Category Archives: Did You Know?

In the wild, giraffes almost never lie down because of vulnerability to predators. They usually sleep standing, sometimes sitting, and they give birth standing up. When giraffes sleep, they curl their necks and sleep for about five minutes at a time, sleeping no more than 30 minutes a day.

By one year of age, that amount drops to about 65%. In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water. However, fat tissue does not have as much water as lean tissue. In adult women, fat makes up more of the body than men, so they have about 55% of their bodies made of […]

The five main archipelagos are Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, and the British Isles. The largest archipelagic state in the world, by area and population, is Indonesia. The archipelago with the most islands is the Archipelago Sea in Finland.

Smoke is particulate material suspended in a gas (air). The particulates may be very finely divided solids or aerosol particles composed of liquid materials. Smoke is neither solid or gas, it is a colloidal dispersion that is a different arrangement of matter.

A single strand could hold 100g (3oz) in weight: the combined hair of a whole head could support 12 tonnes, or the weight of two elephants. Weight for weight, it is not as strong as steel: more like aluminium, or reinforced glass fibres or Kevlar, which is used to make bulletproof vests.

Placing fruit in a paper bag helps to concentrate the levels of ethylene gas which is what helps induce the ripening of the above mentioned fruits (bananas/avocados, etc.). In fact, avocados and pears must be picked in order to ripen.

The female snake, about 13 feet long, builds a nest to lay its eggs. In fact, the King Cobra is the only snake in the world that builds a nest.

To prepare for the stress of waking, your body releases a cocktail of stress hormones, like cortisol. Gradually, your sleep becomes lighter and lighter. And that’s why you wake up before your alarm. Your body hates your alarm clock.

What breeds of dogs can see in color? Neitz confirmed that dogs actually do see color, but many fewer colors than normal humans do. Instead of seeing the rainbow as violet, blue, blue-green, green, yellow, orange and red, dogs would see it as dark blue, light blue, gray, light yellow, darker yellow (sort of brown), […]

Yes, I would say that fish do sleep. Some fish actually lie on the bottom at night. Some of them even produce a gooey covering as a protection against other fish who might be looking for an easy meal. In the dark many fish have a lower rate of metabolism (their body machinery slows down), […]

How many active volcanoes are there in the world? There are about 1500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide, aside from the continuous belt of volcanoes on the ocean floor. About 500 of these have erupted in historical time. Many of these are located along the Pacific Rim in what is known as the ‘Ring of Fire.’

How often do we get a full moon? The modern day definition of a Blue Moon is when there are 2 full moons in one Month. A full moon occurs roughly every 29.5 days and on the rare occasions when the full moon falls at the very beginning of a month there is a good […]

A scale used to measure the relative hardness of a mineral by its resistance to scratching. From softest to hardest, the ten minerals of the Mohs scale are talc (measuring 1 on the scale), gypsum, calcite, fluorite, apatite, orthoclase, quartz, topaz, corundum, and diamond (measuring 10 on the scale).

In between these colours may be seen secondary colours that are, perceptually, each a mixture of two of the primaries. Thus, you will see yellow between red and green, and cyan blue between green and blue-violet. The third secondary colour of light is magenta.

The solubility of gases decreases when the temperature is raised, and that why the dissolved air bubbles out from the water. Then, as the boiling point of water is reached (100 degrees Celsius or 212 degrees Fahrenheit), water vapor starts to form inside the liquid in the form of bubbles.

At 400x magnification you will be able to see bacteria, blood cells and protozoans swimming around. At 1000x magnification you will be able to see these same items, but you will be able to see them even closer up.

Although the actual atmospheric lapse rate varies, under normal atmospheric conditions the average atmospheric lapse rate results in a temperature decrease of 6.4C°/km (3.5F°/1,000 ft) of altitude above ground level. The measurable lapse rate is affected by the moisture content of the air (humidity).

In geochronology, an epoch is a subdivision of the geologic timescale that is longer than an age and shorter than a period. We are currently living in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period. Rock layers deposited during an epoch are called a series.

Today’s large carnivorous land mammals, including the record-setting polar bears—which usually weigh around half a ton but can grow to weigh nearly a ton, are threatened in part because of the energy intake-and-expenditure equation, Carbone told LiveScience

In the early 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed his theory of the transmutation of species, the first fully formed theory of evolution. In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory that was explained in detail in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859).

Frogs can hear both in the air and below water. They do not have external ears; the eardrums (tympanic membranes) are directly exposed or may be covered by a layer of skin and are visible as a circular area just behind the eye.

The primary symbol of the Olympic Games is composed of five interlocking rings, colored blue, yellow, black, green, and red on a white field, known as the “Olympic rings.” The symbol was originally designed in 1912 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, co-founder of the modern Olympic Games.

In genetics, a locus (plural loci) is the specific location of a gene, DNA sequence, or position on a chromosome. Each chromosome carries many genes; humans’ estimated ‘haploid’ protein coding genes are 20,000-25,000, on the 23 different chromosomes.

The Black Sea is an inland sea located between far-southeastern Europe and the far-western edges of the continent of Asia and the country of Turkey. It’s bordered by Turkey, and by the countries of Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia.

Newborns are “obligate nose breathers.” This means they can’t breathe through their mouths in the first few months of life. Because babies have small nasal passages, they sound stuffy when they breathe.

While it may be tempting to brush off warnings against looking up at this eclipse bare-eyed, don’t: The light of an eclipse really can damage your eyes — though warnings of total blindness are likely overstated. The condition is called solar retinopathy, and it occurs when bright light from the sun floods the retina.

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

The nervous system of the starfish is very simple…there is no brain and there are not even any ganglia to coordinate movement. The nervous system is characterized by a nerve ring that surrounds the mouth. A radial nerve branches off of the nerve ring and extends to each arm.

Orville and Wilbur Wright designed and flew their Flyer plane in December 1903. Five people were said to have witnessed the flight including John T. Daniels who took photographic evidence. Claims that Whitehead beat the Wright Brothers to the record first emerged in 1937.

Under each foreleg, the sea otter has a loose pouch of skin that extends across the chest. In this pouch (preferentially the left one), the animal stores collected food to bring to the surface. This pouch also holds a rock, unique to the otter, that is used to break open shellfish and clams.

Generally, the horse has 205 bones (54 vertebral column, 36 ribs, 1 sternum, 34 skull, 40 front legs, 40 hindlegs). The number of tail coccygeal vertebrae is usually 18 but can also vary.