Animal Facts: Browse the Overview below, or pick another animal:

Animal Facts -- Overview

In an effort to help you start your journals on the right foot, we've compiled some photos and descriptions for the most common local animals. These descriptions are by no means exhaustive. Rather, they are meant to pose as a jumping off point for your studies of animal behavior. It is our hope that you will become experts in one or several of these creatures by the end of the semester. Please pay careful attention to the questions and comments raised in the text--but don't stop there!

If you have any questions about a specific animal or if you would like us to add more animals to this section of the site, let your TA know!

Mammals:

Squirrels, cats and dogs (if you are lucky opossums, raccoons and skunks -- yes, around campus).

Birds:

Sparrows, starlings and pigeons are the most common and best to watch. You may also encounter robins, mockingbirds, blue jays, house finches, crows, chimney swifts, chickadees, and a red-tailed hawk who has been seen eating pigeons and squirrels on campus over the past few years.

Bees, Wasps and Ants:

To start, you need to be able to tell them apart. Easy enough -- bees and wasps fly and ants don't (except when they do -- see below). Anyway, you know what ants look like but you might get confused between bees and wasps.

First, check the wings -- there should be four of them. If not, you probably are looking at a fly (look again and see if it has big eyes like a housefly and stubby little antennae on its forehead). Now why would a fly look like a bee? Right, but what are some other reasons? Hoverflies (Syrphidae) hang around flowers a lot. They are fun to watch, so if your bee isn't, watch it anyway. A little more about the wings. Bees often look like they have two wings. That is because they use Velcro (you didn't really think the idea was original with humans did you?!) to hold the front and hind wings together when flying. Wasps sometimes look as if they have sticks for wings when they are walking. That's because some kinds fold their wings at rest.

Bees (and there are probably more than 15 species around campus) are usually fuzzy (you have to get close), wasps tend not to be fuzzy (you don't even want to know how many species of wasps there are around here -- let's just say it is probably 3 times as many as all species of birds and mammals in R.I.).

 Three "kinds" of wasps occur around campus: parasitic wasps, sand wasps and vespid wasps. You will usually be watching the vespids (yellowjackets and hornets) but keep an eye out for the others -- they all do amazing things if you can follow them. Here is a more detailed page that will help you tell bees and wasps apart.

Return to Top

Home  Prospectus  Sections  Journals  Web Discuss   Schedule  News  Handouts  Exams  Links