What causes muscle cramps? There are several potential reasons, but nobody actually knows the real reason. Whatever the reason, all cramps happen in the same way. You may be exercising or you may be at rest, but your muscle will suddenly and involuntarily contract. This can be extremely painful and alarming. The only thing you […]
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Why are some animals cold-blooded? It lets them go for longer without eating, which means they can survive in more inhospitable areas. There are three types of animals: warm-blooded, cold-blooded, and those in between. Warm-blooded animals are called endotherms and they are able to maintain their body temperature by using their metabolism. We are endotherms.
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How is an addict’s brain different to a non-addict’s? They have significant changes in the reward, stress, and self-control parts of their brains. Whether or not someone becomes an addict is based on a number of things, but experiments have shown that up to 50% of that risk is genetic. One of these experiments looked
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How do pythons kill their prey? They squeeze their prey to constrict blood flow before consuming the prey whole. Before we start, pythons are not boa constrictors. I always thought they were the same thing, but they aren’t. Pythons are longer than boa constrictors and they come from different areas. Boa constrictors are found in
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What makes our joints pop and click? Escaping gas, moving tendons and ligaments, or rubbing surfaces. There are about 360 joints in the human body, although that depends on age. A joint is the connection between two bones that connects them and allows them to move. Without joints we would be unable to move. There
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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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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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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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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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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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