The insects are represented by an odd little beetle called the Death Feigning Beetle. These beetles roll onto their sides as a defense from being eaten by large spiders. The 3 body parts, six legs and 2 antenna will all be noted. Most of the animals on Earth, in fact nearly all of them based on the numbers of individuals, are smaller than 1 pound! The Kaleidoscope of Animals School Assemblies points out some amazing, but actually very obvious facts!

Arachnids are the spider family and few animals present a better example than the tarantula. With our magnification camera the multiple eyes can be clearly seen even by the back row!

Echinoderms are strange to us because they have radial symmetry, they are built on a circular body plan. They all look like variations on live soccer balls! The Pencil Urchin is fine exemplar. Combining aquatic and terrestrial animals is a feature of Snakes-N-Scales and Kaleidoscope of Animals School Assemblies does it well.

Most people have never heard of a Myriapod, but everyone knows the centipede. They don’t ever have 100 legs, more like 40-60. Fast and fierce, the centipede is a powerful predator with great strength and a venom that packs a punch! If centipedes could reach 8-10 feet long they could take on rhinos and lions!

Amphibians are under threat in the world today because of their mist skins absorbing human produced toxins and their duel life cycle being so dependent on water. This African Bullfrog is one of the largest of the frog group. Their adaptations to survive droughts include covering themselves with a mucus bag! and hiding underground.

Few would know the Amphiuma, unless they have attended one of our shows! This salamander never progresses to it’s adult stage, staying in the water for its entire life. the Amphiuma hunts from ambush beneath the mud. Making it seem sinister its habits, like a shark. Kaleidoscope of Animals School Assemblies presents a rare opportunity to see one up close.

There are so many fish! At least 30,000 different species, making them the most numerous of all the vertebrates. Our Puffer will stand in for all of them, showing some standard attributes, like gills, and some pretty special equipment like an expandable bag for a body and poisonous flesh.

The lizards and the snakes will soon be in their own category and the term “reptile” will no longer be used by science. This monitor lizard has much less in common with a turtle than we do with a giraffe and DNA is proving that in spite of outward appearances the reptile group makes little scientific sense. A water monitor exhibits the lizard in a very old, though quite advanced form.

The American Alligator is only one of two cold adapted crocodilians. The crocodilians are Archosaurs, a group more closely related to birds and Dinosaurs than snakes or turtles. Once this group controlled a large part of land and water. The 30 or so species we see today are but relics of what was once a small empire of crocs.

The most modern of the reptiles is the snake, but the python is one of the oldest snakes. Virtually a great tube of bony struts wrapped by sheets of muscle, the great snakes have some of the most efficient stomachs on the planet. This Burmese Python shows a few amazing adaptions just looking at its face. It has no eye lids, a scale called a brille, covers its eyes. It has pits in its lips to sense the heat of mammal or bird prey. Behind each eye is a dark spot, a false eye to fool attackers into missing its eyes. Kaleidoscope of Animals School Assemblies discusses these amazing attributes.