female.
Anatomically, the raphe on our upper lip is called the philtrum , an interesting word derived from the Greek word philter , which even in English means a love potion. I confess I don’t see a connection, but many anatomical terms are peculiar in origin, if not downright funny.
Speaking of funny, it is our earnest hope that after the information in this chapter is disseminated, every stand-up comedian, standing before the inevitable brick wall, will stop doing routines about philtrums. Enough is enough.
Submitted by Bruce Hyman of Short Hills, New Jersey. Thanks also to three-year-old Michael Joshua Lim of Livonia, Michigan .
What happens to an ant that gets separated from its colony? Does it try to relocate the colony? Can it survive if it can’t find the colony?
As we all learned in elementary school, ants are social animals, but their organization doesn’t just provide them with buddies—it furnishes them with the food and protection they need to survive in a hostile environment.
All the experts we consulted indicated that an isolated worker ant, left to its own devices, would likely die a week or two before its normal three-week lifespan. And it would probably spend that foreshortened time wandering around, confused, looking for its colony.
Ants help each other trace the path between food sources and the colony by laying down chemical trails called pheromones. Our hypothetical solitary ant might try following pheromone trails it encounters, hoping they will lead it back home. Worker ants in a given colony are all the daughters of the original queen and can’t simply apply for admission to a new colony.
Three dangers, in particular, imperil a lost ant. The first, and most obvious, is a lack of food. Ants are natural foragers but are used to receiving cues from other ants about where to search for food. A single ant would not have the capacity to store enough food to survive for long. Furthermore, ants don’t always eat substances in the form they are gathered. Cincinnati naturalist Kathy Biel-Morgan provided us with the example of the leaf-cutter ant. The leaf-cutter ant finds plants and brings leaves back to the nest, where the material is ground up and used in the colony’s fungus garden. The ants then eat the fruiting body of the fungus. Without the organizational assistance of the colony, a leaf does nothing to sate the appetite of a leaf-cutter ant.
The second danger is cold. Ants are ectotherms, animals that need heat but are unable to generate it themselves. When it is cold, ants in colonies will seek the protective covering of the nest. If left to its own devices, a deserted ant would probably try to find a rock or the crack of a sidewalk to use as cover, whichmay or may not be enough protection to keep it from freezing.
The third problem our lonesome ant would encounter is nasty creatures that think of the ant as their dinner fare. Collectively, ants help protect one another. Alone, an ant must fend off a variety of predators, including other ants. Biel-Morgan compared the vulnerability of the ant, on its own, to a single tourist in New York City. And that is vulnerable, indeed.
Submitted by Cary Hillman of Kokomo, Indiana .
Why is the color purple associated with royalty?
Although pagans once believed that purple dye was the creation of Satan, we actually have the Phoenicians to thank for the association of purple with royalty. Somehow, and we always wonder how anyone ever stumbles upon this sort of stuff, an anonymous Phoenician discovered that the spiny shell of the murex sea snail yielded a purple substance perfectly suited as a dye base. Phoenicians, the greatest traders and businessmen of the ancient world, soon developed purple cloth as one of their most lucrative trading commodities.
Since purple cloth was more expensive than other hues, only aristocrats could afford to wear it. But the Romans codified the practice, turning the color of clothing
Anatomically, the raphe on our upper lip is called the philtrum , an interesting word derived from the Greek word philter , which even in English means a love potion. I confess I don’t see a connection, but many anatomical terms are peculiar in origin, if not downright funny.
Speaking of funny, it is our earnest hope that after the information in this chapter is disseminated, every stand-up comedian, standing before the inevitable brick wall, will stop doing routines about philtrums. Enough is enough.
Submitted by Bruce Hyman of Short Hills, New Jersey. Thanks also to three-year-old Michael Joshua Lim of Livonia, Michigan .
What happens to an ant that gets separated from its colony? Does it try to relocate the colony? Can it survive if it can’t find the colony?
As we all learned in elementary school, ants are social animals, but their organization doesn’t just provide them with buddies—it furnishes them with the food and protection they need to survive in a hostile environment.
All the experts we consulted indicated that an isolated worker ant, left to its own devices, would likely die a week or two before its normal three-week lifespan. And it would probably spend that foreshortened time wandering around, confused, looking for its colony.
Ants help each other trace the path between food sources and the colony by laying down chemical trails called pheromones. Our hypothetical solitary ant might try following pheromone trails it encounters, hoping they will lead it back home. Worker ants in a given colony are all the daughters of the original queen and can’t simply apply for admission to a new colony.
Three dangers, in particular, imperil a lost ant. The first, and most obvious, is a lack of food. Ants are natural foragers but are used to receiving cues from other ants about where to search for food. A single ant would not have the capacity to store enough food to survive for long. Furthermore, ants don’t always eat substances in the form they are gathered. Cincinnati naturalist Kathy Biel-Morgan provided us with the example of the leaf-cutter ant. The leaf-cutter ant finds plants and brings leaves back to the nest, where the material is ground up and used in the colony’s fungus garden. The ants then eat the fruiting body of the fungus. Without the organizational assistance of the colony, a leaf does nothing to sate the appetite of a leaf-cutter ant.
The second danger is cold. Ants are ectotherms, animals that need heat but are unable to generate it themselves. When it is cold, ants in colonies will seek the protective covering of the nest. If left to its own devices, a deserted ant would probably try to find a rock or the crack of a sidewalk to use as cover, whichmay or may not be enough protection to keep it from freezing.
The third problem our lonesome ant would encounter is nasty creatures that think of the ant as their dinner fare. Collectively, ants help protect one another. Alone, an ant must fend off a variety of predators, including other ants. Biel-Morgan compared the vulnerability of the ant, on its own, to a single tourist in New York City. And that is vulnerable, indeed.
Submitted by Cary Hillman of Kokomo, Indiana .
Why is the color purple associated with royalty?
Although pagans once believed that purple dye was the creation of Satan, we actually have the Phoenicians to thank for the association of purple with royalty. Somehow, and we always wonder how anyone ever stumbles upon this sort of stuff, an anonymous Phoenician discovered that the spiny shell of the murex sea snail yielded a purple substance perfectly suited as a dye base. Phoenicians, the greatest traders and businessmen of the ancient world, soon developed purple cloth as one of their most lucrative trading commodities.
Since purple cloth was more expensive than other hues, only aristocrats could afford to wear it. But the Romans codified the practice, turning the color of clothing
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