Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Animal Kingdom
Do all bears hibernate?
(Bear with me on this one.)
To be perfectly accurate, no bear hibernates. When an animal hibernates, it is near death and may appear to be dead. Its body temperature drops to near 32°F, it breathes just a few times a minute, and its heartbeat is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. If the animal is exposed to warmth, a few hours may pass before it awakens and is alert. Animals that hibernate include bats, hedgehogs, ground squirrels, and marmots.
Although most people say that bears hibernate, hibernation is not the proper term in the case of bears, because during their sleep there is little change in their body temperature, respiration, or metabolic rate. A better term would be "deep winter sleep" (the scientific term is "dormancy"). If left alone they can sleep in the same position for months, yet they awaken quite easily if disturbed.
The reason for hibernation and deep winter sleep is the same. During winter, food is scarce, and it's often difficult for some animals to maintain their normal body temperature. To protect themselves, many animals pass the time away by hibernating or sleeping. They store body fat when food is plentiful, then live off the stored fat when hibernating or sleeping. By sleeping for long periods of time, they keep activity to a minimum and also control their temperature and metabolism so that no growth occurs.
A bear may decide to sleep in a hollow tree, a cave, a pile of brush, or a den that it has dug. Sometimes the bear adds dried leaves and grass to its bed for additional insulation against the harsh cold ofwinter.
Not all bears sleep all winter. If bears live in an environment with a good year-round food supply, they don't need to go into a deep winter sleep. Tropical bears such as sun bears, sloth bears, and spectacled bears never go into a winter sleep.
The male polar bear never goes into dormancy, but the female does only if she is pregnant.
If a bear is accustomed to dormancy but is kept in a zoo where food is always available, it will not go into dormancy regardless of how cold it may get.
Factoids
The Australian koala bear is not a bear at all but a marsupial related to the kangaroo. The bearcat, a nickname for the Southeast Asian binturongs, is not a bear either. They are related to a little-known group of animals that includes civets, genets, and linsangs.
People seem to love bears in spite of their size and ferocity, especially the fictional bears Baloo, Fozzie Bear, Paddington Bear, Yogi Bear, and Winnie the Pooh. The most famous live bear was Smokey.
Polar bears have white fur but black skin. Each hair is actually a clear hollow tube designed to funnel the sun's rays to the bear's skin, thereby keeping it warm. Because the rays bounce off the fur, the polar bear appears to be white.
The sloth bear lives on a diet of termites. However, like humans, bears have a sweet tooth. They often break open beehives and will continue eating honey even though their nose has been stung many times.
When a bear is dormant, it does not eliminate its waste but recycles it by turning the toxic compounds into protein. Researchers are trying to discover how bears do this because the bears' method could lead to methods of treating kidney failure in humans.
Did you know?
Although bears are meat eaters and often ferocious, they have their gentle side too. In 1995 four unwanted kittens were dumped near a wildlife rehabilitation center in Grant's Pass, 0regon. Although employees trapped three of the kittens and took care of them, they could not catch the fourth.
By late summer the kitten was starving. Seeing a 560-pound grizzly bear devouring food in the compound, the kitten squeezed through a hole in the fence and approached the grizzly.
Everyone was terrified that the poor stray kitten was going to be the grizzly's next meal. The bear looked at the kitten, pulled a piece of chicken from its dinner, and tossed it aside for the kitten.
The bear, named Griz, never harmed the kitten. In fact they became close friends and ate, slept, and played together. The employees named the kitten "Cat."
At last report, Griz and Cat were still the best of friends. They probably still are today.
Is it true that a dinosaur larger than
Tyrannosaurus rex was recently found?
(A head-to-head match.)
In 1995 scientists in Argentina discovered a meat-eating dinosaur they named Giganotosaurus. They claimed that it was as big as or bigger than the North American Tyrannosaurus. However, their claim is still being disputed. Although Giganotosaurus had a larger skull, it had a smaller brain, making it less intelligent. It has a longer upper leg bone but a shorter lower leg bone, so both dinosaurs were about the same height.
However, the non-meat-eating dinosaurs were considerably larger. In fact, of all the known dinosaurs, which one is the biggest depends on how you measure a dinosaur's size.
A dinosaur named Argentinosaurus was recently discovered in Argentina (hence the name). It was 70 feet high, 120 feet long, and weighed around 220,000 pounds. In other words, it was as tall as a seven-story building, almost the width of a football field, and weighed around 110 tons.
In 1994 scientists in southeastern Oklahoma found the bones of another huge dinosaur. They named it Sauroposeidon, which means "earthquake god lizard." It was 60 feet high, weighed 60 tons, and was 150 feet long, partly because it had the longest neck of any known dinosaur.
One standard measurement used to define a dinosaur's size is length, which is measured from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. Because Sauroposeidon was 30 feet longer than Argentinosaurus...
What Makes Flamingos Pink?. Copyright © by Bill McLain. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.