The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Science
The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Questions and answers; Science -- Miscellanea; Technology -- Miscellanea
Another reason why the eggs of mammals are retained within the bodies
of the females is the need for protecting the young animals from
enemies. In the animal kingdom each kind of animal preys upon another
kind. They attack and devour each other and are constantly in danger.
If, then, mammals laid eggs in nests and sat upon them to hatch them
out, the mother animals sitting on the nests would be continually in
danger of attack from their enemies. They would either have to flee
and subject the nest and its contents to the danger of destruction or
else stay and fight, and perhaps be destroyed. But by carrying her egg
within her body the mother mammal is able to move about from place to
place and protect her baby.
Is Man an Animal?
Men, women and children belong to the “mammal” class of animals. The
offspring of the human family is the most helpless of all animals at
birth. The young of most kinds of mammals can stand on their legs
shortly after being born, but the human baby requires months before it
can stand up. A baby horse can also walk within a few hours, but human
children do not begin to walk until they are more than a year old.
Why Cannot Babies Walk as Soon as Born?
The human baby has a great many more things to learn than a horse baby
before it is safe for him to go about alone. It takes time for the
brain to develop, and if a baby could walk before the brain had even
partially developed it would only get into trouble.
This, then, is what we have learned about the reproduction of life
and the reasons for its being different in different classes of life.
First, we had the division of organic life into the vegetable and
animal kingdoms. Life in the vegetable kingdom has none of the five
senses, for plants cannot see, hear, feel, smell or taste. They cannot
move from place to place, but remain where they grow until destroyed
or removed. On the other hand, all animal life has at least one of
the five senses--feeling. The oysters and clams belong to this class.
Starting with this level of life in the animal kingdom we find that as
we go on up through the different classes we find each class able to
do things which make it superior to the class below it, until we reach
the human mammal, who can do most of all. And, further, that since each
class as we go up in the scale of life has greater ability to do things
than the class beneath it, so in each case the task of the parents
in preparing their offspring for their kind of life becomes greater,
and the period during which the offspring is learning becomes longer
and longer until we reach the human family, in which we find that
parents have the greatest responsibility, and the children are the most
helpless of all animals, but that in the final result man has a right,
on account of his superior qualities, to be the ruler of the other
creatures of the world.
What Are Ball Bearings?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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