[Music] foreign
squeaks where are you squeaks where are you
squeaks oh there you are squeaks oh it's okay squeaks thunderstorms can get kind of loud and
maybe even a little scary sometimes but you know what sometimes things that are frightening are a
little less scary when we understand what causes them and we can learn what causes things by asking
questions that's why we're so glad that we heard from our friend four-year-old Eleanor
who asked why do lightning and thunder happen I'm sure squeaks would like to know experts
called meteorologists study the signs of weather including lightning and thunder we can use what
they've learned to explain what causes these bright flashes of light and the big booms that
follow and you may not know it but the science of what causes lightning can happen right in your own
home have you ever walked across a fuzzy carpet and then when you reach for a doorknob gotten a
little shock if so then you've been part of making a mini lightning bolt that shock that you felt was
caused by the buildup of what's known as a static electrical charge a static electrical charge is
just a little bit of electricity that stays in one place for a little while static electricity
can build up anytime two things rub together when you walk across the carpet your body picks
up tiny bits of charge then when you reach for that doorknob these charges jump into the middle
doorknob and zap lightning is caused by the same thing only on a much bigger scale the kinds of
clouds we see in thunderstorms have tiny bits of ice in them and these little bits of ice bump
into each other they cause an electrical charge to build up inside the cloud and as this charge keeps
building up it gets stronger but there are two kinds of electrical charge we call them positive
and negative charges that are different from one another will attract or pull toward one another a
lot like magnets but in our case the charge in the cloud is negative the negative charge in the cloud
makes some spots on the ground get a positive charge and when the charge is in the cloud and
the charges on the ground are just right a bolt of lightning jumps between the cloud and the Earth
and meteorologists have discovered that there are different kinds of lightning too some Lightning
goes from one part of a cloud to another some jumps from Cloud to cloud and some goes between
the sky and the ground but it's all caused by a moving electrical charge and all lightning is hot
really hot and that heat is what causes thunder thunder starts with the fact that air is made of
tiny particles when these little particles get heated up they start to move around more quickly
so when the hot lightning bolt suddenly moves through the air its heat makes the air particles
around it all excited all those particles of suddenly hot air start to move around quickly
they push hard against the cooler air around them that air then flies away really fast from where
the lightning was with a lot of energy our ears hear this movement of the air particles as a loud
bang or crackle that's thunder so now you know lightning happens when an electrical charge builds
up inside of cloud and moves to an opposite charge and thunder happens when the heat from lightning
causes the particles that make a bear to push away from the lightning bolt and remember when
you're not sure about something ask questions it just might make you feel better foreign
hi guys we just came across this spiderweb look how pretty it is you might know some kids or
adults that get kind of nervous or even afraid around spiders in fact one of our four-year-old
viewers is kind of afraid of spiders too but she knew exactly what to do she wrote us and
said I want to learn about scary spiders so that I'm not afraid of them anymore that's
a great attitude knowledge is power so let's all see what we can discover about spiders one
thing that you should know is that spiders have a really important job to do they eat lots of small
little insects like mosquitoes gnats and house flies so if spiders weren't around to do their
jobs then there would be a lot more of these pesky insects around speaking of insects some
people think that spiders are a kind of insect but that's not true you might remember how you
can tell an insect from other kinds of animals insects have six legs and they have three main
body parts ahead a thorax and an abdomen plus they sometimes have other body parts too like wings to
help them fly around and antennae to sense their surroundings now spiders are different in a lot of
ways for one thing they only have two body parts they have an abdomen but instead of having a head
and a thorax they have just one other body part with the two put together it's called
encephalothorax and maybe the easiest way to spot a spider is that they always have eight legs and
they don't have wings or antennas here's another fun fact about spiders spiders have different
kinds of eyes than insects do insects have really complicated eyes called compound eyes they're made
up of thousands of little lenses that work together so the insect can see but spiders
have simple eyes with just one lens just like you and I do so you actually have something in common
with spiders but if you've ever seen a picture of a spider up close you might have noticed that
spiders have more than two eyes most of them have eight eyes one kind of eight-eyed spider is called
the jumping spider these spiders have some of the best vision of any any spider in the world
their eight eyes make them able to see almost the whole way around their bodies but jumping
spiders do something else very well too and I bet you can guess what it is they jump some of these
fires can jump up to 50 times the length of their own bodies if you could do that you'd be able to
jump over 12 cars in a single leap but these spiders are careful jumpers they always stick
a piece of silk called a drag line to whatever they're jumping from so if they happen to miss
what they're jumping for they won't fall clever spiders jumping spiders are quite smart and really
kind of cute but they don't do something that lots of other spiders do they don't spin fancy
webs for the most beautiful webs around you should keep an eye out for spiders known as orb weavers
the word orb means round and that's the shape we see in an orb Weaver's web a nice pretty Circle
the silk that orb weavers and other spiders use to make their webs comes from special body parts
called spinnerets most spiders have six of these spinnerets and they use them to spend different
kinds of silk each kind is for a different job some of the silica or Weavers use is sticky so
when an insect flies into its web it gets caught in these threads but or Weavers also make a silk
that isn't sticky when they want to walk around on their own webs they keep their eight feet on
those special threads then the spider can get to its prey and wrap it up in another kind of
silk until it's ready to eat it now that you know more about them we hope you feel better about our
friends the spiders so the next time you see a spider take a few minutes to watch it so you
can learn more about it you can also learn more by reading books and of course asking questions
foreign
I'm thinking of an animal it's small and furry it can be pretty cute and it flies around at night
can you guess what animal it is that's right I'm thinking about bats some people think bats are
scary maybe because they only come out at night or maybe because sometimes they live in Dark
Places or maybe it's because some species of bats called vampire bats Survive by drinking blood but
you probably won't ever run into a vampire bat only three species of bat are blood drinkers the
rest of them over 1200 species eat fruit nectar bugs and other small animals if you ask us bats
are totally awesome here are just three of our favorite things about them to start some bass
can hear their way in the dark that's because they don't rely on their eyes like we do instead bats
use sound to find their way around have you ever yelled into a big empty room or a canyon and heard
your own voice shout back at you that's called an echo the sound of your voice moves across the
room to to the walls and then bounces back to your ears as a bat flies through the night it
does something really similar it makes a sound and then carefully listens for the Echo and the
way the echo comes back can tell the bat a lot about what's around it this special skill is
called echolocation if the echo comes back quickly that means there must be something pretty close
to it because the sound only traveled a short way before bouncing back but if the echo takes a long
time to bounce back then the bat knows that the object is further away bats can tell not only how
far away something is but also how big it is and how fast it's moving all from using echolocation
and since bats are constantly using echolocation to figure out the world around them you'll often
see them flying around with their mouths open to keep making sounds to bounce back another thing we
like about bats they really like to hang out bats hang upside down in quiet dark hidden places like
the roof of a cave or the underside of a bridge but how when I hang upside down from the monkey
bars after a while I start to feel like my head is going to explode bats can hang for a long time
because their bodies are built for life upside down the little Pathways in their bodies that
blood moves through called arteries have special vowels in them that only let blood through one way
as the bat's heart beats the blood has to keep moving through its body in just one direction
that keeps the blood from getting stuck in the bat's head when it's hanging upside down that's
a pretty neat trick but you know another thing that's easy to like about bats they make really
great moms bats usually have one baby called a pup in a year at the beginning of that pup's life it
clings to its mother's belly all the time while the mom wraps Her Wings around it maybe we should
stop calling good snuggles bear hugs and start calling them bat hugs and thousands of moms in
their pups can live together in a huge group called a nursery even when it's cold outside
the nursery stays warm because of all those bats hanging close together plus when Mom needs to go
out and find food she can just drop her baby off at the nursery with all the other moms and pups
when she comes back you might think it'd be hard to find her baby again I mean there are thousands
of pups that look just like hers but bats in their Puffs can recognize each other through
their smells and their voice is so when a pup calls out the mom can fly right to it it would
be like trying to find your family in the middle of a crowded amusement park except all of the
other kids at the park are calling out for their parents too so what do you think aren't bats scary
cool they have super sensing abilities they can hang out upside down and they are marvelous moms
[Applause]
believe it or not there's something a lot like this inside of you and inside of me too it's a
skeleton you may have seen skeletons like the ones they have of dinosaurs in a museum or
maybe plastic models of human skeletons like this maybe you've even seen dancing skeletons around
Halloween but do you know how important cool and Powerful your skeleton really is let's get to know
your bones from how they help you move to the different kinds you have and the super special
job they have to do let's get started one of your skeletons important jobs is of course to hold your
body up your muscles are strong but they need a frame something to hold on to without a skeleton
you'd be all loosey-goosey and you wouldn't be shaped like you and it goes both ways without
your muscles your skeleton would just be a pile of bones it's only by squeezing and relaxing your
muscles that you're able to move your bones so that silly dancing Halloween skeleton it's just
pretend because it doesn't have muscles so your bones are hard enough to hold the weight of the
rest of your body but they're also hard enough enough to act like a protective shield around
your soft squishy organs your ribs for example are bones that protect your lungs and heart so
that even if you get a big strong bear hug your insides don't get squeezed too and speaking of
strong the strongest bone in your body is also the biggest longest and heaviest bone you have
it's the bone that goes from your hip to your knee called the femur and that bone has to be
big and strong because when you run jump walk or even just stand still a lot of the weight
of your body falls on your femurs now where do you think your smallest bone might be the very
smallest bone you have is actually in your ear this little bone called the stapes looks kind of
like a stirrup even in adults it's only about the size of a grain of rice but this tiny bone has a
big job when sounds enter your ear they make this little bone move back and forth these vibrations
are what your ears pick up as sound so without this teeny tiny bone you wouldn't be able to hear
now I have a question how many bones do you think we have well it kind of depends it sounds crazy
but you have fewer bones now than when you were born newborn babies have about 300 bones but by
the time you're finished growing you'll only have 206. so where did all those extra bones go nowhere
as babies grow some of their bones grow together or fuse into one bigger bone for example your
skull your hard Noggin is actually 21 bones that are fused together plus one bone that's always
separate your jaw your skull starts out as a bunch of separate bones because that leaves lots of room
for your brain to get bigger and once you're fully grown the fused Parts make an incredibly strong
shield to protect your precious brain one final fun fact about your skeleton your bones are alive
even though we often think of skeletons as not living like the ones we see in museums or models
your bones are full of living cells some of these cells are what make your bones grow and repair
them if they get hurt and other cells which are tucked away in the thick spongy layer deep inside
your bones have a very special job they make your blood that's right most of the stuff that's in
your blood is actually made inside your bones it's because your bones are alive that they're
able to grow like they're doing in you right now and they won't be done until you're about 25 years
old but even then your bones will still be busy holding you up helping you hear and making your
blood so bones and museums are cool and Halloween skeletons are fun don't get me wrong but nothing's
more scary powerful than your own living skeleton and all the great stuff it does for you yeah ready
hi everyone I've been looking for squeaks all morning I know he's around here somewhere but
I can't seem to find him squeaks buddy where are you [Music] oh it's just you squeaks geez
you scared me apology accepted I know you're only trying to surprise me for a second there when you
scared me I felt myself want to run away really quickly and then when I realized it was just you
that feeling went away you must have triggered my fight or flight response oh well the fight or
flight response is something that happens when animals like us get scared because we want to
get to safety as quickly as possible it's okay to feel scared sometimes it happens to everyone even
grown-ups if we're scared and our brains decide that we need to get somewhere safe quickly there
are two main things that can happen sometimes our brains will decide on the fight option so that we
can scare away whatever is scaring us without really meaning to we might suddenly feel angry
and even try to fight whatever scared us other times our brains will decide on the flight option
good guest squeaks but it doesn't mean that we can fly flight is another way to say running
away if our brains choose flight we might feel even more scared than before and want to run
away from whatever scared us as fast as we can for either fight or flight we don't really make
the choice ourselves our brains and our bodies just react without us thinking about it it might
sound strange but our brains are trying to get us to safety quickly so it doesn't give us time to
really think about what we want to do fight or flight is an instinct something our brains and
bodies do naturally without us thinking about it it's the brain's way of protecting us when we get
scared our brain sends signals all over our bodies preparing for Action it makes our heart and lungs
work faster to get energy to our muscles so that we can run really quickly or fight really hard it
even makes our eyes focus better so we can see things moving more easily our bodies will stay
in fight or flight mode until we're safe oh I am a little bit tired now squeaks the fight
or flight response put my body into overdrive so many of my muscles and organs got ready to
LEAP into action and now I can start to feel how much energy went into that response if your brain
goes into fight or flight mode you may not notice what's going on with your body very well but once
you realize everything's okay your brain allows you to think clearly again and you might notice
that you're really tired hungry or thirsty I sure am glad that it was only you trying to
surprise me squeaks and not something really scary and I'm glad I didn't run away too far
that's a good idea squeaks squeaks says that when we feel ourselves getting scared it might
help to take a deep breath in and then a deep breath out really slowly like this
this can help our brains stay out of fight or flight mode so we don't feel as scared I have
an idea let's give it a try I'll close my eyes and you go hide somewhere ready
squeaks squeaks where are you squeaks
ah oh that worked pretty well I feel scared for a moment but my breathing
gave me enough time to realize that it was only you and I felt better but
just in case let's go play something a little less scary like Jess [Music]