Why do we find kangaroos only in Australia?

What makes Texas a great environment for armadillos?

In order to survive, plants and animals have traits or adaptations suited to their environment. Humans can place a penguin in a zoo in the United States and provide an appropriate environment, but if the penguin were to escape from the zoo, it would be unlikely to survive long in the wild.

Boy standing next to a corpse flower in a museum

The Corpse Flower (titan arum) is only found in the wild in the rainforests of Sumatra. It gives off the odor of rotting meat (that's how it got its name), to attract carrion-eating beetles for pollination.

Museums and botanists who want to grow this unusual plant (which can grow three meters tall) must pollinate the flower at the appropriate time. If humans didn't pollinate this plant, it would only be found in the rainforest. The Corpse Flower is uniquely suited to the environment of the rainforest.


Sources for images used in this section as they appear, top to bottom