Seymour Simon's Blog, page 61
February 23, 2011
ONE DAY CONTEST FOR CAT LOVERS!
Seymour Simon has cats on his mind, and he wants to know if you can find this little known fact.: WHAT DO YOU CALL A GROUP OF CATS? Hint: Seymour has written about this somewhere on the Seymour Science blog. Prize: Post your comment here, and one person who has given the right answer will be selected in a random drawing to win a personally autographed copy of Seymour Simon's book, CATS! Enter today for your chance to win!
February 22, 2011
Incredible Camouflage!
Since my new book (coming out in August) is BUTTERFLIES, I was very excited to be able to visit Aruba's Butterfly Farm. It is a large garden, all enclosed by netting, with cocoons, caterpillars, and thousands of delicate butterflies from all over the world. Have you ever seen a black and white butterfly? This beauty is called a Rice Paper Butterfly (Idea leuconoe), and they were quite curious, fluttering around us the whole time that we were there. Readers often ask me what my favorite animal is, and I always reply that it is whatever animal I am writing about at the moment. I do a lot of research when I am writing a book, and the more I learn, the more fascinated I become. So, my favorite animal at the moment is the butterfly, and it was SO exciting to be in this relatively small space and surrounded by fluttering creatures!The one one the right is called a Scarlet Swallowtail (Papilio Rumanzovia) - isn't it beautiful? Any butterfly that has the two long, trailing pieces at the bottom of their wings is some kind of swallowtail. Butterflies protect themselves from predators in many ways. For example, when it is a caterpillar, the Monarch butterfly eats a leaf that is poison to many animals. By storing the poison in its body, the adult Monarch butterfly is avoided by predators who would otherwise eat it. Other butterflies protect themselves through an amazing natural phenomenon called "mimicry" - they appear to be something else altogether, like a leaf, a stick, or a piece of bark. While we were there, my wife Liz shot a video of a Dead-Leaf butterfly. Click on this link to play the video and you will see exactly how mimicry works.Dead-Leaf Butterfly Video.The scientific name for the Dead-Leaf butterfly is Kallima inachus. Whomever gave this genus of tropical butterflies the name Kallima must have been looking at the topside of the wings, since it comes from the Greek word for "beautiful"!
Cool Photo of the Week
Have you ever heard of a fog bow? A fog bow is similar to a rainbow, but it happens on foggy days. Like a rainbow, the fog bow is caused by sun passing through water, but the water droplets that cause fog are so small (less than 2/100 inch), the fog bow has very little color. Fogbows are sometimes called "white rainbows" or "cloudbows". Sailors call them "sea-dogs." Check here every Tuesday for Seymour Simon's "Cool Photo of the Week"! Photo Credit: Mila Zinkova
February 20, 2011
Look Who's Having Lunch with Seymour!
This iguana wandered over to see what Seymour was having for lunch on our last afternoon on the island of Aruba. Iguanas are herbivores (which means they eat plants); this one was probably hoping for a bite of salad! Like all lizards, iguanas are cold-blooded, which means that their body temperature changes according to their surroundings. That is different from mammals - our bodies regulate our temperatures from the inside, and keep it pretty much the same all the time.Cold-blooded creatures seek the warmth of the sun, so you see iguanas sunbathing on rocks and rooftops all over the island. There are lizards everywhere in Aruba. According to the official website, half of all the species of lizard on Earth are found only on this small island. When the sun was out these beautiful, small turquoise lizards (left), called "kododo blauw," were constantly skittering around our feet and on the rocks. Iguanas, which are bigger, move more slowly. Sometimes on Aruba you have to stop your car and wait for an iguana that is crossing the road in a leisurely way. Drivers are required by law to yield the right of way to iguanas on Aruba! Iguanas/rooftop photo by Jacob Grygowski
February 18, 2011
Friday is New Joke Day!
It's Friday, so that means there is a new Joke or Riddle on SeymourSimon.com. Check it out today to find out what has three wings, three eyes and two bills! Jokes and Riddles are right on the homepage for SeymourSimon.com.
February 17, 2011
A Cute Cat
Cat lover Choulie uploaded this photograph with a note: "I saw this picture of a cat and loved it! I used to have two cats name Domino and Punchy.I will love and miss them forever."Who has photographs of their own cats that they want to share?
February 16, 2011
Standing up for CATS!
Recently, Mr. K’s fifth grade class in Churchville, Pennsylvania read my book DOGS and created a poll about kids’ favorite dogs. That led to three weeks of students writing about their favorite dogs. We even ran a dog-related contest one snowy day in January. I think it is time for cat lovers to have their say! Write and tell us about your favorite cat and why you love him or her. Here’s an interesting, little known fact about cats to get you started: Scientists have discovered that a cat's purr can coax its owner into giving them what they want by using a special noise that the human brain can't ignore. According to the study, cats' subliminal 'feed me' messages are disguised as ordinary purrs but have a high-pitched element that makes a human react as if it is an emergency, just like the cry of a baby. Cats are highly intelligent animals. But you cat-lovers already knew that, didn’t you?
February 15, 2011
My Favorite Fish
A student named Marissa wrote this week with an unusual question. "I was wondering, what is your favorite fish? Mine is the Blobfish." I happen to love fish. My favorite fish is known as "The Ram." Its scientific name is Epistograma ramarezi, and it is a dwarf cichlid. Cichlids (pronounced SIH-clid) are freshwater fish found in the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia, somewhat similar to our North American sunfish. The ram is a beautiful little fish that swims around with a great deal of determination. It is gorgeous when it is in breeding condition - a sparkly blue and red. I used to have tropical aquariums and I bred these fish and sold them. So now you know that I really like fish! If you want to see Marissa's favorite, the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), you can find a photo in my Science Dictionary under the definition of DEEP.....which might tell you something about where these very unusual creatures live!
February 14, 2011
A Valentine in Space
This is a photograph of the Heart Nebula (IC 1805 in Cassiopeia). A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in space; the word "nebula" comes from the Latin word for "cloud."This one is composed of glowing hydrogen gas, and the very bright spot in the middle is a cluster of stars, some of them nearly 50 times the mass of our sun! The energy generated by this mass of stars creates the bright red color as well as its "heart" shape. Happy Valentine's Day to all our readers!Photo: NASA
February 11, 2011
Did You Hear That?!
Scientists have discovered that baby crustaceans - lobsters, crabs, shrimps, and barnacles - can hear, and they listen to underwater noise to protect themselves from predators. Even though these baby shellfish are only the size of the flea, they have a hearing system that lets them hear grunts, smacks and gurgles made by fish and other larger creatures that would otherwise eat them. Coral Reefs are the big "cities" of the ocean - teeming with fish and other marine life. "The coral reef is like a 'wall of mouths' to these animals, so when they hear noise, they avoid it," says Dr Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Bristol. "Otherwise, they'd always be eaten by fish." Why does the fact that a tiny shellfish is able to hear matter to us? Humans make a lot of noise in the ocean, from boat engines to activities like dynamite fishing and deepwater drilling. If our loud noises mask the crucial natural sounds near coral reefs, vulnerable larvae will be in danger of being consumed by larger predators. Why should this matter? Humans are part of the web of life on our planet Earth. Each kind of life is like a single strand in the web. By itself, no one strand may seem so important. But all the strands make up the web and the weekness of one strand weekens the entire web. Photo: AustralianMuseum.net
