The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature — John Shaqi
The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of NatureHenry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
History
The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature
Henry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
Animal behavior; Natural history
Dr. Edward Wilson, surgeon of Sir Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901 south
polar expedition, found the first emperor rookery and was able to
observe it for several days. His account became one of the classics of
science. The big birds hatched their eggs, he found, standing on one
foot on the ice and holding them against the breast feathers with the
other foot. The task evidently was shared by both males and females.
The male would take the egg from the female while she trekked to open
water to feed on fish. After a few days, Wilson supposed, she would
return while the male went after fish.
In 1956 Dr. Bernard Stonehouse of the Falkland Island Dependencies
Administration found another emperor rookery and maintained
observations for about ten weeks. The behavior observed was even more
of a miracle than Dr. Wilson supposed.
After laying their eggs on the ice, Stonehouse noticed, the females
leave immediately for open water and remain there for sixty days, the
full period of incubation. Presumably they feed constantly during this
period. The males take over entirely at the rookery. For two months
the husband remains standing on one foot and holding an egg against
his breast with the other—presumably shifting his feet now and then.
Through the entire hatching period he eats nothing. When the eggs are
about to hatch the mothers return from the sea, tidy up the nursery,
and get ready to take over rearing the chicks. Then the males, who
have exhausted their reserve of fat, stagger feebly in their own mass
migration to open water to rebuild their reserves on fish. By the time
of the Antarctic sunrise in October the chicks are about ready to fend
for themselves.
Standing from three to four feet high and looking and acting
deceptively like a human being, the emperor penguin undoubtedly is one
of the most remarkable birds in existence. It presumably is confined to
the Ross Sea side of the Antarctic continent. The bird—actually it is
about two-thirds feathers—remains an evolutionary enigma. Theories have
been advanced that it is the last surviving member of the fauna of the
Antarctic continent about fifty million years ago when the shorelines
were free of ice. It certainly is off any known road of evolution.
_The Strategy of Warrior Ants_
Total war is the way of life for army ants. The picturesque,
devastating drives of their vast hordes have nothing whatever to do
with exhaustion of food or anything of the sort. The wars come in fixed
cycles, regardless of supplies.
There are two species of these ants on Barro Colorado Island in the
Panama Canal Zone. Each species has approximately 50 colonies and each
colony consists of from a few hundred thousands to more than a million
individuals. At the head of each colony is a single queen who lays all
the eggs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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