Adder — Adder Poisonous snake of the viper family. In Great Britain the only venomous snake is the adder. Adult can usually recover from the effects of its bite. In Africa are found the related puff and night adder. The names puff adder and spreading adder are sometimes applied to the harmless hog-nosed snake of North America . The death …

Chameleon — Chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are squamates that belong to one of the best-known lizard families. The name “chameleon” means “Earth lion” and is derived from the Greek words chamai (on the ground, on the earth) and leon (lion). Chameleons vary greatly in size and body structure, with total length from approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in Brookesia minima, to …

Boa — Boa is a common name for non poisonous snake of boa and python family. Boa and python family contains some 70 species. Like pythons boa too kill their prey by constricting them to death and then swallowing it whole. They can stretch their jaws wide appart more than the size of their head to swallow a large animal. …

Anaconda — Anacondas are four species of aquatic boa inhabiting the swamps and rivers of the dense forests of tropical South America. The Yellow Anaconda can be found as far south as northern Argentina. There are two possible origins for the word ‘anaconda.’ It is perhaps an alteration of the Sinhalese word henakandaya, meaning ’whip snake’, or alternatively, the Tamil …

Alligator — An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. The name alligator is an anglicized form of the Spanish el lagarto (“the lizard”), the name by which early Spanish explorers and settlers in Florida called the alligator. There are two living alligator species: the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and the Chinese Alligator (Alligator sinensis). …

Sawfly — Sawflies make up the suborder Symphyta, a group of largely phytophagous insects in the order Hymenoptera. This group is an artificial assemblage of superfamilies (the overall group is paraphyletic), but the name is still in common use, and treated as a suborder, though it seems likely it will be phased out in future classifications. These superfamilies are regarded …

Silkworm — The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of Bombyx mori (Latin: “silkworm of the mulberry tree”), the domesticated silkmoth. A moth in the family Bombycidae, it is very important economically as the producer of silk. It is entirely dependent on humans for its reproduction and no longer occurs naturally in the wild. Silk culture has been practised for …

Tarantula — Tarantula is the common name for a group of “hairy” and often very large spiders belonging to the family Theraphosidae, of which approximately 900 species have been identified. Tarantulas hunt prey in both trees and on the ground. All tarantulas can emit silk, whether they be arboreal or terrestrial species. Arboreal species will typically reside in a silken …

Termite — Termites, sometimes known as white ants, are a group of social insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera. Termites usually prefer to feed on dead plant material, generally in the form of wood, leaf litter, or soil, and about 10% of the 4,000 odd species (about 2,600 taxonomically known) are economically significant as pests that …

Wasp — A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is not a bee or ant. The suborder Symphyta includes the sawflies and wood wasps, which differ from members of Apocrita by having a broader connection between the mesosoma and metasoma. In addition to this, Symphyta larvae are mostly herbivorous and “caterpillar like”, whereas those …