Snowy Egret

Egretta thula

The snowy egret, scientifically named Egretta thula lives in North, South, and Central America. It also lives in the caribbeans. One of its habitats is the estuary. The classification of the snowy egret is domain Eukaryote, kingdom Animalia, and phylum is chordata. Also, its class is Aves, order is Ciconiiformes, family Ardeidae, genus Egretta, and finally its species is Egretta thula. The snowy egret has bilateral symmetry, it is endothermic, and heterotrophic. It is a very social bird, very white, and has a wingspan of about 100 centimeters. A behavioral adaptation of the snowy egret is that the walk upright so they can make quick changes of direction to catch prey. Two structural adaptations are that it has a long beak that can fit into tight places to catch prey and that it has long legs to help it run fast to catch prey or run from predators. An interesting fact about the snowy egret is that they are very engaged in self maintenance behaviors and one particular one is bathing. It has predators such as Alligators, sharks, and racoons. Its prey would be small fish. This is a beautiful organism and I have enjoyed researching it.

                                                                                       

I found this image from: http://veniceaudubon.org/gallery/snowy-egret