Endangered and Extinct
We had a serious discussion with our teachers today. Our words for the day were Extinct and Endangered. Extinct happens when an animal doesn’t live on planet earth anymore and they won’t come back, ever. Endangered is used for animal families that are almost gone.
Nimo: En-Danger-ed, what do you think danger means?
A: Danger means people will get hurt…
Am: It’s not safe
We started our discussion by talking about the Northern White Rhino that is now extinct. Nimo told us the reason why they became extinct is because people hunted them for their horns.
Nimo: Does anyone know what hunting is?
L: The rhino died
A: Hunt is when someone steals something
Hunting is a very natural thing in the animal kingdom, carnivores have to hunt for their food. However, some people hunted too many rhinos and now they don’t exist on planet earth anymore. We took a look at a few other extinct animals such as the Dodo, the Spix Macaw, the Golden Toad. Which were all caused by the hands of people.
Nimo: Unfortunately, we can’t see any of these extinct animals anymore…
A: I really wanted to see that bird… (points at Macaw)
L: No more animals…
It was very sad to hear that some of our animal friends were forced into extinction. We continued our discussion talking about the endangered animals. We learned that the Jaguar, Sloth, Uakari Monkeys, and Pink Amazon Dolphins are endangered.
A: I think the dolphins are in the aquarium.
Nimo: Some animals are kept in safe areas to make sure they don’t go extinct.
C: Why is this happening?
Nimo drew some trees on the white board, these trees were trees in the jungle and they are important homes and food for the animals living in the jungle. Some animals eat the leaves of the trees or fruits and carnivores eat other animals. When there were lots of trees all the animals had enough to eat and had places to sleep. Uh oh, someone came in and chopped down one tree. All of a sudden the plentiful food the animals had was quickly disappearing. When someone came and cut down another tree there weren’t enough food for all the animals and some animals weren’t able to get their share of food. The trees kept getting cut down and the herbivores were running out of food and starving. With no healthy animals making babies, the carnivores also started to starve and by the time all the trees got cut down, there were no more animals in our jungle. We learned that each animal has an important role to play in the jungle and they are all vital in keeping the life in the wild going. We remembered the movie we saw on Friday, Dr. Seuss’ Lorax. It was the same thing, someone came in chopping down all the trees then making homes and factories and eventually all the animals in that area had to move somewhere else to live.
Nimo: Yikes, how do you think the animals feel?
M: Very sad..
C: I would be angry!
Nimo asked us to think about how we might be able to help the animals and we will continue the discussion again tomorrow! Hopefully we will be able to find a great way to help our animal friends.
Nimo prepared a game we could play that was based on the topic of what we discussed today. He had little rubber fruit toys, one for the each of us, we all pretended to be an animal and Nimo would toss the fruits in the classroom then we all looked for our food. Once everyone got their share of food, and everything seemed okay, someone came into our jungle and chopped down one of our fruit trees. Now, with one fruit missing, there wasn’t enough food for all of us. It was like musical chairs just with fruits.
Our friends really enjoyed the game and wanted to play it again and again. We played several rounds then had our lunch.
Hopefully the weather will clear up so we can bathe in the sunlight at the park! Stay dry everyone and see yall again tomorrow!
Love,
Animal Loving Petals 2020