Book 11, Question 25
Why Do Animals Need Skin Care From Nature?
Animals take care of their skin, fur, and feathers in many clever ways! Birds roll in dust or preen their feathers with oil. Elephants spray dust and mud on their backs, and cats lick their fur.
More fun facts
- African elephant skin is covered with a network of tiny cracks only micrometers wide.
- Those cracks hold water to help the elephant stay cool and help mud stick, which protects against parasites and strong sun.
- The cracks form because the elephant's outermost skin layer is brittle and keeps thickening until it breaks.
- On coral reefs, small cleaner fish and shrimp remove parasites and dead tissue from bigger fish called clients.
- When scientists removed cleaner gobies from Caribbean cleaning stations, the variety of fish there dropped by 23 percent.
- Cleaning stations that kept their gobies got about 1.85 times more visits from client fish.
Sources: National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Health
Questions kids ask
What is a cleaning station?
It is a spot on a reef where small cleaner fish or shrimp pick parasites off bigger fish that visit.
Why do elephants throw mud on themselves?
Mud sticks in the tiny cracks of their skin and helps protect them from sun and parasites.