On Monday the 17th October a lady came in to our class from Belfast Zoo to show us lots of rainforest animals.
The first one was a cute pigmy hedgehog called Pie. We learnt lots of facts about her. At the zoo she is fed dried cat food, she is actually from the desert but was brought in as an example of a mammal. She digs holes in the ground to cool down in scorching heat and licks her nose to enhance her sense of smell.
Next was a White’s Tree Frog. It was cool because during the day it lives in the emergent layer where its skin is brown but when it’s hunting in the canopy it changes green! Unlike many frogs it can’t hop due to the suction pads on its large feet. It was very slimy and sticky.
After this we saw the Indian python, Samantha. We were lucky enough to feel her and you could feel her muscles and scales. We found that she had 400 ribcages. She lives on all the layers of the forest and eats smaller snakes and small mammals. If you look at her on a branch from below her belly camouflages with the sky and from above her back looks like leaves and dirt.
After Samantha we saw Sticky. He was a stick insect. He eats vegetation and foliage such as bramble. When threatened by predators he tucks in his legs and plays dead, looking like a stick. He is one of the most endangered rainforest creatures because of deforestation. When he comes to a clearing he can’t survive and soon perishes.
Then we saw the Chilean Rose Tarantula. It lives in cracks in trees and likes to be dry. It has pink bits on its feet to warn predators. When irritated it shoots hairs off its back. It likes insects and its predators are mainly birds.
Finally we saw the Giant African Land Snail. It had a large, brown, horned shell and slimy, green skin. It was very big (for a snail). Unlike the spider it likes to be wet. Its predators are also mainly birds and it is also an extinct creature in the rainforests.
I really enjoyed this visit; it was fascinating and I would thoroughly recommend it for next year’s pupils. However, I would have loved it even more if we had got to hold more animals but overall 10 out of 10.
By Olivia P7 McKenna
