birds name describes it pretty well. The African masked weaver lives in Southern Africa, hence the name. They are quite adaptable birds so they have a large range of habitats they live in. Dry grassy area, savanas, woodlands, and also dry areas are some of the places they can be found in.
This bird is a bright shade of warm yellow, the wongs have balck lines and spots, and the black feathers surrounding its face look similar to a mask. It’s a relatively small bird around half a foot or 10-15 centimeters. The bird’s diet contains seeds, nectar, and insects. They can either be looking for food by itself, but also sometimes with other insect eating birds. African masked weavers are susceptible to predators like larger birds of prey like hawks, crows, and snakes. The larger birds of prey like to kill the adults  and snakes often steal eggs from the nest.
The african masked weaver is known for being able to weave complex nests. The nests are made out of grass blades, they are then woven tightly into basket like nests that hang from tree branches. On average it takes the bird about half a day on average to build the nest. These nests are usually abandoned when the babies are grown up. An interesting thing about these nests is that some have been found to be close to 100 years old and not broken.
For wild suzhou i’m palmtree and thank you for listening.

Hello, this is wild suzhou.
Today, we will be talking about the gila monster, the only venomous lizard that can be found in the United States, and can be found in the southwestern United States and the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora.
Gila monsters are large, stocky, and bulky lizards, and move slowly. They have long, fat tails, rounded heads with bulky cheeks, thick necks, and small, chubby legs. Their skin is black, with pink, yellow, or orange markings. The skin is also very bumpy, and their scales look like little jewels. 
American explorers thought that Gila Monsters had a toxic bite and breath, and would die if they were bitten. However, Dr. George Goodfellow decided to do some research on the Gila monster, even paying people around 5 dollars for every specimen he received from locals, as well as collecting his own. He said that the breath of the Gila monster was very strong and foul, and could possibly be a way of distracting prey from their oncoming death. He also let one of his specimens bite him on the finger to see what would happen, and spent five days in bed feeling sick, but he recovered and felt completely fine afterwards. The Gila monster is not fatal towards humans, and the last recorded fatality was before 1930, but those who died had been drunk, which most likely caused dangerous drops in blood pressure.
The gila monster’s venom is produced in modified salivary glands in its lower jaw. It’s jaws are much weaker than a snake’s, so instead of injecting venom, it chews on its victim until the venom is propelled into the wound. Since Gila monsters mostly feed on helpless prey, like eggs and other young animals, their venom is most likely for defense, which would also explain their bright coloring.
For Wild Suzhou, I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.

The asian golden cat is a big cat, but it happens to be small. This cat can be found all around Southeast asia in countries like Nepal, northeastern India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, Malaysia and Sumatra. Its habitat is forests, along with tropical and subtropical rainforests. Their diet varies because they are carnivores. They eat rodents, hares, birds, reptiles, and sometimes water buffalo calves and ghorals, which are similar to mountain goats. They spend most of their time looking for food.
The asian golden cat is a predator so it doesn’t have any other natural predators. But even though there are no natural predators it is still endangered due to loss of habitat. They are mostly solitary and have their own territory, they also communicate with sounds and scents. The cats can start mating at the age of 1 to 2 years, and have a lifespan of 20 years. Their estimated population is 10,000 individuals left in the wild. Depending on where they live their color changes. They can be brown, gold, grey, black, and white. 

Hello, this is wild suzhou.
Today, we will be talking about the pitcher plants, another type of unique and clever carnivorous plant. Pitcher plants are, of course, named for their shape, which is that of a pitcher, or a jug that you might put a drink in. They are found in areas with poor soil, such as swamps or sandy areas. This is because they don’t need good soil to grow since they get enough nutrients from catching insects to eat. There are three groups of pitcher plants: Sarracenia, Nepenthes, and Cephalotus.
Pitcher plants eat mainly insects, and they are able to attract them using nectar. If an insect gets close enough and lands on the area where the nectar is, they will fall into the bottom of the pitcher, because the top part of the plant is very slippery. Prey cannot get out of the pitcher since downward facing hairs make sure they can’t climb out, and prey eventually drowns. At the bottom of the pitcher are digestive enzymes and bacteria, which will digest the prey.
Sarracenia is the group of pitcher plants found in the New World. The New World refers to the Western Hemisphere, mainly the Americas. They can be found in bogs, swamps, meadows, and savannas. In these areas, the water is soggy and does not contain much nutrients. Most of the plants in Sarracenia look like trumpets, and are fairly long and thin. The pitchers also shoot  out of the ground, and are able to support themselves. Nepenthes are the group of tropical pitcher plants found in the Old World. This means places like Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Plants in this group are usually found in acidic soil but can also grow in trees. Some species like Attenborough’s pitcher plant are large enough to catch small animals, like mice and rats. These pitcher plants are shaped more like pitchers, and are fatter, like a very round and wide pot. Unlike Sarracenia, they droop from the plant that they are attached to. Cephalotus is the final group of pitcher plants, and only has one species, the Western Australia pitcher plant, which is found only in southwestern Australia. It lives in sandy and swampy soil, which is once again very low in nutrition. The pitchers are red, white, and green, and are very short and hairy.
For Wild Suzhou, I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.

From afar this may just look like another large bird, but there's something that makes it one of the best. The Kori bustard is a bird species native to Southern Africa. The thing that makes it special compared to other birds in it’s area is that it is the largest flying bird native to its area. It can fly but it prefers to be on the ground where it can run 80 kilometers per hour. It weighs a maximum of 18 kilograms or 40 pounds.
It eats both plants and other animals, meaning it’s omnivorous. The kori bustards diet includes Insects, small mammals, lizards, snakes, seeds and berries. It's quite a large bird so it only has a few predators, which are hyenas, lions, and the martial eagle. The male birds can display their wings to make themselves bigger.
Their mating rituals really show off how cool these birds are. One thing the males do is puff up their throat so it looks like a large ball of feathers, they also stand up very straight. This bird has a lifespan of around 27 years. It’s a mostly brown bird that blends in with its environment. It has a white stomach, brown back, and wings spotted with black dots.
For wild suzhou im palm tree and thank you for listening.

Hello, this is wild suzhou.
Today, we will be talking about fungi and mushrooms. What are they? Are they plants, or animals, or something else?
Now, what are some things that are interesting about fungi? There are almost 120,000 species that have been discovered, but estimates say there could be millions of different species. Some species, like the portobello, oyster, and button mushrooms are edible and are commonly used in cooking. Others, like the deathcaps, destroying angels, and autumn skullcaps can very easily kill you. They come in bright oranges and yellows, warning you not to touch them, or softer brown and greys, blending in with their environment. They are found in every part of the earth, sometimes helping other life and sometimes preying on it, but usually helping to decompose dead matter and recycling nutrients back into their ecosystems. Fungi are curious and complex organisms, similar to both plants and animals, but existing as their own group.
Fungi are an extremely broad group of organisms, since it is considered a kingdom. A kingdom is a taxonomic rank, or level that we use to classify and name organisms. This may be confusing, so I’ll use the animal kingdom as an example. The animal kingdom contains all animals, from bears to birds to fish. There are many taxonomic ranks, and each one is more specific and usually has less animals that fit into the category. For example, with the animal kingdom, you can start with all animals, then all vertebrates, which are animals with spines, then all mammals, then all carnivorous mammals, then all cats, large and small, then all medium sized cats, and finally the house cat. You can see how the list of animals that fit in each rank becomes smaller as you move through the ranks. 
Just like the animal kingdom, fungi are their own kingdom, with organisms like mushrooms, yeast and mold. There are a few reasons fungi are not considered plants or animals. They are unlike plants because they are not able to photosynthesize, meaning they can’t create their own food and energy from the sun. You might be wondering why there is confusion as to why people have been unsure whether fungi are animals. This is because fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants, which is crazy to think. Humans even share around 50 percent of their DNA with fungi, which is useful in developing cures for disease since we can observe how fungi learned to deal with the problem at hand.
For Wild Suzhou I’m Ciana thanks for listening and see you next time.

You hear a lot about these birds and their abilities, but do you really know much about this bird. The Northern Mocking Bird can be found in Canada, and the Northern United States, during the winter they migrate south to Mexico. Mocking birds are omnivores so they eat a variety of foods including beetles, berries, as well as seeds. These birds are nocturnal during mating season but other than they look for food in the day.
The Northern Mockingbirds predators include owls and snakes who sometimes steal their eggs. Mocking birds live with their same partner for the rest of their life, meaning they are monogamous. They have a lifespan of around 8 years and mate around three times a year. The thing that makes this bird different is its ability to make vocalizations copying other birds, as well as other objects. Some males are able to imitate 200 sounds, they make sounds during mating season to attract a mate. This is similar to the lyar bird who also has this ability.
For wild Suzhou, I'm palm tree and thank you for listening.

Hello, this is wild suzhou.
Today, we will be talking about bumblebees, which include any of over 250 species of bees from the genus bombus. Their name and the name of their genus means that they make buzzing or humming sounds. These bees are usually found in the Northern Hemisphere, though some species can be found in South America.
Though there are over 250 species of bumblebees, they are generally plump insects and also very fuzzy, with dense hairs covering their body. They are more stocky and broad than a typical honeybee. Many species of bumblebees have a few bands of color like black, yellow, pink, white, orange, and red, and different species can be told apart from the patterns on their bodies. These colors and patterns are known as aposematism, and are a warning to predators that the females can sting them. They have longer tongues than honeybees, which is important because honeybees can only pollinate certain types of flowers, while bumblebees are able to pollinate other kinds.
Like most species of bees, honeybees are also able to sting animals or humans that threaten them. However, their stinger works differently to a honeybees. Honeybees have stingers with barbs on them. Think of a harpoon, or fishing spear. When you strike the fish with the spear, small spikes on it hook on to the fish, making the harpoon more difficult to pull out. The same is true with honeybees. When they sting a predator, the barbs on the stinger make sure the stinger stays pushed into the skin. However, this means the stinger is pulled out of the honeybee, killing it. Bumblebees don’t have barbed stingers, meaning that they can sting predators multiple times without hurting themselves. However, bumblebees are not very aggressive, and do not sting often.
Like honeybees, bumblebees feed on the nectar of flowers. They use color and a basic understanding of the space around them to figure out which flowers have nectar and which ones have already been pollinated. Bumblebees also do something called nectar robbing, which is when a bee, instead of going into a flower normally to get pollen and nectar, it instead bites a hole into a flower to access nectar directly. Some bumblebees will do this because their tongues are not long enough to reach into the flower to get nectar. This isn’t as good for the flower because it does not get pollinated.
For Wild Suzhou, I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.

If someone showed a picture of this animal in its natural habitat you would probably be confused as to where the animal is in the picture, that’s because it’s a satanic leaf tailed gecko that camouflages among its habitat. It is found in Madagascar, they live among the leaves and shrub. They are nocturnal so they hunt during the night, and they’re diet mainly consists of insects.
The leaf tailed geckos predators include owls, eagles, large rodents, and snakes. The way they protect themselves is with camouflage, they blend in with dry leaves or bark. Like other geckos they can detach their tails and they will be fine. They’re not endangered but their population is decreasing due to habitat loss in madagascar.
Their lifespan is around 2 to five years but can even live up to 10 years old. Something special about its latin name is that one of the words means imaginary, which fits because it is a weird looking creature. They are around 3 to 6 inches long and can be found in many colors. Since they do not have eyelids and instead have a thin clear film over their eyes, their eyes are also camouflaged and have speckles and dots to make them look like the rest of their body.
For wild suzhou i’m palm tree and thank you for listening.

Hello, this is wild suzhou.
Today, we are going to talk about centipedes, which are horrifying and scary animals that are related to spiders and scorpions. The name centipede is latin, and means 100 feet. However, this number isn’t true, since centipedes can have as little legs as 30, or as many as 354.
Centipedes have round, flat heads, with a pair on antennae. They have long mandibles, also known as jaws.  Many centipedes don’t have eyes, but some have ocelli, known as simple eyes. Sometimes, a centipede has lots of these simple eyes and have compound eyes, or one eye structure made of multiple simple eyes. However, these can only detect the difference between light and dark, and are not that useful. They can’t actually see anything. Centipedes have modified front legs, known as forcipules. These are unique to centipedes, and they are short with little pincers on the front of them. They capture and inject venom into prey.
Centipedes have many legs, and there are a pair of legs on every section of a centipede after the head. Every centipede has at least 16 sections, so every centipede should have at least 30 legs. The final segment has a tail-like appendage called a telson. There are two groups of centipedes. In one, the anamorphic group, they grow more legs as they grow up. They will start with a few pairs of legs, but as they molt their skins, they will add more pairs of legs. For example, the stone centipede starts with seven pairs, then gradually goes up to 15. The other group, epimorphs, are born with all of their legs and do not grow more as they get older.
For wild suzhou, I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.