If you could become an animal, what would you choose? I would like to be a bird, able to soar over mountains and deserts. When I was researching facts for this book, I discovered many animals that I didn’t know could fly, like squid, spiders, and snakes – yes, snakes! Here are a few facts about flight:
- A golden eagle can swoop down on its prey at 150 miles per hour (240 km/hour).
Animal Adaptations: Flight is for young readers in Grades 3 – 5 and is one of my new books out in 2016.
- Owls have velvety feathers on their wings that allow them to fly silently.
- Bats are the only mammals with wings. Other mammals like flying squirrels and calugos must launch themselves from someplace high so they can glide.
- Bees have been found at heights of 30,000 feet (9,000 m) where the air is so thin that helicopters struggle to hover. Scientists found the bees changed the beat pattern and angle of their wings to do this.
- A dragonfly has two pairs of wings that it controls separately.
Here is a really cool video from National Geographic of a flying snake:
