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Show 1 Do Ants Eat Crow? How Does The Hyena Howl? Book Tells All. Fver wonder why ,1s P"1 ants under J feathers? Can you L which plant has a L the size of a Setball? Baffled as o why hyenas laugh? Give up? Then turn to ger Rick's Answer JJk for the ex-' ex-' Sanations. This new I Ldcover anthology of 1 aiure lore is written for drenfivetol2. Its 96 ! es are filled with Questions and answers )l bout geology, Plants, 1 Weather, and animals and they're illustrated With full-color L pdotographs, diagrams, and cartoons, y So why do crows put 1 ants under their feathers? Other birds behave in this unusual manner .too, and scientists guess that the I ants may eat lice and olher pests which live in U,e bird's feathers. Another explanation: j jiany ants' bodies contain a sharp-f! sharp-f! smelling' liquid called 1 1; formic acid. When a bird crushes an ant and ) puts it under its feathers, the formic " acid may clean the ,' feathers or kill small pests. . According to "Ranger Rick's Answer Book", the world's biggest seed is the rare Coco de Mer coconut, which grows on islands . in . the Indian Ocean. Hundreds of years ago, it was believed that liquid drunk from a goblet made from a Coco de Mer would be free of poison. Those days, monarchs worried a great deal about being poisoned by ungrateful subjects, so they were willing to pay thousands of dollars for a magic Coco de Mer goblet. If that's got you giggling, the hyena's J bowl is really no laughing matter. The spotted hyena lives in Africa and prowls in packs during the night. The mammals call to one., . another with raucous barks and hysterical howls that I sound just like crazy human laughter. Young readers of "Ranger Rick's Answer Book" will also learn that all fish have ears that snakes are deaf' and that the bald cypress tree has bark-covered bark-covered knees, which grow upward out of long shallow roots (hat spread out from ihe tree. The book will also lay to rest some common misconceptions. Kor example, raccoons don't really wash their food. It just looks iliat way. These masked mammals mam-mals catch most of their food in shallow water feeling around with their paws for crayfish, tadpoles, and small fish which they then pop into their mouths. And crocodiles don't really eat their babies. The mother crocodile gently carries her just hatched litter in her mouth and deposits them in the water. This protects the baby crocs from hungry hawks and herons. Finally, there are some answers in the NFW nature book for parents, for almost every child asks sooner or later such questions as, "Why is the sky blue?" "Ranger Rick's Answer Book" explains that when light leaves the sun it is a mixture of several colors, including in-cluding red, yellow, blue, and violet. But when these colors hit the earth's atmosphere, the red and yellow pass through in a fairly straight line, while the blue and violet get bounced and scattered by the air's molecules. So the sun looks yellow because that color comes to our eyes almost directly, while the blue and violet approaches us from all directions, making the sky look blue. "Ranger Rick's Answer Book" is available for $8.95 from the National Wildlife Federation, 19223 DV, 1412 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Include $1.15 per order for handling. |
