[music playing]
"Colossal Questions."
Why do chimps fling their poop around?
Our hairy friends from the animal kingdom
are well-known for their smelly habit
of tossing their fresh feces at unsuspecting bystanders.
This might seem like the dumbest possible thing
a monkey could do, but there is a reason for it.
You see, chimp experts say that poo-flinging isn't
nearly as common in the wild.
Chimps roaming free still like to throw things
when they're scared, annoyed, or anxious,
but they tend to stick to rocks and sticks.
Chimps at zoos or in wildlife sanctuaries
tend to have fewer things around to throw.
So being practical primates, they
throw whatever they have in easy supply, and that means poo.
But chimps don't just throw poop because it's plentiful.
Over time, they begin to realize that throwing their poop
gets a much bigger reaction than throwing just
about anything else.
In fact, these prankster primates
have even been documented pooping in their hand
and waiting for someone to bother them.
You might think that it's just the immature monkeys who
would throw their poo, but that's actually not the case.
Chimps who have better aim when flinging feces
tend to have more brain development in their motor
cortex, the part that controls physical motion, which
you might expect.
But they also tend to have much more developed frontal cortex,
too, which helps process language, meaning
they were slightly smarter, more developed, and better
communicators.
So next time you see a chimpanzee hurl
its poop across a cage in your general direction, just
remember.
He's not doing it because he's dumb.
He's trying to send you a warning.
Do bees die after a sting?
There are all kinds of bees buzzing out there
in the world--
bumblebees, honeybees, carpenter bees,
yellowjackets, wasps, and hornets, just
to name a few that you may have heard of.
But it turns out that only one species of bee
can actually die from stinging you, the honeybee.
And it happens to them for a, well, kind of gruesome reason.
You see, a honeybee's stinger is barbed and doesn't exactly
stab, but screws into your flesh like a corkscrew,
driving their whole stinger into your skin
and injecting a venom called apitoxin.
But this isn't some sort of strange, last-ditch suicide
sting.
Honeybees can pull their stinger out
of other insects and most other animals.
But mammal skin is thick and made
of tiny little fibers that tend to tangle up
the barbs on the bee's stinger.
When the bee tries to pull away after corkscrew stabbing you,
its stinger gets caught in our skin,
and it's ripped right out of the bee's abdomen
as it tries to fly away.
But even after accidentally killing itself,
the bee isn't done doing damage.
A bee singer can keep shooting venom
into your body for up to 10 minutes if you don't remove it.
Sometimes, a honey bee will survive
the stinging, if the person being stung
has thin skin that doesn't quite hold the barbed stinger in
place.
But since a honeybee's stinger is
designed to dig as deep as possible,
well, that doesn't tend to happen too often.
In a honeybee hive, female worker bees
are actually the only ones who can sting.
In fact, male honeybees don't even have stingers.
So do bees actually die when they sting you?
Well, honeybees do.
They just don't mean to.
So if you see a bee buzzing about,
it's best to just keep your distance,
and let it do its thing.
You really don't want to get stung,
and it's safe to assume the bees aren't looking to rip
themselves apart, either.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Right off the bat, this seems like an easy answer.
The chicken.
No, ah, the egg.
No, wait.
The chicken needs to--
but the egg can't--
OK, so maybe this one isn't obvious.
Over the years, many cultures have
tried to solve this dilemma.
In the Middle Ages, some Europeans
believed that the chicken must have come first,
since according to their belief, God created birds
before he created eggs.
But some ancient texts wrote at the opposite.
They believed in a cosmic egg, or world egg,
that the sky, Earth, and all of existence hatched from.
Now few people today think the Earth
was hatched out of an egg.
But if you ask most biologists, they'll
tell you the egg did, in fact, come first, sort of.
Around 300 million years ago, reptiles
became the first living things on Earth to lay eggs.
It took another 100 million years or so for birds
to arrive on the scene.
And by then, animals had been laying eggs
for millions of years.
So eggs did come first, just not chicken eggs.
Not satisfied by that answer?
Neither am I, so let's finally put this to rest.
Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?
Well, according to Robert Krulwich of NPR,
the egg came first.
Here's why.
A long time ago, there was a chicken-like bird.
It was very, very similar to a chicken,
but not quite chicken-like enough to be considered, well,
a chicken.
Two of these chicken-like birds had an egg together,
and the genes in that egg mutated just enough
to change it into a new species that today we call a chicken.
So two non-chickens laid a mutated egg
that was the very first chicken egg in history.
That egg hatched into the world's very first chicken.
And voila, an age-old question, answered.
Now go impress your friends with that one.
Why do pigs love mud so much?
It might seem like pigs play in the mud
just to get as dirty as they can,
but it actually serves a specific function.
It helps keep them cool.
You see, as humans, we sweat whenever our bodies
get too hot in the sun.
As that sweat evaporates, it cools the skin
to help keep us at around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
But that's humans.
Unfortunately, pigs don't have nearly as many sweat glands
as we do.
And the ones they do have aren't very powerful.
That means pigs can't sweat enough to keep themselves
cool in the sweltering sun.
So what do hogs do on a hot day to keep from overheating?
You guessed it.
They roll, splash, and play in some nice, cool mud.
That's right.
Pigs have found their own natural muddy way
to protect their skin from the beating sun.
In fact, mud can lower a pig's body temperature
by more than 3 and 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit,
which makes it even more efficient
than sweating is for humans.
It works so well because it takes a long time for water
to evaporate out of mud.
A piglet's mud bath protects them
much longer than if they just hopped in some cool water.
When the mud finally dries on a pig's skin,
it forms a crusty barrier against the sun.
That dried dirt also keeps flies, mosquitoes,
and other parasites from biting the pigs.
All that muddy protection has given our poor porky
little friends a bit of a reputation
for being dirty animals.
But the truth is they're actually pretty clean.
For instance, unlike lots of other animals,
things take pains to make sure they don't poop anywhere
near where they eat or sleep.
Given enough space, hogs will hide their bathroom
as far away as they can.
So why do pigs like to roll in the mud?
Because it keeps them cool and keeps them safe, and maybe
most importantly, it honestly seems pretty fun.
Why do horses wear shoes?
Horseshoes aren't anything like the shoes we humans wear.
And to be honest, they don't look all that comfortable.
But if you're a horse they actually help a ton.
Since horses are giant, super heavy animals,
their hooves need to be super strong to carry
all that weight.
A horse's thick hooves help protect their legs
as they run around or carry heavy loads.
They're made of a material called
keratin, the same stuff that your hair and nails
are made of.
But us humans only have a very thin layer
of keratin on our fingers and toes.
Horse hooves are made of lots of thick layers of keratin put
together that make them strong.
But despite their strength, hooves still
wear and tear naturally.
To fix this, our ancient equine-owning ancestors
started inventing ways to protect domestic horses'
hooves from damage.
And over time, the horseshoe as we know it became the standard.
OK, so all this makes sense.
But what about wild horses?
Why don't they have to wear shoes?
Well, that has a lot to do with the different lifestyles
of wild and domestic horses.
Wild horses might travel up to 50 miles
in a day looking for food, but most of that movement
is done slowly.
They only really need to run if they're
being chased by a predator.
They also tend to live in dry, flat places.
Slowly walking around all day on flat ground
means that wild horse hooves naturally
wear out evenly, smoothly, and stay nice and hard.
Domestic horses move much more inconsistently.
They're often asked to carry or pull
large amounts of weight, like packs, riders, wagons,
or sometimes all three.
They work and live on soft ground,
like irrigated fields and stables.
And once a horse gets back to their stall,
there's only so much space to move around.
All these factors combined wear on their hooves
and make them much more likely to crack or split.
So horses wear hooves for a lot of the same reasons we do--
because it's really hard to walk around our modern world
without shoes on.
How do chameleons change color?
Chameleons are colorful critters that
can be found in all different colors in the wild.
Green, blue, browns, and turquoise are common.
But pink, orange, or red chameleons can be found, too.
There's over 160 different species of chameleon,
and not all of them can change colors.
They live all over the world--
in the rainforests or deserts of Asia, Africa, Europe,
and in North America, where they're mostly
kept as household pets.
You might think the chameleons change their colors
to camouflage themselves from potential predators,
but that's not always the case.
It's certainly convenient to hide in plain sight.
But chameleons are actually really fast
and can outrun almost any predator.
So the disguise helps, but experts
believe it's actually not the main reason chameleons
change their colors.
Then what is?
Believe it or not, chameleons most likely change color
to reflect the emotions, kind of like they're
a living, breathing mood ring.
This can clue another chameleon in
and send signals to each other about how they're feeling.
Darker colors tend to mean a chameleon is getting angry,
and bright, colorful hues are used to attract a mate.
There can be plenty of practical reasons for a chameleon
to change colors, too.
On a hot day, they might become lighter too reflect heat away.
And on a cold day, they would go darker to absorb more warmth.
OK, so those are the main reasons
why chameleons change color.
But how do they actually do it?
Well, if you ask experts, a chameleon's
color-changing ability is mostly due to special cells called
iridophores underneath the skin.
These cells work like millions of microscopic prisms,
and can move to reflect light waves different ways,
creating all sorts of different colors.
So to close, chameleons use special cells
in their skin to change colors, but not necessarily
so they can hide.
They just like to wear their emotions on their sleeves.
What's the deadliest animal on Earth?
We have lots of good candidates for deadliest animal on Earth.
Take elephants, for example.
They're the largest land animals on Earth,
and can be fiercely aggressive if provoked.
They have no problem trampling over other animals or even
entire villages when they're angry.
And if that wasn't destructive enough,
elephants also have excellent memories,
which means they might even hold a grudge if they're really
wronged.
Hippos are another of Earth's most aggressive animals.
Even though they mostly plants, hippos
are huge and more than willing to fight, even for no reason
at all.
And yet, the deadliest animal of them all
is also one of the smallest--
mosquitoes.
These bothersome little bugs are so deadly because they
can spread viruses from person to person
when they suck your blood.
Experts report that nearly 700 million people each year
get a disease from a mosquito bite, which
leads to somewhere between 2 million and 3 million deaths.
Malaria, dengue, and Zika are three
of the many diseases that you can get from mosquito bites
if you live in high-risk areas.
But before you start building a bunker to hide in,
there is some good news.
Since the year 2000, medical advancements
have led to an almost 40% drop in malaria deaths.
And unless you live in certain areas,
there's no real risk of getting a deadly disease.
So next time you're on a safari, just keep a safe distance
from the elephants and hippos, and definitely wear bug spray.
Do horses sleep standing up?
In the wild, horses almost always
need to be on the lookout for potential attacking predators.
That's because horses have straight backs, which
makes it harder for them to get up off the ground quickly.
This means that horses don't like sleeping on the ground
where they're helpless if they're attacked.
So instead, horses need to do most of their sleeping
in broad daylight.
Luckily, horses have special joints in their legs
that let them lock their knees in place
so they can fall asleep standing up without tipping over.
So yes, horses can sleep standing up,
and they do it all the time.
But that also doesn't mean they never lie down.
That's right.
Unfortunately for horses, they might
be able to take little catnaps while standing up.
But in order to get deep, restful sleep,
horses need to lay down like the rest of us
if you're ever at a stable and you
see a group of horses laying down asleep,
look around for one or more horses standing apart,
keeping a watchful eye out for predators
while their friends sleep.
The role of guardian horse rotates
between the members of the group so that everyone
can get enough rest.
So in other words, it's kind of like a big horsey slumber
party.
Why do birds sing in the morning?
Bird scientists call that period in the early morning,
where seemingly every bird within earshot sings,
the dawn chorus.
It starts around 4:00 AM and can last for several hours.
Of course, birds sing all throughout the day.
But during the dawn chorus, their songs
tend to be louder, livelier, and much more frequent.
According to experts, birds belt out their songs
to attract a mate, or warn other birds to steer clear
of their territory.
Basically like a beautiful, singsong version of you
look cute, or get off my branch.
So those songs are less about crooning and much more
about showing other birds just how fit and healthy you are.
So that's why they sing.
But why does it have to be so early in the morning?
Well, experts aren't certain.
But they do have a few ideas.
The traditional theory is that in the darker
hours of the early morning, birds
can't do any of their other bird chores, like foraging for food,
so they use that time to get their singing in instead.
Another theory is that birds sing
so early because it tends to be extra quiet,
allowing their songs to travel further.
Without all the hustle and bustle of the daytime,
their songs would be easier for a mate to pick out.
But both those theories have fallen out of favor
in the last few years.
Instead, many now believe it's much more about showing off
just how fit and healthy they are.
You see, birds do most of their feeding during the day.
So first thing in the morning tends
to be when they're the heaviest and weakest.
Being able to belt out a song loud and proud
proves to potential mates, or threats,
that they're nice and strong.
The louder they sing, the stronger they sound,
which helps attract a mate.
A nice loud song keeps other birds
from trying to move into their territory,
and can make a tiny bird sound much bigger than they are.
So why do birds sing?
For the same reason lots of us like to show off--
to try and impress each other and seem as cool as they can.
Pretty relatable.
Why do sloths move around so slowly?
Sloths are extra slow because of one simple thing--
their diet.
You see, sloths live high up in the branches of Central
and South American forests, so they
have tons of fruits, flowers, and leaves
to eat from the treetops.
That means their diet has little to no protein or fat, which is
what helps give animals energy.
So sloths spend their whole lives
trying to make sure they conserve
their energy by moving slowly and as little as they can.
But sloths do climb a bit better than they walk.
An average sloth might only climb around 120 feet per day
in the trees.
But on ground, they can only move about a foot per minute.
That's really slow.
And as you might imagine, sloths digest their food
just as slowly as they do everything else.
You see, sloths don't have front teeth to chew up those leaves,
so all they can really do is mash them up with their lips.
That means it can take as long a full month
to fully digest a meager meal of leaves and fruits.
Because sloths don't move much and they burn so little energy,
they usually only need to poop once a week.
That might sound convenient at first, but it's definitely not.
Sloths travel down to the forest floor
to poop, which makes them way more vulnerable to predator
attacks.
Not only that, but pooping only once a week means,
well, they really get backed up.
An average sloth feces can weigh about 1/3
of the poor pooping sloth's body weight.
That's one giant, painful poop.
So remember that the next time you
see a smiling sloth lounging in a tree eating some fruit.
It's all nice and relaxing until nature calls.