To Twinkle or Not

I saw a really bright star the other night. My dad, being my very handy know-it-all person, I asked him 'what star is that?'.

'That's not a star! That's Venus.'

And, ooh, I guess I learned something new that night -stars twinkle, planets don't.


This would be because the distance of stars are so great that the starlight is treated as a point source, and is displaced by the many layers of the earth's atmosphere, as it travels through it. The light of the stars are bent, moving in random directions, thus causing the stars to twinkle.

Stars nearer the horizon appear to twinkle more because these the light of these stars need to travel through even more layers of air compared to the stars right above you. I suppose I needn't tell you that if you were in outer space, the stars wouldn't twinkle.

Planets on the other hand, because they are so near to the earth (compared to the stars), hardly ever twinkle, save for extremely turbulent air.

The Night Sky with Stonehenge

Nails

Like to bite your fingernails?



No prob, just swallow them and you'll have an extra boost of that protein that keeps you growing!

Fingernails, and toenails, are made up of keratin, a certain kind of protein found in our strands of hair. The nails are actually fomed by epithelial cells which grow from the growth plate. During growth they die and the inside of the cells become filled with a hard protein called keratin. It is the keratin that makes our nails hard and tough.

(un)Nutritious Sand Balls

Everyone loves white sandy beaches and bright blue skies. So surely you've seen this before?

Everyone who has been to a beach before would have seen this sight: small tiny balls of sand, sometimes forming a pretty formation.





Pretty formations of sand balls in the sand.








Ever wondered what they are?


The Crustacean Truth:











I always knew the pretty little balls were made by crabs.

And although I didn't know how, I assumed (which is a bad thing to do) that since the balls were always found around the crabholes, perhaps the crabs dug their holes by forming little balls deeper and deeper until there was a hole.

Thankfully, my assumption was correct on that one.

However, surely there had to be another explanation: crabs are tiny creatures, and one definately can't expect them to "throw" the ball of sand out of its burrow THAT FAR (it's at least half a foot)!


The Other Truth:










You see, crabs feed off microscopic material in between the grains of sand.
So after feeding off the stuff in the sand, the crab will roll it up into a ball and toss it over his shoulder. (I'm not sure they have shoulders though.) Thus forming those little balls of sand you see.



The Moral of the Discovery:
So, the next time you're stranded on a white sandy beach, don't suck the sand that have been rolled into balls, the crabs have got all the nutrition out already!

Hazy, blurry days of August

The haze has been terrible here in the Malaysian Peninsular.


The sun, which usually looks like this:














Has been looking rayless and egg yolky:













Driving on the road, with only a hundred meters of visibility feels like going into the mist of the unknown. Just over here it's the haze from Sumatera. We're just trying to make it sound romantic.














A good rain should clear it all away

A tenth of a litre

Ok, this is actually Flubber..
I couldn't find any picture of mucus which would NOT cause you to puke.

So, there.

I've always wondered how much mucus my nostril actually produces on a normal flu day. And to my surprise, I found out that the average person on a really bad flu day only produce about half an ounce of mucus.

How terribly disappointing. I was hoping for like 100 ml or something.

A tenth of a litre of snot just sounds so fascinating.

Snot, snot, snot, ah, fascinating snot!

Sharks

Trivia time.

What are sharks?
a) mammals
b) reptiles
c) fish
d) amphibians

*I won't put birds as an option, because you need to be highly stupid to choose that.

Answer: they're fish! C is the answer.

But then again, sharks aren't your normal kinda fish:

1. they don't have scales
2. they don't have swim bladders
3. some of them, besides being ovoviparous, like reptiles, are also viviparous and oviparous

Nevertheless, sharks are classified as fish.

And there you go.

Vivivi

Contrary to popular belief, not all reptiles lay eggs.

There are three different forms of how different types of reptiles bear their young.

1. oviparous - the mother lays the eggs and then the young hatch, all outside the mother's body
2. ovoviviparous - the eggs are hatched inside the mother's body, before the young come out.
3. viviparous - the mother gives birth to her young. These reptiles nourish their young in the uterus in yolk sacs, unlike mammals do in the uterus in plasenta.
4. Here's a quicktime video on a smooth snake giving birth:

http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/reptiles/Coronella_austriaca/Coronella_austriaca_09.html?movietype=rpMed

Pretty interesting, I always assumed all reptiles laid eggs, 'cos I don't recall seeing pythons or crocodiles giving birth.

Homalopsines

Homalopsines.

Homalopsines are water snakes who have:

• dorsal-oriented eyes
• valvular nostrils, and
• rear fangs (venomous)

Like this lil fellow here:
(ok, but the fangs don't show.. just imagine them curved backward)

















This is a cerberus rynchops, a dog faced water snake.

Doesn't look like a dog to me at all, if anything a snakey crocodile.


Remember, the word is

HOMALOPSINES

Hooray

I suppose you know a group of lions is called a pride of lions and a group of crows is called a murder of crows.

And I suppose you're feeling pretty proud of yourself now that you knew that a group of lions is called a pride of lions and a group of crows is called a murder of crows.

Hah, but I bet you don't know what a group of frogs and a group of toads are called.











Well,

A group of frogs is called an army of frogs.

&

A group of toads is called a knot of toads.











There. I've got meself a knot of toads on my blog.
Hooray!