Pebblesbysea

A collection of facts from Pebblesbysea:

• A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
• A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
• A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For example, if a strong-tasting substance like salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to taste it. As soon as a drop of saliva is added and the salt is dissolved, however, a definite taste sensation results. This is true for all foods. Try it!
• A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.
• Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate effects a dogs heart and nervous system, a few ounces enough to kill a small sized dog.
• Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
• Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
• Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
• Until babies are six months old, they can breathe and swallow at the same time.
• Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite.
• Babies’ eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.
• Cats, camels and giraffes are the only animals in the world that walk right foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, rather than right foot, left foot.
• Onions help reduce cholesterol if eaten after a fatty meal.
• The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

You can also check our article: Interesting Marine Facts

We are adding more facts so keep visiting.

An article by Rei from MIT

Fragrant Leaves:

• Lavender. (More on lavender in the Flower section, but the leaves are plenty fragrant on their own.)
• Scented geraniums (Pelargonium): Some varieties to try are some of the rose-scenteds (some are better than others), the peppermint, the lemon, and lime. Very rich, very fragrant. The “peppermint” is not quite the same as real peppermint, but is every bit its equal for energizing lift — and even better, doesn’t smell quite like toothpaste. Scented geranium leaves are used in cooking, and you can add leaves to tea - just beware the cooked leaves look really depressingly limp and dead.
• Peppermint and spearmint. Unfortunately these bring to mind toothpaste these days, but the scent is still brisk and refreshing. And of course you can eat them, put them in drinks… even make toothpaste oil from them…..
• Other herbs: oregano, sage, basil, and other mint-family herbs; there’s also fragrant leaves such as dill and cilantro. Even tomato leaves have a distinctive, sharp smell (though I wouldn’t eat them!).
• Shiso/Beefsteak plant/perilla. Word of advice: get your seed or leaves directly from a Japanese source or store if you can. I’ve gotten so-called purple shiso that didn’t have the nice, spicy perilla smell. The Japanese use these distinctly sweet-sour herbal-smelling leaves for pickling and flavoring condiments, but I read that you shouldn’t really eat too many of them plain.
• Onion family. If you’re a sicko like me, you might even enjoy garlic, chives, and onion leaves and flowers. Of course these are edible too.
• Houtteynia. Hmm, I’m not THAT fond of the leaves, but the sharp citrus-y/orange odor when you break one is pretty nifty. Some Houtteynia has orange/red streaks on their leaves, for a nice colorful effect. The flowers are small, plain, but very tidy-looking. Houtteynia is inedible, as far as I know, just so that’s clear….
• Pine. Well … there IS nothing like the scent of certain types of pine, including some types of hedges. (I wouldn’t eat these either.)

Fragrant Foliage Grown for Flowers

• Calamint - Calamintha nepatoides/nepeta (?), possibly var. “White Cloud.” The foliage is fragrant - spicy spearmint smell, very pleasant when crushed - but I really love this plant for its white masses of mint-family flowers (flower spikes). It blooms for months on end, right into autumn, without deadheading or indeed much attention whatsoever. Bees love the flowers, of course.
  I also must put in a plug for its companion in my garden, which blooms in front of it: Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (leadwort). Ceratostigma, though not fragrant as far as I’ve noticed, has beautiful blue flowers and lovely red-tinged foliage (and can be invasive in some conditions). The two together are the visual highlight of my neglected garden because they just keep flowering (white calamint over the blue flowers and red-tinged leaves is so striking), don’t need trimming or deadheading, and keep looking fresh and interesting all throughout late summer and into fall. My echinacea is dead; the roses are a mass of black spots; everything is spent and done - except for the calamint and ceratostigma (and the too-airy tenacious sea lavender/hardy statice). I am amazed; I am in awe; I think I want to plant more of them both.

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An Article from Biodiversity Hotspots

Birds
Nearly 980 birds have been recorded in the hotspot, but only 15 are endemic. The Critically Endangered Himalayan quail (Ophrysia superciliosa) represents an endemic genus in the region, although it has not been recorded with certainty since 1876, despite reports of possible sightings around Nainital in 2003.

BirdLife International has identified four Endemic Bird Areas that overlap partially or fully with the Himalaya hotspot. The Western Himalaya EBA has 11 species restricted to it, including the Himalayan quail as well as the cheer pheasant (Catreus wallichii, VU) and the western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus, VU). The Eastern Himalaya EBA, which also overlaps with part of the Indo-Burma Hotspot, has nearly 20 endemic species, including four that are fully endemic to the Himalayas: the chestnut-breasted partridge (Arborophila mandellii, VU) and rusty-throated wren babbler (Spelaeornis badeigularis, VU), plus the white-throated tit (Aegithalos niveogularis) and orange bullfinch (Pyrrhula aurantiaca).

Some of Asia’s largest birds live in this hotspot, and many are threatened by human activities. For example, some of the region’s vultures (Gyps spp.) have undergone dramatic declines after feeding on the carcasses of cattle that have been treated with the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac. Of other birds present in the hotspot, the greater and lesser adjutants (Leptoptilos spp.) in the foothill grasslands and broadleaf forests, as well as the hornbills in the broadleaf forests, are threatened by loss of nesting trees and lack of food sources.

Other avian flagships include the white-winged duck (Cairina scutulata, EN), the endemic white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis, EN), and the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis, EN).

Mammals
About 300 mammal species have been recorded in the Himalayas, including a dozen that are endemic to the hotspot. Among the endemic species are the golden langur (Trachypithecus geei, EN), restricted to a small area in the Eastern Himalaya, the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus, VU) and the pygmy hog (Sus salvanius, CR), which has its stronghold in the Manas National Park. The only endemic genus in the hotspot is the Namadapha flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterus biswasi, CR), described only from a single specimen from Namdapha National Park.

The mammalian fauna in the lowlands is typically Indo-Malayan, consisting of langurs (Semnopithecus spp.), Asiatic wild dogs (Cuon alpinus, VU), sloth bears (Melursus ursinus, VU), gaurs (Bos gaurus, VU), and several species of deer, such as muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak) and sambar (Cervus unicolor). In the mountains, the fauna transitions into Palearctic species, consisting of snow leopard (Uncia uncia, EN), black bear (Ursus thibetanus, VU), and a diverse ungulate assemblage that includes blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur), takin (Budorcas taxicolor, VU), and argali (Ovis ammon, VU).

The alluvial grasslands support some of the highest densities of tigers (Panthera tigris, EN) in the world, while the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers that flow along the foothills also support globally important populations of the freshwater Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica). Some of the world’s last remaining populations of wild water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis, EN) and swamp deer (Cervus duvaucelii, VU) are restricted to protected areas in southern Nepal and northeastern India.

Reptiles
Alhough there has been little systematic study of reptiles and amphibians in the Himalaya hotspot, at least 175 reptiles have been documented, of which nearly 50 are endemic. There is just one endemic genus, represented by a single species, the lizard Mictopholis austeniana, known only from the holotype. Other genera are well represented, and have many endemic species. These include Oligodon, Cyrtodactylus, and Japalura.

Amphibians
Among amphibians, there are 105 species known to occur in the hotspot, more than 40 of which are endemic. Most of these are frogs and toads, although there are also two species of caecilians, one of which, (Ichthyophis sikkimensis, is endemic and occurs in northern India (in the States of Sikkim and West Bengal) and extreme eastern Nepal (in Dabugaun in the Ilam District) at elevations of 1,000 to 1,550 meters.

Freshwater Fishes
Fish species from three major drainage systems, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra, inhabit the Himalaya hotspot, although the ranges of many species only just reach into the cold, high-altitude waterways of this region. As a result, only 30 of nearly 270 species are endemic.

The three most diverse of the 30 different families represented here are minnows and carps (Cyprinidae; 93 species and 11 endemics), river loaches (Balitoridae; 47 species and 14 endemics), and sisorid catfishes (Sisoridae; 34 species and four endemics). The genus Schizothorax is represented by at least six endemic species in the high mountain lakes and streams, while two other genera of these snowtrout, the genus Ptychobarbus and the Ladakh snowtrout (Gymnocypris biswasi) — a monotypic genus now thought to be extinct — are also unique to the Himalaya Hotspot.

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