Презентация, доклад Дикая природа Австралии

called Gondwana. This huge piece of land, which also included the landmasses that would become Africa, Antarctica, India and South America, was gradually broken apart by massive geological forces.

The landmasses went their separate ways, with New Zealand finally breaking away 80 million years ago and Antarctica splitting off about 45 million years ago. Australia was left to drift alone, the world's only island continent, its wildlife evolving in isolation to become the unique set there is today.

From nearby landmasses some flying animals, such as bats and birds, and a number of rodents joined this strange collection, but the vast majority of Australia's wildlife is found nowhere else in the world.

The landscape too is varied and often bizarre, with vast deserts and forests, snowy peaks and wild, rocky coastlines. This island continent is surrounded by oceans of many different characters and beyond them lies a huge arc of neighbouring islands that have a wealth of wildlife of their own.

Gondwana

ever lived.
Meaning of scientific name: Diprotodon = "two forward teeth".
Statistics: Shoulder height: up to 1.7m , Body length: 3m. Weight: males up to 2500kg; females 1000kg.
Habitat: They inhabited forests, open woodland and scrub.
Diet: They were browsing animals, feeding on trees and shrubs.

Genyornis: Genyornis and its relatives have been nick-named the 'demon ducks'.
Meaning of scientific name: Genyornis = "jaw bird".
Statistics: Height: 2.2m, Weight: 200-250kg.
Habitat: Desert grasslands and perhaps dry woodlands, would have been Genyornis’ habitat.
Diet: They were primarily herbivores.

Megalania, giant ripper lizard: When the first people reached Australia, they encountered the largest lizard that had ever lived.
Statistics: Body length: 5.5m; Weight: 400kg.
Habitat: They lived in open woodland and grassland.
Diet: They were carnivores.

of bizarre and unique wildlife adapted to some of the most extreme habitats on Earth. Take a trip to the heart of Australia to discover their extraordinary and beautiful wild heritage.

Guess what the subject of our lesson is …

the topic
Improve listening skills
Develop conversational abilities
Polish up reading and writing competence
Learn how one can help endangered animals

I. Goals of the lesson

[‘lWtItju:d]
mammal [‘mWmEl]
insect [‘Insekt]
reptile [‘reptaIl]
marsupial [mA:’sju:pjEl]
amphibian [Wm‘fIbjEn]
diversity [daI‘vE:sItI]
monotreme [‘mOnE”trI:m]
invertebrate [In‘vE:tIbrIt]
habitat [‘hWbItWt]
fascinating [‘fWsIneItIN]

II. New Words

приблизительно
широта
млекопитающее
насекомое
пресмыкающееся
сумчатый
земноводное
разнообразие
млекопитающее, откладывающее яйца
беспозвоночный
среда обитания
обворожительный

marsupial
amphibian
diversity
monotreme
invertebrate
habitat
fascinating

Match the words and the definitions

any of a class vertebrates that feed their young with milk
an animal that crawls or moves on its belly
animal that has a pouch (bag) to carry the young
animal without a spinal column (backbone)
about, nearly
charming, captivating
angular distance north or south from the equator, parallel
natural surroundings, home
any of a class of invertebrate with head, six legs, and wings
variety, multiplicity
animal intermediate between fishes and reptiles
any of an order of egg-laying mammals

Toronto shares the same ……………. as Nice.
Kangaroo and koala are ………………… .
There is a great ……………… of cultures in Russia.
It's ………………….. to listen to classical music.
An ………………. is able to live both on land and in water.
The length of the river is …………………….. … 54 km.
Crocodile is a thick-skinned long-bodied aquatic …………. .
Man is a the higher ………………. .

habitat

latitude

marsupials

diversity

fascinating

amphibian

approximately

reptile

mammal

South America and ………….. occupy the same range of latitudes.

……… of the world’s marsupials live in Australia.

The term “…………..” includes mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds.

Anton Chekhov was impressed by Australian …………….. .

one million

half a million

two million

Africa

Antarctica

Europe

70%

90%

80%

animals

plants

fauna

wildlife

people

culture

Rainforests

Great Barrier Reef

Lake Eyre

Rivers and South-east

The Alps

through calm water, ancient life forms still flourish and 'mermaids' cruise through underwater meadows.
The community which inhabits these submarine pastures is as diverse and fascinating as any coral reef and includes molluscs, crabs and bizarre fish.

These prairies are also where mermaids roam! The mermaids are in fact dugongs, giant marine animals, once mistaken for the mythical beauties by sailors that had spend too long at sea…


Dugong Dugongs, also called sea cows, spend up to eight hours a day grazing Shark Bay's underwater pastures. These creatures could hardly be described as beautiful but they do have a certain grace underwater as well as a surprising speed - critical for avoiding predatory tiger sharks. The world's largest population of dugongs - over 10,000 animals - feed year-round in Shark Bay.

Dolphins
At Monkey Mia on the west coast, a few individual dolphins have learned that if they come to the beach at certain times, they'll get a free fish. The relationship attracts 100,000 tourists to this place every year. All the other dolphins in the bay catch their own food.

These are the 'wet-dry' tropics, under the influence of the monsoonal north, and here the seasons swing regularly between months of dryness and weeks of monsoon rain.
Kakadu National Park, one of the richest and most spectacular areas in Australia, is a landscape of eucalypt woodlands, rocks and wetlands that changes dramatically with the seasons.

Merten's water monitor
Merten's water monitor is an amphibious lizard that lives just as easily in water as it does on land. It cruises through the waterways of the north with the aid of its long, flattened tail

Magpie goose
Hundreds of thousands of magpie geese are attracted to the northern floodplains each year to breed and raise their young. They feed on seeds and tubers and nest in huge colonies.

Frilled lizard
The frilled lizard is one of the oddest-looking lizards of Australia. It spends almost all its time up trees, coming to the ground only to feed.
The lizard's huge 'frill', which can be 30cm across, seems to be mostly for display. Both sexes have frills, but males use them when threatened or when they meet other males in their territory. In spite of their cruel appearance, frilled lizards feed on insects.

Australian Wildlife

driest continent on earth - almost half of it is desert. This is truly the land of the lizard, with more species on a single sand dune than in the whole of the UK. Strange thorny devils feast on black ants that run around here.

Rivers of sand flow through mulga woodlands rich in reptiles and birdlife where thousands of camels have found a new home and ants rule the undergrowth.






Bilby
The bilby is about the size of a large rabbit, with long rabbit-like ears and a hopping walk. But the similarity ends there. The bilby lives in the centre's sandy deserts and is strictly nocturnal, only emerging from its hole several hours after sunset.



Red-tailed black-cockatoo
Like many desert birds, the red-tailed black-cockatoo is nomadic and its presence in an area is usually linked to food or water. Like all black-cockatoos they are seed-eaters and are often found living around the centre's rivers either in pairs or in flocks of several hundred.

Australian Wildlife

is literally like a 'bite' taken out of the southern shore of Australia. The warm Leeuwin current flows into the Bight where it prevents cooler water from rising up from the deep, making these some of the least fertile seas in the world.

Other temperate waters are characterised by immense numbers of fish, birds and mammals, but the Great Australian Bight is totally different. An incredible diversity of plants and animals have developed unique solutions to surviving in a place where food is in such short supply, and because these isolated Australian seas have been separated from other coastal waters for so long, many of these strange creatures are found nowhere else on the planet.

Australian sea lion
Australian sea lions live throughout the Great Australian Bight and because they inhabit the marine equivalent of a desert these species have evolved a bizarre breeding strategy in order to survive.


Southern right whale
Southern right whales congregate in the Great Australian Bight each winter to breed and raise their young. They spend the summer months feeding in the cold, rich seas off Antarctica, but as the plankton blooms give way to shorter days and cooling seas, the whales turn north towards the warmer but less bountiful waters of Australia.

Australian Wildlife

in the driest part of Australia, a flat salt lake floating on a sea of mud - Lake Eyre.
This is the world's biggest expanse of salt and in some areas the salt crust is 50cm thick and solid enough to support a truck.

The lake has a very important role in the centre's ecology. Rainfall in Australia's centre is totally irregular: some areas may not see rain for years, but when it does rain it can bucket down. This is when much of the desert floods and instead of flowing to the sea the normally dry rivers flow to the lowest point of Australia, Lake Eyre.


Lake Eyre dragon
When Lake Eyre is dry, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth, and yet life still exists here.
The small Lake Eyre dragon makes its home amongst the cracks in the salt. Here it shelters from the sun and when it's too hot, or too cool, it digs deeper down into the mud.

Australian pelican
Pelicans are big fish-eating waterbirds usually found on lakes, rivers and channels throughout Australia. However, when Lake Eyre floods, pelicans and other waterbirds fly in tens of thousands to breed on its islands, free from disturbance by people and predators.

Australian Wildlife

in green forests. As it drifted northwards and climatic conditions changed it became drier and rainforests were pushed to the wetter areas.
Nowadays there are still fragments of rainforest, mostly in the cooler, wetter areas of Tasmania and along the east and south-eastern coasts. The most luxuriant rainforest is to be found in the northern tropics, where it grows in the far north-east.
Rainforests were growing here 100 million years ago. Although they cover only 0.001% of Australia's land surface, these very old forests are full of wildlife, with more animal and plant species than any other Australian environment.


Possum
There are 26 species of possum in Australia, and more than half live in rainforests. The dramatically marked striped possum is a rainforest specialist, feeding mostly on grubs. It also eats the nectar of rainforest flowers. Like all possums, the striped possum is a marsupial, the females carrying their developing young in a pouch.


Cassowary
The cassowary is a big and impressive bird of the rainforest. It stands up to 1.8m tall, second in size only to the emu, and is distinctive for its bright blue and crimson head and large bony helmet. Females are larger than males, and it's the male that incubates and looks after the young offspring.

Australian Wildlife

on the continent, the Murray-Darling. But in this dry continent, even these rivers are small by world standards. The Murray River is 2,500km long, but flows slowly. This part of Australia is the typical Australian bush - one of the many areas dominated by eucalypts or gum trees. These woodlands and forests are home to many of Australia's classic animals.


Koala
Koalas are only found in the woodlands of the south and east. These Australian icons eat virtually nothing but gum leaves, which they must chew and digest thoroughly, as they're hard and not very nutritious. As a result koalas spend 20 hours a day sleeping to conserve energy. It's common to see a koala fall asleep half-way through an activity, even with a mouthful of half-eaten leaves!

Kookaburra
Kookaburras are another gum-tree classic, and their cackling call is one of the most characteristic sounds of the bush. They use the hollows that form in eucalypts as ready-made nest sites in which they lay their eggs and raise their young.
Kookaburras are quite big birds, nearly 50cm long and have large beaks. They are the world's biggest kingfishers, though they don't tend to eat fish.

Kangaroos
Kangaroos may be Australia's most instantly recognisable animals. One species, the eastern grey kangaroo, has a wide distribution across eastern Australia. It lives in large numbers around eucalypt woodlands and forests, grazing at the grassy edges and using the deeper areas for shelter and shade.

Australian Wildlife

has been so little geological mountain-building activity here for millions of years and so much weathering. But there are mountains here and in some areas they are covered in snow for large parts of the year.

This is the Great Dividing Range, Australia's only large highlands. It runs for 3,500km from Cape York in northern Queensland, where tropical rainforests grow, all the way down the east coast to Victoria and re-emerging in Tasmania.



Red-necked wallaby
There are some unexpected animals in the Australian highlands. Red-necked wallabies have quite a broad range along the forests of eastern Australia and are common in Tasmania, where they may be found in the coldest areas. Amazingly, females will have young in their pouches at this time of year, ready to become independent when the spring returns and there's plenty of food around.

Common wombat
Common wombats are found in many forested areas of south-eastern Australia, but they have particularly soft, thick fur, which helps protect them. As a result they can withstand the coldest weather. In the wintry high country, they will dig for grass through as much as 30cm of snow, and although in summer they tend to be more active at night, they often come out in daylight to hunt during the winter. Wombats may travel 3kms a day to find food.

Australian Wildlife

coral reef system in the world, stretching for an amazing 2,300km along Australia's north-east coast. It covers an area more extensive than Britain and is quite simply the largest living structure on the planet, and the only one visible from space.

Its reefs are made up of 400 species of coral, supporting well over 2,000 different fish, 4,000 species of mollusc and countless other invertebrates. It should really be named 'Great Barrier of Reefs', as it is not one long solid structure but made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and 1,000 islands.


Corals
Incredibly, one tiny creature - the coral polyp - has built the huge structure of the Great Barrier Reef. As single animals in isolation they look like sea anemones, but most corals live in colonies. New polyps grow off the initial founder until colonies of thousands grow together.

Turtles
Turtles are the most common marine reptile on the Great Barrier Reef and six of the world's seven turtle species breed here.
For most of the year turtles glide through the blue water feeding on anything from marine grasses to small coral creatures, such as jellyfish, molluscs and sponges. Whilst they can stay underwater for hours and they roam the seas for years on end, they need to come ashore on the islands and beaches of the Great Barrier Reef to lay their eggs.

Australian Wildlife

a member of an organization protecting animals
Make a donation
Adopt an animal

Director of the zoo

You

learned new words on the topic?
Have you improved your listening skills?
Have you developed your conversational abilities?
What about reading and writing competence?
Have you learned how one can help endangered animals?

VII. Closing