This page provides stories about animals that children from India, Somalia, Tunisia, and Brazil submitted for including on this website. It shows how the children feel about these endangered animals. Please read them to find out more.

Note: Submissions have not been edited by team members and provided as submitted by the contributor.

My favourite animal: The Grevy's Zebra

In my country, there used to live a beautiful zebra we call as Grevy's Zebra. It is so so pretty and it lived in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Right now, we don't have one zebra in our country. They still have some in Kenya and Ethiopia. People used to get so greedy for this zebra's beautiful skin and killing them to make fashion clothing. I really miss them zebras and hope they don't disappear from other countries too.

(original written in Arabic; translated into English by Abbas Hamid)

I live in a small town near the city of Laguna, in the state of Santa Cantarina (Brazil).

My family goes to fishing because we are fishermen family. One animal I like to see is dolphins. They are cute and they are the endangered type people call as bottlenose. They are so friendly and my family get a lot of help from them. We also help them. You see, we stand on the beach with our fishing net in the water. The bottlenose dolphins push the fish to our net. The dolphins come swimming to us with big smiles. And then, they suddenly role over on water top. This is their signal for us. This way they tell us to throw the nets and that they have pushed the fish to us. We get as much fish as we can get in our nets. Whatever fish doesn't get catched in our net enter the dolphin mouths. This they have been doing since before my grandparents time. They are so much fun although they are only a few of them.

Hoolock Gibbon

There is a monkey in our country that we call as Hoolock Gibbon. Once upon a time, we could see it all over India. It is really small and its weight is also low. I will say about 5 kg or 6 kg at the most. Very, very small animals. They lived in beautiful evergreen forests. Then, people started clearing these forests. When the forests started going away, people started hunting the monkeys. Other animals that liked to feed on the monkey were able to spot them so easily. My mummy told me that when she was little there were so many, many more. She even saw many in her backyard and they used to sit on her tile roof and chase other gibbons. Sometimes they even came down and grabbed some food. She can also see the gibbons clean each other sitting on tile roof. I wonder if these monkeys will be around when I have my own children. It is very sad to see them gone. They are just so cute and so mischievous.

Gazelle: An Endangered Animal in Tunisia
My admiration for gazelles has no bounds. I often associate gazelles with deftness, speed innocence and freedom. Whenever it chances my parents and I visit The Belvedére Zoo in Tunis I at once dart towards the enclosure where a very small herd of gazelles are kept. I could realize that there's a subtle lure in their eyes which seems to me to bridge the whole gap of communication between man and them. In a bid to pat the skin of one of them ,the four gazelles startled, seemed to be struck with awe and took to their heels to keep themselves too much distant from visitors.

These gazelles have no confidence in man and probably their intrinsic intuition has been a guide for them but not the safest one to shield them from eminent dangers of many predators which live side by side with them in their natural habitats. Ironically, what have triggered the alarming decline of gazelles has nothing to do with ferocious predators, it rather stems from man's growing greed and blatant carelessness. The following is a brief overview of the Cuvier's Gazelle, an endangered animal in Tunisia as well as in the north of Africa.

Profile:
Cuvier's Gazelle weighs up to 35kilos (77lb) and is 70 cm (28") tall at the level of the shoulder. It's scattered on a wide array of habitats ranging from hilly valleys, mountainous and rocky plateaus, grasslands, oak and pine forests to arid and desert regions. It feeds on plants and grasses. It's thought to be both a "browser" (eating the leaves of trees) and a "grazer" (eating grass and herbs).

Cuvier's Gazelle resorts to the water imbibed by plants or the dew as a source of drinking water ; yet, it needs to frequently make appeal to waterholes.

As a matter of fact, the Cuvier's Gazelle tends to spend most of the morning rambling in the hill sides and to get down to the valleys to graze at night or early in the morning.

The Cuvier's Gazelle lives in spacious areas. A male gazelle can attend one or more females with their children often in herds of 3 to 5.

Earlier this century, the Cuvier's Gazelle was still scattered in western Tunisia and over mountainous regions in Morocco including the Middle and High Atlas as well as in Algeria.

Right in 1932, this animal was reported to be on the way of extinction. In 1972, only a slew of small groups were signalled to be alive.

Data on Biology and Ecology

• Weight: Female: 15 - 20 kg (33 - 44 lb ); Male: 20 - 35 kg (44 - 77 lb ).  Shoulder height: up to 68 cm (27").
• Gestation Period : 170 - 175 days.
• Birth Season : Mating happens early in winter, while births take place in the spring (April - May).
• Birth Rate: They are in the habit of giving birth to one offspring and yield two litters in one year if grass and water abound.
• Maximum Age: 14 years 10 months (captivity).
• Diet: leaves of trees, herbs, shrubs, green grasses, water from plants and dew as well as water holes.
• Behaviour: Quite often the gazelle spends the whole day in the hills, and gets down grazing at night or early in the morning.
• Habitat: They live in hills, valleys, mountains, desert, grassland oak and Aleppo pine forests.

Reasons of the Cuvier's Gazelle's Decline
The number of Cuvier's Gazelle has dramatically declined due to different reasons:

• They have been hunted for their skins, meat and trophy.
• The use of motorized hunting on a wide scale has triggered the process of their decline.
• Loss of natural habitat, deforestation and the expansion of agricultural lands at the expense of wildlife habitat have contributed to the decline of this species.

Some Facts

• In Tunisia, there's a growing awareness of the urgent need to preserve the country's natural richness from extinction. There have been moves to protect wildlife such as imposing tough measures and strict laws on hunting, signing international treaties, creating numerous animal reservations and parks such as Ichkeul Park in the north of Tunisia which has become the safest resort for thousand of migratory birds swarming from Europe, Asia, etc. and other species including mammals.
• The Cuvier's gazelle can reproduce quite quickly once introduced to a given area.
• The Cuvier's gazelle is the sole survivor gazelle pertaining to the area north of the Sahara Desert.
• In1932, the Cuvier's Gazelle was rarely spotted in great number.

References:

• Website - http://www.animalinfo.org
• Books - African Mammals Databank 2004.

Originally written in French by Rania, 7th Year Basic Education (Tunisia), Translated by Ms S.Kefi