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Q: Where do egrets nest, and why do they follow cows?

Steven Yoder, Humansville

A: Cattle egrets build nests in colonies with other egrets or other kinds of herons. In Missouri they nest in tall oaks, sycamores, cottonwoods or willows. Males gather twigs and branches and pass them to females, who build the nests.

As cows mosey around a pasture, they scare up grasshoppers, crickets, spiders and sometimes frogs from the grass-all things egrets like to eat. Cattle egrets follow cows and even perch on their backs so they can easily nab their prey. Cattle egrets originally lived on the continent of Africa and spread to northeast South America in the 1870s. They began to move into new parts of

the world and were first sighted in North America in 1941. They now live on every continent. The other two Missouri egrets, the snowy and great, do not normally follow cows.

Q: I read your answer to a spider question in last December's issue . . . My science teacher says that all spiders have venom. Is he wrong?

Blair Dowling, age 15, Cape Girardeau

A: The spider question in December's Outside In asked how many poisonous spiders live in Missouri. Two spiders in Missouri are poisonous to humans when they bite: the brown recluse and the black widow. But your teacher is right. All spiders have venom-or toxic fluid-that they use to paralyze their prey. It's just that not all spiders are strong or big enough to bite people, and not all venom is harmful to people. The fluid varies from species to species in how toxic it is to other animals.

Spiders have fang-tipped jaws called chelicerae. They pierce prey with their fangs and inject them with toxic fluid, which immobilizes them. It also turns the insect's insides into a jellolike substance. Using a tube-shaped mouth and strong stomach muscles, a spider sucks out the insides until its prey-usually an insect-is nothing more than a shriveled shell.

 

Q: How many types of animals are there in Missouri?

Amber Wellington, age 10, Arnold

A: Missouri is home to almost 900 different species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, mollusks and crayfish. And if you count other living things, such as flowering plants, trees, ferns, mosses, millipedes, spiders and known insects, the number zooms higher-estimated at around 6,000 different species! There are more insects in Missouri than scientists have been able to count, but estimates range from 1,000 to 5,000 different insect species.

Many of these animal species are on the state's rare and endangered species checklist. For example, 60 out of the 201 species of fish in Missouri's waterways are on the list. Twenty three out of 74 mammal species and 52 out of 173 birds in Missouri are on the checklist. Plants and animals become endangered because we have destroyed or damaged-usually with pollution or over-development-the ecosystems where they live.

If you could be any Missouri animal, what animal would you choose to be?

Would you like to hop? Fly? Swim? Hibernate? Make loud noises? Write to me and explain what Missouri animal you would choose to be and why. You can also send original artwork. We plan to include some submissions in a future isue of Outside In . Mail to:

Professor Oakley Q. Nutkins
Outside In, Missouri Conservationist
P.O. Box 180
Jefferson City, MO 65102-0150