Animal Poet
Liz Brownlee
POEMS & FACTS...
These are some samples of poems and facts from Animal Magic.
Orangutan
A heavy hulk and tum like mine,
in shades of hairy clementine,
means when I'm up my forest tree,
I live my whole life - gingerly!
Pongo pygmaeus, Pongo abelii
Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are mainly arboreal. Adult males weigh 50-90 kg - they are the heaviest primates to live in trees, and a fall could cause them serious injury or death. So they are cautious climbers, testing branches before trusting their full weight to them.
Accordng to the World Wildlife Fund, released orangutans have been observed using tools for many purposes, such as digging and fighting. They have even been seen untying complicated knots that secure boats and rafts, shoving off, boarding and riding across rivers.
STATUS: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has classified Bornean orangutans as Endangered and Sumatran orangutans as Critically Endangered. 80% of the forests in which they live have been cut down (mainly for palm oil) in the last twenty years. Scientists think they will be extinct within ten years, unless deforestation can be halted.
For more facts including diet, range and size - see the book!
Flying Frog
Where the green hands of the forest
hold a fierce and humid heat,
a gorgeous, gleaming frog leaps
from his leaf-high seat.
He doesn't fall, he stretches out
and glides his tree-top routes,
for all his toes and fingers
come equipped with parachutes.
Rhacophorus reinwardtii
Reinwardt's or green flying frogs are fabulously beautiful pale green-topped and orange-bellied frogs with large purple webbed skin between each finger and toe. When they jump from a branch they spread their fingers and toes to open up all of their webbed hands and feet to the air. Then they glide like a piece of paper to another tree, where they use their big toes to sucker themselves a soft, safe landing.
These frogs are decreasing in numbers and are classified by the IUCN Red List as Near Threatened, the main threat to them being the loss of their rainforest habitat. Removal of mature lowland forest through logging, agricultural expansion and human settlement has reduced the available habitat significantly for this species.
For more information about this frog, and others, see the book!
Sea Star
Ophiacatha spectabilis
This unnamed brittle star is a type of sea star (formerly known as a starfish). All sea stars are hollow, with sensitive skin inside and outside. Seawater flows into as well as srrounding them. They feel the sea in every direction and so are very aware of any change in their surroundings. Many types of sea star live in shallow and deep-sea water all over the world, in every habitat and even on each other.
These sea stars live on sea mounts, undersea mountains, off Australia and in the North Atlantic.
Sea mounts are crucial ecosystems, causing currents that carry nutrition up from the deep sea floor. This supports many species such as corals and animals living on them, and those visiting the mount, like sea turtles who depend on them as they travel.
Trawlers and fishing nets easily damage corals on sea mounts, and the animals living on them. Corals do not grow very fast and reproduce/settle infrequently, so recovery is very slow - maybe taking hundreds to thousands of years.
Sea star species are adapted to particular temperatures of water, making them vulnerable to climate change. As their structures are higher in magnesium than other creatures, sea stars and other echinoderms are also vulnerable to acidification of the seas.
Some scientists think acidification of the sea by carbon dioxide absorption is the greatest threat to all living creatures.
Want to learn how to help? It's in the book!
All the poems and the shape poem and text on this page are © Liz Brownlee, illustrations © Rose Sanderson.