The sport of riding on the crest or along the tunnel of a wave, especially while standing or lying on a surfboard is called surfboarding. Originally developed by Hawaiian islanders before the 15th century, ‘he’e nalu’ spread in the early 20th century to mainland USA and Australia, where heavy timber plank boards were ridden directly towards beaches.

A newly-hatched crocodile is about eight inches long and can be found on the mud near the water’s edge of marshes, rivers, estuaries and lakes around the tropical regions of the world. For it is here that the female lays her eggs and buried them-to 70 at a time-in holes in the warm mud. Each of the hard-shelled eggs is …

Most birds build their nests of twigs, grass, feathers and bracken. Some prefer ready-made nest sites like tree holes, which they then line with a soft bedding material for the young chicks. The western magpie, however, a bird of Australia and New Zealand prefers to use rather more robust materials. It is particularly fond of pieces of metal, such as …

A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe. Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Normally this belief is accompanied by a totemic myth. Although the term is of Ojibwe …

Mudskippers are small tropical fish of the eastern Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific from Australia to Japan. They live in estuaries with mudbanks and also in mangrove swamps. Their eyes protrude from their heads and can be moved independently of each other. When the mud is exposed by the ebbing of the tide the mudskippers come out …

A marsupial is a mammal which has a pouch. Its baby is born at a very early stage of development, and makes its way straight away to the pouch, where its suckles. At first the baby has no powers of suction in its mouth, and so the mother’s teat squirts milk into the baby’s mouth at regular intervals. Marsupials are …

A greenshank is a little bird with a long beak and olive-green legs – a member of a group of birds known as sandpipers. The greenshank breeds in Scotland, Norway, Sweden and Finland. It builds its nest on the ground, being content usually to settle in a small hollow, lined with heather or dry grass. The eggs are pale buff …

The mammoth fed entirely on plants. In other words, it was a herbivore – like its smaller relative, the elephant of today. These colossal animals, whose name has become another word for hugeness, must have needed a great amount of vegetation to keep themselves alive. In a broad sense, the name mammoth has come to be applied to any extinct …

Australia is the only continent where venomous snake species outnumber non-venomous ones. Australia is also home to the deadly box jelly and blue-ringed octopus.

Traditionally, ugg boots are Australian boots made from sheep skin, with wool as the inner lining and a tanned outer surface. The natural properties of sheep skin results in thermostatic benefits. Thick fleecy fibres on the inner part of the boots allow air to circulate during summer so that the feet do not become excessively warm. In winter, the sheep …