Toad, your companion in the backyard!

Toad is different from a frog. It lives mostly a terrestrial life. It is usually seen at dusk moving out from its hiding place and search for its prey. It is greyish brown in colour merging with the soil's colour. Skin is rough and dry unlike that of the slimy frog. Female toads are larger than the males. 

They are seen in the fields, forests and country sides having dry areas. At daytime, they are usually seen under stones camouflaging with its surroundings. They live for even 10 years long! 

They are said to shed off their skin repeatedly and eat it! Their preys are slugs, beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, flies, ants and spiders. You can detect about its presence somewhere near, by noting its poops found dropped on the soil. Watch a video on it here:

These poops contain the most of these parts - ant heads, beetle wings that are thrown out as undigestible food. 

They dig pits in the moist soil at dusk, to keep themselves cool in the hot Summer! Watch a video on it:

Female toads lay eggs on the pond water. The hatched out tadpoles grow into small toads before they hop on to the land to survive as an adult. Toad's predators are rats, cats, crows and herons. 

It is the CommonToad (Bufo bufo). It bloats up its body to make its body big when it is attacked. Thus it tries to threaten its predators displaying about its big capacity to offend them! Funny, poor thing.

A different mammal that excites you!

 

A mammal was introduced to me by its laughing voice! Hyena. It is a wolf-like animal that has high front legs and short hind legs. It has special teeth that can crush even bones of its prey! Apart from its laughing sound, it has many other sounds for communicating. It hunts in packs, often at night time (nocturnal). It can eat the carcasses of dead animals that are left out by the hunting animals. So, it is a scavenger of their forest territory in which they live in. It has an anal pouch that produces a white secretion with which it marks its territory on the grasses! Female hyenas are larger than the males in this kind of Spotted Hyenas (Crocuta crocuta, Kazhuthai puli in Tamil). Females dominate males. They have penis-shaped clitoris and a urogenital canal for copulating with male. Born cubs begin hunting in the first year of age itself! This hyena is said to be resistant to Rabies virus attack, as it has antibodies for that in its saliva! So a bite by an infected rabid animal cannot produce Rabies disease in it. There are many stories about this hyena – like taking away children sleeping on open grounds. This strange and different mammal, the Laughing Hyena, lives in a den that has many entrances on the ground, like that of mouse! 

Quite wonderful this second world - our Moon!

 

 Our Earth's Moon is ever enchanting both to humans and other living things, the animals and plants present on this Earth. Though this natural satellite of our planet is revolving around, it is said to be formed out of Earth either due to some forcible impact by asteroids or by parting away due to Earth's centrifugal force when it was rotating. It is still a wonder how the moon keeps it's same side towards the Earth in all it's rotation about itself during its revolving around the Earth in it's orbit!

Wonderfully exciting - Piezoelectricity!

In 1960s, I listened to Gramophone machine with wonder, how it worked, as its arm danced on a grooved disc that rotated round and round! When the operator of this machine (player) lifted up its arm in changing the disc, I noted a needle under it. I had been wondering about it till I studied Physics at college. Yes, that needle (stylus) produced electrical signals as it went up and down the grooves of the disc, (called as record). It did it through a crystal mounted inside the arm's head (called as pickup). This stylus and the pickup did the whole magic in the gramophone record player - producing Piezoelectricity!

A striking force or pressure on a material such as a quartz crystal, can produce this piezoelectricity. This electricity was found out by French Physicists, Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie in 1880. This piezoelectricity is also used in Inkjet printing, in SONAR and Radio Telephony. Earlier, I knew well about some devices that produced sparks - cigarette lighter and the gas stove lighter. Now, I know that they use this piezo effect in them! Do you know that piezo effect is also used in watches and radio wave transmission?

The reverse of this piezo effect has been also discovered to work for us! It produces Ultra Sound waves when an electric curent is applied on to a crystal!

I am going on learning and learning about new uses of piezo effect: it is used in cars for echolocation of objects! 

So, it is a wonder-full Piezoelectricity that is also exhibited by cane sugar crystals, ceramics and even by our bones!

Terrorizing wonder - Mirror!

We see others in front of us. Can others see themselves as we see them in front of us? Yes, they can see themselves with a mirror held in front of them! When a baby sees first its own face in a mirror, it will be some another person or an object; but later, it understands, learns and identifies it as its own image! 

Sweeter but a sticky fruit, Lasura!

In my childhood days, I had wondered about a nut that remained stuck on the eaves tiles. How had it gone there? Crow had swallowed it and ejected it in its droppings on to the tiles! Is it not digested? It is a hardy nut and hence it is not digested! What is the name of the fruit that contained this nut and was tasty to the crow?

An insect and a worm from nowhere!

I had then found an insect walking out of a cut mango in my boyhood days. The mango seed was having a hole on it; from that hole black and soft grains had come out and spilled on the mango slices and lay strewn all around too. When the insect was touched with a stick, it folded in its legs and pretended to be dead lying still! After sometime it put out its legs and moved away hurriedly! How and when this insect could have entered inside the mango and how could it survive inside the mango? These were the questions arising in me.. Likewise, I had also wondered how worms could have entered in our body and make their living inside us!

Deliciously attracting fruit - the Custard Apple!

Fruits that are available seasonally are the most desired than those available year round. One of such most desired fruits is the Custard Apple (Sugar Apple, Annona squamosa, 'Seethapazham' in Tamil)!

The ultimate nutrition supplier to the body cells - Capillaries!

Small is not only beautiful but also essential to life! We take food to supply nutrition to our body.  How and from where this nutrition is received by the tissue cells of our body? Do you know? We all know that our heart pumps blood from the body organs to the lungs, and then returns the purified blood back to the body organs. But there is also a microcirculation existing at a microlevel between arteries, arterioles and the venules, veins! The components of this circulation are the Capillaries. Only through the walls of these capillaries, the nutrition is received by the tissue cells!