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!

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! 

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!

Goose bumps by smaller Erector pili muscles!

We notice occasionally that we have raised pimple-like areas on our skin each with a hair in its centre, when we enter into the chillness of outdoors or when we are excited much on seeing 'hair-raising' scenes. These raised skin areas are all well known as goose bumps (or goose flesh). How they are made?