This section is focused on our earth! Find out planet secrets, from rainforests to sea turtles. Be a science sleuth and track our planet earth — oceans, mountains, places, nature, global warming, pollution, the natural world and much more. Amazing facts and unusual behaviour of reptiles, insects, animals, birds, rainforests… Come in and join our Earth Science for Kids club.
113 items in this section. Displaying page 7 of 12
The Truth About Bats
Bats are among the world’s least appreciated and most endangered animals, thanks to centuries of myth and superstition. Contrary to common misconceptions, bats are not blind, they are not rodents and they won’t get tangled in your hair. The truth is that bats are mong the most gentle and beneficial animals on earth. A bat is a winged mammal with the ability to fly. It’s ability to maintain sustained flight, unique among mammals, results from the modification of hand-like forelimbs into wings....
Dealing With the Potential Danger of a Meteor Hitting Earth
Our solar system is like a busy traffic round-about. The sun is at the centre of this round-about which drives a large number of heavenly bodies, including planets, comets and large and small rocks around it. While the earth and the other planets chart fairly fixed paths around the sun, our smaller solar siblings, like rocks, do not believe in staying in their lanes. As a result, a large rock – the size of a small city – bangs into the earth every once in a while....
A Beautiful Ship in the Sky
In the boundless ocean of space, a beautiful ship sails serenely around the sun. Our earth – Lovelier than the moon, this fragile ship travels one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres every hour. Space is full of countless such ships. But our Earth is special. It is the only ship which carries life – the only ship with voyagers on board. Four hundred thousand different kinds of life make their home on Earth. Together, they make it beautiful and precious....
It's a Zoo Out There!
Almost 400 years ago, Mughal emperor Jehangir acquired a new animal in his private collection or zoo – the zebra. This unusual, striped animal fascinated him so much that he wrote about it in his memoirs as a strange creature. Some even imagined that the animal’s stripes had been painted! The emperor decided to find out whether the zebra was indeed coloured or not. After much investigation, he made it public that the zebra, too, was a creature created by god....
The Deadliest Animal in the World
Do you know, it is one of deadliest creatures in the world? No, it’s not the cobra. It is the sea wasp. It is a kind of jelly fish and is called the Chironex Fleckeri, commonly known as sea wasp. It has a bell-shaped body with long tentacles that trail behind it. These tentacles have hundreds of thousands of tiny cells, which contain a cobra-like poison. When a victim brushes against the tentacles, the poison is injected into his body, killing him in less than five minutes....
Man's Best Friend
Who is man’s best friend? Of course there are no points for guessing that one – the dog. The dog is the most popular domestic animal in the world. For more than 12,000 years the dog has been a companion, a protector and above all, an honest friend. But different civilisations and cultures have treated the dog in different ways. In some countries, dogs are used as guards or beasts of burden, whereas in others they are even eaten as food....
Marine Militants: Bioinvasion propagated through Cargo Ships
What would happen if all the lions in Africa are carried away to some other place? The deer population will rise as there will not be anyone to kill them. With this population boom, the deer would need more food. After a point, there will no grass left to feed subsequent generations. This would lead to the destruction of the entire ecosystem which thrives and sustains itself on the grass. And the grasslands will turn into a desert....
Sea Turtles
Can you name an animal that returns to the place of its birth, every single year, journeying more than 1,000 km to do so? Well, here is another hint: this animal is a sea creature that originated on earth more than 200 million years ago- making the species older than the oldest ever dinosaur. Give up? They are none other than marine turtles, more commonly known as sea turtles. Seven existing species of sea turtles exist in the world today of which at least four (the Olive Ridley, Green Hawksbill, Leatherback and Flatback) are fairly common in the waters of the Indian Ocean....
The Tiny World of Ants
It is believed that ants evolved from wasps and have lived in the Earth for at least 100 million years. It is said that at any one time there are at least 1 quadrillion living ants on the Earth. Ants are no doubt the most successful of all social insects of Hymenoptera, an order that also includes wasps and bees. Ants are colony makers and their colonies may contain from a few to 20 million individuals....
Chimp Traits
Do you think chimps are chumps? If the answer is yes, then you are in for a surprise – because chimps or chimpanzees are actually very, very intelligent. Chimpanzees are the most intelligent of the ape family. It was known that chimpanzees use tools intelligently to obtain food. They use rocks to crack open nuts or use sticks to dig the earth for choice insects and termites. Once a chimpanzee learns a certain method he/she teaches it on to all the other chimps in the area....