Intellect PlusOrganisms
1,988 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 15 of 34.
Guanajuato, the Mexican state named frog hill, holds seven extinct volcanic lanternsIn the southern valleys of Guanajuato, seven dead volcanoes rise abruptly from farmland, their craters up to a kilometre wide. Locals call them holes; a legend of all seven once b…
Bird droppings once funded Peru, sparked a war and built an American empireIn the nineteenth century, seabird droppings became one of the world's most fought-over commodities. Guano royalties turned into Peru's biggest source of revenue, the United State…
North America's biggest heron hunts fish, frogs, voles and even rabbitsThe great blue heron stands taller than a metre, yet usually weighs little more than two kilograms. Fish are its staple, but this patient wader of North American wetlands will spe…
The great bustard is a flying heavyweight whose males dwarf the femalesA male great bustard collected in Manchuria weighed about 21 kg, a verified record for any flying bird. Its mate might weigh a fraction of that: in Spain, males averaged nearly tw…
A great hornbill mother walls herself inside a tree for monthsWhen a female great hornbill nests, she seals herself into a hollow tree trunk with a plaster made largely of droppings. For weeks her mate feeds her through a narrow slit while s…
The great white pelican's name means a bird that brays like a donkeyLinnaeus named the great white pelican onocrotalus, from a Greek word for something that brays like a donkey, after its harsh calls at breeding time. The bird itself is far from c…
A greater kudu bull needs six years to finish twisting its hornsA greater kudu bull's horns start sprouting in his first year, complete one spiral by about age two, and reach their full two and a half turns only around six. Straightened out, t…- Grebes look like ducks and loons but their nearest kin are flamingosGrebes swim low, dive for food and resemble loons, so for a long time scientists grouped the two together. That turned out to be convergent evolution. Molecular studies, backed by…
The Grinch was not green until a 1966 cartoon made him soIn Dr. Seuss's 1957 book, the Grinch was drawn without his famous colour. Green arrived only with Chuck Jones's 1966 television special, when Jones and Seuss agreed it was the one…- Godzilla almost began life as a giant octopus rather than a dinosaurToho's 1954 Godzilla rose from the wreck of a cancelled co-production, and its effects chief first pitched an enormous octopus. The finished film, a sombre story of a monster born…
- Godzilla's name blends the Japanese words for gorilla and whaleGojira fuses gorira, gorilla, with kujira, whale, hinting at a creature of vast size and ocean origins. Since 1954 that monster has starred in 38 films, 33 of them from Toho, and …
Hollywood's 2019 Godzilla sequel honoured the man inside the original rubber suitGodzilla: King of the Monsters pitted Legendary's giant lizard against the three-headed King Ghidorah, Mothra and Rodan. It was dedicated to Haruo Nakajima, who wore the monster c…
Two-thirds of today's continental land once belonged to a single southern landmassSouth America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Arabia and India were all pieces of Gondwana, a giant landmass that at its peak covered about a fifth of the planet. Its name comes f…
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast is classed as fantasy without containing any magicGormenghast has no wizards, dragons or spells in its first two books, yet it is ranked among the twentieth century's great fantasies. Mervyn Peake's crumbling castle, ruled by end…
Canada's prime minister holds an office no constitutional document ever createdCanada's government formally belongs to the King, who holds every power of state yet takes no political role. The prime minister, who actually steers the country, exists only thro…
Gozo's temples, said by legend to be built by giants, predate most standing structuresOn Gozo, Malta's quieter second island, stand the Ġgantija temples, whose Maltese name means belonging to the giants. They rank among the oldest free-standing structures anywhere,…
The gray fox climbs bare tree trunks and sometimes dens high in treesWith hooked claws, the gray fox can scramble up a branchless trunk to 18 metres, leap between limbs and come down backwards like a house cat. It belongs to an ancient lineage that…
Rodents and monkeys rafting from Africa reshaped South America's mammalsLong before Panama joined the Americas, a few rodents and monkeys drifted from Africa to South America on mats of flotsam. Their descendants now number 372 species, more than twic…- The giraffe's only living relative is a shy forest animal, the okapiGiraffes stalk open savanna while okapis hide in the Congo rainforest, and at first glance they look nothing alike. Yet both have long dark tongues, lobed canine teeth and skin-co…
Bristol broke away from Gloucestershire in 1373 as England's third cityGloucestershire once contained Bristol, then a modest town. By 1373 the port had grown into England's third-largest city and became a county of its own. The rural shire it left be…
Car-sized armoured glyptodonts turned out to be true armadillosGlyptodonts were armadillos the size of a small car, up to 4 metres long and over two tonnes, sealed inside a rigid shell of hundreds of bony plates. Some swung spiked tail clubs …
The word ghee shares an ancient root with the English word ChristGhee comes from the Sanskrit ghṛta, clarified butter, traditionally linked to a root meaning to sprinkle. That makes it a linguistic cousin of the Greek khristós, anointed, source…- A Philippine fruit bat has the longest forearms of any bat aliveThe giant golden-crowned flying fox of the Philippines can weigh 1.4 kilograms and spread its wings up to 1.7 metres, and its forearm, at up to 215 millimetres, is the longest rec…
- The longest bony fish in the sea may explain old sea serpent sightingsThe giant oarfish is a silver ribbon with a crimson fin running its whole length, and it can reach 7 or 8 metres, perhaps even 11. Its snakelike body and rippling swimming style h…
The world's largest ray can be told apart by a T on its backThe giant oceanic manta ray can span 7 metres across and weigh around 3,000 kilograms. Divers distinguish it from its smaller reef cousin by the pale patches on its shoulders: on …- An amateur in a dune buggy found a rival to TyrannosaurusIn 1993 Rubén Carolini was driving a dune buggy through the Patagonian badlands when he spotted a huge leg bone. It belonged to Giganotosaurus, a predator up to about 13 metres lo…
- Every gilt-head bream starts life male, and some later become femaleThe gilt-head bream, a Mediterranean favourite on restaurant menus, matures as a male by age two. Later, some individuals grow ovaries and lose their testes. Today far more of the…
Water striders row across ponds by pushing against waves they makeA water strider does not swim; it stands on the surface film of a pond, held up by water-repelling hairs and long splayed legs. To move, it presses its middle legs down and back, …
Seahorses are the only animals where males are said to get pregnantIn seahorses, pipefish and sea dragons, the female deposits her eggs into a pouch on the male's chest, and he carries them until they hatch. It is the only animal family for which…
The gharial is named for the pot-shaped bulb on a male's noseAdult male gharials grow a hollow knob at the tip of their snouts shaped like a ghara, a clay pot, and use it to make a hiss audible 75 metres away. No other living crocodilian sh…- Geese planned to split after high school, then record labels came callingA handful of New York teenagers recorded songs in a Fort Greene basement and fully intended to go their separate ways after graduating in 2020, with some members bound for Oberlin…
Gelatin melts below body temperature, which is why jelly dissolves on your tongueGelatin is broken-down collagen from animal skin and bones, and it has a neat trick: its gel melts at a temperature lower than the human body. That is why a spoonful of jelly turn…
Why most male horses become geldings, and why some races ban themHorse breeders have long reckoned that only about one male in ten should stay a stallion. The rest are usually gelded, turned into calmer, more trainable animals that riders prefe…
The gentry sat just below the nobility, living off land rather than titlesIn Britain the gentry were landowners with a coat of arms but no seat in the peerage, families who lived on rents from country estates. The word comes from an Old French term for …- The platypus lost its own name because a beetle got there firstGeorge Shaw named the platypus Platypus in 1799, but a group of ambrosia beetles already had that genus name from 1793. Since both are animals, the name could not be shared, and t…
Geologists began by arguing Earth was far older than anyone thoughtIn 1785 James Hutton told the Royal Society of Edinburgh that mountains wear down, their sediments harden into rock on the seabed, and that rock is lifted into new land. Such cycl…
Foot-and-mouth virus spreads before symptoms show, which makes it a farmer's nightmareFoot-and-mouth disease rarely kills adult livestock, yet countries will cull healthy herds and ban meat exports to stop it. The reason is its sheer ease of travel: on boots, lorri…
Formic acid was first collected by distilling large numbers of antsIn 1671 the English naturalist John Ray described how he obtained a sharp-smelling acid by distilling a great many ants. The substance took its name from formica, Latin for ant. I…
The second Bond film invented much of what we now call a Bond moviePresident Kennedy listed Ian Fleming's From Russia, with Love among his ten favourite books, so the producers picked it for Bond's second outing. The 1963 film, made for $2 millio…
A full moon is only truly full for an instant, and rarely completelyWe talk about a full moon as if it lasted all night, yet the phase peaks at a single moment, often while the Moon sits below the horizon. And because its orbit is tilted about fiv…
Galactose, the milk sugar half, also helps decide your blood typeSplit lactose and you get two simple sugars: glucose and galactose. The second one differs from glucose by the flip of a single group of atoms, yet our bodies cannot burn it direc…
Gannets hit the sea at 100 km/h, cushioned by built-in bubble wrapA hunting gannet folds its wings and plunges from as high as 30 metres, striking the water at around 100 kilometres an hour. It survives that impact thanks to air sacs under the s…
In the eastern Himalayan hills, wealth has long been counted in gayalAcross the forested hills of Northeast India, a family's standing was traditionally measured by how many gayal it owned. These half-wild cattle, also called mithun, have served as…
Flying squirrels cannot fly, but they steer with a wingtip found nowhere elseNo flying squirrel has ever flapped its way into the air. What the 50 species do instead is glide, sometimes as far as 90 metres, on a furry membrane stretched from wrist to ankle…
Why food chains rarely stretch beyond five linksEach step up a food chain loses most of its energy. Generally only about a tenth of what one feeding level holds reaches the next; the rest is burned in the business of staying al…
Your arms and legs began as the fins of ancient fishThe limbs of every four-legged animal, including humans, match the paired pectoral and pelvic fins of jawed fish. They descend from freshwater lobe-finned fish whose fleshy, bone-…
Fishcakes turned leftover fish and cold potatoes into a global favouriteMrs Beeton's 19th-century household guide asked for leftover fish and cold potatoes. Across the world, the same simple idea of minced seafood bound with starch became Japanese kam…
Fishing bait works, though nobody fully knows why fish biteWorms, cheese, boilies, spoons and even robotic fish all end up on hooks. Yet how fish respond to particular baits remains poorly understood. Florida sunfish will grab a ball of b…
Brixham's sleek sailing boats launched the age of deep-sea trawlingOverfishing off South Devon pushed Brixham's fishermen farther out in the early 19th century, so they built fast, tall-rigged boats strong enough to drag big nets in deep water. T…- Flesh flies skip the egg stage and deliver live maggotsMost flies lay eggs, but flesh flies are ovoviviparous: the female deposits larvae that have already hatched or are hatching. Their family name, Sarcophagidae, joins Greek words f…
Flickr grew out of tools built for a shelved online gameVancouver's Ludicorp was building a browser game called Game Neverending when its photo-sharing tools looked more promising than the game itself. Flickr launched on February 10, 2…
Fly fishing lets the line's weight carry a lure that weighs almost nothingAn artificial fly is too light and fluffy to throw against air resistance, so fly anglers turn the method around: a heavy line does the casting and the feathered hook simply rides…
Chicago's Field Museum grew out of the 1893 World's FairWhen the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition closed, Edward Ayer persuaded department-store magnate Marshall Field to fund a museum for its exhibits. The result now holds over 24 mi…- A burnt thumb made Fionn mac Cumhaill the wisest hero in IrelandThe poet Finnegas spent seven years hunting one salmon in the Boyne, prophesied to grant whoever ate it complete knowledge. He caught it and told his young pupil to cook it. The b…
Water, dense and dim, shaped every part of a fish's bodyWater is far denser than air, carries little dissolved oxygen and swallows light quickly. Those three facts explain much of how a fish is built, from its two-chambered heart and s…
The Norse gods bound Fenrir with a ribbon, and Týr paid with his handIn Norse myth the gods raised a wolf pup they had been warned would one day kill Odin. As he grew alarmingly fast, they tried to chain him with iron twice and failed. The third fe…
Mustangs and brumbies are not wild horses; they are escaped domestic onesA feral animal descends from domesticated stock but lives on its own. That excludes a lion that escapes from a zoo, and it includes the mustangs of the American West, Australia's …- Male fiddler crabs regrow weaker claws and bluff their rivals anywayA male fiddler crab carries one claw far bigger than the other, and he uses it to fight, to shed heat and to beckon females in waves timed with his neighbours. If he loses it, the…
- Every living Przewalski's horse descends from just 12 wild-caught ancestorsSome species survive only behind fences, in greenhouses or in hobbyists' tanks. Conservationists label them extinct in the wild, and the only way off that list is to put animals o…
Harris's hawks hunt in packs like wolves, which makes them falconry favouritesMost birds of prey hunt alone, but Harris's hawks live in groups with a pecking order and chase quarry together, behaviour no other raptor shows. That sociability makes them easy …