Kangaroo rats can live without drinking any water



Kangaroo rats live in arid and semi-arid areas of Canada, the US and Mexico. The kangaroo rat has the ability to live without the need to drink any water, if it has its normal diet with hydrocarbons available.

The rat has a very water-efficient metabolism. Their kidneys are at least four times more efficient at retaining water and excreting salt than a human kidney.
If certain animals need little (or no) water this is often explained by the fact the animal gets the water from eating the plants’ leaves and roots as they are getting the moisture that is in those plants.

The kangaroo rat however has a special ability; they manufacture the water through a metabolic process called ‘oxidative phosphorylation’, which basically means it is gaining water from burning the food it eats. You get carbon dioxide and water as waste products if you ‘burn’ carbohydrates.

Debunked: A lemon contains more sugar than a strawberry



Another remarkable fact that is well spread around the internet; A lemon contains more sugar than a strawberry. The acid within the lemon would mask the sweetness of the sugar, so is the explanation.

To determine if this is true we first need to agree on how to compare the two, since a lemon is of course much bigger and heavier than one strawberry. To make a fair comparison we should look at the amount of sugar per a certain amount of substance, lets take the standard of 100gram.

Then we will see that a lemon contains 2.50g sugar per 100g, and a strawberry contains 5g sugar per 100g. Twice the amount of that of a lemon!

So we can safely conclude this fact is not true and debunked; A strawberry contains in fact twice as much sugar as a lemon.

The koala bear is not a bear

The koala is often referred to as the ‘koala bear’, but it actually is not a real bear. The koala is a marsupial, just like a kangaroo.

The word koala comes from the Dharuk gula. The word is erroneously said to mean “doesn’t drink”. English-speaking settlers from the late 18th century first called it koala bear due to its similarity in appearance to bears and until today the koala is frequently referred to as the koala bear.

The Albatross has a wing span of up to 14 feet and only needs to land once every couple of years to breed. They can travel hundreds of thousands of miles each flight.!

Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

The Earth and the diversity of life it harbors continues to surprise us. This year, researchers found some truly astounding creatures that had been unknown to science even through centuries of exploration. While some of these newfound species were found in remote, little-visited corners of the world, others were hiding in seemingly plain sight.

Here, OurAmazingPlanet takes a look of at some of the new species found in 2010.

Head-Bobbing Lemur

A new long-tongued, squirrel-sized species of lemur was discovered in Madagascar this year and announced on Dec. 13.

The new creature doesn't have a species name yet, but is of the genus Phaner, otherwise known as fork-marked lemurs. The long-tongued species has a unique head-bobbing move that showed up in the flashlight beam as discoverers searched the treetops for a glimpse of the animal.

The lemur was first spotted during a 1995 expedition by Conservation International president and primate expert Russ Mittermeier, but the animal couldn't be identified as a new species until Mittermeier conducted a follow-up expedition in October of this year.

That's cool, but remember, only mammals have hair... it's probably something close to hair, but not "real" hair like in humans.

HAHA that's a must see!

Wow, so unbelievable though.

MYSTERIOUS CURVED TREES: In Western Poland A Forest Of About 400 Pine Trees Suddenly Grew With A 90 Degrees Bent At The Base Of Their Trunks And Their Bent Points Northward. Yet The Larger Forest That Surrounds It Have Normal Straight Trunks !!

I have a plausible explanation for it.

Carbon dating is method of determining the age of fossilized creatures, such as dinosaur remains.

Scientists compare the ratio of two carbon isotopes in the sample: C-14, which is radioactive, and C-12, which is stable. Because everything on Earth has about the same ration of C-14 and C-12 at any given time, measuring this ratio tells when the creature lived.

It looks like someone intentionally bent them over (in the same direction) when they were young.

Actually, the trunks only could get such abrupt change in direction on their axis ( about 90 degrees ) if they got –partially broken- instead of just bent. And they, probably, got broken when they were quite younger and more fragile but also, probably, with better capability to cicatrize the severe damage. But it is unlike that a person would care to break about 400 trees in exactly the same direction. If it was an act of vandalism the breakage would be more likely done in random directions and not all close to the base of the trunk. The best candidate to break all those trees when they were young, in the same direction and at the base of their trunks - is a very strong wind, which was, probably, caused by a storm, a tornado or something akin. And such strong wind, probably, lasted a short time, otherwise, it would have rather caused a long trail instead of being localized in relatively small area ( unless some physical object like a nearby mountain caused an sudden change in the direction and force of the wind current).