How’s it going codebreakers? Hope you enjoyed feasting on some yummy delights yesterday. Those recipes were sooooo tasty!
Have you been dreaming about those mysterious symbols as well?!
Perhaps it’s some sort of pledge, but there must be more to find! We’ll try to find some more today.
We’ll set out after breakfast, could you help us with our word search whilst we wait for the rain to stop?
Have a go at a: Rainforest Word Search
Thank you! We’d been stuck on that for a couple of days!
Right, let’s get going. First we’re going to check some camera traps that our team left out the last time they were here.
Camera traps are a great way of taking photos and short films of any animals that might have passed by, so we can get an idea of who might be in this rainforest.
Check the camera traps with our: Camera Trap Activity
And look at this incredible footage one of the cameras has picked up…
Wow! Chimpanzees…that can only mean one thing, we must be in the rainforests of Central Africa!
We have seen some chimpanzees fishing for ants in the trees not far from here actually…
We should go and check it out!
No sign of the chimpanzees here today, but it certainly looks like they’ve been using some of these sticks as tools. It’s so incredible how they use tools just like we do to find food. We shouldn’t be surprised though, they are one of our closest relatives!
In fact, for a bit of extra fun, can you guess which order different primates go in, in relation to humans? It is a bit tricky, but someone in your family group might be able to help!
Try our: Primate Ancestry Activity
What’s this? It looks like there are some knuckle prints heading off this way, we should follow them and see if we can find these chimpanzees.
Here they are! Don’t get too close though!
It looks like quite a big troop; 40 or more. We should watch for a while, see how they interact with one another.
What do you think their facial expressions mean?
Try playing our game with someone else to figure them out: Chimp Facial Expression Game
Right, let’s keep going before they notice us…
What’s that bird over there?
It looks very familiar. Let’s check those notes, Pretty sure we’ve read about this bird before…
It does look quite similar to the robin that visits my garden at home. It’s not the same though, it’s perfectly adapted to life in the forest. Just like a lot of the animals here.
In fact, look at this…
If you look really closely, can you see how these top leaves have been plucked off? This is a sign that one of the most mysterious rainforest animals of all, has been around…
This animal was only discovered very recently and when it was first discovered, it was thought to be a relative of the zebra, mainly because of those stripy back legs.!
It is of course an okapi, whilst it might look a bit like a zebra at first glance, it’s actually the closest relative of a giraffe.
If you were as tall as a giraffe and living in the forest, you might get a bit of a headache bumping your head on trees the whole time. So the okapi evolved to be shorter, better suited to the forest.
What are the best adaptations for the rainforest that you can think of?
How about…
- Arms of a chimpanzee
- Tongue of a bear
- Spots of a cheetah
- Trunk of an elephant
- Tail of a monkey
Voila! We present the…..Chee-phant-mon-bear-zee!
Ok, that would be a very strange animal indeed!
Why don’t you have a go?
Get a sheet of paper, think of some unique adaptations and draw your favourite ones all together as one animal!
For some inspiration, why not use our: Chester Zoo Writing Sheet
Uh oh! It looks like it’s going to rain again…no wonder they call it the RAINforest!
Let’s get back to camp before it gets too dark…
Phew! We made it!
Let’s unpack our bags to let our equipment dry out ready for tomorrow…
Hold on… what’s this? Another one of these strange notes at the bottom of the bag.
Hmmm…it’s starting to make some sense now but we’re missing a couple more pieces.
Hopefully we’ll find some more tomorrow in the forests of…Madagascar!
See you in the morning!