I learned this today. High energy radiation or long exposure to radiation can damage the DNA in cells and cause radiation sickness. What is radiation? Radiation is energy that radiates from a source and travels through space at the speed of light. It travels as a wave or as particles and has an electric field […]
#275 How does radiation sickness happen? Read More »
I learned this today. Pandas eat bamboo because it is such an abundant food source that they don’t need to fight over food or search for it. There is some argument over when pandas started eating bamboo. The general consensus is that they began to eat bamboo about 6 million years ago. Evidence for this
#271 Why do pandas eat bamboo? Read More »
I learned this today. Vitamins are organic compounds that our bodies cannot produce on their own but that we need to live. Vitamins are organic molecules that we need in small amounts. They all serve different purposes in our bodies. There are 13 different vitamins. They are A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9,
#268 What are vitamins? Read More »
I learned this today. Trees have rings because they do not grow through the winter when it is too cold. The study of tree rings is called dendrochronology. The word comes from ancient Greek: dendron means “tree”, khronos means “time”, and logia means “the study of”. So, it is the study of tree time. What
#263 Why do trees have rings? Read More »
I learned this today. Animals can sleep standing up by locking a set of muscles and tendons in their legs, using gravity to lock a joint, or using a flexor tendon. There are a lot of animals that can sleep while they are standing, but they can only do that through slow-wave sleep. To enter
#260 How do some animals sleep standing up? Read More »
I learned this today. Different species of extremophiles have evolved different ways to survive the extreme environments that they live in. The word extremophile comes from the Greek “extremus”, which means love and “philia”, which means love. They are organisms that not only survive in extreme environments they flourish in them. I learned about tardigrades
#237 How do extremophiles survive? Read More »
I learned this today. Tardigrades are incredibly strong and incredibly small micro-animals. Tardigrades are generally about 0.5mm long. Some of the big ones grow up to 1.5mm in size but they are usually much smaller. There are about 1,300 different species of them and they live all over the world. They are short and plump
#236 Why are tardigrades so tough? Read More »
I learned this today. Skunks smell so bad because they spray an organic compound that has sulfur in it. Skunks are mostly native to north and south America, although there is also a species of skunk that lives in Indonesia. This is called the Sunda stink badger. There are generally ten different species of skunk.
#234 Why do skunks smell so bad? Read More »
I learned this today. Porcupines don’t actually shoot their quills. The quills just detach very easily and stick in the predator. Porcupines are members of the rodent family. Males can grow to be almost a meter long and weigh up to 16 kg. They are not very fast, but they don’t need to be because
#233 How does a porcupine shoot its quills? Read More »
I learned this today. Sloths move so slowly because they have an extremely low metabolic rate. There are six species of sloth that are divided into two different types of sloth: three-toed sloths and two-toed sloths. Both of these groups of sloths are from different families that are very distantly related. They have both evolved
#231 Why do sloths move so slowly? Read More »
