• Question: What is your favourite animal ? and if you were to save one animal what would it be ?

    Asked by yangtze6 to Adam, Thomas on 10 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by brookly, 439evnb33.
    • Photo: Adam Milligan

      Adam Milligan answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      Ooh… tough question! I always loved cheetahs because they were so fast but recently I have really started to love hyaenas because I worked with them and discovered how smart they are – and they aren’t all bad like the ones in the Lion King!

      But if I had to save only one I don’t know what I’d do! Cheetahs and hyaenas aren’t in too much danger at the moment but gorillas are so probably gorillas!

    • Photo: Thomas Clements

      Thomas Clements answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hi yanftze6,

      My favorite animal is definitely the octopus.

      Did you know that they can not only change their colour, but also the texture of their skin to blend in to the surrounding environment. They also can solve complex puzzles (I’ve seen one use Lego to build a tower so it could open the lid of the tank it was in before!) as well as mimic other animals to look less tasty to predators. They have a really interesting evolutionary history and because of this I get to study them a lot.

      I don’t think I could pick one animal to save, I feel like we as a species should work to save them all, because whether it’s immediately obvious or not, each animal has an integral and important place in the food chain and ecosystem.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Ooh this is a really tricky question! I love wolves. I’m fascinated by how they behave and work together and I’m also very interested about the way people respond to them, people often have strong opinions about them – like marmite people either seem to love wolves or hate wolves.

      Conservation scientists spend a lot of time trying to work out which species to try and save first – they try and work out which species are most important by working out how big an effect losing that species would have on an area. They also try and work out which animals it might be possible to save, it can be too late or too difficult to save a particular type of animal so it is sadly better to spend money and time saving something else.

      It makes me really sad that people hunt and poach animals for things like their scales, bones, tusks, eggs, fins, etc. So I’d like to save animals being hunted like that. Today I’ll pick the pangolin to save, because it’s a really weird super cute mammal that looks a bit like a reptile and in real danger of going extinct. People hunt them for their scales, but I’d rather have living Pangolins than a pile of scales!

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