My Science School

Wandering through a dense forest in southern China, a sun bear comes across a log. He gives it a sniff and then opens his mouth. A nearly ten-inch-long tongue rolls out! Maneuvering the massive tongue under the log, the bear slurps up the tasty insects that crawl beneath until his belly is full.

Sun bears are named for the golden patches of fur on their chests, which some people say resemble a rising sun. While their tongues may be extra-big, sun bears are actually the smallest bear species. Males grow about 5 feet long and weigh up to 150 pounds—that’s about half the size of an adult American black bear.

These animals live in wooded areas of Southeast Asia. Strong and agile, sun bears are good at climbing trees. They spend a lot of time in tree canopies and even build "beds" of twigs and leaves on the branches to sleep in.

Sun bears chow down insects, leaves, lizards, and berries. But the sun bear’s favorite snack is honey. To get the treat, they rip open beehives with their sharp claws. Then the bears use their superlong tongues to extract the honey inside, often gobbling up bees with the sticky sweet. Luckily they don’t seem bothered by bee stings. That’s nothing to stick your tongue out at.

Credit : National Geographic 

Picture Credit : Google

Bald Uakari is an old world monkey found in north-western Amazon basin. It has a striking bald head and a bright red face. It has brown shaggy fur and human-like ears.

It forages with its troop for fruits, leaves and insects during the day and sleep aloft, high in the rain forest canopy in groups of 50-200 individuals. Its tail is short unlike other primates. Its fangs are well developed to break open thick fruit skin.

It is generally a quiet, active and agile animal. But it makes loud shrieking calls to communicate and mark its home ranges.

Females give birth to just a single infant every two years. Reproductive ages are three (females) and six (males), so populations cannot experience rapid growth.

Unfortunately, these intelligent primates are hunted in their Amazon forest homes for food and sometimes captured by indigenous peoples. They are also threatened by the destruction of their environment, as the timber industry clears ever increasing swaths of Amazon forest.

Credit : National Geographic 

Picture Credit : Google

Arctic fox is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It has short legs, small ears and a bushy tail, which it curls around my body when lying down to keep myself warm in the cold Arctic.

Its body is covered with thick white fur during the winter and grey-brownish fur during the summer. Seasonal variations in the colour of the fur ensure camouflage.

It lives in burrows that have up to 100 entrances, and in a blizzard it tunnels into the snow to create shelter. Its diet includes lemmings, voles, sea birds and their eggs, seal pups and fish.

When it’s not trying to keep warm or avoid predators, an arctic fox is on the hunt for food. They prefer to eat small rodents called lemmings, but when times are tough they’ll eat whatever they can find: insects, berries, and even the droppings of other animals. Sometimes an arctic fox will follow a polar bear on a hunting trip and eat the bear’s leftovers.

If a fox can’t find food, or if the weather gets really bad, it can dig a snow den and hunker down for up to two weeks. As long as a fox is warm, it can slow down its heart rate and metabolism, which helps the animal save energy so it doesn’t have to eat as much. It’s sort of like how bears hibernate, but for a shorter period of time.

Once the animal emerges from its den, it’ll try to hunt again. With food in its belly, the arctic fox has a better chance of making it through another long, dark winter.

Credit : National Geographic

Picture Credit : Google

The grasshopper mouse found in the deserts of North America, howls to proclaim its territory. Do you know what it feeds on? Its main diet consists of scorpions, centipedes and other scary insects. Before feasting on its prey, it lets out a high-pitched cry into the night sky.

The three species of grasshopper mice – all members of the genus Onychomys – are among the most carnivorous of all rodents. These are not adorable grain-eaters. Grasshopper mice are agile little predators which regularly take on prey as large, if not larger, than themselves. Insects, scorpions, lizards, and other mice make up about ninety percent of a grasshopper mouse's diet. And, like other carnivores, they roam relatively large territories but have low population densities – a swath of habitat can only support so many hunters.

Since the diets of grasshopper mice are so different than those of their herbivorous relatives, we would expect their jaws to reflect this different lifestyle. But exactly how grasshopper mice diverge from their plant-eating cousins has been a matter of debate. In a 2006 paper on the jaw anatomy of the northern grasshopper mouse Onychomys leucogaster, anatomists Kazuhiko Satoh and Fumihiko Iwaku proposed that the carnivorous rodent had a relatively weak bite force but a wider gape compared to plant-eating mice. This seemed to be consistent with the predator’s attack strategy. Chewing grains all day requires a good deal of crushing power, but cutting into flesh and insect carapaces might not require as much force. Evolution had caused the grasshopper mouse to sacrifice bite strength for a wider gape to enfold its unfortunate prey.

Credit : Wired

Picture Credit : Google

Grapes and raisins are a big no for dogs and cats, as they are toxic to them even in small quantities. Though what substance in grapes causes the toxicity to these animals is still not known, what is known is they can be potential threats to them causing sudden, acute kidney failure and eventually death.

It isn’t quite known why grapes and raisins are toxic to pets. Some experts agree that mycotoxin, a fungal byproduct, is the culprit. Others believe that pesticides sprayed on the fruit could be responsible. Making matters even more confusing, some pets are able to eat the fruit without suffering any negative effects. But, even if you don’t know the cause, it’s just too risky to feed these fruits to your furry pals.

Grape or raisin poisoning symptoms usually appear within a few hours after your pet eats the fruit. Clinical signs include increased thirst, lethargy, diarrhea, and vomiting. Kidney failure, or renal failure, can occur without treatment. For this reason, always keep your veterinarian’s phone number on hand to call in the event of an emergency. If you know or suspect that your pet has eaten grapes or raisins, take him to your local vet immediately. 

Credit : Waterdown 

Picture Credit : Google

Turritopsis dohrnii is known as the immortal jellyfish. This small, transparent creature begins life as a larva called a planula that settles on the sea floor and grows into a cylindrical colony of polyps. These spawn free-swimming, genetically identical medusae - jellyfish which grow to adulthood in weeks. In response to physical damage or starvation, they revert to an earlier stage of their life cycle, transforming back into a polyp. The born-again polyp colony eventually buds and releases medusae that are genetically identical to the injured adult.

The species T. dohrnii was first described by scientists in 1883. It was 100 years later, in the 1980s, that their immortality was accidentally discovered.

Students Christian Sommer and Giorgio Bavestrello collected Turritopsis polyps, which they kept and monitored until medusae were released. It was thought that these jellyfish would have to mature before spawning and producing larvae, but when the jar was next checked, they were surprised to find many newly settled polyps.

They continued to observe the jellyfish and found that, when stressed, the medusae would fall to the bottom of the jar and transform into polyps without fertilisation or the typical larval stage occurring. 

Credit : National History Museum 

Picture Credit : Google

Arctic ground squirrel is a native to the Arctic and Subarctic of North America and Asia.

It has a tan coat with a white-spotted back. It has a short face with white markings around its eyes. It has strong forearms and hind legs adopted for burrowing. During winter, its coat turns silvery. In the summer, it feeds on a lot of food, which includes tundra plants, seeds, and fruit to increase body fat for winter hibernation.

When it hibernates, its body temperature drops below freezing to survive long, cold winters without any food. It makes "tsik-tsik" calls in response to threats. It also makes variation in sounds for different predators.

These animals are primarily, although not exclusively, herbivorous and eat a variety of grasses, stems, roots, leaves, berries, seeds and mushrooms. They will also occasionally eat insects, small vertebrates (e.g., baby mice) and fresh carrion. Arctic ground squirrels begin storing food materials, such as willow leaves, grass seeds and berries, in their burrows during the summer months for use in the spring when they wake from hibernation. 

Picture Credit : Google

The Elysia chlorotica is part animal and part plant. This green sea slug is the first animal ever found to create chlorophyll like a plant. This makes it capable of photosynthesis. Found in the east coast of the U.S. and Canada, it resembles a small leaf, an inch or two long.

It was among the first members of the animal kingdom thought to be capable of producing chlorophyll, a pigment found in nearly all photosynthetic plants that use solar energy to transform carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Members of this species appear as wide, rippling, green leaves with snail-like heads. They inhabit the shallow salt marshes and inlets of North America’s Atlantic coast from Florida to Nova Scotia. Over their life span of 9–10 months, they can grow to a length of 1–6 cm (0.4–2.4 inches).

The photosynthetic ability of Elysia chlorotica appears to come from the temporary incorporation of chloroplasts (photosynthesizing structures within plants) from Vaucheria litorea, a yellow-green alga it consumes, into cells that surround E. chlorotica’s digestive tract. Chloroplasts and other plastids (small bodies involved in the synthesis and storage of foodstuffs) can continue to photosynthesize nutrients for the animals for up to several months. It is unknown, however, how much E. chlorotica relies on the photosynthetic capacity of the chloroplasts it brings into its body for energy, because individuals can survive long periods of darkness (possibly through digesting their stored plastids). E. chlorotica also assimilates the genes of V. litorea into its genetic structure; however, those genes do not appear to be active in the animal.

Credit : Britannica 

Picture Credit : Google

The tarantula hawk, a kind of large parasitic wasp, paralyses a tarantula spider with its sting and then lays an egg into the spider so that when the egg hatches the larva will have enough food to feed on for weeks together. Its sting is considered to be one of the most powerful insect stings on Earth.

In most cases, tarantula hawks won’t sting unless you bother them first. They’re similar to wasps in that they are incredibly bold, but it would take stepping on one or picking one up for you to receive a sting.

If you do get stung, you’ve had some bad luck, as the sting of the tarantula hawk wasp is rumored to be one of the most intense, painful stings of all insects. Because their stingers are so large, very few animals eat them, and as a result, they have few natural predators.

Luckily, the sting is not dangerous, unless you are unfortunate enough to develop an allergic reaction. The area where you are stung may remain red for up to a week, but the pain from most stings subsides within just a few minutes.

To treat the sting, make sure you wash the site with antibacterial soap and warm water. This will reduce the likelihood of an infection. You can apply a cold compress, ice, or topical cortisone or antihistamine to relieve the pain, itch, and swelling.

Credit : Rest Easy Pest Control 

Picture Credit : Google

Our planet has all kinds of creatures in all sizes. Some of them are really huge and some of them are so small it may take a lot of effort to even spot them. Among such tiny creatures are micromolluscs. As the name suggests, they are molluses (shelled organisms) that are really small in size even when they are fully grown adults, include a variety of micro snails, which could be marine, freshwater, or land organisms

Recently, a new micro snail species was discovered in Meghalaya. The species is so tiny that the adults among them are smaller than two mm in length. The new species-Georissa mawsmaiensis- is named after Mawsmai, the limestone cave in which it was discovered. Found by researchers Nipu Kumar Das and NA Aravind of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. Bengaluru, this species is slightly different from Georissa sarrita, which was documented in 1851, a good 170 years ago. Though the new species was collected from wet limstone rocks in the cave, it is not clear yet if it is a true cave species or not

As with any species discovery, this one is exciting too, but the researchers have certain concerns. Continued tourist visits to the cave and mining in the region could alter the ecology of the place, negatively impacting these organisms. Further, there are hardly any studies on such creatures, meaning not enough is known or documented about them to protect them.

Picture Credit : Google