Amazing facts about Insects

1. For every person on the earth, there are two hundred million insects. More insects can be found in only ten square feet of rainforest than there are people in Manhattan. One square mile of rural land can hold more insects than there are human beings on Earth.

2. Over 900,000 known species of insects exist throughout the world.

3. Each year, insects eat about a third of the world's food crops.

4. In contrast, each year the average person will "eat" several insects while they are sleeping. During the average lifetime, a person consumes about seventy insects and ten spiders during their sleep. According to some sources, beetles have a taste that is similar to apples while wasps taste like pine nuts.

5. The Department of Health and Human Services has set standards regarding how many insect parts are food can contain, called the Food Defect Action Levels. Chocolate can have up to eight insect fragments per hundred grams, while peanut butter can have only sixty fragments. Meanwhile, wheat flour can have 150 fragments per hundred grams and paprika can have 300 fragments.

6. The smallest insect in the world, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye on a housefly. The largest insect is the goliath beetle, which can grow up to four and half inches long.

7. Slavery is not strictly a human condition. Amazon ants will steal larvae of other ants to be their slaves. They depend upon these slaves for their survival because Amazon ants are incapable of doing anything other than fight.

8. An ant is capable of lifting fifty times its own weight and is capable pulling thirty times its own weight.

9. The most dangerous ant in the world is the black bulldog ant. It lives in Australia and has killed several human beings. When provoked, it stings and bites at the same time.

10. There are about a million ants per person. Ants are very social animals and will live in colonies that can contain almost 500,000 ants.

11. A flea can jump about two hundred times the length of their body, which is about thirteen inches. This is the equivalent to a six foot tall human jumping nine hundred feet.

12. A cockroach can live nine days without eating. This is also the same amount of time that the body of a cockroach can live after its head has been cut off before it eventually dies from starvation.

13. Mosquitoes have forty-seven teeth. They do not use these to bite, however. Instead, they have a proboscis, which is a tubular appendage.

14. Mosquitoes are more likely to bite children than adults, blonde-haired people rather than brown-haired people, and people wearing dark clothing. They are also attracted to people who just ate bananas or finished exercising. This is because foods high in potassium and exercising cause your body to release lactic acid, which is attractive to mosquitoes.

15. Citronella does not repel mosquitoes through its smell. Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates its feet.

16. Mosquitoes are responsible causing the most human deaths worldwide than any other animal-almost two million annually. They do this by transmitting diseases such as the West Nile virus, malaria, and Dengue fever. Second to this is the tsetse fly, which kills about 66,000 people annually.

17. Dragonflies are capable of flying sixty miles per hour, making them one of the fastest insects. This is good since they are in a big hurry, as they only live about twenty-four hours.

18. Flies jump backwards during takeoff.

19. A housefly will regurgitate its food and eat it again.

20. Termites outweigh humans by almost ten to one.

21. Termites have been known to eat food twice as fast when heavy metal music is playing.

22. There are more beetles than any other animal. In fact, one out of every four animals is a beetle.

23. The rhinoceros beetle is the strongest animal and is capable of lifting 850 times its own weight.

24. A spider's web is not a home, but rather a trap for its food. They are as individual as snowflakes, with no two ever being the same. Some tropical spiders have built webs over eighteen feet across.

25. More people are afraid of spiders than death. Amazingly, few people are afraid of Champagne corks even though you are more likely to be killed by one than by a spider.

26. The most poisonous spider is the black widow. Its venom is more potent than a rattlesnake's.

27. During its lifetime, a worker bee will only produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.

28. Honeybees are more dangerous than snakes. Bees kill more people each year than all the poisonous snakes combined.

29. Butterflies have taste sensors in their feet and taste their food by standing on it. Although all species of butterflies have six legs, some keep their front legs tucked up under their body most of the time.

30. The butterfly was originally called the "flutterby."

31. The praying mantis is capable of turning its head 360 degrees. It is the only insect that can do this. It is also the only animal on Earth with only one ear.

32. Crickets and katydids have ears on their legs.

33. Aphids are born pregnant and can give birth when they are only ten days old.

34. Only male crickets can chirp and will chirp faster in warm weather than cool. In fact, you can determine the temperature by counting the number of chirps in fifteen seconds and adding it to 37.

35. The average bed contains between two million to six million dust mites.

Extinct Animals - Amazing facts

Eryops meaning "drawn-out face" because most of its skull was in front of its eyes is a genus of extinct, semi-aquatic amphibian that lived in swamps during the Permian period. This meat-eater had a stout body with very wide ribs, a strong spine, four short, strong legs, a short tail, and a wide, elongated skull with many sharp teeth in strong jaws. Eryops averaged a little over 1.5-2.0 meters (5-6 ft) long, making it one of the largest land animals of its time. It weighed about 90 kilograms

Eclipse Facts

Here are some of the facts about Eclipses.,

• Lunar eclipses can only occur during a full moon.
• Solar eclipses can only occur during a new moon.
• A Solar eclipse always occurs two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse.
• Eclipses very often occur in threes, alternating lunar, solar and lunar.
• The maximum time a lunar eclipse can last is 3 hours and 40 minutes.
• The longest time the Moon can stay in totality is 1 hour 40 minutes.
• The maximum time for a total solar eclipse is 7 minutes and 40 seconds.
• The maximum time for an annular solar eclipse is 12 minutes 24 seconds.
• Lunar eclipses can occur up to 3 times a year.
• Solar eclipses can occur at least 2 and no more than 5 times a year.
• Lunar eclipses are visible over an entire hemisphere.
• Solar eclipses are visible in a narrow path a maximum of 167 miles wide (269km.)
• At any geographic position on the Earth, a total solar eclipse occur an average of once every 360 years.
• The cycle of eclipses repeats every 18.6 years called the saros.
• The eclipse shadow moves at 2,000 mph at the Earth's poles and 1,000 mph at the Earth's equator.

What is a Solar Eclipse?

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses.

By a fortunate coincidence, the sun's diameter is 400 times larger than that of the moon, and at the same time, it is 400 times as far away. From where we are, this creates the illusion that they are the same size. If we look through a filter at the sun, it looks exactly like the moon on a full moon night. When the moon passes in front of the sun, the shadow falls on the earth and it appears to exactly cover the sun's disc. This is what a solar eclipse is - a shadow.

During a solar eclipse, the moon actually casts two shadows towards earth. One shadow shaped like a cone is called the umbra. This becomes narrower as it reaches the earth. No direct sunlight penetrates into this area. The path of this is called the path of totality. If you are positioned in this area than you can see a complete blocking of the sun and view a total solar eclipse. Total eclipse is observable only within a narrow strip of land or sea over which the umbra passes.

The second shadow is called the penumbra which spreads out as it reaches the earth. The penumbra is spread over a large area. People viewing the eclipse from this area of the earth's surface will see only a partial blocking of the sun.

Solar Eclipse - July 22, 2009

On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan's Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean.

The moon's shadow blocked out the sun, leaving only the solar corona visible in west China's Chongqing Municipality and Guang'an City in neighboring Sichuan Province.

The cities turned off many street lights to allow the public to better observe the total eclipse, which lasted about four minutes.

The July 22 eclipse is the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st Century. It is expected to pass across China from Tibet to the coastal city of Shanghai, where 300 million people live.

Celebrating 40th Anniversary of Moon Landing

On the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, let us rewind the facts on Apollo 11's historic trip.

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon or Moon orbit.

July 16, 1969: The world watched in anticipation as three men were hurtled skyward in a rocket bound for the moon.
The Apollo 11 launch date had arrived with just months to spare: Nine years earlier, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had said that by the end of the decade the country would put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.

The successful Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, ushered in an era of moon exploration that has so far gone unrivaled.

Crew Members:

Position Astronaut Commander Neil Armstrong
Second spaceflight Command Module Pilot Michael Collins
Second spaceflight Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.
Second spaceflight

" That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - Neil Armstrong

Just 12 men have walked upon the moon and they remain the only human beings who have stood on another world!!!!!

How did water get into the coconut?

Coconut water is the endosperm part of the coconut plant. Endosperm is the most common nutritive tissue for the development of embryos in flowering plants. It supply nutrients to the growing embryo. The water is taken by all plants to prepare their food and for transporting the food throughout the plant body.

There are three types of endosperm and the coconut endosperm is a nuclear type in which theendosperm is found as a clear fluid in which float numerous nuclei of various sizes.

This fluid is compactly filling the embryo sac in which the embryo is developing.At a later stage gradually these cells and free nuclei start settling at the periphery of the cavity and layers of cellular endosperm start appearing. This forms the coconut meat. This meat is very tender enclosing the fluid content called coconut water. At this stage the nut is called tender coconut. The quantity of the cellular endosperm increases further by the divisions of the cells. In
mature coconut the liquid endosperm becomes milky enclosed by the cellular part called kernel and it does not contain free nuclei or cells.

How does the tail of lizard grow into exactly the same shape?

Not all lizard species are capable of shedding their tails, only those that can have fracture points in their vertebrae. The lizard’s blood vessels in the tail area rapidly constrict after autotomy to ensure minimal blood loss. The muscles in this area are also adapted to provide easy shedding of the tail.

After a lizard drops its tail it will start to grow back a new one, however the new one will not look the same as the original. It may have different colors, shape and size.

If snake has venom in its teeth, how come it does not die when it bite and eat its prey?

Yes, if a venomous snake bites itself and injects a considerable amount of venom, it could quite easily die. Remember that the venom itself never comes into contact with the snake's bloodstream - it is stored in venom glands behind the snakes eyes and injected through the fangs into the prey item, and then the prey item is swallowed into the stomach, never touching the blood.