Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

Scuba-Diving Lizard Anoles are lizards that live in many warm areas of the Americas. The little reptiles make a tasty snack for predators like birds and snakes, so hiding in trees is the way many anoles stay safe. One kind of anole that lives in Costa Rica has a special trick to avoid being eaten—it dives underwater with an air bubble over its nose. Researcher Lindsey Swierk studies water an-oles and had seen them make bubbles. She knew the lizards could stay underwater for more than 15 minutes at a time. She wondered if the bubbles helped them do it, like an air tank helps a scuba diver. To find out, she put a temporary coating on some water anoles so that any bubbles they blew wouldn’t stick to their…

Do you have a cat that likes to squeeze into small, cozy spaces, like a box? Did you know some cats will also curl up in a box-shaped, square outline on the floor? Scientist Gabriella Smith used citizen science to test it! Volunteers made a pretend box on the floor using tape or paper shapes that created the illusion of a square. Then they filmed their cats any time the cats checked out the “box” over six days. (The volunteers wore sunglasses so they wouldn’t accidentally signal the cat where to go by looking there.) Cats do what they want, so in the end, only 30 completed the experiment. But those 30 sat in the pretend box just as often as they sat in a real one. They also sat…

When he was a young boy living in a village in southwest India, Ullas Karanth saw wildlife all around. Elephants and leopards roamed the mountains nearby. He spent hours bird-watching. But as Ullas grew up, he saw forests cut down all around India. Because animals cannot survive when their habitats, or natural homes, are destroyed, Ullas worried that the animals he loved would soon disappear. Indeed, tigers were already vanishing. In all his years of looking, Ullas had never seen one in the wild. In the 1970s, other people in India also started worrying about the future of wildlife. The government passed laws and created nature reserves to protect animals. Ullas Karanth saw his first wild tiger in one of those reserves more than 30 years ago. At…

Send your letters to Ask at ask@cricketmedia.com. Dear Ask,My name is Phoebe, and I’m six years old. And I want to know how tissue paper is made.Thanks, Phoebe Dear Phoebe,Tissue paper is made much the same way as regular paper, with a few special treatments to make it softer or more absorbent. The process starts with wood fibers or recycled paper. They get ground up and mixed with water and chemicals to break them down into a mushy slurry called pulp. The pulp gets cleaned, pressed, and heated to turn it into dry, flat, thin paper. That paper then goes through machines that soften it, perforate it, cut it into sheets or strips, and package it onto rolls or into boxes, depending on whether the tissues are meant…

Cats hiss when they’re angry, meow to get our attention, and purr when they’re happy (or to comfort themselves). But cats mostly show what they’re feeling with body language. With practice, you can learn to read these cues too. When you see a cat, look at how she holds herself. Does she look tense or relaxed? Are her ears perked, or moving around, or flat? Is the tail twitching with excitement? Even when she’s silent, your cat is saying plenty! Hello! How are you? A cat with her tail straight up is saying hello. When friendly cats meet, they may rub past each other and entwine tails. Mine, Mine, Mine Cats rub their heads and bodies on things (and you) to spread their scent around. This marks the rubbed object…

February 2025 Volume 24 Number 2 cricketmedia.com $6.95…