Page 11 - Animal Facts

Heavily hunted animals live in Chernobyl, because it is safer where there are no humans

In April and May 1986, reactor four at the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down. Over the course of ten days, it pored out radioactive isotopes that blanketed the area. They killed the pine trees surrounding the plant in a matter of days. Now, the area remains one of the most contaminated ecosystems on Earth.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone encompasses 1,600 square miles or norther Ukraine and southern Belarus and is guarded by armed military. The levels of radiation within the zone are dangerous. After the meltdown, the Soviet government took drastic measures to contain the radiation as best they could.

They scraped away the topsoil, sprayed the area with chemicals meant to trap radiation close to the ground, evacuated nearby villages and slaughtered livestock. They left a barren moonscape.Since then, nature has begun to take over again. Not only has the vegetation returned, but wild animals now roam the area.

Bears, boars, owls and wolves have all been spotted in the area. Ironically, since no humans live in the Exclusion Zone, it has become a sanctuary for biodiversity, particularly the wildlife. With no humans there to hunt them, these animals are able to thrive despite the radioactivity.

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Scientists let rats press a lever to stimulate their brain's pleasure center. They did it until they starved to death!

The pleasure center is the general term used to refer to parts of the brain that deal with pleasure. Some such areas are the nucleus accumbens, the septum pellucidium and the hypothalamus.

The pleasure center was discovered in the 1950s by two brain scientists, James Olds and Peter Milner. They were trying to find out if rats would be made uncomfortable by electrically stimulating certain areas of the brain, particularly the limbic system.

During the experiment, rats were given an electric current if they entered a certain area of the cage. The idea was that if the current was uncomfortable, they would not return.

However, the rats returned again and again. The brain area that was being stimulated was labeled 'the pleasure center.' They were eventually allowed to press the lever that controlled the current themselves.

The rats came back again and again to press the lever--sometimes as often as 700 times per hour. The rats chose the current over eating and drinking and eventually died from exhaustion.

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Crows can remember human faces.

Studies have shown that crows can learn to recognize human faces and hold those faces (and any grudges associated with them) for a long time. Researchers captured 12 wild American crows while wearing particular mask of a human face.

For four weeks following their capture, they fed and cared for the crows while wearing a different mask. One by one, they took the crows and presented them with one of the two faces or an empty room. They gave the crows a chemical that functions as a sort of dye or marker. It would be taken in by whichever part of the brain became active. They crows would then be examined in a PET scanner.

From the images and the crows behavior, it was evident that the crows recognized both masks, and treated the capturing mask as a threat and the feeding mask with relative affection. They did so with the same region of their brains that humans do when they process images of faces and associate them with relevant emotions.

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You can use goldfish to keep horse troughs clean!

Aquarists and fish owners seem to have trouble keeping goldfish alive in tanks. This is because they're relatively large fish for the size tanks that they are usually held in.

One interesting way that you can learn this is the fact that goldfish can thrive in cattle troughs. This seems a weird place to keep goldfish, but actually they help farmers keep the troughs clean from algae and other bacteria.

The reason why they thrive is because these massive tanks hold between 150 and 300 gallons of water, while most people keep them in tanks that are about 30 or 55 gallons. This deteriorates the water quality that they live in and can lead to their death.

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Adwaita the tortoise lived an estimated 255 years!

While turtles and tortoises are known to have long live expectancies, this particular animal is just absurd. Adwaita was a giant tortoise who was originally owned by General Robert Clive of the East India Company.

Clive ended up committing suicide in 1774, and left his already 34-year-old tortoise behind. Adwaita was eventually brought to an Indian zoo in 1875 after having several different owners, and spent the rest of his life there.

He survived until 2006, at which time scientists carbon dated his shell to around the year 1750! This makes him around 255 years old, which is a generation older than the United States, and means he was born before Mozart, Lincoln, and the French Revolution!

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