I learned this today. Vellum is a material for writing on that is made from prepared animal skin. The document on the front of this article is the Magna Carta. It is the document that tried to control King John of England and is one of the most famous documents in the UK. It was […]
#186 What is vellum? Read More »
I learned this today. Octopuses have blue blood because they have adapted to live in cold, deep water. Octopuses live in every ocean on Earth, and they live in a range of different conditions. A lot of them live at great depths and this is the main reason why they have evolved to have blue
#171 Why do octopuses have blue blood? Read More »
I learned this today. Dinosaurs were able to grow so big because they had hollow bones, could get more nutrition out of less food, and they didn’t need to chew their food. The largest land animal today is the African elephant and they grow up to about 3m and weigh about 6 tons. The largest
#158 How could dinosaurs grow so big? Read More »
I learned this today. Cats sleep as much as they do to conserve energy. Something we should probably learn from. Not that it’s today’s topic, but humans are the only animals that intentionally restrict their sleep. Cats sleep between 16 and 20 hours a day. However, not all of that sleep is deep sleep and
#149 Why do cats sleep for so long? Read More »
I learned this today. There have been six mass extinctions on Earth that experts know about. The Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction 440 million years ago. The Devonian Extinction 365 million years ago. The Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago. The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction 210 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary
#139 What are the six great mass extinction events? Read More »
I learned this today. Corals are animals because they don’t produce their own food. Corals are sometimes thought to be rocks and sometimes thought to be plants, but they are neither. They are animals. They are thousands of tiny animals collected together. Because of this, they are known as colonial organisms. They belong to the
#133 Is coral a plant or an animal? Read More »
I learned this today. Cats don’t so much retract their claws as lift them off the ground using tendons. Their claws are then hidden by their fur. Cats have five claws on their front paws and four claws on their back paws. The front claws are usually sharper than the back ones. Cats’ claws continue
#104 How do cats retract their claws and why can’t other animals? Read More »
I learned this today. Bees make honey as a way to store food through the winter. Flowers cannot move, so they need insects to help them reproduce. To pollinate another flower, the pollen from one flower has to reach another flower. The best way for flowers to do this is to have the pollen stick
#92 Why do bees make honey? Read More »
I learned this today. Whales make use of sound in the water because they cannot use their other senses. It is not possible to use light to see underwater because the water scatters it too much. Plus, some whales dive over 2,000m and light doesn’t really penetrate much farther than 1,000m. They also cannot rely
#81 Why do whales make sounds? Read More »
I learned this today. Dogs can probably smell cancer in people. Dogs have a phenomenal sense of smell. They have 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. We have about 6 million. On top of this, the part of their brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times larger than ours. It
#79 Can dogs smell cancer? Read More »
