Friday, August 29, 2008

More Nature Trivia


• A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.


• A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.


• A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.


• A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.


• Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception.


• Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.• It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.


• Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.


• The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - "Island of Dogs."


• The fastest-moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed of 0.0313 m.p.h..


• The pygmy shrew—a relative of the mole—is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce.


• There are around 2,600 different species of frogs. They live on every continent except Antarctica.


• Dragonflies have as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye. If you don't believe me, count them yourself.


• Insects with the fastest wing beat frequency are the no-see-ums, or very tiny midges, which beat their hairy wings 1,046 times per second. Male mosquitoes beat their wings 450 to 600 times per second.


• The fastest insect runners are cockroaches, which can move almost a foot per second. However this only translates to a little over 1 m.p.h..


• The loudest insects are male cicadas, which can be heard about a quarter of a mile away.

Armadillos Invade America


After years in south Georgia, where they are common road kill and a nuisance to some homeowners, armadillos have spread to the chillier northern half of the state where their digging and burrowing is already generating complaints.The official state mammal of Texas, armadillos invaded the Lone Star State from Mexico in the 1800s and have been spreading North and East ever since. Their name means "little armored thing" in Spanish. They don't displace other species or cause significant habitat changes, but their digging for grubs and other invertebrates can destroy a flower bed in a single night. Cattle and humans risk injury if they step into holes dug by the south American mammal, which is related to anteaters and sloths. On the plus side, armadillos eat lots of insects, including some that are pests. Joshua Nixon, a Michigan State University Zoologist, who has hosted an armadillo Web site since 1995 as a hobby, said he is not surprised that the burrowing mammals would spread to north Georgia, since they have already been confirmed in southern Illinois and he's received unconfirmed reports of them north of New York City and in the Pacific Northwest. Cold weather is about the only thing that restricts their spread. With limited fat reserves, they have to come out of their cozy burrows every couple of days for their meals, which would be impossible in extremely cold climates. Of course, sometimes it is the armadillos themselves that become the meals. During the Depression, when Herbert Hoover was president, armadillos were known as "Hoover Hogs" by the impoverished Americans who had to eat them, instead of the "chicken in every pot" he had promised. Some people still eat them, and the Internet is replete with recipes for such dishes as armadillo 'n rice, barbecued armadillo and armadillo fricassee. Despite their intolerance to cold, Nixon said he's surprised at how far and quickly they've spread. There is even evidence that they might hitch rides on trains, he said. "They're one of the few mammals that is spreading its range," Nixon said, noting that North America once had a native armadillo, known as the "beautiful armadillo," that went extinct about 50,000 years ago. The armadillo's tendency to leap when startled often means trouble on the highways. The maneuver helps the animal avoid predators, but often lands it on the grilles and undersides of cars and trucks. If they didn't have this nervous hic-up they would often survive crossing the road when a vehicle drove over them. Contrary to popular belief, the nine-banded armadillo cannot roll itself into a ball to escape predators. Also, Armadillos are not blind, but most of them do need glasses.