The ladybird (also known as the ladybug) is a small colourful beetle found all around the world. There are thought to be more than 5,000 different species of ladybird in the world, with more than 450 species found in North America alone.

The ladybird is best known for it's spotted body (normally red and black, but often orange and yellow are found), and their ability to rid gardens of their aphid pests affectively. It is thought to be good luck to find that a ladybird has landed on you, and most definitely bad luck if you then squash it!

Ladybirds are small sized insects rarely growing to more than a centimetre in length. Ladybirds have size legs that are black in colour and their brightly coloured shell, protects the wings of the ladybird which are concealed beneath the spots.

Ladybirds are known to hibernate once the warm summer weather begins to cool. Ladybirds will hibernate in large groups in sites which are used year after year, and ladybirds are thought to hibernate in this communial fashion in order to increase their chances of surviving the cold winter. It is thought that pheromones are released by hibernating ladybirds which attract other ladybirds to hibernate in the same place.

Ladybirds are fearsome predators within their environment and are known as gardener's friends as they munch all of the tiny pests that eat the plants. Ladybirds primarily eat aphids, greenfly, plant-lice and other small insects. It is thought that the average ladybird eats more than 5,000 aphids in just one year.

Ladybirds are prey to a number of animals in their environment that include birds,reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, rodents and other insects. It is thought that the bright colour of the ladybird is used to deter hungry predators as they think that the ladybird will taste disgusting or is poisonous.

The female ladybird can lay more than 2,000 eggs in one year that hatch in just a few days. The ladybird larvae hatches out of the eggs and looks nothing like an adult ladybird as the ladybird larvae is long in shape and is generally one colour. After a couple of weeks, the ladybird larvae evolves into a ladybird pupa which is about the same size and colour as an adult ladybird but has a protective layer surrounding it, until it has developed it's wings. Once the ladybird pupa has developed, it breaks out of the skin surrounding it to become an adult ladybird.

Due to climate changes and habitat loss, the ladybird is now considered to be one of the animal species that is threatened with extinction. It has been noted that ladybirds are particularly sensitive to temperature and will die from dehydration if it is much hotter than it should be.

Modern orangutans originated during the Pleistocene period, 2 million to 100,000 years ago.

They now face extinction. At the turn of the last century around 315,000 orangutans existed in the wild. Orangutan numbers are now down by 92% compared with a century ago and have been reduced by half in Northern Sumatra between 1993 and 2000.

The orangutans ancient origin is not agreed upon. One hypothesis says it originated from Lufengpithecus, while another maintains that they originated from Sivapithecus.  The fossil record of the living great apes is poor and the orangutan is the only great ape that has a fossil record linking early forms to later forms (there has never been an African fossil found that is related to chimpanzees or gorillas).

However, there is now strong evidence that suggests neither of those species was the ancestor of the orangutan.  In a recent discovery (reported in 2002),  a team of scientists unearthed a fossil ape (Lufengpithecus chiangmuanensis) in Thailand dating back 10 to 13.5 million years ago.  It consists of both an upper and lower jaw with similar dental structure as today's orangutan and they consider it to be an ancestor of the new form.  This discovery would place the development of the earlier orangutan in a similar habitat as today's tropical forest home on Sumatra and Borneo.  More fossils need to be found and studied to complete the picture of its evolutionary history.

Fossils from a million years ago indicate that there were giant sized orangutans in Indochina.  Fossils from 40,000 years ago, found on Borneo and Sumatra, show the orangutan as 30% larger than today's species.  It is conjectured that early orangutans may have been more terrestrial than today's species.  However what we see today is a species that has been arboreal

for a very long time and has completely adapted physically.

The origin of the word orangutan is derived from the Indonesian and Malaysian words for person (orang) and forest (hutan).  Literally it means person of the forest.  It is incorrect to abbreviate the word to orang as many Westerners do, because it just means person.

Mimics are normally quite small, growing only up to 60 cm (2 feet) long and have a body covered with brown and white stripes or spots, although in a resting state their body colour is more of a pale brown or beige. Their tentacles are around 25 cm in length and no more than pencil thick.

As with all octopus, the mimic has 8 arms, a mantle containing 3 hearts and other internal organs, and a siphon used for jet propulsion. The arms have 2 rows of suckers, each sucker having a touch sensor and a chemoreceptor, allowing the mimic effectively to feel and taste its food before it eats it. It has a large brain but lacks the sense of hearing.

Like all octopus the mimic has pigment sacs on the skin called chromatophores which can be contracted or expanded to produce rapid changes of pattern and colour.

To distinguish any octopus from another you need to know what to look out for in terms of size and colouration. Since divers are so keen to declare to themselves or others that they have seen a mimic octopus, they can often mis-identify other species. Most commonly it is the wonderpus that is mis-identified because it has a similar size, shape and general colour, and also lives in similar habitats to the mimic. An experienced observer will know the wonderpus by the presence of strong white markings which are fixed and therefore do not alter when at rest or in an excited state. Mimic octopus are only believed to have been officially 'discovered' as recently as 1998, off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

The arctic fox is an incredibly hardy animal that can survive frigid Arctic temperatures as low as –58°F (-50°C) in the treeless lands where it makes its home. It has furry soles, short ears, and a short muzzle—all-important adaptations to the chilly clime. Arctic foxes live in burrows, and in a blizzard they may tunnel into the snow to create shelter.

Arctic foxes have beautiful white (sometimes blue-gray) coats that act as very effective winter camouflage. The natural hues allow the animal to blend into the tundra's ubiquitous snow and ice. When the seasons change, the fox's coat turns as well, adopting a brown or gray appearance that provides cover among the summer tundra's rocks and plants.

These colorings help foxes to effectively hunt rodents, birds, and even fish. But in winter prey can be scarce on the ground. At such times, arctic foxes will follow the region's premier predator—a polar bear—to eat the leftover scraps from its kills. Foxes will also eat vegetables when they are available.

Like a cat's, this fox's thick tail aids its balance. But for an arctic fox the tail (or "brush") is especially useful as warm cover in cold weather.

Female arctic foxes give birth each spring to a large litter of up to 14 pups.