Uncle John's Creature Feature Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! Read online

  DOLPHIN FACTS

  Dolphins are born with mustaches. (So are whales.)

  A dolphin can hold its breath for up to eight minutes and dive as deep as 1,000 feet.

  Dolphins never take a drink. They absorb all their water from their food.

  Dolphins sleep with one eye shut—half of their brain rests; the other half (and the other eye) stays awake.

  Every dolphin has signature whistles, or “names,” that it uses to find its family and friends.

  The largest dolphin is the orca, or killer whale, which can grow to 31.5 feet long (about 10 meters).

  The smallest? It’s a tie between Hector’s dolphin and the black dolphin. Adults can be as short as four feet long (1.2 meters).

  OCEAN ACROBATS

  Dolphins are graceful and athletic. They’re the stars of aquarium shows the world over, dazzling audiences with soaring flips and dives. But the superstars are the spinner dolphins. These mammals got their name from their signature jump: They can leap out of the water and rotate up to seven times, like an ice skater doing an axel jump. Spinners have other great moves, too: tail slaps, fluke dives, nose-outs, and spectacular head-over-tail flips.

  Like all dolphins, spinners love to play. One of their favorite games is “make a play-toy.” Anything floating in the water—a fishing float, a lump of driftwood—becomes “it.” Spinners will play catch with the object, and even wear it on their heads like a hat. They’re so much fun to watch that Hawaiians call them “Ambassadors of Aloha.”

  Dolphin researchers have studied spinners to figure out why they jump and spin, and have come up with a few explanations. Sometimes they spin to get rid of a pesky parasite. Sometimes a spinner wants to signal the rest of the pod exactly where it is (in this case, the spin ends with a loud belly-flop). But the best explanation for why spinners spin is, well, because they can.

  IS SAND FISH POOP?

  Well, some of it is—particularly on the coral reefs of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Coral are actually small animals, related to sea anemones, that protect their soft bodies with a limestone covering. Coral gather in colonies that number in the millions. Each new generation of coral builds on the skeleton of the previous one, and over time coral reefs become home to all kinds of sea life. Those limestone skeletons are literally hard as a rock, but that doesn’t bother the bumphead parrotfish.

  Bumpheads love to eat the algae that grow on the coral. Rather than pick it off bit by bit, they use their strong jaws to chomp right through the rock, which they swallow along with the algae. Then they poop it out as fine white sand. On a single reef, bumpheads can crank out a ton of sand every year. Over centuries the sand builds up to make tropical islands. So those beautiful white beaches you see on postcards of tropical paradises are really nothing but a load of fish poop!

  GNARLY TEETH

  QUESTION:

  What’s got a hard shell, weighs more than 1,000 pounds, and has a mouthful of truly gnarly “teeth”?

  ANSWER:

  THE LEATHERBACK TURTLE

  Well, maybe not actually teeth. What this ocean reptile has is a mouthful of stiff spines that point backwards to help it swallow its favorite food—jellyfish!

  MONSTER WAVES

  So you want to be a sailor? You may change your mind after you read this.

  WALL OF WATER

  What’s a monster wave? One that rises 80 feet or more above the ocean’s surface. Imagine a wall of water ¼ mile wide and as high as a 10-story building bearing down on you like a freight train. That’s a monster wave! Sometimes they’re called “freaks” and “rogues.” The biggest wave ever measured at sea was 98 feet tall. Most monster waves are caused by hurricanes and other storms. Others happen when waves join great ocean currents like the Gulf Stream. But wherever they come from, they’re deadly—monster waves can snap a giant tanker ship in half like a toothpick. Worst of all, it takes hundreds of miles for one to build up to monster size. A ship can be sailing on a clear day far from a storm and still get slammed by a monster wave.

  HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER

  Q: What do you call a fish with no eye?

  A: FSH!

  Q: How do you keep a fish from smelling?

  A: Cut off its nose.

  Q: If fish lived on land, which country would they live in?

  A: Finland.

  Q: What did the boy octopus say to the girl octopus?

  A: I want to hold your hand hand hand hand hand hand hand hand.

  Q: Why are fish smarter than mice?

  A: Because they live in schools.

  SEA ANIMAL QUIZ #1: WHAT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS GIANT?

  IT’S BIG…

  …As in the biggest creature that ever lived. In fact, this giant is larger than a brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex put together.

  • Its tongue weighs as much as an elephant.

  • Its heart is as big as a car.

  • Some of its blood vessels are so wide that a person could swim down them.

  REALLY BIG…

  The largest one ever measured was 108 feet long and weighed almost 190 tons. If you stood one on its tail, it would be as tall as a 10-story building. You’d have to stack up more than 25 elephants to equal its weight.

  AND FAST…

  It can swim at speeds of up to 48 mph, making it one of the fastest swimmers in the world.

  AND HUNGRY…

  It spends its summers in the icy waters around Antarctica eating krill, tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that live there in huge swarms. A single one of these creatures can eat 40 million krill in a day.

  AND LOUD!

  Our mystery mammal is the loudest creature ever recorded. A jet plane can reach a volume of 120 decibels. A gunshot might hit 140 decibels. But this monster’s call clocks in at 180 decibels and can be heard for thousands of miles underwater.

  WHAT IS IT?

  ANSWER:

  THE BLUE WHALE!

  This marvelous creature is also one of the most mysterious. Scientists are just beginning to understand some of its habits, but there’s much they still don’t know, such as where it breeds, or where it migrates. Sadly, we may never find out because the blue whale has been hunted almost to extinction. Almost half a million were killed in the 19th century for their blubber. Scientists guess that there might be as few as 2,000 left. Because they are so rare, today there is a worldwide ban on hunting the blue whale.

  FIERCE GUARDIANS

  Swimming in Hawaii? Don’t forget your aumakua!

  Many Hawaiians believe that guardian spirits protect their family. The guardians, known as aumakua, often take the form of a powerful animal, such as the shark. As long as the family takes care of their aumakua, the shark will take care of them.

  • In the 1930s, a tour boat sank off the island of Molokai. Sharks attacked and everyone was killed…except the captain, who later said he had called his aumakua. When the shark appeared, it offered the captain its dorsal fin and pulled the man safely past the other sharks to the shore.

  • A man from Maui and his wife were sailing to a neighboring island when a sudden squall capsized the boat and swept them into the rough seas. As they foundered in the water, the man called out, “If I have any aumakua in this ocean, I pray you to carry us to the land.” A streak flashed by them and a shark appeared in the water. They grabbed the shark by the tail, and it towed them safely to shore.

  THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

  Planes and boats check in, but they don’t check out.

  In 1918 a ship called the U.S.S. Cyclops sailed into an area of water off the Florida coast…and vanished. There were 309 people aboard and not one person, nor a lifeboat or even a scrap of wood, was ever found. For hundreds of years, people have been talking about this expanse of ocean that stretches from Bermuda to Florida to Puerto Rico, known as the Bermuda Triangle. Records show that more than 1,000 people have vanished there—which may be the reason some people also call it the Devil’s Triangle.

  Even as far back as 1492, Christop
her Columbus reported trouble on his first voyage to the New World when he crossed the Bermuda Triangle. He and his crew observed strange lights hovering over the ocean, and noted in the ship’s log that their compass suddenly went haywire.

  MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

  In 1945 five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers flew over that area during a military training exercise. Two hours into the mission, the pilots sent this radio message: “Everything is wrong. The ocean doesn’t look as it should.” All five planes in the squadron reported that their compasses were spinning and they couldn’t tell north from south. They said the sky was a strange yellow color…and then they were gone. The Navy immediately sent another plane with a crew of 13 men to help. That plane disappeared, too.

  Where did they go? The Navy searched for weeks, but not a single clue was found. The planes had simply vanished. More than 100 ships and planes have disappeared into the Triangle. Ships have been found drifting in the area with all of the passengers missing. Sometimes a dog or a bird will be left behind, but never a human. Pilots flying over the area will be having a normal radio conversation with ground control and suddenly they’re gone, as if they’ve flown into a hole in the sky.

  UNSOLVED MYSTERY

  What causes compasses to go wild and lights to appear in the sky? Some say that in this area of the ocean is a pocket of magnetic energy that affects electronic gear. Others speak of black holes that send planes and ships into some kind of time warp. Geologist Dr. Richard McIver thought that undersea landslides might cause the release of huge amounts of methane gas which would make the sea look like it’s boiling and create clouds of odd-colored light. Some folks whisper about aliens in UFOs abducting the people and planes.

  What do you think?

  FALSE ALARM

  Ew. What’s that smell?

  In December 2006, an alarm went off in the aquarium at the Weymouth Sea Life Center in England. Marine biologist Sarah Leaney raced to the tank to see what was wrong, but found nothing out of order. As she looked at the alarm sensor, a sea turtle floating by ripped off a couple of farts that set the alarm off again. Leaney quickly realized what had happened: The staff had fed the turtle a holiday treat of Brussels sprouts. It seemed that vegetable has the same effect of turtles as it does on people when they eat too much of it—it produces a mighty, stinky wind!

  THE WORLD’S SAFEST BEACH? HA!

  New Smyrna Beach, Florida, may be the shark bite capital of the world.

  According to the International Shark Attack File, two-thirds of all shark attacks in the United States occur in Volusia County, Florida. Most of those take place at New Smyrna Beach, a place once advertised by local businessmen as “the world’s safest bathing beach.” In August 2001, ten people, most of them surfers, were bitten in as many days. The “world’s safest beach” was closed for 10 days while thousands of black-tip sharks cruised by off the coast on their annual migration north. Experts used to think black-tip sharks weren’t a threat to people…but not any more!

  SHARK FACTS

  Sharks have no bones. Their skeletons are made of cartilage, the same stuff that’s in your ears and your nose.

  Sharks are ancient. They were patrolling the oceans more than 300 million years ago—nearly 75 million years before the dinosaurs were around.

  Scientists think sharks were the first creatures to have teeth.

  A shark can detect a single drop of blood in a million drops (25 gallons) of water.

  If it doesn’t keep swimming, a shark will sink.

  Sharks can sense vibrations in water, and they can detect electrical currents. They use these skills to find their prey.

  FISH SALON

  If cleaner fish could speak, their favorite word would be, “Next!”

  Life for a fish is tough. It spends every waking minute trying to eat other fish and avoid being eaten. But there’s one class of fish that gets a free pass from the “I’m gonna eat you first” rule: cleaner fish. These tiny fish (mostly wrasses and gobies the size of minnows) have carved out a special niche for themselves in the sea.

  Most fish suffer from parasites—little bugs that latch onto scales and gills like ticks on a dog. But unlike dogs, fish can’t scratch. So they line up at cleaning stations set up by cleaner fish in caves or overhangs. The cleaner fish crowd around each “customer” fish and nibble off all of the pests. They even do a teeth cleaning, swimming safely in and out of the gaping jaws of their guests. They work hard, too—researchers on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef logged some cleaner fish servicing 2,000 fish a day.

  Being a cleaner isn’t just a job for fish. There are cleaner shrimp, and even seagulls. But it’s a sweet deal for the ones that take on the job: They get an unlimited supply of food (up to 1,200 parasites a day—yum!), and best of all, they don’t get eaten by their clients.

  DID YOU KNOW…

  …the world’s only underwater mailbox can be found 32.8 feet below the surface in Susami Bay, Japan? Diver Heinze Pieorkowski put it there on April 23, 1999, but he didn’t say why.

  FLIPPER

  The first dolphin superstar was a female named Mitzi.

  One night a stuntman named Ricou Browning was watching the TV show Lassie with his kids and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to do a show like this with a boy and a dolphin?” Ricou took his idea to producer Ivan Tors, and the movie Flipper was born. A dolphin named Mitzi was chosen to be the star. Mitzi was smart: She could fetch five things at once, tow a boat with a rope, shake hands, hit the water with her tail, and give someone a ride with her flipper. Her best trick was carrying a boy on her back, which she learned by playing fetch: One day Ricou tossed his nine-year-old son into the water and told Mitzi to retrieve him. The dolphin put her fin under the boy’s arm and brought him right back.

  The movie Flipper came out in 1963, and was a huge success. Another movie was made, followed by a TV series. By then Mitzi had retired. She was replaced by another female dolphin named Suzy, who played Flipper from 1964 to 1967.

  SEA DOGS

  Aye, matey, it’s those two-legged scourges of the sea—pirates.

  BLACKBEARD. The most feared pirate of them all was Blackbeard, a true Pirate of the Caribbean. Blackbeard (his real name was Edward Teach) went into battle with six pistols strapped across his chest and smoking fuses woven into his wild hair and beard. This merciless villain was known to shoot his own crew because, he said, “If I don’t shoot one every now and again, they’ll forget who I am.” When he discovered that the woman he loved had given a ring to another sailor, he attacked her boyfriend’s ship and mailed the man’s severed hand—with the ring still on it—to the lady. He terrorized the Caribbean and the Atlantic off the Carolina coast from 1716 to 1718 in his ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. His final battle was against the Pearl, a British ship led by pirate hunter Robert Maynard. Trapped in a shallow bay, Blackbeard fought like a madman to the end. Maynard wrote in his report that Blackbeard was stabbed 20 times and shot five times before he finally fell. They cut off the pirate’s head and hung it from the bowsprit as a warning to all other pirate wannabes. But Blackbeard had the last word. Legend has it that when his headless body was thrown overboard, it swam around the Pearl five times…looking for its head.

  BARTHOLOMEW ROBERTS. “Black Bart” Roberts came to piracy late (he was 37), but he was the most successful pirate of all time. Born in Wales, he roamed the seas from Brazil to Africa to Newfoundland, capturing and looting more than 400 ships during his career. He designed his own pirate flag, which had a giant figure of himself, cutlass in hand, standing on two skulls. Roberts’ life of crime came to an end when he was killed by a hail of gunfire in a battle off the coast of West Africa in 1722.

  BLACK CAESAR. Henri “Black” Caesar was born a slave in Haiti in 1765. He worked in a sawmill, where he was mistreated by a white overseer. In 1791 Haitian slaves revolted against their masters and Caesar joined the fight, starting first by executing his overseer with a crosscut saw. When peace came in 1804, he turned to piracy
and quickly became feared across the Caribbean for his ferocity in battle and his skill as a sailor. He later moved his base to the west coast of Florida, and is supposed to have buried millions in loot on Sanibel Island. Unlike most pirates of his day, Black Caesar didn’t end his life at the end of a rope. In fact, no one knows what became of him. He just vanished.

  MADAME CHING

  One of the greatest pirates of all time was…a woman!

  Madame Ching terrorized the waters off the coast of China in the early years of the 19th century. At the height of her power, she commanded a fleet of 1,800 ships and 70,000 men. But she didn’t get to the top by being nice. If one of her pirates broke her rules, she had his head lopped off.

  Although Madame Ching terrorized the Chinese navy for years, she was able to do what few pirates ever accomplished: die of old age. In exchange for giving up piracy, the Chinese Navy granted her a pardon in 1810. Madame Ching was even allowed to keep all of her stolen treasure. She used it to open up a gambling house, which she ran for the rest of her life.