Dear children,
In this website, we will discover the marvels of creation in the living beings surrounding us. In the following pages, you will set out on a joyful journey in the company of many loveable living beings who will amaze you with their many interesting and astonishing characteristics.
While reading this website, you will see that Allah has created all living beings in perfect forms and that all of them are only manifestations of Allah's infinite beauty, power and knowledge. "Do you know all the animals?" We can hear you saying, "Not really. Only some of them." Do you know about these creatures' lives? Do you know how they are born? How they live? How they protect themselves and find food? You probably have no idea about most of the details of these animals' lives. But don't worry! As you read this website, you will learn astounding things about them and be amazed at the various perfections and fine qualities Allah has given these living creatures.
You are already acquainted with many animals. But in this website, you will also get to know some other animals' secret and marvellous worlds, which you have most probably never heard about or seen. You will like them very much. As you continue reading, you will be amazed at the way these animals can accomplish some of the tasks they do. You will see ostriches - the fastest runners in the world, tigers - some of the best sprinters, sharp-teethed squirrels, eye-catching peacocks and, as you meet them, you will come to know them better. Meanwhile, keep in mind that these are only some of the animals that exist in the world… Our planet abounds with countless other animal species.
While seeing the beauties of these creatures, keep in mind that Allah, the Creator of all these creatures, only wants us to think about the infinite might and art in His creation, recognise that He has created everything and that He is the owner of every living being. He also wants us to see the beauty in these living creatures, to take pleasure from their beauty and thereby love Allah and be grateful to Him because He has created all these splendid creatures. The creation of all the universe, all the lovely animals, plants, night and day and everything surrounding you serves a single purpose: to come to be able to see the sublime and flawless creation of Allah. The purpose is simply to make us, human beings, say, "How graciously Allah has created!" Reading The World of Animals will provide this outlook on the living creatures you see around you.
Are you ready? Now, turn the page and embark on The World of Animals! There is a whole world of wonderful animals waiting for you inside!
When they don't move, the bodies of these small animals quickly lose heat and they become vulnerable to freezing. For this reason, sleeping is a great threat to squirrels. However, Allah has created various protective mechanisms for every species, enabling them to survive under unfavourable environmental conditions. During sleep, for instance, squirrels just curl their fluffy tails tightly around their bodies. The tail of the squirrel is just like a coat. On wintry days, their tails save them from freezing. 
But how? Well, squirrels can achieve all these feats by using their hind limbs, their keen eyes, which make good adjustments for distances, their strong paws, and their tails, which enable them to maintain balance. But, have you ever thought who has given squirrels these features and taught them how to use them? Since it is impossible for a squirrel family to take a ruler and measure the heights of trees and lengths of branches, how do they measure distances as they jump from one tree to another? Furthermore, how do they jump and bounce so fast without getting hurt or crippled? 
In wintertime it becomes hard for squirrels to find food, so in summer they gather food to eat in the long, cold months ahead. Squirrels are among those living beings that store food for winter. 
It is Allah Who gives this knowledge to squirrels at birth and enables them to take their nutrition. Here, we witness one of the attributes of Allah: Allah is "ar-Razzaq", that is, "the One Who continually provides sustenance to every living being He has created".
RABBITS LIKE CARROTS!
Rabbits become 50 to 70 centimetres (19 to 27 inches) long when they grow into adults. Their hind limbs are longer and stronger than their forelimbs. That is why they can run 60 to 70 kilometres (37 to 43 miles)per hour and can leap six metres (20 feet) forward at a time. A rabbit can move faster than a car travelling within the city does. 
Also for us, human beings, Allah has made everything easy to use. Take, for instance, the orange you eat in wintertime. If it were not in segments, it would be very hard for you to eat it, because it is so juicy. However, Allah, Who has created everything you see around you, has also created this delicious fruit full of vitamin C in its segmented form, ready to eat, in its special package. Now back to rabbits! A rabbit can easily gnaw a carrot with its continually growing front teeth that give it such a lovely look. 
Apart from their nutritional needs, Allah has given living creatures many features that make life easy for them. Various rabbit species with different characteristics live on earth. Rabbits living in cold regions, for example, are mostly white in colour. This is an important feature that makes them invisible on the snow and enables them to hide themselves effortlessly. Wild rabbits, which are relatively bigger than other rabbits, have longer limbs and ears. The desert American rabbit, on the other hand, has quite large ears. These ears help rabbits to keep themselves cool. 
In nature, most animals live in particular territories they mark out for themselves. This is similar to us living in our comfortable homes surrounded by our family members. Animals and animal groups usually avoid entering other animals' territories. "Leaving a scent" is a method employed by animals to mark their territories. Gazelles, for instance, leave a substance with a scent similar to tar on long thin branches and grasses to mark their territory. This substance, secreted from the glands under their eyes, informs other gazelles that this field is already occupied. Reindeer, on the other hand, have scent glands on the tip of their hind feet with which they mark their territory. Rabbits mark their territories with glands on their chins.
As we have seen, Allah has created animals with very interesting and important characteristics. Learning all these makes us astonished at the flawless creation of Allah. We remember that Allah is our Creator and we feel grateful to Him. Remember that Allah has commanded people to think about His blessings and be thankful. In a verse of the Qur'an, Allah informs us that He will reward those who are thankful:
Let's consider the following: assume that you have never seen a dog before and somebody asks you to draw a picture of one. Would you be able to accomplish this? Of course not. No one could do this. Because, we cannot do anything unless Allah provides us an example in nature. 
Allah, Who has given all creatures various features, has also given dogs physical characteristics that make them different from other living beings. For example, dogs have 42 teeth, that is, 10 more than human beings. This way, they can grind and break their food, especially bones, into pieces without difficulty. Moreover, thanks to the special creation of their eyes, in darkness dogs have better eyesight than human beings. They can perceive moving objects from farther away. Furthermore, because dogs can hear voices at frequencies beyond our threshold of hearing, they notice noises from distances four times farther away than we can. For example, a man cannot hear the extremely high-pitched sound of the dog whistle used to give commands to dogs while dogs can hear it easily. 
The dog's sense of smell is also very keen. The olfactory centre - the centre for smelling - in its brain is forty times more developed than that of man. For this reason, their sense of smell is superior to man's. 
Unlike human beings, these creatures do not sweat to regulate their body temperatures, because there are no sweat glands in their body. Regulation of body temperature is handled by the respiratory system. The hair covering the body isolates the skin from external heat. As the external temperature increases, a dog's body temperature also increases; a dog whose body temperature increases gets rid of this excess heat by sticking out its tongue. This way, in spite of their thick hair, they do not sweat on hot days. Allah has given them such a perfect system, whereas we, human beings, immediately sweat when we run even for half an hour. But dogs never sweat even if they run for hours. Now that you have learned this fact, you don't have to worry about dogs when you see them with their tongues lolling out on hot days. 
Also, if you think about dogs, you will remember that their bodies are always very soft and bright. What gives this softness and brightness to their skin is its oil glands. 
By the time the ewe gives birth to her lamb, she never forgets its smell and the taste she senses while she cleans it with her tongue. That is why, she never accepts another lamb having a different taste and smell. This is really astonishing! While a mother in a hospital may well accept somebody else's baby given to her, a ewe can readily distinguish her own lamb from all others in a crowded flock. 
Besides, one of the most important characteristics of lambs is their rumination. Have you ever seen an animal ruminating? Let us tell you about it. Some animals that feed on grass ruminate. Characteristically, these animals have a stomach divided into four compartments. When the animal eats something, the food first goes to the stomach then comes back to the mouth again. After the animal chews it, it goes to the other chamber of the stomach. This process is called "rumination". Our Lord has given this capability to some animals the better to digest some indigestible foods. 
Do you know that after dogs, our most loyal friends are horses? Domestic horses never leave their owners if they are able not to. 
Do you know that you can identify the age of a horse by looking at its incisors? Indeed, since the grass on which horses feed contains sand and dust, their teeth wear out gradually and the degree of this indicates their age. Despite this, however, horses' teeth are very long. These teeth are similar to long strips buried deep in the roots of the jawbone. That is, compared to our teeth, the roots of horses' teeth reside deep inside. As the teeth wear out, the part remaining in the jawbone begins to emerge. In fact, the roots of the teeth of very old horses appear on the surface of the gum. Each tooth may wear out about two and a half to five centimetres (one to two inches) before it loses its ability to chew. Think for a moment: had our Lord not given this feature to horses, these animals would quickly lose their teeth and die of starvation. 
Here is another interesting feature of horses: Horses sleep on their feet! Do you know how they manage not to fall down? Because their leg bones have the ability to lock themselves while asleep. Thanks to this ability our Lord has given horses, they can sleep on their feet and also carry very heavy loads. The heads of human beings, however, fall down even when they fall asleep in an armchair. 
Well, why are horses' bodies designed in a way to make them carry heavy loads and run very fast? Actually, carrying heavy loads or running very fast are not skills that a horse needs for itself. So, why do horses have these abilities?
Zebras at first sight remind us of horses. As in the case of horses, zebras, too, have hair which we call a "mane". Their body structures are also very similar to horses and they run as fast as them. 
At times, a zebra herd wanders for 50 kilometres (31 miles) to find water and grass. But at nights they return to their own places. That is because, as we mentioned earlier about other animals, each herd leads its life in a particular territory. 
Zebras, as is the case with all other creatures under Allah's protection, are equipped with defence mechanisms that Allah has taught them. The first of these defence mechanisms is their very sensitive sensory organs, such as seeing, hearing and smell, which Allah has given them at birth. The sensitivity of these sensory organs enables zebras to notice their predators quickly and run away. No sooner do they begin to run than they reach an incredible speed. The second defence mechanism is the following: when the herd fall asleep, one or two zebras stay awake and watch out for possible threats.
Most zebras live on open grasslands where there is not much possibility to hide. For this reason, in order to stay alive, they need to move very fast. All the body structure of a zebra is devised to meet this need. For instance, their limbs are very long; they can run very long distances without becoming exhausted or losing speed. Although light, the bones of zebras are very strong. 
Often reaching a height of five to six metres (15-20 feet), you could find a resemblance between giraffes and speckled towers. The longest part of a giraffe is its neck. Its long neck enables it to reach the remotest branches on trees and feed by grazing on the sprouts and leaves. These thorny plants, which the giraffes don't chew, first go directly into their four-compartment stomach. Then they regurgitate them back to the mouth, where the giraffe chews them. Finally, they swallow them again and send them to another compartment in their stomach. 
On the other hand, such a system could not have come about by accident. You would certainly laugh at a person who tells you, "I went to that vacant area where many years ago I left some materials to construct a building. To my surprise, I found a huge building instead of the materials. No doubt, rain, snow and sun must have worked together to build this building over the years." You would also think that this man must have gone insane and would therefore feel pity for him. It would likewise be unreasonable to think that the lift system in a giraffe's neck had come into being in the same way. Such a system could not have come into existence by chance. 
Now, let's set aside how these speckled animals eat their food and talk about the way they drink water. Probably most people have never thought about how a giraffe bends down and drinks water without difficulty. However, our Lord, Who is the Creator of everything, wants us to ponder over such delicate systems. 
In moments of danger, giraffes run at speeds of 55 to 60 kilometres (34 to 37 miles) per hour. When they begin to run, they move their heads back and forth like a pump, and curl their tails. Unlike other animals, giraffes do not take crossed steps. That is, they move their left front and hind limbs first, and then the right front and hind limbs. Owing to this, lions are hardly able to catch giraffes.
Elephants, the largest animals on land, have two major kinds of species; African and Asian elephants. African elephants are larger than the others. They may be as high as three and a half metres (12 feet) and their weight reach around six tons (12,000 pounds). Their fan-shaped ears are two metres (6.5 feet) long and one and a half metres (5 feet) wide. As you can imagine, with such a giant body, you can't keep an elephant at home as a pet. 
Besides that, elephants use their trunks to spray water on themselves to have a shower or throw dust on themselves for a dust-bath. Yet, new-born elephants fail to use their trunks. They sometimes even step on their trunks and fall down. We may find this amusing but surely these little babies do not like it. A mother elephant accompanies her young elephant for twelve years. During the first six months, she teaches the baby how to use its trunk and she never becomes bored doing this. 
Another feature of elephants has surprised hunters and zoologists for a long time. What astonished them was the rumbling of elephants' stomachs. While rumbling, elephants' stomachs make very loud noises. Yet, what is astonishing is not the loudness of these noises but the way elephants control them. In fact these noises have nothing to do with digestion. The elephants make these noises to detect the location of their friends. More surprisingly, in the face of a danger, they all of a sudden become silent. Once they sense the threat is over, they start making noise again. Thanks to this method, elephants can communicate with one another even from four kilometres away. 
Have you ever touched an animal with antlers? If you did, you would surely be very astonished, because the antlers emerging from the animal's hairy, soft skin are stony. You can compare an antler to your nails. The hard nails coming out of your soft skin and the way they grow so neatly probably astonish you. The way animals' antlers grow is similar to the way our nails grow, yet they are much thicker, harder and bigger. 
Except for the reindeer, in general only male deer have antlers. Once the mating season is over, these antlers drop off and are renewed by others growing from beneath them. 
You have probably asked yourself, "Why do deer have antlers?" Antlers are an important weapon for deer. With antlers they can protect themselves from enemies. Sometimes, a predator only has to see the antlers to leave the deer alone. 
Allah has created these animals with antlers on their heads, thereby making it possible for them to protect themselves and their herds. If Allah had not given them antlers, these animals would have remained defenceless and helpless against their enemies. A male deer could not protect female deer and thus his herd couldn't be constituted. They would not have a weapon against wild animals. 
In the Qur'an, Allah reminds us this fact:
Children! At this point, you must ask yourself the questions, "How can a baby kangaroo one centimetre long know the right nipple that would meets its needs?", "How has the mother kangaroo placed milk in her four nipples with such different ingredients?" What is more, the milk the new-born baby sucks is hotter than the other milk from the other nipples. Their ingredients are also different. This being the case, how did the mother kangaroo manage to heat this milk? How has she added the necessary ingredients to this milk?
A baby kangaroo spends its first six and a half months in this pouch. After spending the next eight months both in the pouch and outside, it leaves it once and for all. 
We always remember the greyish furred koalas wrapping their arms and legs around the trunks of eucalyptus trees. This sight of koalas is indeed very lovely. Meanwhile, you may wonder why we call a koala "the sleepyhead". Let's remind ourselves right away that koalas sleep 18 hours a day! 
Although there are more than 600 species of eucalyptus tree in Australia, koalas only eat certain leaves from 35 of them. Koalas can't live just anywhere because, apart from being a store of leaves, the eucalyptus trees constitute a unique shelter for them.
There are many kinds of koala species. Each species feed on a different kind of eucalyptus leaf. If you are planning to move a koala away, you need also to take the eucalyptus leaves on which he feeds with you. Apart from their diets, koalas rarely climb down eucalyptus trees because they are hardly able to move around on the ground. The eucalyptus tree's leaves constitute different chemical substances. These substances are poisonous and dangerous for all animals except for koalas. Before swallowing, koalas grind these leaves with their teeth. The harmful elements in the leaves are filtered in the koala's liver and expelled from the body. By the will of Allah, this food, which is extremely poisonous for other animals, does not harm koalas. Therefore, koalas can eat about a kilogram (2.204 pounds) of poisonous leaves everyday without trouble. Koalas even get their water from these leaves. At certain times of the year, two thirds of the eucalyptus leaf consists of water. Therefore, only feeding on eucalyptus leaves, a koala can survive for months without drinking water. The tops of eucalyptus trees are vulnerable to wind. For this reason, koalas have very thick fur. 
