Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers Read online

  But it was Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, and her “Rose Renaissance” that brought the rose into the modern age. She wanted to grow every kind of rose in the world in her gardens. To that end, Napoleon ordered his captains to bring back roses from their conquests. By the end of her life, Josephine had successfully cultivated 250 varieties of the flower. So beloved were her gardens that they sparked a fad of growing ornamental roses throughout Europe and in the New World—a fad that persists to this day.

  Kermit at the Beach

  How many frogs live in the ocean?

  Miss Hoggy?

  What’s the difference between a pig and a hog?

  Kermit at the Beach

  No frogs live in the ocean—at least not for very long. Frogs are water-permeable, which means they can drink water through their skin. So if a frog jumped into saltwater, it would quickly become dehydrated and die. However, there is one frog that can tolerate saltwater for short periods of time: the crab-eating frog of southeast Asia. Because the mangrove swamps it lives in can contain brackish water, the crab-eating frog has adapted by increasing its ability to produce and retain urea (a chemical compound found in urine), allowing it to absorb moisture back from its own pee so it doesn’t rapidly dehydrate as other frogs would, even when it’s briefly exposed to saltwater.

  Miss Hoggy?

  It’s all in the poundage. In the United States, any fully grown swine weighing less than 180 pounds is generally called a pig. Any swine heavier than that is called a hog. (This isn’t a global rule: All British swine are simply “pigs.”)

  The U.S. has other specialized names for swine. Newborns are called piglets until they’re weaned. After that, the animal is called a shoat or a weaner. A half-grown pig can be a gilt (female), a boar (uncastrated male), or a barrow (castrated male). Adult females are sows, uncastrated males are still called boars, and castrated males are stags. After death, most farm swine get a new name—either sausage, chops, ham, or bacon.

  Stomping Grounds

  How can you tell if two horses are really fighting or just elephanting around? Oops…we got that backwards. Second try: How can you tell if two elephants are really fighting or just horsing around?

  Grass Stains

  Rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. What are these?

  Stomping Grounds

  In a play fight, elephants wrap their trunks around each other’s heads. In a real fight for dominance, elephants protect their trunks by curling them under their chins while they shove against each other face-to-face at tusk level. Although this battle may seem quite fierce and full of sound and fury, it rarely injures the fighters and almost never leads to a fatality…for the elephants. Humans should keep their distance, though. As the Kikuyu people of Kenya say, “When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

  Grass Stains

  Contrary to popular belief, cows don’t really have four stomachs—rather, they have a four-chambered stomach consisting of the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. You’d need a four-chambered stomach, too, if you tried to digest roughly 100 pounds of grass every day. How do cows do it? They regurgitate and rechew the partly-digested grass—called cud—as it goes from section to section. The repeated mastication (chewing) breaks down more and more of the plants’ cell walls, releasing the vitamins and minerals within. Even so, chewing the cud isn’t a complete process…which is evident by the amount of undigested grass that gets stuck to the bottom of your boot when you step in a cow pie.

  Don’t Be Scared

  Rhode Island’s are red. Which state’s are blue? And what do they say: “Cluck,” “Tweet,” or “Coo”?

  And the Sheeple Shall Lead

  How many more sheep than people are there in New Zealand?

  Don’t Be Scared

  If you recognized Rhode Island Reds in the question, then you know they’re chickens. And if you know they’re chickens, you know they say “cluck.” But unless you’re a chicken-ologist, you’ve probably never heard of the Blue Hens of Delaware. The official state birds were once formidable cockfighters, but are now much more peaceful (because cockfighting has been outlawed).

  Footnote: Rhode Island Reds are among the most prolific egg layers in the chicken world, some of them producing upwards of 250 large brown eggs per year.

  And the Sheeple Shall Lead

  New Zealand has tens of millions of sheep—roughly 10 for every one person. Sheep are so important to the island nation’s economy that New Zealanders celebrate National Lamb Day every February 15. But with the proliferation of synthetic fibers, sheeps’ original economic function—to provide wool for the British textile industry—is no longer their primary use.

  So what do the Kiwis do with all those sheep? Many raise them for food. Sheep parts are also used to make lanolin and tallow for candles. Their intestines can be made into sausage casings, sutures, condoms, and strings for tennis rackets and musical instruments. Our favorite: Sterilized sheep poop contains cellulose, making it useful as an ingredient in paper.

  Hive Got a Question

  You just bought a pound of honeybees. How many bees do you have?

  I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka!

  Female mosquitoes want your blood. Why?

  Hive Got a Question

  It takes 3,000 to 4,000 bees to make a pound, depending on how plump they are when you buy them. Who buys bees by the pound? Beekeepers, of course. This recent small-business craze—called apiculture— is buzzing with opportunity.

  Beginning beekeepers usually buy two to three pounds of bees for their home apiaries, consisting of several thousand workers and a queen. The queen lays the eggs; the workers gather nectar and pollen and tend to the larval bees—the brood. In a good summer, if all goes well within the walls of the comb, the hive’s population can grow to anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000. Beekeepers then harvest and sell the honey and wax, and if they’re really lucky, after all the other expenses (hive boxes, packaging, marketing, protective suits), they can maybe break even for the year. “There’s a lot of money in beekeeping,” goes an old saying, “If only you could figure out how to get that money back out!”

  I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka!

  Both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar, but in order to lay eggs, the female also requires iron-rich nutrients. The world’s best supply happens to be found in the blood of plump, juicy mammals. This relationship has worked out great for the bugs, but lousy for people. Due to the spread of blood-borne diseases, mosquitoes have been responsible for about half of all human deaths since the Stone Age.

  That Ex-stinks!

  What animal met its end in a museum?

  That Ex-stinks, too!

  Where did the dodo live and die?

  That Ex-stinks!

  The Great Auk, a three-foot-tall flightless bird similar to the penguin, once thrived on the rocky islands of the North Atlantic. Then the Europeans arrived. They hunted the easy prey for food and fish bait, but mostly for its soft down, which became highly prized.

  By the late 1700s, it had become obvious that the Great Auk was going extinct, prompting some of history’s first environmental protection laws, but it was too late. All across Europe, museum curators said, “We must procure a stuffed Great Auk for our collection before they’re all gone!” Result: a Great Auk killing spree. On July 3, 1844, in Eldey, Iceland, a museum collector killed the last known pair of Great Auks.

  That Ex-stinks, too!

  The dodo, a three-foot-tall flightless bird similar to a large pigeon, once thrived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. The birds had been living on the island for thousands of years. So safe was their habitat that—over time—they lost the ability to fly. Then the Europeans arrived. When the Dutch began using Mauritius as a stop-over on their trade routes in the 1600s, their ships brought dogs, cats, rats, and humans. The flightless birds were no match for the Dutch and their beastly companions. By 1681, barely 65 years after it first encountered “civilizatio
n,” the dodo was completely extinct.

  Ichabug Crane

  How long can a headless cockroach live?

  Skeletor

  This common animal has a distinctive feature that is made up of more than 50 bones and even has nerve endings. What is it?

  Ichabug Crane

  A headless cockroach can stay alive for up to two weeks before it dies of starvation. How can that be possible? Cockroaches are so small that their circulatory system requires no significant pressure to keep blood flowing, so if their heads are severed, their blood quickly clots, preventing them from bleeding to death. And cockroaches breathe through spiracles, tiny holes spread around their bodies that require no direction from their brain. And although their brains are located in their heads, cockroaches have ganglia spread throughout their bodies. These collections of nerve cell bodies act a bit like little brains, allowing the headless cockroach to stand up, walk, and react to stimulation. Weirder still, a cockroachless head will stay alive, too: It will wave its antennae around for several hours before it also dies of starvation.

  Skeletor

  It’s the turtle, whose shell is technically part of the reptile’s skeleton—the ribs and backbones, to be exact. The shells get their distinctive patterns not from the bones, but from the scutes on top of the bones, which are made of keratin (the primary substance in hair, nails, and hooves in other animals). Although the turtle’s upper shell, called the carapace, is hard enough to withstand attacks from most predators, it is very sensitive to the touch. (In fact, one of our writers has a pet turtle named Proudfoot that seems to enjoy a good petting.)

  We Ain’t Lion

  Which African mammal is responsible for the most human deaths?

  Pocket Protector

  A mother kangaroo stands more than six feet tall and weighs 200 pounds. How big is her newborn?

  We Ain’t Lion

  When you think of a hippopotamus, what do you see—a fat, lazy animal floating in a watering hole? Perhaps something in a tutu? Don’t be fooled: This 8,000-pound beast is responsible for more than 200 human deaths per year; that’s more than lions, tigers, rhinos, and crocodiles combined. These massive herbivores are fiercely territorial—especially nursing mothers—and they will attack any human that they perceive as being too close, whether you’re on land or in a boat. With its gigantic mouth gaping wide open, an angry, angry hippo will charge an intruder and, in a few documented cases, simply bite his head clean off.

  Pocket Protector

  The size of a lima bean. That’s how small a kangaroo is the first time it’s born. The kangaroo is a marsupial, and unlike other mammal mothers, which carry their young for the full term, marsupials give premature birth. After gestating in the mother’s womb for about 36 days, the hairless, blind, larva-like, bean-sized baby emerges and instinctively uses its partially developed forearms to climb into its mother’s pouch and clamp onto a teat. It stays in the pouch for six months, occasionally poking its head out. Then the baby, now called a joey, climbs out and starts exploring but still spends most of its time in the pouch. By month nine, the joey, now weighing about 20 pounds, leaves the pouch for the last time.

  What’s Up, Chuck?

  Oh, no! One of your extremities is swelling; you have severe muscle cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Your heart is racing! You’re suffering from latrodectism! What happened to you?

  Admiral Birds

  In 1916 the French military placed birds in cages high up in the Eiffel Tower. What type of birds were they, and why were they put there?

  What’s Up, Chuck?

  You were bitten by Latrodectus—more commonly known as the black widow spider. The condition that results from her venom (only females bite humans) is called latrodectism. So what are your chances of being bitten by a black widow? Not high. Although the spiders inhabit much of the U.S. and have venomous cousins in Australia and Europe, none of them are aggressive; they’ll bite only if threatened. They live in dark places, so if you keep rolled-up posters in your garage, you may want to open them carefully; if you keep a pair of shoes on your porch, check inside before sticking your feet in. And if you are bitten, go to a doctor as fast as you can: Although only 1 percent of black widow bites are fatal, they are very painful and the symptoms can worsen if left untreated.

  Admiral Birds

  They were parrots. It was World War I, and the French military was taking advantage of the parrots’ amazing sense of hearing. That, along with the fact that they squawk loudly when disturbed by any unusual sound—such as enemy planes—made them perfect “guard birds.” Placed in cages high in the Eiffel Tower, the parrots could squawk out a warning of a German air raid up to 20 minutes before human ears could detect it. It wasn’t a perfect system, however, because the birds were unable to distinguish between German and Allied aircraft.

  Good Boy!

  If you threw an orange ball into a field of green grass underneath a blue sky, a dog would see these colors as a _______ ball, _______ grass, and a _______ sky.

  Wormicide

  How many silkworms must die to make a pound of silk?

  Good Boy!

  The dog sees a yellow ball being thrown into yellow grass underneath a blue sky. Dogs’ eyes, like all mammals’, consist of photoreceptors called rods and cones. We humans have many more cones than rods, which allow us to discern the difference between mauve and lilac. Dogs, on the other paw, have more rods, which allow them to track movement and see in low light better than we can. So, although Fido can’t discern colors as well as a human, he’s better at picking out movement, so he has no trouble chasing down the ball. Color-wise, dogs can see some of the red spectrum and all of the blue spectrum, but they can’t see greens at all.

  Wormicide

  It takes 2,000 to 3,000 silkworm cocoons to make a pound of silk…and they all get boiled alive. Domesticated 5,000 years ago, the moths have lost the ability to fly and have become dependent on humans for reproduction. When the silk caterpillar spins a cocoon, it wraps itself up in a single thread of silk, which comes from its salivary glands. That thread, which can measure up to 3,000 feet long, would be broken into many short pieces if the silk moth were allowed to emerge. To prevent this from happening, newly spun cocoons are dropped into boiling water, killing the silkworm inside and making the long silk filament easier to unravel. In some cultures, most notably in Korea, the boiled silkworms are collected and eaten.

  The Numbers Game

  There are more species of what kind of animal than any other?

  See Ya Later…

  How fast can an alligator run?

  The Numbers Game

  Coleoptera—the beetle. The 350,000 known species comprise roughly one-fourth of all species on Earth, both animal and plant. (For comparison, there are “only” about 10,000 known species of ants, and roughly 600 species of primates.) Beetles exist in every habitat except for the polar regions and the ocean (although the whirligig beetle dives into streams and travels inside its own air bubble). Beetles range in appearance from the little ladybug to the African goliath beetle, which can reach six inches long and weigh more than a Big Mac. All beetles have wings, though not all of them fly. So what’s the key to their success? They’re very strong, even for insects, and are protected by tough exoskeletons. (Uncle John’s favorite: the dung beetle.)

  See Ya Later…

  If an alligator ran past a school zone, it could get a ticket for speeding—the reptiles have been clocked at 30 miles per hour. Still, you don’t have to worry too much about being chased down by one on land; they prefer to hunt from the water, where they use the snatch-and-grab method. Alligators only run fast on land when they need to get to the water.

  Another surprising alligator fact: Their jaw muscles are incredibly strong, but only for closing. You could easily hold a gator’s jaws closed with only two fingers. Try it at your own risk, though, or “Two Fingers” might just become your new nickname.

  PAGE, STAGE & SCREEN

  One of humank
ind’s favorite leisure activities is to sit and enjoy things that other people created. Now you can sit and enjoy these Q&A’s about the creators…and the createes.

  Head Start

  Whose head did Thomas Edison chop off in 1895? And how did it make history?

  Hamming It Up

  Miss Piggy made a surprise appearance on a London soundstage in 1979. What movie was being filmed?

  Head Start

  Edison’s 1895 short film The Execution of Mary Stuart had three cinematic milestones: the first dramatic screenplay, the first actors to appear on film, and the first use of special effects. In the 18-second film, an actress playing Mary, Queen of Scots is placed on the chopping block (reenacting Mary’s 1587 execution for plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I). After the executioner raises his ax, there’s an obvious edit; the actress is replaced with a mannequin. The ax comes down, and Mary’s “head” comes off. Then the executioner picks it up and raises it over his head. The end.