Hard NZ animals word search

About this word search

New Zealand has two native bats, the long-tailed and the short-tailed bat, and they were the only land mammals here before people came. Archey's frog and Hamilton's frog are among the most ancient frogs in the world, and Powelliphanta is a giant carnivorous land snail that eats earthworms. Alongside them live the animals that were brought in, from red deer and Himalayan tahr in the mountains to the wallaby, the weasel and the feral goat.

The grid is eighteen by eighteen and the words can run in any of the eight directions, backwards included. Short-tailed bat and Hector's dolphin are the longest at fourteen letters each, with long-tailed bat, Hamilton's frog, Powelliphanta and Himalayan tahr close behind at thirteen. Two-part names have no spaces or apostrophes, so look for ARCHEYSFROG and HECTORSDOLPHIN. Kea is the shortest at three letters, and the two bats share the end TAILEDBAT, which makes them easy to mix up.

This is a good sheet for a quiz afterwards: who can say which animals on the list are native and which were introduced, and which of the introduced ones DOC tries hardest to control? Peripatus, the velvet worm, usually wins the prize for the strangest animal on the page.