Karen Hill

Beeswax is secreted by four pairs of glands under the abdomen of worker bees. It has more than two hundred chemical components. Most are fairly high molecular-weight hydrocarbons similar to a plastic. The wax is naturally white and is stained by the pollen, gums, resins and other things that bees collect. Beeswax is akin to … Read more

In terms of weight in comparison to volume, flies don’t weigh much, so very little force is required to keep a fly from falling. That force is exerted by structures on the tarsi, the tips of the fly’s legs. First, there is a set of claws, which can be seen with a very good hand … Read more

Cobwebs are made by spiders. The word “cob” is derived from the Middle English word for spider, coppe, and cobweb is often used to refer to any spiderweb. The dusty strings that do not look like the circular Halloween spiderwebs, which are made by only some species, are instead probably an accumulation of abandoned draglines. … Read more

Insects have muscles and they are extremely strong. An insect can lift twenty or more times its body weight, while most people can lift their own weight or a little more. Insects have their “bones” on the outside, but the attachment points for muscles are on the inside. The muscles are linked to little inward … Read more

Some moths do eat wool and digest the fibers, especially if the wool is soiled. They can also damage synthetics, though they get no nutrition. However, the two main species of clothes moths, the case making moth and the webbing moth, are unjustly blamed for holes in sweaters caused by carpet beetles, which are probably … Read more

Mexican jumping beans, actually seeds of plants in the Croton family, are invaded by larvae of a moth, Cydia saltitans, and it is the larvae that make the beans move. The larvae are aroused by the warmth of someone’s hand, making the “beans” jump. The insect, commonly called the Mexican jumping bean borer, is native … Read more

Many adult flies die off with the arrival of cold weather, but others live through the winter. Among these flies are cluster flies, so called because of their habit of clustering. They are relatively large flies, and are not from the same family as houseflies, but they also like houses, and are probably the ones … Read more

The three dots on the insect’s head are the simple eyes, or ocelli. Many insects have both compound and simple eyes. A compound eye is the familiar faceted bulge on the fly, for example, but a simple eye is just one little hexagonal surface. They are not believed to generate an image, though we do … Read more

Snow Fleas are not fleas, but tiny insects of several species that thrive on glaciers and snowbanks, feeding on even smaller specks of plant debris. A common North American species, also found in Europe, is also called a scorpion fly. It is only about a tenth of an inch long. Wings are vestigial or missing, … Read more

Significant pollination of many plants is done by butterflies and moths, sometimes exclusively, and they are not the only animals other than bees that work at pollination. Bees of various kinds, especially honeybees, and other social insects are the most familiar and important pollen carriers. However, beetles, moths, butterflies and flies are involved in pollinating … Read more

Swarms of ants in their reproductive stage often make an appearance in July. Some ants, both males and females, or queens, have wings at mating time, and July is a time when several species would be flying. Termites would be more likely to swarm in spring or fall. As for what they wanted, inspect the … Read more

Katydids have call-and-response sessions and feed on tree foliage, but they will not do trees tremendous harm. Katydids and cicadas have different sounds and schedules. The male katydid, a relative of the cricket, does its chirping beginning at dusk in the mating season, which is early fall. It is a distinctive three or four-part call, … Read more

There is a group of spiders sometimes called cannibal or pirate spiders, members of the family Mimetidae, that feed on other spiders, creeping into their webs and killing them. Many authorities believe the pirates never spin their own webs and feed exclusively on other spiders. The black widow spider is comparatively abstemious, with the female … Read more

Usefulness is a subjective term, but wasps, which with bees and ants make up the order Hymenoptera, are extraordinarily well adapted to certain human ends. Almost all are predators or parasites of injurious pests, and some act as pollinators of valuable plants. With varying degrees of success, wasps of different species have been bred, imported … Read more

Some insects roll over on their backs when they die, some don’t, and some may not be dead at all. Collectors usually do not find many dead insects in the field, because they are so quickly scavenged by other creatures. As for what position they end up in, it depends on the shape of the … Read more

Lovebugs are best known for their nuptial flight, and are Bibionid flies of the species Plecia nearctica. They come out in huge numbers, emerging in a synchronized fashion twice a year, especially in fall, when the clouds of them are so thick they impair driving visibility. They fly around with the tips of their abdomens … Read more

Cats, like many other animals, have an extra olfactory organ, called the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson’s organ, that helps them sense scents and excretions from both other cats and their prey. The organ is very well developed in some animals, like reptiles, and almost vestigial in humans. In cats, it is a pouch above the … Read more

The best evidence indicates that all modern dogs are descended from an ancestral wolf species. Darwin originally thought dogs were so diverse that they must have been descended from more than one form. And Konrad Lorenz, the expert on animal behavior, popularized the idea that dogs like huskies and German shepherds were descended from wolves, … Read more

Insects definitely see colors, smell and sometimes hear, but not the way people do. Our eyes see a we range of wavelengths, but many insects have vision tuned into a specific range to find resources like food and shelter. For example, because of filters in their eyes, quite a few insects see leaves as yellow, … Read more

A dog’s tongue is not cleaner than a person’s, and judging by the things they lick, it may not be as clean. Dogs, like people, harbor various kinds of germs in their mouths, and dogs tongues have no special antiseptic properties. Different species of animals do have different levels of resistance to the many different … Read more

Whether it’s a dog, cat, human or cow mouth, they are all probably pretty similar in terms of cleanliness or dirtiness. It’s certain that there’s not a whole lot of difference as far as bite wounds are concerned. Mouths contain germs that can cause infections, and it would be dangerous for a child to bite … Read more

A litter of kittens have more than one father, and so can a litter of puppies. In fact, any of the species that have litters and can be bred multiple times during one heat cycle can have offspring with different sires. The scientific term for such breeding is superfecundation. Female cats are induced ovulators and … Read more

The question of potential animal longevity is complicated even among pets by the fact that many dogs and cats do not live an entire life span, because of trauma and euthanasia. The Animal Medical Center in New York asked animal medicine experts from around the nation at what age they consider pets to be geriatric. … Read more

Cats cannot see in total darkness, but they require much less light than people and some of the animals they hunt because of the structure of their eyes. A cat’s pupil is a vertical slit when it is constricted and becomes a large round or oval when it dilates. The slit-shaped opening protects the eye … Read more

A vegetarian diet for cats would be difficult to the point of impossibility. A vegetable-based diet could be devised, but only if some chemical reagents and animal fats were added to it. That is because cats cannot synthesize some of the essential fatty acids found in animal fat. For example, plants have virtually none of … Read more

Most researchers agree that a cat’s purr results from vibrations in the muscles of the larynx and in the diaphragm. That’s why you can feel it both in the throat and down in the stomach. Purring, which is limited to the common domestic cat, has also been described by some as resembling human snoring, with … Read more

Unfortunately for the neighbors, barking for hours puts no more strain on dogs than normal conversation does on people. We tend to think of the bark as so atonal that it sounds like the equivalent of a human scream. If we made such a sound, we would be hoarse in five minutes. But the dog … Read more

The kneading motion with the forepaws is often done when the cat is in a pleased or expectant mood. It probably imitates the kneading of a mammary gland by a nursing kitten, stimulating the release of milk from the mommy cat. The behavior is also called milk-treading. However, there are also scent glands on the … Read more

Two things makes chocolate dangerous to dogs. The first is the worst, a chemical called theobromine. The second is rather high levels of caffeine. A small amount of chocolate is unlikely to cause much harm, but in large amounts theobromine can be very dangerous. Eating an entire box of chocolates is more dangerous to a … Read more

Scientists would find it difficult and perhaps pointless to try to prove an explanation, but can make some educated guesses. All canids, that is, wolves, coyotes, dogs, etc., typically circle before they lie down, though not every single member of all species will do this. The old assumption was that it was to stamp down … Read more

Sheep can swim, but only in dire circumstances. The ability is basically instinctive, and a life-saving device. They don’t go swimming every day, but in case of flooding, or falling into a river, in essence they know how to swim. Sheep have never been known as big swimmers, and most of the habitat where they … Read more

First, it is a legal requirement to vaccinate pet cats in many states. Second, there aren’t any cats that never go out, there are only cats that aren’t supposed to go out. Eventually, any cat leaves the safety of home to visit the veterinarian, to be boarded, to leap or fall out an unguarded window, … Read more

The dog’s wet nose is relatively misunderstood by many pet owners. A dog with a wet nose is not an invariable indicator of health, good or bad. It is normal for a dog to drain some fluid out of the nose, and the nose may be wet and cold because of evaporation. And it is … Read more

Tail motion and eye contact are parts of a complicated inborn system of communication among dogs. The signals let dogs figure out who is top dog in a group or when meeting a stranger. They can also communicate emotional states. Tail wagging may simply indicate excitement. Position is important, too. The tail held high is … Read more

The active ingrediant of catnip, Nepeta cataria, is a chemical called nepetalactone that sets off in the cat’s brain the behavioral patterns usually connected with a variety of pleasurable or exciting things. The playing, hunting, feeding or sex neurocircuits are randomly triggered, in no particular order. Lactones are chemicals present in certain body substances, like … Read more

The definition of dreaming can be quite different for animals, and obviously you cannot ask an animal if it has had a dream. But experts cite strong suggestive evidence that mammals like dogs and cats experience something people would recognize as dreams. Such animals have the same brain processes during sleep as humans. They experience … Read more

The common aquarium goldfish, Carassius auratus, can live thirty years or more under ideal conditions. An aquarium limits their size, but a pond lets them achieve their maximum growth. Some goldfish can reach up to two feet in length. Goldfish often change color as they age and develop their full color patterns. In fact, one … Read more

It is not as simple as seeing whether a bull charges a red cape, scientists say, and some of the evidence is indirect. Indirect research methods include examining the behavior of the animal in its natural world. One way is simply to look at whether the animal itself has colors. You can assume that if … Read more

There have been many mass extinctions over the millions of years since life began, each sparing a remnant of living things. Survivors of the extinction that killed the dinosaurs tended to be widespread, adaptable and, perhaps most important, small, paleontologists say. There are many theories about exactly why the dinosaurs died and over what period, … Read more

Animals do get tooth cavities, and for the same reason that people do, even without a sweet diet. Bacteria build up on the teeth and cause decay, although they may be different bacteria from the ones that cause human cavities. It is recommended that most pets including dogs and cats have their teeth cleaned. In … Read more

Male Emperor Penguins build up big fat reserves before nesting and slowly burn them off. At fifty or sixty pounds or more, emperors are the largest penguins, and their size means they can withstand cold better than smaller species and can “nest” the farthest south. They breed on the frozen Antarctic Sea, where temperatures may … Read more

There are plenty of dead pigeons around, if you look carefully, but there are lots of things around that clean them up, scavenging animals of all sorts, including rats, and even gray squirrels. Insects probably do not have a major role in pigeon disposal. It might take a week for the various carrion beetles to … Read more

Birds are known to use a combination of things, including landmarks, the angle of the sun, stars, odors, even the magnetic field of the earth, as they migrate. However, scientists still do not know exactly what they use for a map and compass, let alone exactly how they use them. A flock of birds, for … Read more

A number of authorities agree that birds do not get any special storm warnings before a hurricane that allow them to avoid it. In fact, bird-watchers find that oceanic birds often fly before the winds of a hurricane and end up far from their tropical homes. For example, sooty terns may be swept from Florida … Read more

The key to a birdhouse is not a manufacturer’s custom design but a simple box of the proper size. If you put up nest boxes of the proper dimensions, you will typically get a wren or a chickadee; a flicker or a red-bellied woodpecker; a screech owl; and perhaps a titmouse, for a usual maximum … Read more

Unless you live on a farm in the middle of Nebraska and the nearest house is thirty miles down the road, birds do not become dependent on you as a sole source of food. Birds come to feeders for supplemental food. They prefer to eat natural food, and given the choice between ant steak and … Read more

The gestures that birds make when they put dust on their feathers and then shake and preen it off look like the movements they make when bathing in water, but the purpose is not exactly the same. Birds take dust baths to rid themselves of all sorts of parasites that crawl in and between their … Read more

First of all, they are gulls, not sea gulls. “Sea gull” is something of a misnomer, while these birds were mostly coastal in the past, there have always been some inland. Now, many gulls’ habitats have shifted inland, primarily because they like to scavenge in garbage dumps. They will eat almost anything, making them goats … Read more

Birds often do reuse their nests, not always and not all birds. But the phoebe is a perfect example of a species that uses the same nest from year to year. It is usually the same pair of adult birds, but if misfortune happens to one, the other will probably find a new mate and … Read more

Birds have a sort of thin extra eyelid called a nictitating membrane that protects their eyes and may do so in the rain. The membrane is not entirely transparent, so the birds may not see clearly, but they can probably see light and dark. As in cats, dogs and other animals, this membrane can flick … Read more

The wandering albatross is often listed as the longest-living bird in the wild, but it is not known exactly how long its life span is. The information from bird bands returned to ornithologists indicates that both royal and wandering albatrosses, the two largest species, are around for at least forty years. Ornithologists know they live … Read more

Some birds do hit branches when they fly, but most are very maneuverable. Birds also have excellent vision, and the flight pattern and style, musculature and aerodynamic characteristics, and even how fast they fly, are adapted to the environment in which they fly. Birds that live in the forest and fly through the canopy are … Read more

Birds don’t have to work at not falling off their perches when they sleep. Tendons on the bottom of their feet, called flexor tendons, respond to pressure from a branch or other perch by causing the toes to wrap around the perch automatically. Humans would have to expend energy to hold on, but birds would … Read more

Pigeons, or rock doves, are actually fairly common in agricultural areas. There they find niches in barns and lofts that resemble the rocky ledges that are their natural nesting sites, as well as plentiful supplies of their favorite food, small grains. However, pigeons do seem to prefer cities to small towns and wilderness. There are … Read more

They have an extremely good sense of hearing. For example, the hairy woodpecker and pileated woodpecker can actually hear those carpenter ant larvae and get right into a nest of them quite efficiently. Woodpeckers also tap tree trunks to find the hollow places where insects might be.

Recent studies show that birds like Robins find worms in the ground visually, not by hearing or smell. When robins run along the lawn, cocking their heads, it looks like listening, but actually it is just looking. What the robin usually sees is the castings or pellets of mud at the entrance to the worm … Read more

Animals’ sensitivity to taste varies widely by species, but animals do have food preferences and many have taste buds. Animals also seek out food based on consistency, color and smell. Certain snakes that have poor eyesight have powerful receptors for the heat of their prey and make their choices based on that, and some animals … Read more

For most animals the idea of an expected life span is meaningless, since so many die shortly after birth and so few die of old age, except in captivity. However, reliable longevity records for individual animals have been kept. The animal with the longest recorded life span is the Marion’s tortoise of the Seychelles Islands … Read more

In some cases, different species of animals can understand each other. In research on the complex signals gulls send to each other within the same species, scientists found that birds in mixed flocks can respond to each other’s alarm calls, and that this could be a matter of learned behavior or an inborn instinct. It … Read more

Baby teeth are more scientifically called deciduous teeth, because they are shed like leaves. They are also called milk teeth, which is a clue to the answer. Mammals, with a few exceptions, have two sets of teeth. The key to mammalian success is specialized teeth for many different foods, and two sets, often with different … Read more

Yes, some animals do snore, according to anecdotal reports and personal observations. Just a few snorers that zookeepers and pet owners have observed are dogs, gorillas and bears. The mechanism of snoring in these mammals probably resembles what happens in people. In human beings, snoring is noisy breathing through the open mouth produced by vibration … Read more

Luckily for deep-diving whales, they have an entirely different system from that of humans for handling the air they breathe before diving and their oxygen needs while diving. When pressure is released on gases dissolved in the blood, the bends result. Whales are taking in air breathed at the surface and carrying it to the … Read more

Squirrels do indeed have a homing instinct. It is not well understood by science, but they will often return several miles. For example, an informal experiment was conducted at the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment in Prospect Park, which conducts extensive environmental education programs for school children and adults. Some years ago, a classroom … Read more

Dinosaurs probably did sleep, though it’s all speculation, because scientists don’t know enough about their physiology. The speculations are based on their structures and diets and on the habits of the presumably most similar living species, like crocodiles and birds, which do sleep. Carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Deinonychus would probably have slept a … Read more

Some marine mammals sleep out of the water, and some may not sleep at all. The furred or hairy aquatic mammals in the pinniped suborder, seals, etc. have a variety of interesting adaptations that permit them to spend a comparatively long time underwater, sometimes at considerable depths. However, they rise frequently to breathe and emerge … Read more

Relax and enjoy the bat’s company might be the best advice, if a bat ever flies into your house or apartment. A one-ounce brown bat, the kind most likely to show up in a North American house, is capable of eating five hundred mosquito-sized insects an hour all night, but is virtually incapable of doing … Read more

Sharks can definitely smell blood from quite a distance. Sharks have an extremely sensitive sense of smell for food in the water. A few molecules can be enough to draw a shark. A shark has nostrils, called nares, connected to olfactory bulbs that go back to the brain. Just by studying the brain, scientists concluded … Read more

Fish do have blood, and it is red. Other cold-blooded animals, like amphibians and reptiles, also have red blood. Fish have a circulatory system with blood and a heart as the pump just like that of humans, and just like that of humans, fish blood is red because it contains hemoglobin, the iron compound that … Read more

All fish have internal pressures that are equal to the pressures outside their bodies at their normal depths. This is true of both tissues and the gas-filled bladders in the abdominal cavity that many fish have. They would only be in trouble if they changed depth greatly. If they come up a great deal, they … Read more

There are nearly three hundred species in the squirrel family, and some of them, called tree squirrels, are expert tree nest builders. Some other species dig burrows and build nests there. Tree squirrels belong to the genus Sciurus. Their nests are called dreys. The common gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, is a tree squirrel. Its natural … Read more

Marine mammals depend primarily on the water content of the food they eat, rather than on drinking sea water. Whales, for example, eat mostly shrimp-like krill and fish. A high percentage of the body tissue of fish is water. Toothed whales eat larger fish or squid, while the baleen whales, which are larger, take big … Read more

The cause of death when a Cormorant swallows its prey alive is, in all probability, suffocation. If not, the acid in the stomach compartments in the cormorant would interfere with oxygen transport in the gills. Pythons, boas and other constrictors kill their prey before they feed on it, by constricting and suffocating it before they … Read more

A few species of slugs are pests of agriculture and can destroy foliage faster than plants can grow. Most garden slugs, however, eat dead leaves, fungus, and decaying plant material. Some slugs are predators and eat earthworms, snails, and even other slugs. It may surprise someone whose vegetable garden has been munched by voracious shell-impaired … Read more

The true dolphin is a mammal, any one of about thirty-three species of cetacean mammals in the family Delphinidae, characterized by a pronounced beak-shaped mouth. The dolphin on restaurant menus, Coryphaena hippurus, is a fish with gills, iridescent colors and firm flesh. It is called mahi-mahi in Hawaii and dorado in South America. The dolphin … Read more

Shaving cream is basically made of soap and water. It is put into the can along with compressed butane gas. Without the gas, all you have is soapy liquid. When the valve is pressed, some of the gas mixes with the soap and water, escapes and expands to make foam. The filling process is just … Read more

A fabric softener sheet put in the dryer works much the way a liquid fabric softener does. But it includes agents that disperse very small amounts of softening and antistatic components throughout the warm air that permeates the damp fabrics. Fabric softening agents are surfactants, chemicals that reduce the tension at the surface where two … Read more

In an adult giraffe, the systolic blood pressure, the pressure when the heart contracts to pump blood through the body, is about 200 millimeters of mercury at the level of the heart, about twice that of an adult human being. During exercise, the blood pressure at the level of the giraffe’s feet might be double … Read more

Many of the specific techniques machines use to detect counterfeit money are closely guarded secrets, since once counterfeiters know how the machines work, they try to foil them. But two common means of identifying paper money are magnetic sensing and optical sensing. Inks used to print notes have certain magnetic properties, which can be sensed … Read more

French dye-works owner Jean Baptiste Jolly discovered dry cleaning with petroleum-based solvents in the mid-19th century. Dry cleaning is dry in the sense that the solvents used have no water. Although they are liquid, they have the ability to remove soil without affecting fabric as water would. They also evaporate quickly and leave dry clothes … Read more

At room temperature and pressure, carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a common gas, about 0.05 percent of the air at sea level by weight. It is also a product of combustion and the respiration of all animals. When chilled below minus 109 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a solid, called dry ice. Dry ice was first … Read more

Clothes shrink because of the chemical and physical properties of fibers from natural sources, especially cotton, wool and linen. The individual fibers in yarns are made of long polymer chains, or strands of giant molecules. In their natural state, the chains are scrolled up or crinkled. In preparing them for spinning and weaving, the first … Read more

The first time-release medication was probably just a sugarcoated pill. The coating did not dissolve and release the bitter medicine until it was safely past the mouth. Many time-release medications, like Contac, introduced in 1961, are based on that fairly simple idea: small amounts of the medication are coated with varying thicknesses of soluble material. … Read more

There is no data to support the belief that freezing nylon hose makes them more durable. Nylon is a fiber made from petroleum derivatives. Properties such as strength and resistance to fatigue, or stress from flexing, and abrasion do not differ depending on temperature, particularly by the time nylon is in a finished article. By … Read more

The central processing unit, the microprocessor that actually performs the calculations, is what takes the most power when the calculator is running. The more calculations the machine is asked to perform, the more power it would draw. Just being turned on would take only enough of the calculator’s battery power to light up the display. … Read more

Aluminum foil is produced by rolling sheet ingots cast from molten aluminum, then re-rolling on sheet rolling mills to the desired thickness. Beta radiation is passed through the foil to a sensor the other side to help maintain a constant thickness in aluminum foil production. The shiny and dull surfaces result from the final rolling … Read more

The non-soluble gum base of chewing gum is not digested, but neither are parts of many foods, like popcorn or lettuce, experts in the food industry say. Gum typically contains five ingredients: sugar, corn syrup, softeners, flavors and a non-soluble gum base. The first four ingredients are soluble and are extracted as the gum is … Read more

The dial tone on a telephone isn’t really a pure A, but a composite of two frequencies: 350 hertz, or cycles per second, and 440 hertz. Most symphony orchestras tune to an A of about 440 hertz. The tone was apparently not intentionally selected to make life simpler for musicians with no tuning fork, but … Read more

Alcohol is the safest solvent for drugs that do not mix well with water, as pharmacists have known since ancient times. Safe, that is, for the general population. For an alcoholic or anyone else who does not want to ingest spirits, a pharmacist will recommend a tablet or lozenge, or for a severe cough, a … Read more

Hot water is more effective for cleaning dirty dishes for two reasons. First, hot water melts fats and softens other food particles, making it easier for detergent to penetrate them. The active ingredients in dishwashing detergent, known as surfactants, are chemicals that bind fat and water together so they can be removed from the dish. … Read more