Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (20 page)

This common animal has a distinctive feature that is made up of more than 50 bones and even has nerve endings. What is it?

A headless cockroach can stay alive for up to two weeks before it dies of starvation. How can that be possible? Cockroaches are so small that their circulatory system requires no significant pressure to keep blood flowing, so if their heads are severed, their blood quickly clots, preventing them from bleeding to death. And cockroaches breathe through
spiracles
, tiny holes spread around their bodies that require no direction from their brain. And although their brains are located in their heads, cockroaches have
ganglia
spread throughout their bodies. These collections of nerve cell bodies act a bit like little brains, allowing the headless cockroach to stand up, walk, and react to stimulation. Weirder still, a cockroachless head will stay alive, too: It will wave its antennae around for several hours before it also dies of starvation.

It’s the turtle, whose shell is technically part of the reptile’s skeleton—the ribs and backbones, to be exact. The shells get their distinctive patterns not from the bones, but from the
scutes
on top of the bones, which are made of
keratin
(the primary substance in hair, nails, and hooves in other animals). Although the turtle’s upper shell, called the
carapace
, is hard enough to withstand attacks from most predators, it is very sensitive to the touch. (In fact, one of our writers has a pet turtle named Proudfoot that seems to enjoy a good petting.)

Which African mammal is responsible for the most human deaths?

A mother kangaroo stands more than six feet tall and weighs 200 pounds. How big is her newborn?

When you think of a hippopotamus, what do you see—a fat, lazy animal floating in a watering hole? Perhaps something in a tutu? Don’t be fooled: This 8,000-pound beast is responsible for more than 200 human deaths per year; that’s more than lions, tigers, rhinos, and crocodiles combined. These massive herbivores are fiercely territorial—especially nursing mothers—and they will attack any human that they perceive as being too close, whether you’re on land or in a boat. With its gigantic mouth gaping wide open, an angry, angry hippo will charge an intruder and, in a few documented cases, simply bite his head clean off.

The size of a lima bean. That’s how small a kangaroo is the
first
time it’s born. The kangaroo is a
marsupial
, and unlike other mammal mothers, which carry their young for the full term, marsupials give
premature birth
. After gestating in the mother’s womb for about 36 days, the hairless, blind, larva-like, bean-sized baby emerges and instinctively uses its partially developed forearms to climb into its mother’s pouch and clamp onto a teat. It stays in the pouch for six months, occasionally poking its head out. Then the baby, now called a
joey
, climbs out and starts exploring but still spends most of its time in the pouch. By month nine, the joey, now weighing about 20 pounds, leaves the pouch for the last time.

Oh, no! One of your extremities is swelling; you have severe muscle cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Your heart is racing! You’re suffering from
latrodectism
! What happened to you?

In 1916 the French military placed birds in cages high up in the Eiffel Tower. What type of birds were they, and why were they put there?

You were bitten by
Latrodectus
—more commonly known as the black widow spider. The condition that results from her venom (only females bite humans) is called
latrodectism
. So what are your chances of being bitten by a black widow? Not high. Although the spiders inhabit much of the U.S. and have venomous cousins in Australia and Europe, none of them are aggressive; they’ll bite only if threatened. They live in dark places, so if you keep rolled-up posters in your garage, you may want to open them carefully; if you keep a pair of shoes on your porch, check inside before sticking your feet in. And if you
are
bitten, go to a doctor as fast as you can: Although only 1 percent of black widow bites are fatal, they are very painful and the symptoms can worsen if left untreated.

They were parrots. It was World War I, and the French military was taking advantage of the parrots’ amazing sense of hearing. That, along with the fact that they squawk loudly when disturbed by any unusual sound—such as enemy planes—made them perfect “guard birds.” Placed in cages high in the Eiffel Tower, the parrots could squawk out a warning of a German air raid up to 20 minutes before human ears could detect it. It wasn’t a perfect system, however, because the birds were unable to distinguish between German and Allied aircraft.

If you threw an orange ball into a field of green grass underneath a blue sky, a dog would see these colors as a _______ ball, _______ grass, and a _______ sky.

How many silkworms must die to make a pound of silk?

The dog sees a
yellow
ball being thrown into
yellow
grass underneath a
blue
sky. Dogs’ eyes, like all mammals’, consist of photoreceptors called
rods
and
cones
. We humans have many more cones than rods, which allow us to discern the difference between mauve and lilac. Dogs, on the other paw, have more rods, which allow them to track movement and see in low light better than we can. So, although Fido can’t discern colors as well as a human, he’s better at picking out movement, so he has no trouble chasing down the ball. Color-wise, dogs can see some of the red spectrum and all of the blue spectrum, but they can’t see greens at all.

It takes 2,000 to 3,000 silkworm cocoons to make a pound of silk…and they all get boiled alive. Domesticated 5,000 years ago, the moths have lost the ability to fly and have become dependent on humans for reproduction. When the silk caterpillar spins a cocoon, it wraps itself up in a single thread of silk, which comes from its salivary glands. That thread, which can measure up to 3,000 feet long, would be broken into many short pieces if the silk moth were allowed to emerge. To prevent this from happening, newly spun cocoons are dropped into boiling water, killing the silkworm inside and making the long silk filament easier to unravel. In some cultures, most notably in Korea, the boiled silkworms are collected and eaten.

There are more species of what kind of animal than any other?