Page 73 - One Million Things: Animal Life - The Incredible Visual Guide

6 MONKEY
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Japanese macaques, like other monkeys, use
their excellent sense of vision to spot fruit.
Their senses of smell and taste then take
over. As the macaque bites into a fruit,
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smell detectors in its nose pick up odors
from the flesh, and taste buds on its
tongue detect tastes, such as sweetness.
A bitter taste warns that the fruit may
be poisonous and should be discarded.
7 OCTOPUS
These intelligent mollusks hunt mainly
at night for fish, crabs, and other prey.
An octopus’s eight flexible, muscular
arms reach out to move and to grasp
food. Each arm is equipped with
numerous suckers that grip the seabed
and hold onto prey. The suckers also
taste prey to see if it is worth eating.
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8 SNAKE
Like a tapir, a snake has a Jacobson’s
8 organ housed in the roof of its mouth,
which detects both tastes and smells.
By flicking out its tongue, the snake
collects odor molecules. These are
identified when the tongue is pressed
against the Jacobson’s organ. Snakes
use this combined sense to locate food
and potential mates.
9 TURKEY VULTURE
While other vultures use sight to find the
dead animals on which they feed, turkey
vultures employ a different strategy.
Found in North and South America, the
turkey vulture uses its sense of smell.
As it soars and glides, the vulture can
pick up odors given off by rotting
corpses on the ground, even if they
are hidden in dense forest.
10 CATFISH
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Named for the whiskerlike barbels
around their mouths, catfish have poor
10 vision and live in the murky depths of
lakes and rivers. Their long barbels are
equipped with lots of taste sensors.
As the catfish’s snout probes the lake or
riverbed, the barbels feel for food and
taste it to determine whether it is edible.
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