Animals that start with L

The labrador retriever is a very popular breed of gun dog. They were originally developed to retrieve birds after they were shot.

Labradors come in three main colours - yellow, black and chocolate.

Labradors are a gentle, intelligent dog and make excellent family pets. They can be trained to be helping dogs, and are used as guide dogs for blind people.

The ladybug, or ladybird, is a very small beetle that eats aphids. As aphids are pests, it is seen as a very good thing to have ladybugs in your garden.

Ladybugs are usually red, orange or yellow with black spots.

A lamb is a baby sheep.

Larks are small to medium sized birds that like to live and make nests on the ground. They eat insects and seeds.

Larks have an intricate and pretty song that people like. Larks have been noted for thousands of years for their song.

Some insects go through stages in their life, and the early stage is the larval stage. Larvae of creatures like butterflies tend to be crawling things with no wings that spend all their time eating and growing. When they are big enough, they change into flying insects.

Many different creatures have a larval stage that is so different to the adult form that you would never know they were the same creature unless you saw it change.

Leeches are in the same family as earthworms. Not all leeches are bloodsuckers, but the ones people are most familiar with are. They grow to around 2-5cm long but some species reach 30cm. Leeches live in damp, swampy areas.

Leeches have adapted one end of them into a sucker, so they can attach to a host. They inject anaesthetic in as they bite, so the host cannot feel them, and then an anti-clotting agent so the host's blood flows freely. Leeches stay stuck to their host until they are full, then they drop off.

Lemmings are small rodents closely related to voles. They eat mainly leaves new shoots and grasses. Lemmings will sometimes migrate in large numbers, not stopping even if a cliff gets in the way, which has lead to many myths about their behaviour.

Lemurs are a kind of monkey that only lives on Madagascar. They live mainly in trees and come out at night time to eat fruit, flowers, leaves, insects and small animals.

The leopard is the fourth largest big cat, after the jaguar. Leopards are very similar to jaguars, but are slightly smaller and have a different pattern of spots. Leopards are not fussy and will eat anything they can catch and kill.

A lerp is a protective cover made by the larvae of some kinds of insects. Lerps are made from sugary liquid that the larvae make. Once it is dry, it is hard and crystalline.