Unusual Animal Senses Identification Cards

Cut cards apart and have students try to match each animal with their unusual animal sense.

Platypus

This animal is well known for being a mammal with a duck bill which lays eggs. But you might have wondered exactly what purpose this odd bill serves? This animal’s bill contains sensory cells with an electrical sense that is sensitive to disturbances in the water. When hunting for food at the bottom of rivers, it closes its eyes, nostrils, and ears in the water. The special sensory cells help the animal accurately locate its prey.

Electrical Bill

Bat

You may think this animal is blind, but it does have sight. Its eyes are small and less powerful because they use their sense of sound to hunt rather than their sense of sight. This is called echolocation.

Echolocation

Snakes

Police often use infrared imaging devices when chasing criminals or when searching for people trapped in rubble. Infrared devices pick up the thermal radiation emitted by objects based on heat. Several kinds of this animal which hunt warm blooded animals have pits on their heads which can detect infrared light. Even if these animals have been blinded, they can still accurately hunt using this ability to sense infrared.

Infrared

Bees

These insects do not see the world like we do. They have an extra set of vision cells. Special designed cells help them see Ultraviolet Light.

Ultraviolet Light

Bees

Some insects have more than one sensory trick. This insect has a very busy day and finding the hive again after flying all around could be a matter of life or death. Their source of navigation is thought to come from their abdomen. There is a small ring inside their abdomen that can detect the magnetic field of the Earth and help the insect define its location.

Magnetism

Spiders

Unlike humans covered in armor, this animal has a tough, sensitive exoskeleton to protect their bodies. These arthropods have small slits in their exoskeleton that allow for stress to be measured by the bend of the slit by force.

Sensitive Armor