My Science School

               Albatross is the largest flying sea-bird. It can have a wingspan of 3.15 m (10 ft 4 in.) at full stretch. It belongs to Diomedeidae family and is found mainly in south of the equator. It has a long, heavy beak and long narrow wings which allow it to soar on the wind seemingly without effort for hours. Its body is about 1.2 metres long.

               There are more than a dozen species of Albatross. It experiences certain difficulty in taking off. It needs some wind and must run along the ground or paddle with its feet across the water for a long time before it can soar.

                Like other oceanic birds, albatross also drinks sea water. Although it normally lives on squid, it is attracted to ship’s garbage. It comes ashore only to breed in colonies on islands. It lays a single large white egg on ground in the open, which is incubated alternatively by the male and female parent. The growth of a young albatross is very slow. It attains flight plumage in 3 to 10 months, and then spends the next 5 to 10 years at sea, learning navigation and feeding techniques. Albatrosses live long and are among the few birds that die of old age.

               However, among the sea birds which use wings for swimming and not for flying, the largest is the Emperor Penguin of Antarctica. Standing over one metre high and weighing 40 kg, the Plum Emperor lives in the most remote shores of the great ice-bound continent.

               The largest ever recorded specimen of albatross was a very old male with a wingspan of 3.63 m. (11 ft. 11 inch). This was caught by the members of the Antarctic research ship in the Tasman Sea on 18 September, 1965.

               It is established by the scientists that the most successful free living kinds of animals judged by the number of species and standing stocks of living substance, have come from marine surroundings.

               In 1964, Sir Vernon Wigglesword had suggested that, at first these animals might have lived along the shore lines and later moved in two directions. A part colonized the open sea and ocean deeps to give rise to crabs, crustacea etc and the other part moved to land areas.

               Crabs are mainly marine animals - although some live in fresh water or land. They are ten-legged alert carnivores that act as scavengers. There are many species of crabs worldwide; such as European crabs, shore crabs, edible crabs, fiddler crabs, river crabs, common hermit crabs and robber crabs.

               Among all these, robber crabs or commonly known as ‘coconut crabs’ are well adapted for living on land, although their larvae first live in the sea. But if an adult robber crab is left under water beyond 24 hours, it will be drowned ultimately. These are the crabs which can climb trees.

               The robber crab (Birgus Latro) is an extremely large land crab of South-West Pacific and Indian Ocean. Adults of robber crabs are about one metre long (40 inches) and weigh about 15-17 kilograms. A robber crab uses two large chelae or pincers to pound or chip coconuts to eat the soft white portion of the coconut. They climb coconut trees to detach coconuts from tree tops through they are quite unable to get inside a coconut on their own. They apparently eat coconut meat already broken into the ground by other means.

               The colour of a grown crab ranges from light violet to brown and deep purple with black strips on their legs. The female lays her eggs in sea. In larval state, it lives in water, feeding on small organisms. After about a month when it is grown to intermediate stage, it leaves water to live in a shell for 3-4 weeks. It then discards the shell and buries itself in moist sands, and transforms into an adult robber crab. Its meat is a local delicacy. 

               A dog, like a cow, an elephant, or a man, is a mammal. All mammals are warm blooded, or homothermic animals. In the animal world only mammals and birds are warm-blooded creatures. The rest of the animals are cold-blooded or ectothermic. A warm-blooded animal has a relatively constant body temperature, while the temperature of cold-blooded animals changes according to surroundings. 

               Heat is being constantly produced in our body. A part of it escapes through our skin. We have sweat glands under our skin and sweat comes out through small pores in it. When sweat evaporates, it absorbs heat from the body producing a cooling effect.

               Unfortunately, not all mammals can use this method to get rid of their body heat.

               For example, a dog has few sweat glands and, therefore, cannot sweat like us. Similarly, tigers, lions, cheetahs, etc. cannot sweat much. Birds and rats also cannot sweat.

               A dog has a different mechanism to control its body temperature. It does so by hanging its tongue out. When a dog pants, it takes in air through the nose and gives out air through the mouth. The saliva in its mouth evaporates. Evaporation of saliva produces a cooling effect and the dog feels comfortable. This habit of panting is simply a natural urge of a dog to control its body temperature in accordance with its surroundings.

               An elephant also maintains its body temperature in a very interesting manner. Its skin is very thick and not much heat can escape through it. However, the skin on its ears is much thinner. The elephant, therefore, tries to get rid of the body heat through its ears. Nature has given the elephant very large ears which it can flap in a bid to lose heat. The skin of our ears being quite thin, the ears feel cold on a winter day.

 

               Many animals and creatures rest during the day but become active at night. Similarly there are many plants which bloom at night only. Such plants are called night blooming plants. The flowers of Raat Ki Rani (Queen of the Night) also fall in the same category. Many night flowering plants belong to the honeysuckle and nightshade families. Do you know why do flowers of Queen of the Night bloom at night only? It is quite often in the case of night flowering plants that they resort to the use of scent, thereby attracting high-flying insects and moths.

               When these insects sit on the flower, a few pollen grains get stuck to their tiny feet and wings. When the same insects go to other flowers of the same variety, the pollen grains are deposited on the flower. This process helps pollination, without which a flower cannot mature into a fruit. Thus we can say that flowers of the Queen of the Night bloom at night to attract those insects which help the process of pollination. Flowers produce fruits and fruits produce seeds. The seeds are responsible for producing new plants.

               Most of the flowers blooming at night are those which cannot bear high temperature and light of the day time. Flowers of Raat Ki Rani also avoid extremes of temperature and daylight by blooming at night.

               There is one more fact about the night blooming flowers. Such flowers do not have attractive and pleasing colours as these colours are not visible in the darkness of night. Most of the night blooming flowers are white because this colour is easily visible in the darkness of night and quite effective in attracting the insects for pollination. In fact, all white or cream coloured flowers such as night-scented stock are pollinated by night-flying moths which are attracted by strong perfumes of the flowers.

               Thus we see that flowers of Raat Ki Rani are not capable of withstanding day temperature, usually white in colour and have a delicious fragrance with which they attract insects. 

               Tuatara or Sphenodon punctatus is a strange lizard like animal that has three eyes. It is the only animal in the reptile group which is placed in a separate sub-group rhynchocephalia. Although it resembles lizards, it is truly a precious living fossil, since this reptile order goes back to the time of the dinosaurs. Tuatara is found only on the islets of New Zealand. A full grown male weighs upto 1 kg but females weigh only half that of a mature male of similar age.

               The strange thing about this animal is that it has three eyes. The cone like third eye is called the pineal eye. This eye is situated in a hole between the head and brain. It has an eyelid over the third eye which closes horizontally. One can’t say anything about the use of the third eye of this animal but certainly it had some use for these prehistoric animals.

               This animal is active at night. Generally it lives in burrows often in company with sea birds. It is a very shy and retiring animal. It eats insects, other animals like frogs, rats and eggs of birds also.

               The average life of a Tuatara usually does not exceed 77 years, but some Tuataras may live upto 100 years. Male Tuataras are unusual in the sense that they have no copulatory organ; their matings are accomplished by cloacal apposition. Female Tuatara lays 8 to 15 eggs in the spring, at some distance from its burrow. Hatching of eggs occurs in the next summer which means that hatching takes about one year of time.

               It is a unique animal and represents a whole vanished order of reptiles. All other species except this one became extinct and only this particular type has lived unchanged till the present day. In captivity it can live upto fifty years only.

               This strange animal is now facing extinction. The government of New Zealand has been making great efforts to prevent the extinction of this animal.

 

               Cocoa originated in Central and South America. It is said that Christopher Columbus introduced cocoa beans in Europe in 1502. The cocoa seeds however were first commercially planted in 1879 in Ghana. Upto 1913 Ghana was the leading cocoa producing country in the world. Even today Ghana is the largest cocoa producer. It is believed that several lakhs of people are associated with the production of cocoa in Ghana.

               The cocoa trees grow to a height of about 7 metre. It is an evergreen plant. Twice a year, small, star like, pink and yellow flowers appear on it. After sometime flowers grow into fruits or pods of the shape of an egg which are about 6-10 inches long and 3-4 inches thick. These pods take about six months to ripe.

               Equatorial regions are most suitable for growing cocoa trees. It needs constant moisture and in some countries watering is also necessary. Regions having a rain fall of 50-100 mm are most suitable for these plants.

               Generally there are two crops of cocoa —first crop from October to March and other crop from May to August. When cocoa tree is five years old it starts bearing fruits. The ripe fruits are cut with sharp knives from branches. Women and girls usually collect these in baskets and take it to another place where cocoa beans are scooped out from these pods. After this, beans are subjected to fermentation. For this purpose, beans are put into perforated boxes and heated at constant temperature. By this process which takes about six days, impurities are removed to bring out the flavour.

               Cocoa is used in many eatables. But it is mainly used in preparing chocolates. Chocolate powder is made from dry cocoa seeds. Cocoa butter is made by extracting fats from cocoa beans. In ice cream it is used for flavour. It is also used in the manufacture of some medicines. 

               In the world of nature we see a great variety of flowers. We have virtually flowers of every conceivable colour. Some are so perfectly symmetrical with vibrant colours that their beauty attracts us immediately. Some others are shaped like insects or lizards.

               Most flowers have fragrance. However, flowers are not just decorative creations but play a great productive role also. They produce fruits by the process of pollination and the fruits in turn produce seeds.

               In this great world of flowers do you know which the biggest flower is and which is the smallest? 

           

 

                The biggest flower in the world is Rafflesia arnoldii. It is found in the Sumatran Jungle and can have a diameter of over a yard. It is about 0.75 inch thick and weighs about 7 kg. The flower can grow to 91 cm. (3 ft) wide. It blooms for five to seven days. It is reddish or orange brown in colour. It has an unpleasant odour which is attractive to flies. These flies carry out the pollination process. Rafflesia is a parasitic plant and feeds on the sap of trees. It does not have any leaves. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                The largest recorded chrysanthemum flower was cultivated by Francois Santini of Indre - et - lorie, France. This giant flower was 2.5 m (8ft. 2 inch) tall and had 4041 blooms. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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