Innehållsförteckning för June 2023 från What on Earth! Magazine

A QUICK TURNAROUND This brave rider and her horse are competing in a barrel race. Each time the horse passes a barrel, it needs to slow down sharply before racing on to the next one! SANPIT! MAKING A SPLASH! The steeplechase is a longdistance running race in which athletes have to leap over a hurdle and water obstacle placed on the track. German athlete Lea Meyer unfortunately clipped the hurdle as she jumped over it, causing her to plunge head first into the water! MOON MOUNTAIN To take this stunning photo of the Moon rising above a mountain, Spanish photographer Jordi Coy had to be exactly six miles away from the mountain. Jordi then put his camera in the perfect position so that the Moon would look as if it…

WHALE SHARK Length: 19 metres. The whale shark is the world’s biggest living fish. Its mouth can contain more than 300 rows of tiny teeth, each no bigger than the head of a match. HUMAN DIVER Length: 1.75 metres. ZEBRA SHARK Length: 3.25 metres. Zebra shark pups have a pattern like a zebra’s, with yellow stripes on a brown body. WHITE-SPOTTED BAMBOO SHARK Length: 0.75 metres. This small shark is harmless to humans and often kept in aquariums. BASKING SHARK Length: 10 metres. The second-largest living fish, basking sharks feed on krill and other plankton. WHITETIP REEF SHARK Length: 4 metres. The whitetip reef shark lives close to coral reefs and nearby seabeds. BULL SHARK Length: 2.5 metres. Bull sharks migrate from salty oceans to freshwater rivers, swimming upstream to…

RUNNERSUP Eleven people who came second 1 The Egyptian pharaoh Khafre built the second-tallest pyramid (about 2530 BCE). 2 English seaman Sir Francis Drake was the second person to sail around the world on a single expedition (1577 to 1580). 3 British tennis player Charlotte Cooper was the second woman to win an Olympic gold medal (11 July 1900). 4 British explorer Robert Falcon Scott led the second team of adventurers to reach the South Pole (17 January 1912).* 5 American aviator Amelia Earhart, pictured in the main photo above, was the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (22 May 1932).** 6 American athlete Jesse Owens, pictured right, was the second track-and-field athlete to win four gold medals at one Olympic Games (in Berlin in August 1936).***…

Lessons of the blinking mudskipper Mudskipper fish are extraordinary animals for several reasons, including the fact that they live on both land and in water. They are also the only fish that blink! Scientists at Penn State University, USA, have been studying mudskippers’ blinking to understand why they do it - which, as with humans, is mostly to clean and protect their eyes - and to discover more about how this unusual behaviour for fish helps them to survive on land as well as in the water. This could provide fascinating clues as to how, hundreds of millions of years ago, humans’ fishy ancestors evolved to become land animals, too. NASA’s robot snake goes in search of hidden aliens We have yet to find evidence of life anywhere else in…

SHARK TALES DID YOU KNOW? Sharks have such a powerful sense of smell they could detect a single drop of blood in a bathtub of water! DID YOU KNOW? A shark’s ears are sensitive enough to hear sounds from several hundred metres away, helping it to locate prey. Sharks are some of the oldest animals on Earth. They first emerged more than 300 million years ago and there are still more than 300 species, or types, of shark swimming in our seas today. As you will discover when you see our fantastic pull-out poster on page 26, sharks come in all shapes and sizes. The giant, 19-metre-long whale shark is the largest living fish, while the smallest shark, the dwarf lantern shark, is only about 17 centimetres long. On the…

Fossils are the preserved remains of long-lost creatures or the impressions they left behind. When creatures die, usually their bodies rot or dissolve. Sometimes, though, minerals in the ground replace onceliving cells, creating a fossil. The same thing can happen to shells or teeth or footprints. Fossils are wonderful for helping scientists understand what kinds of creatures once lived on Earth. Expert fossil hunters are called palaeontologists. Charles Doolittle Walcott loved finding fossils. He was born in New York Mills, New York, USA, in 1850. As a young boy he found school quite boring. It wasn’t that he had no interest in things, just the opposite. He was so curious that he wanted to get outside and explore the world for himself - in particular, he liked to look for…

AMPULLAE A shark’s snout is covered in small pores, or holes, called ampullae of Lorenzini. These pores can detect tiny electrical currents in the water which are given off by the shark’s prey. NOSTRIL These are used for smelling, not breathing. TEETH Most species of shark have several rows of teeth. As you can see in the diagram below, as the front row of teeth wears down, newer rows of teeth move forwards in the shark’s mouth to replace them. Some sharks can use and lose more than 20,000 teeth in their lifetime! EYE A shark has eyes on either sides of its head, which gives it almost 360° vision. PECTORAL FIN The shark uses this fin to balance and steer. The fins are shaped in the same way as…

Living Things Change The process of natural selection works very slowly. It usually takes thousands, if not millions, of years for new species to evolve. Today, mammals are an incredibly diverse group of animals, but they all developed from a single group. Monotreme Mammals Scientists believe that the first mammals laid eggs just like reptiles and amphibians. Only two egg-laying mammals are still around today: the platypus and the echidna. These both belong to a group called monotremes and live in Australia. Placental Mammals Most modern mammals, including humans, are part of a group called placentals, in which the baby fully develops inside the mother. After birth, she feeds the baby and cares for it. Marsupial Mammals Marsupials, such as kangaroos, are a small group of mammals from an older…

GEOGRAPHY WORD SEARCH Can you spot the names of 25 countries hidden in our jumbo word search puzzle? Good luck! AZERBAIJAN BOTSWANA CUBA DENMARK ETHIOPIA FINLAND GUATEMALA HUNGARY IRAN JAMAICA KENYA LIECHTENSTEIN MEXICO NAMIBIA OMAN PAPUA NEW GUINEA QATAR RWANDA SRI LANKA TURKEY UKRAINE VENEZUELA WALES YEMEN ZAMBIA NUMBER TRIANGLES! In the triangles below, the numbers inside the squares are the sum of the two numbers in the connected circles. For example: Can you work out which number should appear in each of the circles? All the numbers in the circles are between 1 and 9 and a number can only be used once in each triangle. SPOT THE DIFFERENCE Can you spot all 20 differences between these two inventive illustrations? WORD WHEEL Use the word wheel to help find…