Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats.
Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a
chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.
There may be as many as 3,000 different kinds of insects more than all the
other animal and plant species combined.
Of the huge numbers of insects, only a tiny amount, one percent, are harmful
to humans. Most insects are harmless or actually beneficial. For example,
without bees to pollinate flowers, plants would not have a way of reproducing
and we wouldnt have anything to eat!
Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body
weight in about half a year.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old 80 million
years older than the first dinosaurs!
The desert locust is the worlds most destructive insect. It can eat its own
weight in food every day. Large swarms can gobble up to 20,000 tons of grain
and plants in a day.
Out of every 1,000 Mosquitoes, one female carries a disease that could be
fatal to humans.
There is only one insect that can turn its head the praying mantis.
Some male spiders pluck their cobwebs like a guitar, to attract female spiders.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old 80 million years
older than the first dinosaurs!
The praying mantis is the only insect that can look behind its shoulders.
One kind of insect called a spittlebug, lays its eggs in a big nest of saliva
bubbles. I guess no predator would look for a meal in there!
The weight of all the termites in the world outweigh the weight of all humans
10 to 1!
One way to tell the age of a fish is by looking at its scales. They have growth
rings just like trees. These are called circuli. Clusters of them are called
annuli. Each annuli show one year.
The northern fur seal, rather than using a layer of fat to keep it warm, depends
on its thick fur with some 300,000 hairs per square inch.
The chameleon has a tongue that is 1.5 times the length of its body!
Did you know porpoises could surf? They are frequently seen riding the bow
wave of a ship. They make no swimming motions and can ride the wake for
more than an hour. They can also turn on their side or flip completely around.
Fish swimming at depths of 15,000 feet (almost 3 miles down!) can withstand
a pressure of 7,000 pounds per square inch. They are able to live in these
crushing depths by pumping gas into their swim bladder.
You may have heard someone say, It's raining cats and dogs. There have
been actual documented cases from all over the world of fish, frogs, dead
birds, snakes, snails, beetles, worms and jellyfish raining down from the sky in
great numbers, but no reports of showers of cats or dogs.
The blue whale, the largest animal to have ever existed, is 96 feet long and
weighs 125 tons. This is as much as 4 large dinosaurs (Brontosauri), 23
elephants, 230 cows or 1800 men.
Some animals produce their own lights, called bioluminescence. The Brazilian
railroad worm has a red light on its head and green lights down its side. All it
needs to drive on the street is a turn signal.
The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon. It can fly at a speed of 168-217 miles
per hour.
The largest egg laid by a living bird is that of the North African Ostrich. It is 6
to 8 inches in length and 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The smallest is that of the
hummingbird. It is less than 0.39 inches in diameter.
Animals with some of the longest lives are the Marions tortoise (152 years),
the fin whale (116 years) and the deep-sea clam (100 years).
An electric eel can produce a shock of 600 volts. That's enough to stun large
animals to even knock a horse off its feet.
Salamanders are known to come out of wood when it was burning inside a
fireplace, this is because Salamanders hibernate in wood.
Some frogs can pull their eyes into their throat and help push food down!
An African adult elephant eats about six hundred pounds of food a day; that's
four percent of the elephants body weight!
The smallest fish in the world are the pygmy goby and the Luzon goby, from
the Philippines, which are only one-half-inch long when they are full grown.
The 14-foot-long narwhal is a whale whose tooth can reach up to eight feet
long!
Chimpanzees use tools more than any other animal except man.
The mandrill baboon has a red nose, blue cheeks, and an orange beard!
There are about 100 billion birds in the world, and about 6 billion of them
make their homes in the United States.
The emperor penguin is playful, and often times lies on its chest and side to
slide along the ice and snow.
The leatherback is the biggest sea turtle, and it can weigh as much as 1,500
pounds.
The snapping shrimp, only 1 1/2 inches long, makes a noise with its one big
claw, which sounds exactly like a firecracker.
Flying fish actually glide on wind currents above the surface of the water,
sometimes up to 20 feet above the surface.
Adult male giraffes bang their long necks together in a form of ritual fighting,
during which no harm is done to either giraffe.
The stonefish, which lives off the coast of Australia, is the most poisonous fish
in the world.
The black-necked cobra, which lives mostly in Africa, spits its venom into the
eyes of its victim, to cause it blindness.
When two lovebirds appear to be kissing, they are actually grooming each
other with their bills to keep clean and neat.
A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the
backs of other animals is fun!
Vultures can soar for hours without one beat of their wings.
Sea horses pull themselves around with their chins leading them.
Foxes sometimes nip at the heels of cattle so the stomping of the cattle
makes mice and other rodents come out of the ground, for the fox to eat.
The guanaco of South America, a cousin of the camel, has pads on its feet to
keep its feet from burning on desert sand or freezing in mountain snow.
The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own.
Blue jays often forget where they hide winter supplies of food.
The largest bird egg ever laid was laid millions of years ago by the
Madagascar, or the elephant bird.
Today, the ostrich is the bird that lays the largest eggs.
Scallops swim with jet-propelled speed by clapping its shell open and shut.
Some ducks and geese can fly as much as 332 miles a day!
The lung fish can live out of water for as long as four years!
Theodore Roosevelt was the U.S. President with the most pets, including a
lion, hyena, wildcat, five bears, and many more!
Killer Whales are the only sea animal that outranks the Tiger Shark as top
predator of the sea.
Some fish have eyes that are the same size as their stomach!
A female seahorse lets her husband store her babies inside his stomach!
There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. You
dont see all of them because most are too fine and light to be noticed.
Fish have gel-slime on their bodies that protects them from parasites.
An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
Some frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and continue living.
Cats can make over 100 vocal sounds, while dogs can only make 10.
Texas horned toads can shoot blood out of the corners of their eyes.
The flying fox is a bat with a wing span over five feet.
Some wild tigers can eat up to 40 pounds of meat at a time, and not eat again
for several days.
The blue whale is the largest animal that ever lived (it could reach 100 feet
long and weight up to 150 tons!)
left a large crater. It was a good thing the Moon was between us and the
meteor!
o See the rings of Saturn while you can. They slowly wobble up and down over
the years as Saturn's poles point away from then towards the sun. The rings
disappear when edge on to our line of sight. Currently they are almost at their
widest point and can be seen even in binoculars and small telescopes.
o Stars viewed through even the largest telescopes look like tiny points of light.
But astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph a star
called Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle jooze), have now been able to see
the surface of another star. Betelgeuse is a red, giant star located at the left
shoulder of the constellation Orion and is the largest known star in our galaxy.
o Not all stars are found inside galaxies. Astronomers have found stars moving
between the galaxies, which are millions of light years apart. These stars may
even have planets, possibly with intelligent life on them. If they do, these
beings would see a lonely sky with just one star (its own sun) and a few faint
galaxies.
o The Hubble Telescope has photographed pictures of auroras on Jupiter and
Saturn very much like those at our North and South Poles. But if we had
auroras as big as these, they would cover the entire Earth and more.
o If you were to place the planet Saturn in a big enough bowl of water, it would
float!
o After a blistering day of exploring, astronauts may relax with a nice cold glass
of ice water from Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. Since there is no
atmosphere there to spread the heat around, shadows in deep craters at the
poles could hold ice deposited by early comet collisions.
o Where do comets come from? There is a huge cloud of objects made of ice
and rock encircling our solar system, called the Oort Cloud. It lies beyond
Pluto and extends half way out to the next star. These objects occasionally
bump into each other, sending one in towards the sun to become a comet like
the recent Hale-Bopp comet.
o Someday you may go ice fishing on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Evidence is
being constantly discovered that there is an ocean under the ice of Europa.
The ice would keep the ocean from evaporating and huge tides caused by
Jupiter would keep the ocean temperature above freezing. What kinds of life
might there be in such a strange ocean?
o A giant game of cosmic pool was played when the solar system was first
formed billions of years ago. Neptune was hit by an asteroid so big it was
knocked sideways on its axis. It orbits with one pole pointed at the sun. Venus
was hit so hard it is almost upside down and is the only planet to spin
backwards on its axis. And most astronomers believe the Moon was formed
when an asteroid almost the size of Mars hit Earth and shot debris into orbit. I
wonder who won the game and when is the next tournament?
o When you think youre standing still remember this fact. Even though you
dont feel it, our entire local group of galaxies is moving at about one million
miles per hour toward another galaxy group called the Virgo Cluster.
o Scientist believe that diamond rains occur on Neptune and Uranus. The heart
of these planets may be a layer of diamonds hundreds of miles thick.
o Jupiters giant red spot is like a tornado and it is 3 times bigger than the earth.
o The largest crater on the moon measures 183 miles across.
o Astronomers know Mars is a backwards planet. Once a year, for several days,
it appears to move backwards in its orbit. This is actually an optical illusion
when the faster orbit of Earth races past Mars.
o The farthest you can see with the naked eye is 2.4 million light years away!
(140,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.) Thats the distance to the giant
Andromeda Galaxy. You can see it easily as a dim, large gray cloud almost
directly overhead in a clear night sky.
o Jupiter is a planet made entirely of gases.
o The first animal sent up to outer space was a dog.
o If you could live on the planet Mercury, a year would only last 88 days.
o Saturns moon, Titan, actually has many geysers spewing out of its south
poles. Scientists have said that the geysers are very similar to the ones here
on earth.
You may have heard someone say, Its raining cats and dogs. There have
been actual documented cases from all over the world of fish, frogs, dead
birds, snakes, snails, beetles, worms and jellyfish raining down from the sky in
great numbers, but no reports of showers of cats or dogs.
Almost two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered by water. If the earth were
flat, water would cover everything in a layer two miles deep!
During a solar eclipse, the shadows of leaves make the same crescent shape
of the eclipsing sun. The image is made by light passing through tiny holes in
the leaves.
Tired of the cold weather? Take a vacation on the hottest planet in the solar
system Venus. At over 800 degrees, it is hotter than Mercury because the
clouds and abundant carbon dioxide hold in most of the heat received from
the sun.
Geologists have discovered there seems to be more water miles deep
between the rocks of Earth's mantle than in all the oceans of the world. The
intense pressure of the tons of rocks above keeps the hot water from turning
to steam and escaping.
Water is the only substance on earth that is lighter as a solid than a liquid.
The biggest canyons in the world are under water. Beneath the Bering Sea off
Alaska there are seven giant canyons: Bering Canyon, 240 miles long;
Navarin Canyon, 60 miles wide; Zhemchung Canyon, 9000 feet deep. In
comparison, the Grand Canyon in Arizona is only 10 miles wide, one mile
deep and 250 miles long.
The Sahara, one of the world's largest and driest deserts with sand up to thirty
feet deep was once a land with flowing rivers, humid swamps and lush fields.
Cave painting, 9,000 years old, found in the heart of the Sahara, show men
herding cattle and hunting lions and hippos. About 2,000 years ago the cave
painters, herders and animals left because the area that was rapidly
becoming the desert we know today.
Seeds from a wild flower, the Artic Lupine, found in Alaska, have grown in the
lab after being frozen in the ground for 10,000 years.
The bristle-cone pine, which grows in the deserts of Nevada and California, is
the oldest living species in the United States. Some are believed to be 4600
years old and can live to be 5500 years old.
Monster waves of over 100 feet tall can suddenly appear at sea when there is
no storm to cause them. They are actually accidental meetings of several
waves that can combine to form one huge one that can easily sink a freighter.
When scientist drilled through the ice of Antarcticas Lake Vanda, they
discovered that the water at the bottom of the lake was an amazingly warm 77
degrees Fahrenheit. Ice crystals actually heat the water by focusing on the
bottom of the lake.
The 6,288-foot summit of New Hampshires Mount Washington has some of
the worst weather in the world. The strongest wind measured was 231 miles
per hour. The official low is 47 below zero Fahrenheit, but the cold often
combines with the wind to produce wind-chills of 150 degrees below zero. The
ground is permanently frozen in a layer from 20 to 100 feet below the surface.
Since 1851, over 100 people have died of falls or exposure on the mountain.
8,200 below the surface of the ocean a ridge of volcanoes stretch around the
globe. Vents in the ridge spew mineral rich water at temperatures of 700
degrees Fahrenheit or more. In the hot waters, bacteria live feeding on the
minerals. Tube worms grow to six feet long and foot long clams grow 500
times faster than their relatives living near the surface.
On February 20, 1943 in a cornfield near the village of Paricutin, Mexico, the
ground cracked open and began to spew red-hot rocks. A volcano was born. It
grew to 35 feet the first day. By 1952, it had soared to 1,352 feet and had
buried two towns.
A two-mile thick dome of glacial ice covers most of Greenland. The weight of
the ice is so great that if it suddenly melted the bedrock of the island would
rise 2500 feet!
Iceland is a 39, 000 square mile island that is built of lava from volcanoes.
Major eruptions occur every 6 or 7 years. Almost 1/3 of the worlds lava output
since 1500 has poured out onto Iceland.
There are giant waterfalls under the ocean! The largest is between Greenland
and Iceland. This submarine waterfall drops 11,500 feet; three times the
height of any land waterfall.
The loudest sound in history was recorded in July 1883 when a volcano on
the tiny Indian Ocean island of Krakatau erupted. The explosion was heard
3,000 miles away in Madagascar. Ash clouds shot 25 miles into the sky. The
eruption also created giant tsunami, sea waves, that reached heights of 175
feet, speeding across the ocean at 400 miles an hour and destroyed over 300
towns.
Ball lightning can sometimes float through a glass window without breaking it;
other times the glass is smashed to pieces!
Have you ever heard the expression, knock your socks off? If you are struck
by lightning, your socks and shoes may be knocked off. Rapid evaporation
and expansion of sweat on your skin blows your clothes off. You may not be
hurt if the current does not enter your body.
The place with the most number of rainy days per year is Mount Waialeale
on Kauai, Hawaii up to 350 days. The longest time that a place remained
without rain was Arica, Chile from October, 1903 to January, 1918 14
years!
The more salt you put on ice, the more the ice melts.
The hottest continent on earth is Africa, where a record high of 136.4 degrees
F was once recorded.
Antarctica is the coldest continent on earth, where a temperature of 126.9
degrees F below zero was once recorded.
It gets as cold as minus 160 degrees F. ten miles above the ground on earth!
Raindrops arent really shaped like drops; they are perfectly round!
Antarctica gets less precipitation than any other continent on earth.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest place on earth, where it has an
average of three-hundredths of an inch of rain per year.
The greatest snowfall recorded in a day was 75.8 inches at Silver Lake,
Colorado on April 14-15, 1921. I wonder how long schools were closed?
Hold on to your hat! The fastest wind speed ever recorded was 231 miles per
hour on Mount Washington, New Hampshire on April 12, 1934.
The hottest place on earth is in Dallol, Ethiopia, which is a sizzling 94 degrees
in the shade on a typical day!
A lightning bolt is 4 times hotter than the sun.
Once in England, because of a water spout, it rained frogs!
Roy Sullivan, A U.S. park ranger, was struck by lightning seven times during
his life and lived to tell about each of those strikes!
Lightning strikes 1,000 times per second on the planet earth.
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise, unless theyre in Ireland.
Cows sometimes sit down in a field when they know its going to rain. (that
way, they are saving a dry spot to sit for themselves).
How long can you tread water? The greatest rainfall recorded in a day was
73.62 inches at Reunion in the Indian Ocean on March 15, 1952.
One inch of rain is equal to 10 inches of snow.
The number of bacteria in a quart of soil from your backyard garden is 30
times greater than the population of the world.
Steamboat Geyser, located in Yellowstone National Park, is the most powerful
geyser in the world, and can shoot super-hot water 300 feet in the air.
Every year, plants make and store ten times the amount of energy that people
use.
Glass is made of sand.
Did you know that the Empire State Building once got stuck by lightning 9
times in 20 minutes.
In the tropical rainforest it gets about 80 to 400 inches of rain yearly. If it is
raining really hard, it gets about 2 inches of rain per hour.
pew!). These same bacteria also make vitamin K, which causes blood to
clot. If we didnt have these germs we would bleed to death whenever we got
a small cut!
It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.
That dust on rugs and your furniture is not only dirt. Its mostly made of dead
skin cells. Everybody loses millions of skin cells every day which fall on the
floor and get kicked up to land on all the surfaces in a room. You could say,
Thats me all over.
It takes food seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach via the
oesophagus.
A humans small intestine is 6 meters long.
The human body is 75% water.
Your blood takes a very long trip through your body. If you could stretch out all
of a humans blood vessels, they would be about 60,000 miles long. Thats
enough to go around the world twice.
The strongest bone in your body is the femur (thighbone), and its hollow!
The width of your arm span stretched out is the length of your whole body.
The average human dream lasts only 2 to 3 seconds.
The average American over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
The farthest you can see with the naked eye is 2.4 million light years away!
(140,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.) Thats the distance to the giant
Andromeda Galaxy. You can see it easily as a dim, large gray cloud almost
directly overhead in a clear night sky.
The average person has at least seven dreams a night.
Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.
Your brain is 80% water.