Animals

The largest deer alive, taller than a horse, and oddly happy to feed at the bottom of a pond. A quick tour of the moose, antlers, bell and all.

The elk is a deer that grew up. Bulls the size of a small horse, antlers that regrow yearly, and a bugle you can hear across a valley. A quick tour of the wapiti.

Ankles that spin backwards, nuts buried as decoys, and a memory good enough to grow woodland. Squirrels are far cannier than my Year 4 class expects, and they expect a lot.

They sing songs you cannot hear, squeeze through a pencil-width gap, and out-breed almost anything. Mice are stranger than their reputation suggests.

Rats can laugh, free their trapped friends, and slip through a gap the size of a coin. Not bad for an animal most of us try very hard not to think about.

A class hamster taught my Year 4s more than I expected. Cheek pouches to the hips, one 1930 ancestor, and a wild cousin most people never meet.

The hedgehog that turned up in my Bristol garden taught me more than any textbook. Thousands of spines, a strange spitting ritual, and a proper winter sleep.

My Year 4 class thinks bats are flying mice. They are not even close. Meet the animals that hunt in the dark, hang by their toes, and keep summer nights bite-free.

Kangaroos hop everywhere, cannot go backwards, and can pause a pregnancy until the weather improves. Here is what my Year 4 class never believes until I show them.

Koalas are not bears, they nap most of the day, and their diet is basically a plate of poison. Here is how they get away with it.

The bird that got its name from a geography mix-up, changes colour when it feels something, and came back from the brink. Turkeys, properly.

Everything my Year 4 class gets wrong about horses, sorted out: why they doze on their feet, why they cannot be sick, and why they run on one big toe.