Why are many mushrooms dangerous? This is a little bit tricky because not all mushrooms are dangerous, but a lot of them contain toxins that can be harmful or fatal. A lot of plants are also toxic, but they can have edible parts. If you get lost in the wild, the general advice is to […]
#1117 Why are many mushrooms dangerous? Read More »
Why do some fish create their own light? Some fish create their own light to attract prey or, surprisingly, to hide from predators, and many other reasons as well. Being able to create light is called bioluminescence and it is not limited to just fish. The most common organism that creates light on land is
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What is leukemia? Leukemia is a type of cancer that begins in the bone marrow. It is a group of different cancers, rather than one type of cancer. “Leukemia” comes from the Greek words “leukos”, which means white, and “haima”, which means blood. It is named in Greek, but the Greek’s didn’t know what it
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Do larger animals have a faster metabolism? No, bigger animals don’t have a faster metabolism. It tends to be the exact opposite. Let’s look at what metabolism is. The metabolism of an organism refers to all of the chemical processes that go on within the cells to keep that organism alive. There are three main
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How do weight loss drugs work? There are different kinds of weight loss drugs, but the most common ones work by suppressing appetite and slowing down how fast the stomach is emptied. A large percentage of people in developed countries are becoming seriously obese. There are many reasons for this. The prevalence of ultra-processed food
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Why can you graft onto a plant? You can graft onto a plant because they don’t have an immune system. There are several ways of grafting plants, but the method I am thinking about is called cleft grafting. In cleft grafting, a cleft is cut into the trunk of a tree of the stalk of
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Why do teeth have nerves? We have nerves in our teeth to provide us with feedback on what we are eating and how much pressure we are applying. Teeth appear to have nerves for three reasons. The first reason is because the inside of the tooth is living tissue with a blood supply and where
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How good is an elephant’s sense of smell? Elephant’s have a better sense of smell than any other animal on Earth. We know that our sense of smell is pretty basic when we compare it to a lot of other animals, but that makes sense because we have evolved for more of our brain to
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How much weight could a human lift? This is a difficult question to answer because there are too many variables, but possibly three or four tons. There are many ways of lifting weight and there are different records for each method. The heaviest weight ever lifted by a human is purported to be 2,844 kg,
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What is a syrinx? It is the organ that birds use to produce sounds and their birdsong. Birds make sound in a different way to us. We use our larynx and they use their syrinx. Both of these words have come from Greek and larynx means “upper windpipe” and syrinx means “pan pipe”. The larynx
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