Welcome to a special edition of The Brain Scoop,
where we're going to answer some questions from our friends
at Matoska International School in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
Hold down to your horses, because this is going to be a-neigh-zing.
We have a lot of squirrels and chipmunks. We have hundreds of them.
This is because they're really easy to find out here in Montana.
The biology classes here used to even require that the students collect them.
And you know what I always say: You can never have too many squirrels.
In the old days, the people who stuffed animals were the same people who stuffed couches and chairs.
They used everything from straw, hay, cotton, wire, twigs, even metal.
They also used nasty chemicals like arsenic and mercury
in order to help protect the animals from bugs,
kinda like how you would use bug spray when you're camping, but a little more deadly.
These days, we use natural cotton stuffing, wire and these long wooden sticks called dowels.
Sometimes we even use big pieces of foam that are already shaped like the animal we're trying to stuff.
Sometimes when people are out driving around, they'll see a dead deer or a bear
and they'll call me up and ask if I want it.
Sometimes local hunters will even donate a part of an animal that they don't want.
Like these elk feet.
We also find a lot of dead birds underneath windows, because the birds try to fly through the glass.
Poor birds.
Before you're born, when you're still in your mom's belly, your skeleton is made out of cartilage.
Cartilage is the stuff in your nose and in your ears and it's pretty sturdy,
but it's still kind of rubbery and bendy.
Over time, your cartilage skeleton begins to collect minerals, which hardens the cartilage into bone.
If you wanna sound really smart, this process is called ossification.
Bones are filled with this spongy stuff called marrow.
Marrow is some of the most important stuff in an animal's body.
You can think of it like a blood factory. It's where all the blood gets made
and without blood, there would be nothing to carry oxygen from the lungs to all the other cells
in an animal's body.
Humans are animals too, you know, so it works the same way in your body as well.
It depends on the animal. For example, horses have huge lungs,
so that they can keep breathing while they're running.
And some whales are so large that they have hearts the size of cars.
A snake's organs are specially adapted to run along the inside of its body.
For example, they have one very small lung and one very large lung,
that's so long that it runs almost half the length of its entire body.
And a cow has a special stomach that's split up into four chambers
to help it digest all of that grass.
Strangely, one animal that has organs that are very similar to ours is actually the pig.
Well, different animals give birth in different ways.
Some animals are born from eggs, like reptiles and birds and even a couple of mammals.
The mother lays an egg and either sits on it or buries it
in order to keep it warm and protected while the baby forms inside.
When the baby's ready, it bursts its way out of the shell.
Other animals give birth to live young, meaning that the baby is growing inside of the mother
and is popped out when it's ready.
Most mammals are born like this, including you and me.
There're even weirder ways to give birth, too.
Amphibians lay eggs, but the eggs don't really hatch,
they just grow into tadpoles, which later grow into adults, like a frog or a salamander.
The animals usually don't go anywhere. They stay right here in the museum.
Usually.
Unfortunately, we don't have a Brain Scoop truck.
Maybe you could design one for us.
You can send your Brain Scoop truck pictures to thebrainscoop@gmail.com.
A big thanks to Ms. Bianco's 4th grade class for the questions
and this has been an episode The Brain Scoop.