Biology Archives - Page 35 of 50 - I Learned This Today

#571 What is the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores?

April 27, 2023

What is the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores? Amongst other things, they have differences in their teeth, mouths, eyes, saliva, intestines and their stomachs. Herbivores obviously live off plants. They are known as primary consumers because they eat the energy that the plants have produced through photosynthesis and introduce it into the food chain. […]

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#568 Why don’t we move when we’re dreaming?

April 24, 2023

Why don’t we move when we’re dreaming? Chemicals in the brain inhibit the motor neurons and stop them from triggering the muscles. As well as this, the membrane potential in the motor neurons decreases, meaning the nerves need more voltage to trigger them. We dream when we are in REM sleep, which is one of

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#567 What happens in your brain when you learn a second language?

April 23, 2023

What happens in your brain when you learn a second language? The hippocampus and cerebral cortex get larger. The grey matter in the brain becomes denser and the amount of white matter increases. These changes are most noticeable in children that learn a second language from a young age, but they are also visible in

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#562 Why can blowing up a balloon make you pass out?

April 18, 2023

Why can blowing up a balloon make you pass out? Because we hyperventilate and have too much oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide. Counterintuitively, it is too much oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide that can cause people to faint when they blow up a balloon. One would think that it is a lack of

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#561 Are all bones made of calcium?

April 17, 2023

Are all bones made of calcium? Mammal bones and bird bones are all mostly made of collagen and calcium. Fish bones are either made of collagen and calcium, or of cartilage. Our bones, and all mammal bones, are not made only of calcium. Calcium is a large part, but it is not everything. Mammal bones

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#560 What is the difference between short and long-term memory?

April 16, 2023

What is the difference between short and long-term memory? Short-term memory holds small blocks of information for a few seconds up to a few minutes. Long-term memory holds information indefinitely. Memories can cross from short-term into long-term and be held for longer. There are three steps in making a memory and short-term memory is the

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#556 Why are hammerhead sharks shaped like that?

April 12, 2023

Why are hammerhead sharks shaped like that? The location of their eyes on the end of the hammer give them a greater ability to locate and catch stingrays. There are several different types of hammerhead shark, but they all have the same hammer-shaped head. This hammer shape is called a cephalofoil. The hammerhead shark with

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#554 What is a sponge?

April 10, 2023

What is a sponge? Sponges are animals that have a very porous skeleton and live in the sea. When we talk about sponges, we are talking about the organisms and not the sponges we use to wash. Although, the one is based on the other. There is a big trade in diving for and selling

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#553 How would a cure for cancer work?

April 9, 2023

How would a cure for cancer work? It would teach the immune system to attack the cancer cells. All of the cells in our bodies reproduce to make more copies of themselves and they are all programmed to last for a certain length of time. Cells have a preprogrammed signal that causes them to die

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#552 Why are organ transplants so difficult?

April 8, 2023

Why are organ transplants so difficult? Because the organs are usually harvested from people who have died, there is a very short time window to perform the transplant, and the immune system tries to destroy the new organ. There are very few organs that can be taken from a living donor. You can obviously take

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