Wolves have always played the villain in fairytale stories like in Little Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs We have known wolves to be ferocious animals. Why is that so?

Wolf, or gray wolf or timber wolf, is the largest wild mammal of the order Carnivora. It is an ice age survivor, which lived from the Late Pleistocene some 300,000 years ago. It stands 26-36 inches tall and weighs between 20 to 68 kilograms. Studies on its DNA showed that gray wolves have the same ancestry with domestic dogs.

We’ve seen wolves (in television) in the forest and in the icy places. That is because wolves are adaptive creatures which can adapt immediately different temperatures.

Neither a wolf nor a dog, as what it appears to be. More closely related to the kangaroos and the wombat, the Tasmanian Wolf is the largest carnivorous marsupial from Tasmania, as what its name suggests.

Its Latin name, Thylacinus cynosephalus, means a “pouched dog with a wolf’s head”, which reflects its appearance. Scientists say that the Tasmanian Wolf’s similarity to unrelated species is a result of “convergent evolution”.

Convergent evolution suggests that specie develop the same features as other unrelated specie due to factors like environment and ecological niche. In the Tasmanian Wolf’s case, it resembles a dog because it performs the same ecological niche as true dogs do in Australia.

However, Tasmanian Wolves are already extinct. That means their species is already gone. It is believed that it has been extinct for 65 years. Its extinction was caused by human actions. Being a carnivore, the Tasmanian Wolves are said to be a threat to their livestock. That is why they ordered the animals hunted.

In the movie Ice Age, dodos were plenty. Today, however, they are considered extinct.

When we say “dead as a dodo”, we mean that a person is like a dead man, or someone that has been forgotten. The phrase was taken from a bird that lived sometime ago, the dodo.

Dodo is a flightless bird from the island of Mauritus. It stood 3 feet tall and weighed about 20 kilograms. It is related to pigeons and doves, fed on fruits and nested on ground.
Dodos are believed to be extinct since 17th century. Its extinction is believed to be a result of human activity.

The origin of the name dodo is uncertain. One possibility is that it came from the bird’s own call, a pigeony sound like “doo-doo.”

Remember that big elephant-like creature in the Ice Age movie? It’s what we call a mammoth.

Mammoths are relatives of elephant, that’s why they look like one. But mammoths are relatively smaller compared to modern elephants. Mammoths are hairy animals with long curved tusks. It stusks could extend as much as 11 ft.

They lived 4.8 million years ago or what we call Ice Age. It stand up to 16 feet on the shoulders and weighs 6 to 8 tonnes. However, male mammoths can weigh up to 12 tonnes. A female mammoth conceives her calf for 22 months! That means only a single calf is orn for every mother mammoth.

Maybe that’s why mammoths only lasted until 4,500 years ago.

When you look at your encyclopedia or dictionary, the first word that will appear is aardvark. So what are aardvarks?

Aardvarks are nocturnal mammals native to Africa. Its resemblance to pigs made it referred to as earth pig. However, aardvarks are not related to pigs. Neither is it related to anteaters which it is also oftentimes called, although they eat ants. Its closest  living relatives are elephants.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of aardvarks are their teeth. Their teeth have no enamel coatings, which when worn will grow continuously. They are born with incisors and canines at the front of the jaw, which fall out and are not replaced.