Anaimal adaptations?

im diong a project on animal adptaions and need to know why these animals have adapted to have these feature





Why does the moose have antlers?


why is ther blue whale so big


Why are a bevers teeth so long?


Why is a girafees neck so long


Why dopes a zebra have stripes


why do elephants have trunks


why the hammer head shark has a hammer head


and why the puffer fish puffs





any more stange/gross anaimal adaptations wopuld also be helpful, thanks so much guys!!!!

Anaimal adaptations?
All animals have adapted to their environment in one way or another. The below exaples can all be true or false depending on your point of view.





Why does the moose have antlers?





Can be an adaptation because of the following...A moose should have antlers aprox 10' wide per it's size. Antler size is determined by the species size, except moose, their antlers are SMALLER than they should be. This is because they travel most of their lives through thick forest and brush where a large rack would be a disadvantage.





why is ther blue whale so big





All baleen whale species are large for 2 reasons. 1. because the blubber they need to survive the cold water has to be VERY thick and 2. because the food they eat is so small they need a lot of it per day to survive and so need a very large digestive system to handle the large amount of food.





Why are a bevers teeth so long?





A beaver is related to rodents, and all rodent front teeth grow continuously. The front part grows faster than the rear part of the teeth both giving them the curve, and makeing them sharp. As the beaver uses his front teeth as chisels to chop down trees, his are adapted to be longer and stronger than other rodents.





Why is a girafees neck so long





so it can reach the top of the acacia trees that grow to be about 20' tall. The only leaves are at the very top and are protected by pretty big thorns. The giraffe is the only animal tall enough and with a long enough tongue (also an adaptation) to reach the leaves and so has no competition for his food source.





Why dopes a zebra have stripes





Zebras travel in herds and the stripes on one Zebra blend with others in the herd and confuse preditors. This helps the individual zebras with survival.





why do elephants have trunks





Elephants grew large to help prevent predation (no one attacks an adult elephant and few attack baby elephants), but that made it difficult to forage with a short neck and columnar legs. So they had to grow an appendage to grasp food and drink from the ground. As the elephant grew bigger, the trunk grew longer.





why the hammer head shark has a hammer head





that one is still questionable, but some people believe the front edge of the hammer is used to detect small changes in the elctrical field. This would be an advantage for the shark to find prey under the ocean floor.





and why the puffer fish puffs





When threatened, a puffer fish will inflate and when it inflates, spinesall along it's body expand like a scared porcupine. This makes it almost imposible for most marine animals to bite down and eat the fish.





hope that helped...
Reply:I'll come back later and comment further on your questions, but I wanted to add an important clarification first.


We call some features 'adaptations' because we recognize them as something that increases the biological fitness of the animal or plant in question.


However, while we are able to provide explanations (that is to say, hypotheses) about the current function of these features - in other words, we can answer the questions "What do they use it for?" or "Why is this useful/advantageous?" - , and also about the reasons why this feature is not somewhat different (for instance, "Why haven't running animals evolved wheels"; these are related to biomechanical, phylogenetic, and other factors and constraints), I say, although researchers offer hypotheses to answer these questions, the answer to the "Why" question is "Because it evolved in a certain direction". The evolutionary history of each taxon is unique.


And remember that evolution does not have a goal...



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