WORKS OF NATURE - WERE THEY DESIGNED?

When onions are sliced, an organic compound of sulphur is given off. Dissolved in water, it becomes sulphuric acid. So when this compound of sulphur gets into your eyes and dissolves in the moisture there, you have sulphuric acid produced. The old folk prescription for avoiding this: slice your onions under water. Then the acid is manufactured in the water, not your eyes.

Dr. Richard Blakemore was surveying sediments in a dish and noticed that bacteria in one sample gathered at one side of the dish. He rotated the dish. The bacteria swam back to the same area—the north side of the dish. He placed a small magnet on the south side of the dish. The bacteria collected there. Wherever he moved the magnet, there the bacteria gathered.

Dr. Richard Frankel of MIT joined Dr. Blakemore, and together they discovered by chemical analysis that these bacteria contained 1...

WHEN you are accustomed to traveling always by car, going on foot can be a newfound pleasure. Wheels may get you there sooner, but for the sheer pleasure of travel, what can beat your feet?—when in good condition. Only on foot can you fully enjoy the earth. The beauty of the majestic hills, the fragrance of the delightful forest and the songs of birds are most enjoyed when you are walking.

However, your feet do more than make you self-mobile. They respond automatically to your senses, and ...

God-given instinct is the moving force. A limited amount of intelligence also comes into play. If they are to survive, the young need to be taught how to get food; they also need to learn to recognize danger and know how to cope with it. Animal parents do not give reasons to their young or explain why and how to do things. But they do teach by example, and they may inflict pain to help youngsters to stay in line. A closer look at some of these animals will fascinate you.

. A she-bear ma...

BY YOUR appearance you give people a certain impression as to the sort of person you are. That impression, of course, is based only on what they see. People also base their judgment on what they hear. In fact, far more revealing, far more indicative of your personality is your voice. It can proclaim ever so many things, which may or may not be true. Yes, the very sound of your voice can do good or harm to yourself and to others.

Have you not found it so, that how a person says a thing, the t...

Mountains that pierce the clouds and reach to dizzying heights may appear to us humans as coldly majestic, lonely, even forbidding. Yet to a great variety of wildlife they constitute home. One of such wildlife is the mountain Gorilla

The mountain Gorilla, the giant ape was  discovered in the higher levels of the West African forests in 1847. This creature’s warlike,  tremendous strength and the remoteness of its habitation have stirred man’s imagination and posed something of a mystery, ...

OTTERS are among earth’s most playful animals. They seem to take delight in sliding on their bellies, either down snow-covered slopes or wet riverbanks. They play tag and engage in mock combats. They are not averse to including other creatures—dogs, raccoons or foxes—in their endless games.

The common otter of Europe is much like the otter inhabiting North America, though the European variety is smaller. Both are superb swimmers. An otter is said to travel in water at a rate of some 10...

A crowd gathers at Stirling Castle in Scotland to witness a spectacular event. There on the roof is an Italian alchemist who had announced that he would fly to France using specially designed wings well endowed with bird feathers.

He is off! But where did he end up? At the foot of the castle, with a broken thigh bone. So ended a sixteenth-century attempt to imitate the miracle of bird flight.

Many persons long felt that if man simply possessed feathers like a bird and flapped wings up and d...

Science has always been mystified by the ability of birds to migrate long distances. Now the mystery has deepened—pigeons can sense the position of the moon even when they can’t see it. Before this it has been demonstrated that homing pigeons sense changes in the earth’s magnetic field, can see light waves we can’t, can detect low-frequency sounds miles away, can sense air-pressure changes and identify familiar odors. And now pigeons know where the moon is, even in daylight. How they ...