Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Crepuscular, a classification of animals that are active primarily during twilight, making them similar to nocturnal animals. Diurnality, plant or animal behavior characterized by activity during the day and sleeping at night. Cathemeral, a classification of organisms with sporadic and random intervals of activity during the day or night.
Wildebeest is Dutch for 'wild beast', 'wild ox' or 'wild cattle' in Afrikaans (bees 'cattle'), [citation needed] The name was given by Dutch settlers who saw them on their way to the interior of South Africa in about 1700 because they resemble wild ox. The blue wildebeest was first known to westerners in the northern part of South Africa a ...
A feral (from Latin fera 'a wild beast') animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some cases, contributed to extinction of indigenous species.
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million in total. Animals range in size from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs .
The largest living land animal, the African bush elephant, is a herbivore. This is a list of herbivorous animals, organized in a roughly taxonomic manner. In general, entries consist of animal species known with good certainty to be overwhelmingly herbivorous, as well as genera and families which contain a preponderance of such species.
Certain words in the English language represent animal sounds: the noises and vocalizations of particular animals, especially noises used by animals for communication. The words can be used as verbs or interjections in addition to nouns , and many of them are also specifically onomatopoeic .
The vernacular name "hartebeest" may have originated from the obsolete Dutch word hertebeest, [5] literally deer beast, [3] based on the resemblance (to early Dutch settlers) of the antelope to deer. [6] The first use of the word "hartebeest" in South African literature was in Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck's journal Daghregister ...