How do fish breathe in the water?

As the fish forces water past its gills tiny blood vessels lining the gills  absorb oxygen out of the air that is dissolved in the water.

Just as  our lungs take oxygen from the air.  Fishes take oxygen from the water.  But fishes breathe with gills instead of lungs. By watching a fish in an aquarium,  You can see it open and close  its mouth constantly as though drinking in gulps of water.

Each time the fish opens its mouth a mouthful of water is drawn in. Then the fish closes its mouth and the water is forced back out through the gill openings, which  are the slits located on the side of the fish’s head. The gills are very  thin tissues.  They are bright red because they contain many tiny blood vessels.

As the water passes over  the gills the oxygen dissolved in the water is absorbed  into  the tiny blood vessels and is carried by the blood to other parts of the fish’s body. (Fishes have nostrils which they use only for smelling.)

Fish live wherever there is water, except in  very salty  water, such as the dead sea and  the great salt lake of Utah, or in water polluted by man. In such water fish cannot find enough oxygen to breathe. – Dick Rogers

How does a spider spin its silk?

A spider spins its silk by releasing a liquid through its spinnerets.  The liquid hardens into a silk thread as soon as it touches the air.

Spiders are small, eight-legged animals that are best known for the silken webs they spin. Spiders have spinning organs called spinnerets on the underside of their stomachs.

Through the spinnerets, spiders release a liquid that hardens to silk as soon as it touches the air. The spider cannot force the silk from its silk glands in a stream.  When it is spinning a web it pulls the silk from the spinnerets with a hind leg.

Spiders use their silk in many ways.  Some spin webs to catch insects for fond.  They also line their retreats and nests with it.

Most spiders enclose their eggs in a protective eggs sac, or cocoon of silk.  The newly hatched spider lings may migrate to new homes by spinning silken, gossamer threads carried by the wind.

The spider traits a drag line wherever, it goes.  It can swing down to the ground from high places or swing out of reach of any enemy.-Dick Rogers

How do bees make honey?

It is a mistake to image that bees get readymade honey from flowers.  The honeybees make honey from nectar, the sweet juice found in blossoms.

The reason bees make honey is that it serves them as food.

To make honey, the honey bee sips the sweet nectar from blossoms with its long tongue, and stores it in its honey stomach.

Inside its honey stomach the bee adds special chemicals to the nectar.  The bee puts the treated nectar into a wax cell in the honeycomb, where it ripens into honey.

The bees that gather nectar also gather pollen from the blossoms.  Pollen, too, makes good bee food.

The dusty pollen from the blossoms brushes off upon the bee’s hairy body.  The bee scrapes it off with its legs and moistens it with a little nectar to make a clump, and then pushes it into pollen baskets on its back legs.

Bee pollen is sometimes called “bee bread,” and with pollen bees help plants bear good fruit and seeds.  They help the plants by carrying pollen from one flower to another of the same kind.-Dick Rogers

How do hummingbirds hum?

Usually, the only sound of a hummingbird is the whirring or humming sound it makes with its rapidly beating wings.

A hummingbird flaps its wings nearly 60 times in the time it takes you to blink your eyes.  The wings move so fast that only a misty outline can be seen.  They make the air vibrate, and we hear a humming sound.

The delicate and brightly colored hummingbird usually measures less than four inches from bill to tail and weights about as much as a copper penny.

No other bird can fly in so many ways as the hummingbird.  It can quickly dart up, down, backward, forward or it can hover nearly motionless in the air like a helicopter.

The active little bird must eat every 10 to 15 minutes it is awake to maintain its tiring pace. It flits from flower to flower and hovers above each blossom.  

It sips the sweet nectar through its long, tube-shaped tongue and picks up any small insect that it may find in the flower. Most, but not all hummingbirds are tiny.  The largest is the giant hummer.  It grows nearly 9 inches long.-Dick Rogers

What is a lynx?

Lynxes are wild members of the cat family. They can easily be distinguished from the other cats by their stumpy tails, long legs, and long tufts of hair on their pointed ears.

Primarily a forest animal, the North American Lynx Lives mainly in the great Canadian forests from Labrador to Alaska.

If you live in the United States south of Canada you may know another kind of lynx better by the name of “bobcat” or “wildcat.”

Bobcats are found running wild in many parts of the United States and Mexico.  They are smaller than their northern cousins and have shorter ear tuffs.  Bobcats get their name from their “bobbed” tails.

In winter, the big feet of the northern lynx serve as snowshoes, allowing it to run swiftly over the snow. The rabbits on which the lynx preys try to escape notice by lying perfectly still.  The lynx, unable to tell exactly where the rabbit is, emits a piercing howl.

The timid rabbit, startled by the fearful sound cannot help jumping; thereby disclosing its hiding place to the crafty lynx.-Dick Rogers

What is a leech?

Leeches are bloodsuckers which belong to the worm family.  Most leaches live in water, where they attach themselves to fishes, animals and even to people. Some swamps and ponds contain leeches, worms that can cling to fishes, animals and ever to persons.

Leeches may grow from ½-inch to 4 or more inches long.  Like many worms, they have soft, flat bodies divided into segments. On the leech’s head is a sucker like mouth equipped with three saw-shaped teeth.  A second sucker is located at the hind end of the leech.

The leech attaches itself to the host by means of its suckers.  Then, with the mouth sucker, it sucks up the blood through three little holes which it makes in the skin with its sharp teeth.

In a single meal a leech may eat three times its own weight in blood.  One meal may fast several months. Not all leeches suck blood.  Some feed instead on worms and other small animals that live in the water. 

During medieval times bloodsucking leeches were used by physicians to draw blood from patients in attempts to cure them. - Dick Rogers

What was a saber-toothed tiger?

Saber-toothed tigers were big cats with long, saber like teeth. In the Old Stone Age, there lived a bit cat, more ferocious in appearance than any known today.

This was the saber-toothed tiger.  It was not really a tiger.  But it resembled a tiger and had two long teeth curved like swords called sabers—which accounts for its name of “saber-toothed tiger.”

Sometimes its teeth were as long as 8 inches and could easily slash the thick skins of the large mammoths upon which it preyed.

Perhaps where you live today, saber-toothed tigers stalked their prey long ago.  They prowled most parts of the world and found plenty to eat in North America.

The last of them died out thousands of years ago. Some people think they became extinct because their teeth grew so long that they could no longer open their mouths wide enough to eat.

But it is more likely that they died out when the big animals upon which they depended for food became scarce. - Dick Rogers