Wonders of Nature [ P-II ]

1.Armadillos are bulletproof.

There have been numerous reports that if you shoot an armadillo, the bullet will ricochet off the animal's armor and instead, hit the shooter.

When a man in Texas pulled out his .38 revolver and fired three shots at an armadillo, the bullet wound up hitting the man in the face, resulting in him needing to have his jaw wired shut. Long story short, please don't try to test this one at home.

2.

More than 200 viruses can result in a cold.

There are more than 200 different viruses that can cause symptoms of the common cold. These upper respiratory infections are usually due to a rhinovirus, but corona viruses, adenoviruses, and enteroviruses can all result in the common cold, as well.

The average adult gets two to four colds a year, which isn't too bad considering all the different viruses your body has to fight off to maintain that statistic. Thanks, Mother Nature.

3.Caffeine is a natural pesticide.

Caffeine—which is found in tea leaves, guarana berries, kola nuts, and, of course, coffee beans—acts as a natural pesticide. 

It overloads the nervous systems of insects that try to eat the plants containing caffeine, paralyzing and even killing them before they can do too much damage. It affects humans' central nervous systems, too, but for us, it merely acts as a stimulant. 

4.Women blink more often than men.

According to a study from the Functional Anatomy Research Center in Milan, women blink an average of 19 times a minute, whereas men blink only 11 times a minute. And now you know the cards as stacked against women in staring contests.

5.Mars has the solar system's biggest volcano.

At 13.6 miles high and 370 miles wide, Olympus Mons on Mars' western hemisphere is the largest volcano in our solar system.

It's unknown whether this volcano is still active. But what we do know is that Olympus Mons was able to grow so big because Mars, unlike Earth, has no shifting tectonic plates, so the mountain simply sits over a hot spot that gives it a constant supply of lava.

6.Happy guinea pigs pop like popcorn.

When a guinea pig, particularly a baby guinea pig, gets excited, it just can't hold that feeling in. It pushes off from all four feet and hops straight up in the air, looking like a kernel of popcorn in a microwave. 

Guinea pigs aren't the only animals that popcorn, as this behavior is called. Gazelles will do something similar to ward off predators, and even horses have been known to popcorn on occasion.

7.

Humans eat only 200 types of plants.

Scientists estimate that there are about 400,000 different species of plants on Earth. It's much harder to estimate how many of them are edible, but figures range from 80,000 to a whopping 300,000. 

But, in all the cultures across the world combined, we eat only 200 of those edible plants. Amazingly, about 50 percent of the plant calories we do eat come from just three species: rice, wheat, and maize (corn).

8.Your femur is stronger than concrete.

Your femur, which is your thigh bone, is the largest and strongest bone in your body. Pound for pound, a human femur can withstand four times as much pressure as the same amount of concrete because of the bone's structure and density. Again, this is not something worth trying at home.

9.Sloths only poop once a week.

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Everything about sloths is slow, including their metabolisms. The average adult sloth poops once every five to seven days, and when it does, it can expel one-third of its own body weight.

Unfortunately, these tree dwellers have to come down to the ground in order to defecate, which saps their energy and leaves them vulnerable to predators. About half of all sloth deaths occur during their once-a-week defecation.

10.Black holes aren't actually black.

At the heart of a black hole is something called a gravitational singularity, which is a mass so dense that it creates gravity too strong for even light to escape, i.e. the "black" part of black hole.

However, quantum physics actually predicts that black holes, particularly small ones, do emit some observable radiation, including visible light. This is called Hawking radiation, after astrophysicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, and it slowly drains the black holes of their mass and energy.

11.Liquids can boil and freeze at the same time.

While this sounds completely counterintuitive, all substances have what's called a "triple point," or the exact temperature and pressure at which the three main states of matter—gas, liquid, and solid—are at equilibrium. For water, that point exists at 0.01°C (32.018°F) and 611.657 pascals of partial vapor pressure.

As the temperature and pressure fluctuate in tiny amounts around that triple point, a frozen liquid can start to boil, and a boiling liquid can freeze solid. Pretty wild, huh?

12.The Iberian ribbed newt uses its own bones as weapons.

It's a rough world out there, and animals have to protect themselves from predators however they can. For some, like Iberian ribbed newts, that means pushing their own bones through their skin.

The newt's abdomen contains special tubercles that allow its ribs to poke out through its skin when the newt is frightened. As an added bonus, its skin secretes a toxic chemical, turning this unassuming little creature into a killer of anything that tries to bite it. Basically, this little guy is real-life Wolverine.

13.Hurricanes release the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs.

If you measure the kinetic energy of its wind velocity alone, a single mature hurricane can equal about half of our entire planet's capability of producing electricity. If you measure it in terms of rainfall, though, a hurricane releases the force of 10,000 atomic bombs over an area about 413 miles wide.

The difference, of course, is that the energy is spread out over the entire area instead of radiating from a single point. Still, that much sustained force can do some heavy damage, as all too many Floridians, Texans, Louisianans, and North Carolinians know.

14.Bamboo is the world's fastest growing plant.

There are about 1,000 different kinds of bamboo and many grow quite fast, but only a few species can reach Guinness World Record speeds. The current record is an astonishing rate of 35 inches in a day, which is nearly three feet. The more typical growth rate in temperate climates is more like 1 to 4 inches per day, which is still a lot.

15.

Your tongue is made up of eight muscles.

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The tongue is made up of eight muscles: four that anchor it to the head and neck, and four that intertwine to make up a muscular hydrostat, like an elephant's trunk. While it may not be the strongest muscle in the body—an honor that would go to the heart, the jaw muscles, or even the gluteus maximus, depending on how you measure strength—that doesn't make the tongue any less remarkable.

16.Camels' humps are made up of fat, not water.

It's time that the world knew the truth. While you probably didn't think those camel humps were beverage coolers, you might have imagined that all the water that a camel drinks—up to 53 gallons in three minutes—has to go somewhere. And it does, but it's not in its humps. The water stays in the camel's stomach or bloodstream.

Those humps are actually storing fat, which is the camel's energy source when food is scarce. Since camels live in hot environments, they don't want all that fat insulating and overheating their organs, so it's stored in natural "backpacks" instead.

17.The resurrection plant can rise from the dead.

Also known as the "Rose of Jericho" or "dinosaur plant," Selaginella lepidophylla can survive extreme dehydration. It's found in deserts in North and South America, and in the total absence of water, it curls up into a dead-looking ballIt can stay that way for months, but when it comes into contact with moisture, it will revive itself over a matter of hours and start regaining its green color. It synthesizes a special sugar called trehalose that protects its cells from damage as a result of dehydration. It turns out, resurrection is possible.

18.The ocean produces up to 85 percent of the Earth's oxygen.

Tiny sea-dwelling creatures called phytoplankton are actually the ones that produce the vast majority of the oxygen in our atmosphere: 50 to 85 percent to be exact. Though they're too small to see without a microscope, they live in the upper layers of water and use the same method plants do—photosynthesis—to convert sunlight into energy, creating oxygen in the process.

19.A day on Venus lasts way longer than a day on Earth.

On Earth, it only seems like a day can last longer than a whole year. In reality, our planet rotates on its axis once every 24 hours and makes one complete revolution around the sun every 365.25 daysn Venus, though, it rotates much more slowly. One Venusian day—i.e. one one rotation on its axis—can take 243 Earth days. That'd be great on weekends, but it'd make the work week feel torturously long.

20.

One of the elephant's closest living relatives weighs 10 pounds.

The fuzzy rock hyrax is only found in certain parts of Africa and the Middle East. Though it may look somewhat unremarkable, it has a pretty incredible relative: the elephant. You have to look pretty closely to see the similarities between these 10 pound creatures and a 10,000 pound elephant. But the rock hyrax does have long front teeth that are distinctly tusk-like.

The elephant and the hyrax share another relative in the manatee. We'd totally watch a family reunion among these three species.