How can a fly walk on a ceiling?

Two sharp claws and sticky pad under each foot help the fly cling to ceilings and other smooth surfaces.  If you were to look at the feet of fly through a microscope, you would see that each foot is equipped with tiny claws and sticky pads of hair.

These enable the fly to walk upside down on the ceiling and cling to the slippery surfaces of windows and mirrors.  When walking upside down, the fly picks up three of the feet at a time, while the other feet hold the fly to the ceiling until it is their turn to step forward.

Flies have great strength for their size and can run along a ceiling with the greatest of ease. Most kinds of spiders and insects have claws on their feet that help them cling to ceilings and smooth walls.

Wherever the spider goes it lays down a thin, silken dragline, to help prevent falls or to escape from enemies.  If danger threatens, it can drop to the floor below, or it can simply hang there until the danger has passed.  

Then it climbs back up on its dragline and continues on its way.  Many of the duty cobwebs you see hanging from the ceiling are discarded draglines.-Dick Rogers

Why are some birds more brightly colored than others?

Color makes some birds stand out and helps to hide other birds. Though there are a great many things in nature that we can explain, we can only guess why some things are as they are.

One idea – and there are many exceptions – is that birds with brighter colors spend most of their time in place where their bright colors make them stand out, so they can easily be seen by other birds of their own kind.

Birds with duller colors live mostly on or near the ground.  Their dull-colored feathers match the grass and leaves of their surroundings and make them hard to see.  This protects them from enemies.

This may also be why nature gave the duller colors to most female birds.  Since she must sit on the nest to hatch the eggs, the mother bird must be better hidden.

A male bird may court his mate by singing and displaying his flashing colors, in order to persuade the quiet little female that he is the finest bird in the world.

During the nesting time, he perches on a limb some distance from the nest.  With his bright colors, he draws all the attention to himself, and away from the nest and young ones.-Dick Rogers

What is salamander?

A salamander is a harmless creature that looks like a lizard, but it is related to the frogs and toads. Salamanders’ bodies and long tails make them look so much like lizards that they are often mistaken for them.  It is easy to tell them apart.  Lizards are covered with dry scales.

Salamander has smooth, shiny skin that always looks wet.  Salamanders are timid, harmless creature.  They love to live in streams and ponds, on land beneath stones and rotting logs where it is cool, dark and moist.

They live in a stream or a pond as tadpoles and breathe with gills like fish.  But when grown-up, they have  legs and come ashore and breathe air with lungs.  Salamanders have a special name because they start life in the water then crawl out onto land.  They are called “amphibians,” which means “leading a double life.”

There are many kinds of salamanders.  Mud puppies, newts, and hellbenders are the names of the few.  Not all salamander live a double life.   The mud puppies and hellbenders spend their entire life in the water.-Dick Rogers

Why does a mosquito bite itch?

The itchy welt you welt you get from a mosquito bite is caused from the saliva the mosquito injects into the skin.  The saliva keeps the blood from clotting so that the mosquito can easily sip your blood.

Most of us are allergic to the mosquito saliva, and the itchy welt that forms on the skin is very irritating. Only the female mosquito “bites.”  The male mosquito feeds only on plants juices.  The female mosquito does not really bite. To the eye, her needle-like beak looks like a think tube.  Actually, it holds daggers with saw-like tips.

As soon as she settles on your skin, she starts sawing.  Into the tiny hole she injects the saliva that helps her to sip the blood. If you swat her before she can suck back the irritating saliva, your itching will be worse.

Next to its bite, the hum of a mosquito is probably most annoying – especially when we are trying to sleep.  The hum of a mosquito is the sound of its wings beating rapidly as it flies.  The humming “song” helps the female mosquito attract a male mosquito.-Dick Rogers

What is an albino?

True albinos, like the white, pink-eyed rabbit pets, are born without any coloring matter in their bodies. An albino is a person born without any coloring matter or pigment, in his skin.  In such a person the skin is milky-white and the hair is very light.

A person who is a true albino also has pink eyes because the iris (the colored part of the eye) is so clear that the tiny blood vessels of the eye shines through.  In normal eyes, the color of the iris serves to hide the pinkness.

The color of our skin is chiefly due to the presence of a color pigment called “melanin,”  which gives the skin what we call “flesh color.”

When melanin accumulates in small spots in the skin, freckles appear.  And when you spend a few days in the sun, the sunlight darkens the melanin in your skin and this results in a “suntan.”

Albinism is found not only in man, but among all kinds of animals and birds, and it is even found in plants.  Perhaps the animal albinos we are all most familiar white mice and rats and rabbits that have pink eyes.

White ducks, chickens and horses are not true albinos, because most of them have color pigments in eyes, beaks or legs.-Dick Rogers

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