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01
There are Penguins that live in rainforests
The Snares islands are the holy grail of New Zealand wildlife destinations- they were never settled by humans and miraculously have never been invaded by introduced mammals of any kind. It is a Lilliput kingdom of gnarly trees and is ruled by an empire of woodland penguins that breed in clearings. There are dozens of colonies all linked up by well-worn paths and muddy little roads, creating what amounts to a labyrinthine penguin city in the ferny forest.
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02
A polar bear won't set off an infrared motion detector.
ne physical feature that helps the polar bear stay warm is its fur coat. The coat is made up of two distinct layers: a short and dense underfur layer right next to the skin, and an outer layer of longer and coarser guard hairs. The guard hairs are transparent but the polar bear's coat appears white because the hairs scatter sunlight. Research on these transparent guard hairs has revealed a key property that helps to prevent heat loss in the cold Arctic air. The guard hairs appear to be very effective at absorbing infrared radiation, which makes up a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that most mammals (including humans) cannot see but can feel as heat. This means that heat emitted from the polar bear's warm body could be absorbed by the hairs instead of transmitted through them, where it would be lost to the cold environment. The hairs' ability to absorb radiation is especially high at the specific part of the infrared spectrum where mammals tend to radiate heat most strongly. An interesting consequence of this property is that a polar bear appears invisible in the infrared if the temperature at the surface of its coat matches the temperature of the ice and snow around it.
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03
The French Army has trained eagles from birth in order to take down drones.
Faced with the specter of a terrorist threat from rogue drones, the French are recruiting an avian ally. At a base in the southwest of the country, a special army unit has for months been training four golden eagles to spot drones and perform mid-air takedowns. Details of the program emerged last week when French media outlets reported on an experimental program that involves soldiers raising the eagles from chicks, and training them to associate the drones with food. As Le Parisien explains, the soldiers began by serving meat to the young eagles on the ground using drones as dinner plates. When the eagles grew a bit older, the trainers then presented them with drones hovering in the air—to predictable results. The eagles swooped in and seized the drones in talons that can exert pressure of 500 pounds per square inch.
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04
After India, the world's largest population of tigers resides in Texas
By some estimates, a couple of thousand tigers live in Texas, many in backyards and most not registered with the state, which is believed to be the second-largest tiger population in the world behind India. Texas allows ownership of exotic pets and requires owners to register their animals with the state, but as of February only 50 tigers were recorded, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. Animal rights advocates say many tigers go unregistered because county enforcement of the registration rules is often lax. Most Texas counties have banned tiger ownership, but the state doesn't track which counties allow tigers and which don't, making it difficult, if not impossible to track unregistered tigers in the state, said Skip Trimble, advisory director of the Texas Humane Legislation Network.
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05
"Giraffe" is a relatively new term. Before the 1600s they were known as "Camelopards".
The name "giraffe" has its earliest known origins in the Arabic word zarafah (?????),[ perhaps borrowed from the animal's Somali name geri. The Arab name is translated as "fast-walker". There were several Middle English spellings, such as jarraf, ziraph, and gerfauntz. The Italian form giraffa arose in the 1590s. The modern English form developed around 1600 from the French girafe. "Camelopard" is an archaic English name for the giraffe deriving from the Ancient Greek for camel and leopard, referring to its camel-like shape and its leopard-like colouring.
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06
A strand of spider silk long enough to orbit the Earth, would weigh less than 500 grams
A dragline silk's tensile strength is comparable to that of high-grade alloy steel (450 - 2000 MPa), and about half as strong as aramid filaments, such as Twaron or Kevlar (3000 MPa). Consisting of mainly protein, silks are about a sixth of the density of steel (1.3 g/cm3). As a result, a strand long enough to circle the Earth would weigh less than 500 grams (18 oz).
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