Why do mosquito bites itch? Mosquito and insect bites itch because the immune response is triggered after the mosquito finishes biting. There are over 110 trillion mosquitoes from 3,000 different species around the world. I have no idea how they managed to calculate the number of actual mosquitoes. The word “mosquito” comes from Spanish where […]
#385 Why do mosquito bites itch? Read More »
Why does a chicken’s head stay perfectly still when you move its body around? Because chickens cannot move their eyeballs in their eye socket and because they don’t have a vestibulo-ocular reflex. Our heads (humans) are pretty much constantly moving, yet we can see perfectly well. This is all thanks to the vestibulo-ocular reflex which
#374 Why does a chicken’s head stay perfectly still when you move its body around? Read More »
When did the last woolly mammoth disappear? A population of woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until about 2000 BC, about 500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. Woolly mammoths appeared in Siberia about 700,000 years ago. They were the same size as a modern African Elephant: up to 3.4 m at
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Could penguins fly in the past? Yes, they could, but millions of years ago. There are many birds that could fly at some point but that have lost the ability. The Galapagos Cormorant is a good example. They are only found on two of the Galapagos islands. They are not originally from the island, so
#324 Could penguins fly in the past? Read More »
Why do dragonflies have four wings? So that they can hover and fly in any direction that they wish. Most insects have two pairs of wings but the second set in some of them have evolved to have a different purpose. Two examples of these are flies and beetles. (I know we are talking about
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What happens when you are bitten by a venomous snake? The venom either attacks the cells, the circulatory system or the nerve system. There are 3,500 species of snake and 600 of those are venomous. Many of them are not dangerous to people but some of them can be lethal. Venomous snakes inject venom through
#305 When happens when you are bitten by a venomous snake? Read More »
How do hummingbirds flap their wings so fast? By having very strong, fast twitch chest muscles, by twisting their wings instead of flapping them, and by being able to use oxygen and energy very quickly. There are 361 species of hummingbird altogether. The smallest species grow to about 5 cm and weigh 2 grams The
#300 How do hummingbirds flap their wings so fast? Read More »
How big was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? It was probably 10 km across, but it could have been anywhere between 10 and 17 km. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit Earth about 66 million years ago. Apparently, according to research, it was 66,043,000 (±11,000 years). The asteroid came down in the Yucatan
#298 How big was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? Read More »
Why do ant bites hurt? Ants both bite and sting. They drip formic acid onto your skin and some ants inject venom. Not all ants bite. There are estimated to be 22,000 different species of ant and they are on pretty much every landmass except for Antarctica. It is estimated that ants make up between
#297 Why do ant bites hurt? Read More »
I learned this today. Why do horses need horseshoes? They only need horseshoes if they are going to be walking on hard or rough surfaces for a long time. The hoof of a horse consists of several different parts. The part that we can see is called the wall. This is up to two centimeters
#281 Why do horses need horseshoes? Read More »
