Remote consequences

Human body is an amazing phenomenon. A pat on the back can result in a swollen head.

birds that do not sing and dogs that do not bark

Do you know that there are birds that do not sing or chirp and dogs that do not bark? The Antpitta avis canis Ridgley is a bird looks like a stuffed duck on stilts and barks like a dog. These long legged, black and white birds were discovered in the Andes by Robert S. Ridgely, Director of the Center for Neotropical Ornithology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in June 1998.

And the basenji, a smallish dog with a silky copper coat, does not bark but yoddle!

The bird that barks.

Basenji information

Fastest growing woody plant

Bamboo is nature’s fastest-growing woody plant, with some species achieving the phenomenal growth rate of 60 centimetre (24 inches) a day.

Meat minus the animals

Imagine eating meat grown in a laboratory or a factory and not on a farm in an animal. It is not there yet, but scientists has taken tissue engineering to where cells taken from animals can be grown directly into meat in a laboratory. They claim that the technology could benefit both humans and the environment, be healthier, reduce the need to keep millions of animals in cramped conditions and lessen the meamage caused by meat production to the environment. It may also overcome the objections of those who don't eat meat because they don't want an animal to be harmed for their meal.

However, even meat grown in the laboratory need to be exercised, otherwise it will be like mush. To do that, they suggested growing the cells on large sheets that is stretched to provide the 'exercise' for the growing muscles.

Scientists aim for lab-grown meat

Hic Hic Hurray

Charles Osborne (1894-1991) of Antoon, Iowa, is on record to have the longest attack of hiccupping. Mr. Osborn hiccupped continuously for 69 years 5 months since 1922, but had a reasonably normal life in which he had 2 wives and fathered 8 children. He hiccupped every 1.5 seconds until a morning in Febuary 1990. He died a year later.

Headless cockroach can live for weeks without its head

A cockroach breathe through openings in the side of its body and its brain is not in its head. A cockroach can continue to live for weeks after its head is cut off. It only dies because without a mouth, it can't drink water and dies of thirst.

Mister Eat Everything

Michel Lotito, also known by the nickname Monsieur Mangetout (Mister Eat Everything), from Grenoble, France, has the amazing ability to eat metal and glass. Mr Lotito apparently suffer no ill effects from these unusual meals because he has a stomach and intestine with walls twice the normal thickness and digestive acids strong enough to digest a portion of the metallic meal.

Mr. Lotito is a French entertainer whose performance include consumption of metal, glass, rubber and so on of bicycles, televisions, even a Cessna 150. The Cesba took 2 years, from 1978 to 1980, to be consumed.

Inflatable aeroplane

In the 1950's the Goodyear Company wanted to design an inflatable rubber airplane that could be used for military purposes and they came up with inflatoplane.
The plane can be wheeled out like a wheelbarrow on its own wheels. It can be inflated in about 5 minutes. It used a two-cycle 40 horsepower Nelson engine. With a wing span of 22 feet and lenght of 19 feet 7 inches, it can cruise at 60 mph and has a range of 390 miles. It need 250 feet for takeoff and 575 feet to clear a 50 foot obstacle.

Ot was meant to be dropped by container behind enemy lines for downed pilots to use to be rescued.

A total of 12 inflatoplane were built untill the project was finally laid to rest in 1973.

Size doesn't matter

Lightweight Champion Eater

Takeru Kobayashi who weighs only 65kg (10st 4lb), is the five-time winner of the Nathan's hot dog-eating competition in New York. He set another world record in 2004 by eating 69 hamburgers in eight minutes at an international contest in Tennessee. Mr Kobayashi also holds the world record for hot dog eating - an impressive 53-and-a-half frankfurters in 12 minutes.In Hong Kong, Takeru Kobayashi polished off 83 of the steamed vegetarian dumplings in eight minutes, easily beating Hong Kong's Johnny Wu into second place with 76. Japan's champion speed-eater capped his feat in another contest ingurgitating 100 roasted pork buns in 12 minutes in Hong Kong. Takeru Kobayashi ate twice as many buns as the first runner-up, Johnny Wu, who only managed to guzzle 47. Mr Kobayashi, 27, used a special technique - squeezing the buns tight and sipping plenty of water while chewing to soften them up.

Lollypop Sticks Viking Longboat

Imagine a 50 feet Viking longboat made out of 15,000,000 ice cream sticks collected by children all over the world! Robert McDonald, a former Hollywood stuntman, and his two friends and countless volunteers painstakingly glued together the sticks to make up the boat and claim the world record for the biggest boat made that way. He even hope to sail the boat across the Atlantic. The project is supported by OLA icecream. Other sponsors include Bison International which supplied the glue which makes the ship very strong and sea-water proof.

Mr. McDonald is the president of the Sea Heart Foundation, an organisation which runs projects for children in need.


Sea Heart Viking Ship - Made From 15 Million Popsicle-Sticks!

Viking lollystick longboat sails

Welcome to the Seaheart Viking Ship Project.

Factory produced free range chicken

Why are free range chicken popular? One of its touted plus point is it is supposed to have more muscles and less fat. This is because the chicken exercise more and spend less time coped up in the cage inactive. Well, here is an amazing invention - factory produced free range chicken! This is the conventional poultry farm with a slight modification. A conveyor belt replaces the floor of the cage. Every now and then, the conveyor belt moves, forcing the chicken to ambulate and thus get some exercise! And there is a plus point. Add a scrapper at the end of the conveyor belt to scrap off chicken poo and you have without additional labor help collect environmentally friendly natural fertilizer.
:-)

Where on earth can you find temperature 5 times hotter than the temperature of the sun?

When lightning strikes, the air around a lightning bold is superheated to a temperature of about 5 times the temperature of the sun. Tis sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave. This is what we hear as thunder.

Stereo smell

The sense of smell in most snakes is excellent. The flicking action of the forked tongue allows the snake to pick up minute scent particles which are transferred to a special organ, the Jacobson's Organ, in the roof of the snake's mouth where they are analyzed and enable them to smell in stereo.

World Champion Long Jumper

World Champion Long Jumper

Fleas are wingless insects between 1 to 5 mm long, feed on blood of mammals and birds, and can be found all over the world, including the Antartica! Fleas can jump up to a height of 20 cm and a length of massive 137 cm. On an equivalent scale, that is like a human jumping a length of 137 m!

"Civilised" insects.

Millions of years ago, long before man began their farming practices, the ants have already learn to cultivate fungus for their food. Amazingly, ants also practice farming, specialisation, waste management and medicine! Leafcutter ants cultivate their own food from freshly cut leaves, uses sophisticated antibiotics against fungal pests in their garden and have a sophisticated waste management system!

Leafcutter ants cut leaves and petals into small pieces with their sharp jaws and carry them back into their underground colonies, hand the leaves to the smaller ants who carry them to their fungus gardens. The leaves are cut into smaller and smaller fragments by smaller and smaller ants until the thoroughly masticated fluffy-looking fungus cultures are placed into the growing culture and tended by the tiniest ants. The fungus produced special structures called gongylidia which are eaten by the ants.

To protect the fungus cultures from fungal pests, these ants uses antibiotics produced by Streptomyces bacteria that lives on their skin and also physically remove the invading fungi.

The queen ant lay her eggs in the fungus garden. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the gongylidia and are cared for by specialised nurse ants.

When the nutrients have been used up from the leaf material, the waste are transported to special dump chambers where dead ants and dead fungus are also placed. There are specialized "heap workers" who spend their entire time in the huge waste dumps turning over and aerating the garbage piles to hasten decomposition.

Fungus growing ants

Birds with "false teeth"

Birds don't have any teeth in their mouth, so how to chew their food.?

Well, birds have their own mechanism for grinding the food for them. It is a sort of a set of false teeth (dentures) that birds have. On regular intervals of time, birds swallow some pebbles and gravels that go and settle in their stomach. It's these pebbles that help the flying creatures grind their food with a vigorous agitation of the stomach. This agitation leads to grinding of the food particles in the bird's stomach as the food passes through the digestive system.

Air-conditioned beehives

Amazingly, although beehives are not equiped with air-conditioners, they have their own mechanism to cool the hives when temperature rises. To cool the hive, one group of bees station themself at the entrance while another remain inside. The bees then flap their wings simultaneously at high speep, even up to 400 flaps per second. This creats a cross-ventilation that exhausts the hot air out of the hive and pulls the cool air in, thus conditioning the air.

Fastest insect

Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.

Animal with a third eye

You must have seen animals with two eyes, but have you ever seen about animals with three eyes?

The Tuatara or Sphenodon punctatus is a lizard-like reptile with a third eye on top of the head called the pineal eye. The eye is covered by an eyelid which closes horizontally. It can be seen under the skin and has a retina with nerve connection to the pineal gland in the middle of the brain. The pineal gland produces melatonin which influences sleep and hibernation. The amount of light falling on the third ey may thus trigger biological cycles. The third eye is covered by scales after 4 to 6 months.

Kiwi Conservation Club

Tuatara

Food that do not spoil

Honey is a food that do not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Antifreeze for animals

Cars have antifreeze in their radiator to prevent the coolant from freezing in winter. But what about animals? What prevent their fluids from freezing in winter?

Well the reindeer eat lots of moss because the moss contain a special chemical that keep their fluids from freezing much as antifreeze keeps a car from freezing up in winder.

Some Artic and Antartic animals have evolved proteins in their blood which stop it from freezing solid. Some animals also build up high concentrations of sugars or sugar alcohols in their tissues.

Rain dogs and cats?

Can it really rain cats and dogs? Well, maybe not cats and dogs, but fish, shells and frogs have really fallen from the sky on rare occasions.

In 1984, live flounders fell on a London neighbourhood. How did they get there? Perhaps a waterspout had lifted them to cloud level from the Thames River and then deposited them several miles away.

On August 6th, 2000, the fishing port of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England also had a shower of fish. In a storm in England in 1844, people held out hats to catch falling frogs.

Other incidences of living things falling from the sky are reported here.