Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (17 page)

What’s the smallest nation in Africa? What’s the smallest African nation
not
in Africa?

Where would you have to go to find the longest mountain range on Earth?

The water in Isa Lake flows in two directions at the same time. How? The lake sits directly on top of North America’s Continental Divide. All the rivers and streams east of this dividing line eventually flow into the Atlantic Ocean, much of them by way of the Gulf of Mexico. Rivers and streams to the west of the Continental Divide eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean. Because of Isa Lake’s unique position (no other lake in North America does this), its water drains into two creeks—one that ends up in the Atlantic, the other in the Pacific.

Africa’s smallest
mainland
nation is Gambia, at 4,363 square miles. However, at 174 square miles, the smallest African nation is the Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 tiny islands in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar.

Underwater. Technically, the longest mountain range on Earth is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which lies almost entirely below the surface of the sea. It’s 10,000 miles long, stretching from the South Atlantic to Iceland, which contains the only part of the mountain chain above water. The longest above-ground, or primarily “exposed,” mountain range is the Andes Mountains in South America, at a comparatively paltry 4,350 miles.

Test your knowledge on the finer points (and quills and teeth and leaves and roots) of growing things, both great and small
.

What does a spider do when it gets stuck in its own web?

What does it mean if a camel has a floppy hump?

We’re talking about the most familiar type of spider web—the spiral web. And yes, it’s true that arachnids occasionally get a leg or two (or five) caught in their own webs. To avoid this predicament, most spiders spin two kinds of material: one nonsticky and one sticky. The nonsticky material radiates out from the center, like spokes. That’s what the spider walks on. It’s also the stronger of the two, providing support for the entire web. The sticky material that is designed to trap prey goes around and around the center in the familiar spiral shape.

So what does a spider do when it makes a misstep and becomes stuck in that sticky spiral? Most species are able to secrete an oily substance that allows them to slip away. In addition, some spiders also have tiny
tarsal claws
located on their hind legs that they can use to slide along the sticky strands to get themselves unstuck.

Did you assume it’s because the camel is low on water? Good guess, but camels don’t store water in their humps—that’s a common misconception. A camel’s hump becomes floppy when the animal is low on food. When camels are well fed, fat cells build up inside their humps, making them firm. After weeks of roaming through the desert with little to eat, the hungry camel has used up most of its fat stores, resulting in a flabby hump.

What is the oldest (known) living thing in the world?

Which bear becomes a tiger?

Many biologists disagree over exactly what qualifies as “oldest,” “living,” and “thing.” Some argue that the oldest organism is an amoeba, in that it multiplies by dividing, so each new amoeba is the same living organism as its parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, and so on, all the way back to the very first amoeba. Other biologists point to clonal colonies of plants and mushrooms that reproduce asexually, in which individuals are connected by a root system that has been there for millennia. (There’s a stand of Neptune grass in the Mediterranean believed to be 100,000 years old.)

However, the oldest living thing that started life from sexual reproduction (meaning by combining the genes of two “parents”) is a tree. A bristlecone pine that biologists call Methuselah has been standing proudly in what is now California since before Stonehenge was constructed. How old does that make it? About 4,850 years.

The banded woolly bear caterpillar, common in North America, is known for its brown and black spiky hairs—it looks like a pipe cleaner. The Isabella tiger moth is also common—it has yellow wings with tiny black spots on them. What do these two bugs have in common? They are one and the same—the “bear” turns into a “tiger.”

Why do elephants have such big ears?

What backyard bug goes by many names and breathes through gills instead of lungs?

If you said “to hear better,” you have a smart mouth and Uncle John would like to hire you…but you’d be only partially correct. The primary function of these massive body parts, which can reach five feet in diameter in African elephants, is to cool down the animal. The thin ears contain thousands of tiny blood vessels. On hot days, an elephant fans its ears, but it’s not the whoosh of air on the rest of the body that does most of the cooling; it’s the air passing over the thin skin of the ears, which cools the blood vessels within by as much as 10°F. As the cooler blood flows into the rest of the animal, it keeps the elephant from overheating.

A crustacean known as
Armadillidium
. A crustacean in the backyard? Aren’t those crabs, lobsters, or shrimps? There are actually two
genera
, or types, of land-dwelling crustaceans, the most common of which is
Armadillidium
. As its name suggests, it has a hard shell, which it rolls up into a ball for protection. You may know it better as a woodlouse or—depending on where you’re from—a potato bug, pill bug, chuggy-pig, armadillo bug, doodlebug, or roly-poly. These small gray bugs are usually found in damp places where there’s little danger of drying out. There are about 300 species of
Armadillididiae
, and yes, they do breathe through gills instead of lungs. (What’s the other common land-dwelling crustacean? The hermit crab.)