My Science School

Lobster is an invertebrate that belongs to the crustacean family, living in the oceans across the world.

There are two kinds of lobsters - clawed and spiny. Clawed lobsters have claws and inhabit cold waters, while spiny lobsters have antennas instead of claws and inhabit tropical waters.

It has10 legs and a long tail with a fan-like tip. Its body is protected by a shell, which it sheds and grows periodically. Its diet includes fish, molluscs, worms, and crustaceans. Occasionally, it consumes algae and sea vegetation.

Lobsters eat voraciously after molting, and will often consume their own recently emptied shells. Eating the old shell replenishes lost calcium and hastens the hardening of the new shell.

 Lobsters were once considered poor man’s food. In Colonial times the crustaceans were so plentiful in the northeast that they were often used as fertilizer, feed for farm animals, and as fishing bait. Because they were so cheap, they were only eaten by poor people and served to prisoners and servants.

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Can you believe that there are sharks that can live for over 400 years? Greenland sharks have the longest known lifespan of all vertebrates on Earth. Scientists estimated the age of a Greenland shark to be about 400 years in 2016. It is said that they do not even reach sexual maturity until they are about 150 years old.

Greenland sharks are rarely encountered by humans. They are thought to prefer colder, deeper environments but may be found anywhere between the sea surface and depths of 2,200 meters (about 7,200 feet). Greenland sharks are slow-moving, typically swimming at rates of less than 3 km (about 1.9 miles) per hour. They are carnivorous, and their diet is often made up of several different types of fishes, including smaller sharks, eels, flounders, and sculpins. Crustaceans, seabirds, and carrion—as well as terrestrial mammals (such as horses and reindeer) that likely fell through the ice—have been found in stomach analyses of the species. Greenland sharks are not considered dangerous to humans, in part because they live in regions where people do not typically swim; the only known report of a possible attack by a Greenland shark on a person dates to 1859.

Greenland sharks are considered to be a near-threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The species was valued for its liver oil; about 114 litres (30 gallons) of liver oil can be obtained from a large specimen (see also fish oil). (Although the flesh of the Greenland shark may be eaten, it is toxic unless properly cleaned and dried or repeatedly boiled prior to consumption.) Greenland sharks were fished commercially from the 19th century until 1960. Norway persecuted Greenland sharks during the 1970s, because they were considered to be a nuisance that threatened other fisheries. In the early 1900s as many as 30,000 Greenland sharks were caught a year. In the present day the annual take is far smaller; small-scale subsistence fisheries in the Arctic harvest fewer than 100 individuals annually, and roughly 1,200 are caught accidentally in fishing trawls.

Credit : Britannica 

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Anaconda, (genus Eunectes), either of two species of constricting, water-loving snakes found in tropical South America. The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus), also called the giant anaconda, sucuri, or water kamudi, is an olive-coloured snake with alternating oval-shaped black spots. The yellow, or southern, anaconda (E. notaeus) is much smaller and has pairs of overlapping spots.

Green anacondas live along tropical waters east of the Andes Mountains and on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. The green anaconda is the largest snake in the world. Although anacondas and pythons both have been reliably measured at over 9 metres (30 feet) long, anacondas have been reported to measure over 10 metres (33 feet) and are much more heavily built. Most individuals, however, do not exceed 5 metres (16 feet).

Green anacondas lie in the water (generally at night) to ambush caimans and mammals such as capybara, deer, tapirs, and peccaries that come to drink. An anaconda seizes a large animal by the neck and almost instantly throws its coils around it, killing it by constriction. Anacondas kill smaller prey, such as small turtles and diving birds, with the mouth and sharp backward-pointing teeth alone. Kills made onshore are often dragged into the water, perhaps to avoid attracting jaguars and to ward off biting ants attracted to the carcass. In the wild, green anacondas are not particularly aggressive. In Venezuela, they are captured easily during the day by herpetologists who, in small groups, merely walk up to the snakes and carry them off.

Green anacondas mate in or very near the water. After nine months, a female gives live birth to 14–82 babies, each more than 62 cm (24 inches) in length. The young grow rapidly, attaining almost 3 metres (10 feet) by age three.

Credit : Britannica 

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If you thought it would take just a day for a snake to digest its meal, you're wrong. A snake can take up to five days to digest its last meal. With larger snakes such as anacondas, the digestion period is weeks rather than days.

The typical 4-5 day digestive process in snakes encompasses the entire feeding process, from striking and swallowing to excreting feces.

The larger the snake, the longer it takes to digest its food. Big snakes eat larger prey, and larger prey takes longer to fully digest. It can take a large snake a week or more to digest prey.

Snakes have stomach acid and enzymes that break down prey. Once this process is completed, the food is moved on to the gut for further nutrients to be extracted.

Snakes can take a longer or shorter time to digest their food. Some constrictors can eat a meal, fully digest it, and defecate in only one day. Others will go longer, up to two weeks, for reasons which vary but include temperature and the availability of food.

Credit : Snakes for Pets

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Legless lizards look a lot like snakes, but aren't. Most of their body is actually tail and they have tiny vestigial limbs and a non-forked tongue. Unlike snakes, they have eyelids and external ear openings.

All this being said, there are a few ways to tell snakes apart from the majority of legless lizards. For example, snakes tend to have relatively longer bodies and shorter tails than their limbless reptilian cousins. Further, serpents don't have eyelids or external ears, while most lizards do. And many "legless" lizards actually have tiny vestigial limbs, while snakes generally sport no external appendages at all.

There also tend to be big ecological differences between snakes and limbless lizards. Most serpents take relatively big prey items on an infrequent basis, while lizards tend to eat large numbers of small creatures such as insects.

But you can't always rely on these guidelines. Pythons and boas, for instance, have rudimentary hind limbs that males use during courtship and mating. And the species that I studied in grad school — Burton's legless lizard, Lialis burtonis — has no eyelids, just like a snake. It eats like a snake, too, attacking other lizards up to half of its own weight, choking them out and swallowing them whole. 

Credit : Live Science 

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The wandering albatross, which is adept at gliding, has the largest wingspan of any bird in the world, reaching up to 3.5 metres or 11 feet. Weighing between 17 and 25 pounds, this seabird can travel long distances for years without touching land. The species is known to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean thrice each year.

These frequent fliers are known for spending months in the air without touching down, as well as having some unique mating arrangements. However, thanks to harmful fishing techniques and predation by invasive species, albatrosses around the world are either under threat or endangered.

There are 23 species of albatrosses, though arguably the most famous is the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), which is the largest flying bird in the world. This bird has a 11-foot (3.4 meter) wingspan, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica — even bigger than the famous California condor — and it uses those massive flappers to travel thousands of miles in a single journey.

Credit : Live Science 

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Both butterflies and moths are winged insects. And, at a glance, they do seem similar. However, with just a bit of observation you can tell one from the other. How?

One of the easiest t ways to tell a butterfly from a moth is from the way they rest. Butterflies tend to fold their wings vertically up over their backs, while moths hold their wings flat in a tent-like fashion that hides the abdomen. While at rest, you can also see how their bodies and antennae are. Butterflies are slender and smooth, while moths are stout and fuzzy. Butterfly antennae are thin with club-shaped tips as against the feathery or comb-like antennae of moths. Also, normally butterflies come in vibrant colours and moths in dull colours. Another difference between them has to do with their wings. Butterfly wings are not linked, but the forewings and hindwings of moths are connected by a bristle-like structure called the frenulum. Butterflies are diumal, meaning they fly in the daytime, and moths are nocturnal, flying at night.

Another difference between butterflies and moths has to do with their pupal stage between the larva stage and the adult stage- rather than their physical structure. Butterflies form a chrysalis that's hard, smooth, and silkless, while moths create cocoons spun from silk.

However, all the above do not mean there are no exceptions because there are dull-coloured butterfly varieties and extremely colourful moth varieties too. There are butterflies resting with their wings held flat and moths that rest with wings held up. There are crepuscular butterflies that fly at dawn and dusk, and diumal moths. The list goes on....

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Blue jay is a songbird that belongs to the family of crows, and found in Central and Eastern parts of North America and South Canada.

Its face, throat and belly are white, while wings and tail are covered with white, black and blue plumage. It has a crest on top of the head.

It is known for being highly adaptable and intelligent. It makes an excellent imitation of several hawk calls to check if there are any hawks in the area.

It is an omnivore, eating seed, nuts, acorns, fruit, insects, eggs and young birds. Hawks, owls and cats prey on adult birds, while snakes, raccoons, squirrels, opossums and crows attack young birds and eggs.

This is a rare characteristic among birds, and it is called sexual monomorphism, meaning the males and females look the same. Other species of birds have males and females that look very different, which is called sexual dimorphism. With male and female Blue Jays having similar plumage, it’s difficult to tell them apart. However, male Blue Jays are slightly larger.

Seven US states claim the Northern Cardinal as their state bird, but the Blue Jay is not recognized as a state bird in any US state. However, they are the mascot of a Major League Baseball Team, the Toronto Blue Jays.

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Did you know the mongoose is one of the rare animals that is immune to a dose of snake venom? It is known for its ability to fight and kill snakes like cobras. But how is it possible? Besides being agile and having thick coats, mongooses have specialised acetylcholine receptors that make them tolerate a certain amount of snake venom.

Mongooses evolved in Africa in two distinct groups (genera), one of which, including the meerkats, stayed on in Africa. The other went globetrotting – first to Spain, then South Asia, including India. There are six species found in India; four mainly stay in the forests of the Western Ghats, the other two – the Indian grey mongoose and the small Indian mongoose – have more or less spread everywhere and adapted their lifestyle to live alongside us, enjoying scrub jungles, fields, villages and even the desert.

At around 3 ft long, the Indian grey mongoose is the larger of the two and is the one to have made its name as a cobra killer. Its technique is simple: dart and feint at the snake at ninja speed, so that the latter is forced to strike repeatedly, until it is fagged out. Then, bite its head. Apart from cobras, it hunts rats, mice, ground-nesting birds, lizards, even hares and insects, while its smaller cousin goes for insects, fruits and tubers. It’s been believed that the mongoose is immune to cobra venom, but this is not exactly true. It does have some resistance to the venom, but it simply avoids being bitten with its ninja moves. Also, it frizzes up its fur stiffly, to become twice its size and makes it difficult for the snake’s strike to hit home. It’s a fearless hunter and attacker, plunging headlong at its victim and biting its head – no sly ambush from the rear here. Or, it will stalk its victim, and, when close enough, pounce. Or, it will follow its prey to its burrow and dig it out – for which its huge front claws are perfect. Let one loose in a hen-house and it will cause carnage, killing left, right and centre, far in excess of its needs – and, like a complete reprobate, guzzling up the blood.

Credit : The Indian Express

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Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine located in the White Mountains of California, is known as the oldest non-clonal tree in the world. It is said to be over 4.850 years old. Its exact location is kept a close secret so as to protect it from tree vandals.

Though these are some of the oldest individual trees in the world, they are technically not the oldest living organisms. There are several clonal colonies — which are made up of genetically identical trees connected by a single root system — that are much older.

For example, the Pando, or "trembling giant," is a clonal colony made up of more than 40,000 individual quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) trees, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Located in Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah, the colony is estimated to be an astounding 80,000 years old.

In 2008, peculiar circumstances led to the discovery of the world's oldest individual from a clonal tree: Old Tjikko, a 9,550-year-old Norway spruce located the in Fulufjallet Mountains in Sweden, according to scientists at Umea University. Old Tjikko is suspected to be the only living trunk of an ancient clonal colony like the Pando.

The tree's true age was revealed by carbon-14 dating its root system. According to a statement from Umea University, scientists found four generations of spruce remains at the site, all with the same genetic makeup. Spruce trees can multiply with the root penetrating branches to produce exact copies of themselves, so while the individual trunk is younger, the organism has been cloning itself for at least 9,550 years.

Umea University also reported that a cluster of around 20 spruces were found in the Swedish mountains that are estimated to be over 8,000 years old. The trees are able to survive very harsh weather conditions, but a warming climate has allowed them to thrive.

Compared with all of these ancient trees, the oldest living animal, a 183-year-old tortoise, is a young whipper snapper.

Credit : Live Science 

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Ants are social animals. They communicate with each other using a chemical scent called pheromones. They rely on pheromones to defend territories and exchange information such as the location of food sources and nest sites. Like other insects, ants perceive smells with their long and thin antennae. The antennae provide information about the direction and intensity of scents.

In species that forage in groups, a forager marks a scent trail to find its way back to its colony - similar to Hansel from Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of bread crumbs through the woods to find his way back home. On the way back to the nest carrying food, the ant creates a trail with an even stronger scent. This trail is followed by other ants. These followers then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. Thus ants are often seen marching one after the other.

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