Science magazine for children: Packed with science stories, science facts, science features, and other science learning resources for children. Discover the known, the unknown, and little-known facts in our science articles. Learn the how and why of everyday things and explore rare and exotic living species.
358 items in this section. Displaying page 27 of 36
A Lizard that Squirts Blood from its Eyes
Are you scared of lizards? There is no need to be unless you come face to face with one kind, called the Horned Lizard. It sprays blood from its eyes, and may just make you jump a bit. A lizard that squirts blood from its eyes [Illustration by Shridevi] Not all time. Only when it feels threatened. Surprisingly, the Horned Toad or the Horned Lizard, found in North America and Mexico, is often kept as a pet....
Spiders and their Magical Web
Most of us have come across cobwebs that accumulate in our walls, and ceilings when we dust our homes. The webs are under tables, cellars, and sometimes across branches and leaves at the park. All these cobwebs are the work of spiders. Spider webs are fine silken threads. Originally spiders spun silk to protect their eggs and to line their nests. But later they adapted to use this silk to weave a web and trap their prey....
How do Spiderwebs Help Skydivers?
While dusting the house have you ever cross jhalis (webs) in the corners of the wall? Sometimes you may come across them under table corners or at rarely used places. Yes, the webs are woven by spiders. It’s a nuisance clearing them for just when you manage to remove one sticky web, the spider scurries off to a corner to spin yet another! How do Spiderwebs Help Skydivers? [Illustration by Anup Singh] But before you destroy these webs with a sweep of the broom, here’s some food for thought – you are about to dismantle one of the strongest structures in the natural world!...
The Truth About Bats
Bats are among the world’s least appreciated and most endangered animals, thanks to centuries of myth and superstition. Contrary to common misconceptions, bats are not blind, they are not rodents and they won’t get tangled in your hair. The truth is that bats are mong the most gentle and beneficial animals on earth. A bat is a winged mammal with the ability to fly. It’s ability to maintain sustained flight, unique among mammals, results from the modification of hand-like forelimbs into wings....
Dealing With the Potential Danger of a Meteor Hitting Earth
Our solar system is like a busy traffic round-about. The sun is at the centre of this round-about which drives a large number of heavenly bodies, including planets, comets and large and small rocks around it. While the earth and the other planets chart fairly fixed paths around the sun, our smaller solar siblings, like rocks, do not believe in staying in their lanes. As a result, a large rock – the size of a small city – bangs into the earth every once in a while....
A Beautiful Ship in the Sky
In the boundless ocean of space, a beautiful ship sails serenely around the sun. Our earth – Lovelier than the moon, this fragile ship travels one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres every hour. Space is full of countless such ships. But our Earth is special. It is the only ship which carries life – the only ship with voyagers on board. Four hundred thousand different kinds of life make their home on Earth. Together, they make it beautiful and precious....
It's a Zoo Out There!
Almost 400 years ago, Mughal emperor Jehangir acquired a new animal in his private collection or zoo – the zebra. This unusual, striped animal fascinated him so much that he wrote about it in his memoirs as a strange creature. Some even imagined that the animal’s stripes had been painted! The emperor decided to find out whether the zebra was indeed coloured or not. After much investigation, he made it public that the zebra, too, was a creature created by god....
The Deadliest Animal in the World
Do you know, it is one of deadliest creatures in the world? No, it’s not the cobra. It is the sea wasp. It is a kind of jelly fish and is called the Chironex Fleckeri, commonly known as sea wasp. It has a bell-shaped body with long tentacles that trail behind it. These tentacles have hundreds of thousands of tiny cells, which contain a cobra-like poison. When a victim brushes against the tentacles, the poison is injected into his body, killing him in less than five minutes....
Man's Best Friend
Who is man’s best friend? Of course there are no points for guessing that one – the dog. The dog is the most popular domestic animal in the world. For more than 12,000 years the dog has been a companion, a protector and above all, an honest friend. But different civilisations and cultures have treated the dog in different ways. In some countries, dogs are used as guards or beasts of burden, whereas in others they are even eaten as food....
Marine Militants: Bioinvasion propagated through Cargo Ships
What would happen if all the lions in Africa are carried away to some other place? The deer population will rise as there will not be anyone to kill them. With this population boom, the deer would need more food. After a point, there will no grass left to feed subsequent generations. This would lead to the destruction of the entire ecosystem which thrives and sustains itself on the grass. And the grasslands will turn into a desert....