You can find a wide range of God's creatures on mother earth, anything from beetles and fungi, reptiles and wild birds to hedgehogs, moles and domestic dogs and cats. Each of these and many more, play their part in the creation and maintenance of our world. Why not find out about our natural world in a varied range of nature books. Naturally, everybody could do their bit in order that the natural world continues to sustain life, not just the life of mankind but the miles and miles of plant life and forests, the birds and wildlife in the midst of it and not forgetting the polar ice caps, which is also home to a variety of animals, such as polar bears and penguins.
Our journey through the natural world category gets underway with the beetle. A beetle is an insect that has a hard outer covering and with roughly 4,000 different species in Britain alone could make them the commonest animal worldwide. They feed on numerous types of food that include plants, fungi and leaf litter. Beetles come in quite a lot of different colours that gives camouflage from predators. The beetle family comprises of ladybirds, stag beetles, devils coach horses, whirligig beetles, woodworm (or furniture beetles), dung beetles, scarab beetles, weevils, water beetles and longhorn beetles.
Human beings are exposed to nature everywhere we go and we're straightaway surrounded by it whenever we step foot outside, in our gardens, which gets visited by a variety of insects and birds every day, perhaps even nightingales. The nightingale feeds mainly on insects as they are insectivores and they also love to sing at night as well as during the day. Most other birds normally only sing when it is light.
They are secretive birds that live in open broad-leaved woodlands, heaths, coppices and thick undergrowth. Like the beetles above their drab brown colour acts as good camouflage which makes them difficult to see, however they can always be heard because of their distinctive song.
With its small, brown, spiky body the hedgehog is one of the most familiar wild mammals. They can be spotted in parks and gardens under bushes and hedges in the daytime. Although once dusk arrives they love to go off in search of insect rich lawns and flower beds in order to feed. Hedgehogs are known as the gardener's best friend as they love to munch on big, crunchy beetles, earthworms and slugs.
The badger is easily recognisable especially with its black and white striped face and is our biggest land predator. The badger family includes stoats, weasels and otters. The badger is known to be a nocturnal animal which lives in a burrow known as a sett. They will feed on small mammals, ground-nesting birds eggs, earthworms, fruit and roots and bulbs, which they dig up with their strong front paws.
Our journey through the natural world category concludes with the Amazon rainforest which is described as the 'lungs of the earth' as it is able to continuously recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen producing around 20% of the world's supply. The rainforest covers over a billion acres of land and if it were classed as a country it would be about the ninth largest in the natural world.
It is from the rainforest that at least 80% of the developed world's diet originated, giving us fruit, vegetables, spices, sugar cane, coffee and nuts such as Brazil and cashews. The rainforests not only provide some of the foods we eat but many of the plants there have been proven to be of great medicinal value and many of which have been found to be active against cancer cells.
The natural world is truly an amazing and inspiring place in which we can discover the many plants, animals and fungi that live all around us and the rocks, fossils and minerals inside the planet we walk on.
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