STRONGEST CREATURES

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 September 1938, Page 5

STRONGEST CREATURES

STRANGE FACTS ABOUT INSECTS. Strong . men’s efforts are puny compared with some of the “strong men” of the insect world. Champion of them all is the beetle, which can lift nearly 900 times its own wei'ght. li other words, were it increased to the size of 'a. man it would be able to raise 70 tons with ease. This makes the human “strong man” look pretty small, says W. B. Bolt. But the beetle is not the only insect with remarkable muscular strength. A bee is as strong, in proportion, as the average railway engine, while the humble earwig, which takes such a lot of killing, can move over 500 times its own weight. ' This means that to equal such a feat a man would have to draw 18 two-ion cars piled one on top of the other.

When it. comes to eyesight, however, man is even farther behind. A tiny speck of food, which you could scarcely see if it were at yourjeet, can be spotted by many kinds of birds at a distance of a hundred yards. Even more remarkable is the. chameleon, which can move its eyes independently, and can see in two directions, at tiie same time. And if you have ever thought how tired your eyes would become if you could not blink, think of the snake. Snakes never close their eyes—they haven’t any eyelids. Spiders, however, enjoy an unfair advantage, most varieties having eight eyes. Bees, too, have an unusual ability. They can see ultra-violet rays, although red is simply black to them.

Here’s another strange thing about eyes. According to an American scientist, if a bulldog has two eyes of different colours this is a sign that it is deaf in one ear.

Human pride suffers a severe blow when one considers that the greatest skyscrapers in the world are built by a. little creature a quarter of an inch long. Proportionately, a termite hill is fifty times as high as the tallest New York skyscraper. And if we could breed chickens as easily as queen termites, eggs would, be really cheap! That hard-working insect lays an egg every second all. the year round.

it will probably surprise, you to learn that if all the insects in the world were piled into one side of a gigantic pair of scales, and all the ether living creatures —birds; boasts, and men —wore piled into the, oilier, (.he insects would easily outweigh (hem. But. this is not so remark-able, perhaps, when wp realise .t'mit one houselly has 3,001),000,000,000,00(1 descendants in a season.

Insects, birds, and animals can certainly do some, amazing things. Try to imagine yourself, for instance, swallowing- a loaf of bread whole. Yet. a snake can swallow an egg fivetimes the size of its own head withoutbreaking the shell. As for our long-distance, high-speed aeroplanes, they seem positively slow, in proportion, when we. consider that some birds, notably the swift, can fiy 200 miles an hour, while a homingpigeon flew last year from Buenos Aires to Rome. —a distance of 0250 miles. Migratory birds frequently, fly at a height of nine miles, which compares favourably with Hie records of stratosphere balloons, and puts high-altitude aeroplanes to shame. .And These feathered aviators don’t carry oxygen apparatus. Have you ever lost your way in a fog? An eel never loses its way when, answering some mysterious call of Nature, it leaves its home- and travels, often part of the way across land, to the breeding grounds on the other side of the Atlantic. This is a journey of thousands of miles—and

As for our long-distance, high-speed aeroplanes, they seem positively slow, in proportion, when we. consider that some birds, notably the swift, can fly 200 miles an hour, while a homing pigeon flew last year from Buenos Aires to Rome. —a distance of 0250 miles.

As for our long-distance, high-speed aeroplanes, they seem positively slow, in proportion, when we. consider that some birds, notably the swift, can fiy 200 miles an hour, while a homing pigeon flew last year from Buenos Aires to Rome —a distance of 6250 miles.

yet the eels always reach their bbjec? live. They never land up at Iceland or clown in the Canaries by mistake.; ratt don’t let those comparisons worry you. There is one very good reason why, with all your physical and instinctive inferiority to birds', beasts and insects, you—and the rest of mankind—are top dog. That reason is—the human btain.