Wildlife
What is a wetland?
Wetlands are places where the land is covered by shallow water: marshes, ponds, the edges of large lakes and rivers, and low-lying areas that flood regularly.
Wetlands brim with life: microscopic animals and plants, fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Wetlands also have their special plant communities - rooted plants like reeds, sedges, and waterlilies in the shallows and floating plants like duckweed and water hyacinth in deeper water.Lakes and ponds
The shorelines and shallow inlets of lakes support a great diversity of plant and animal life. The muddy lake bottom is home to a host of creatures - flatworms, segmented worms, molluscs, crustaceans and insect larvae. The tangled roots of reeds and rushes provide shelter for breeding fish, frogs and newts. Water birds and a variety of mammals nest and feed in the wetland vegetation near the shore.
Specially adapted creatures
Even a small pond is home to a myriad of species. Shallow ponds and marshes might dry up for part of the year: the animals that live here need to survive in a dormant state during dry periods, or move to another pond. The African lungfish, which can grow to 2m long, buries itself in the drying mud and covers itself with a slimy cocoon so that its skin stays moist.
It can stay there for many months, breathing in air and waiting for the rains to come. Some other varieties of fish can even travel across land! In India, climbing perch travel from pond to pond since their gills absorb oxygen from the air.
