Is after dinner conversation lacking at your table? Do your dinner guests surreptitiously yawn & glance at their watches? Do you want for a topic of conversation? Then you are not a homeschooling parent...but never fear. This conversational lack can be remedied.
A little to the south of us there is a rather large block of ice where the white stuff makes a permanent home. You can see it from out in space too.
This charming place has the rather dubious honour of recording the lowest temperatures ever ~ -128F at the Russian Vostok station. Brrrr! Too cold for me.
Despite all that ice & snow it has two active volcanoes. Active. Only 2 have peaks that rise above the ice. Mt Erebus on the Ross Shelf is the larger one.
Now in this inhospitable terrain there are whales & penguins ~ things like that ~ but there is only one land animal & I'll bet you don't know what it is! You do?! Yep; The anti~freeze mite!
This is not an insect. It is related to spiders & scorpions ~ which is unlikely to make it any friends on the unlikely chance you ever run into one. I'm not in any hurry.
You have to wonder about a place that produces an animal that's just big enough to be seen without a microscope, whose system produces chemicals that prevent its blood from freezing & that when it freezes freezes from the inside out.
You're welcome!
6 comments:
Some thing more to add to my "Fun Facts to Know and Tell" file;)
Oh, do you have one of those too?! ;)
Oooh I love stuff like this! No matter that most people dismiss it as 'random', there is always a time where it comes up. I actually got a job offer by answering a trivia question from a judge. It was why prostitutes in the US are known as "hookers." Answer - Civil War General Hooker often brought prostitutes for his soldiers who were known as "Hooker's girls."
Now I have another one to add to my *fun Facts to Know & Tell* file. Thanks Allison! :)
The things one learns. Anti freeze mites and hookers, all in one day. : )
That so cool--er, cold. ;)
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