Innehållsförteckning för April 2024 från What on Earth! Magazine

START HERE Scientists discovered an ancient species of parrot as tall as a threeyearold and nicknamed it 'SQUAWKZILLA' The fossil of an ancient bird discovered in Antarctica had a wingspan wider than the height of a two-storey building In 1991, geologists discovered dinosaur fossils under the ice in Antarctica A 16th-century Ottoman map appears to show Antarctica without any ice, which is how the continent probably looked 6,000 years ago Prehistoric people drew star maps in the shapes of animals on the walls of caves in France NASA has sent a map into space to show extraterrestrial life how to get to Earth After an Unidentified Flying Object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, USA, in 1947, people believed that the town had been visited by aliens – but it was…

Goats can recognise the differences in other goats’ bleats (even if they might sound the same to humans). To test this, scientists played the sounds of goats enjoying a treat to other goats. They found that the listening goats had increased heart rates. When they heard sad goats (who were recorded when they weren’t allowed food) their heart rates stayed normal. For a long time scientists thought that being able to read and understand the emotions of other animals was something that only primates such as humans and monkeys and a few other animals could do. To find this ability in goats was quite a surprise! So maybe think twice next time you gossip with a goat – they might be understanding more than you think!…

Knock, knock. When someone sets up this type of joke it is almost impossible not to say or think in response: ‘Who’s there?’ Knock knock jokes are popular all around the world, and are told in lots of countries including the UK (obviously!), France, the Philippines and India. But how and when were knock knock jokes invented? Historians cannot be sure who told the very first knock knock joke. But there are two interesting theories about how they began. Some experts think knock knock jokes started in the Middle Ages as repeated ‘call and response’ conversations used by castle guards. When people approached a medieval castle at night, they would have to shout out to the guards to ask to be let in. The castle guards would then call out:…

HOW TO RECOGNISE SPACE ROCKS Asteroids Asteroids are rocky objects that aren’t big enough to form a planet. Meteoroids Meteoroids are small pieces of rock or metal less than 1 metre across. Meteors Often called ‘shooting stars’, meteors are meteoroids that burn up as they enter Earth’s atmosphere, giving off a streak of light. Meteorites Meteorites are parts of meteors that don’t vaporise as they enter Earth’s atmosphere and land on the surface of the planet intact. Comets Comets are clusters of rock, dust and ice orbiting the Sun. There could be as many as a trillion comets in the outer reaches of the solar system. COMETS Comets are born in two outer regions of the solar system, the Kuiper Belt, a vast icy region beyond the orbit of Neptune,…

All species of living things interact with other species out in the wild. This can cause them to evolve in a way that affects one another. When species evolve together it is called coevolution. Flowers and their pollinators offer some great examples of coevolution. Flowers often depend on insects and other animals to help them spread their pollen and seeds. Sometimes these plants and animals become completely dependent on one another. These species are then linked together in the never-ending dance of evolution. The orchid and the moth In 1862, Charles Darwin was sent an interesting flower to study – an orchid from Madagascar. Darwin looked at the flower and noticed that it kept its nectar at the bottom of a 30-centimetre-long tube. He predicted that its pollinator must have…

PHOTOS CAVE OF WONDERS This ice climber is exploring a cave made of ice that is nearly 25 metres underneath Langjökull Glacier in Iceland. Ice caves like this one are formed by hot springs underneath glaciers or by meltwater that flows from the surface. Very cool! EVERYBODY JUMP! The Farleigh Dickinson Knights men’s basketball team from New Jersey, USA, seem to be floating in this fun photograph. While doing their warm-ups before a game, the team all jumped at the same time as the player on the right made a dunk, which was caught at exactly the right moment by the photographer. UNLIKELY FRIENDS This sweet moment between a Balkan pond turtle and a northern banded groundling dragonfly was captured by a bird-watching photographer in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. Instead of…

Send It In! We want to hear your best farm animal impressions! Record yourself making the goat or pig noises listed here and email the file to editor@whatonearth.co.uk The best impressionist will win a copy of the new book How to Chat Chicken!…

It’s an ancient riddle and one that is seemingly impossible to solve. You need a chicken to lay an egg. So you might think that the chicken must come first. Then again, chickens hatch from eggs. So perhaps the egg is the winner. This circular argument is what makes it such a popular riddle, and one that people have been debating for thousands of years. Did you know, for example, that the Greek philosopher Plutarch discussed the chicken versus egg riddle in an essay he wrote in around 100 CE? How do chickens keep fit? They eggs-ercise! Thankfully, modern science can provide some answers. Recent studies suggest that the first domestic chickens evolved from a species of bird called red junglefowl around 8,000 years ago. That sounds pretty old –…

Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘slapstick comedy’? Slapstick is a word used to describe a particular type of physical comedy in which funny accidents and other mishaps happen to people. Classic examples of slapstick comedy include someone accidentally slipping on a banana skin. Or someone (perhaps one of your grown-ups!) having a custard pie splatted in their face. Slapstick is often intended to look painful but any violence is actually made up for comic effect. The origins of slapstick A slapstick was originally a harmless paddle made from two pieces of wood which made a loud whacking sound when they were slapped together. In 16th-century Italian theatre, the harlequin, who we met on the previous page, used it to loudly slap the bottoms of his comic victims! Modern…

1x Earth's radius Proxima Centauri b The closest exoplanet to Earth, it orbits the star Proxima Centauri. 3x Earth's radius GJ 1214 b This exoplanet may have no land whatsoever, as its entire surface could be covered by a single hot, watery ocean. 13x Earth's radius HD 189733 b Scientists think that it could rain glass on this exoplanet! 13x Earth's radius PSR B1620-26 b This exoplanet is thought to be 13 billion years old, which is nearly three times older than Earth. 77x Earth's radius HD 100546 b The largest known exoplanet. It is more than six times bigger than Jupiter. 17x Earth's radius HAT-P-7 b Scientists think it could rain rubies and sapphires on this exoplanet. 15x Earth's radius TrES-2 b This exoplanet is blacker than a lump…

Laughter is a universal human experience. People from all known cultures laugh and smile. In fact, babies don’t even need to have seen or heard somebody else laugh to know how to do it. Laughter just comes naturally. So if laughing and smiling is such an important and instinctive part of what it means to be human, why have we evolved to do it? Here are three good reasons: 1 Laughter helps form social connections. People laugh more often when they are with other people. In fact, scientific studies have shown that you are 30 times more likely to laugh if you are with someone else than if you are alone. Like yawning, laughter can be contagious: once you see other people laughing you sometimes can’t help but join in.…

MIGRATION Every autumn, monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles from Canada to Mexico. The typical lifespan of a monarch is just two months. But those butterflies who are born before the journey south are able to live longer, for seven months. They spend the winter in Mexico and then lay eggs. The original butterflies that migrated die as they begin the journey back to Canada. So it is the second, third or fourth generation of butterflies that eventually returns to Canada. How the new butterflies find their way, having never made the trip before, is a bit of a mystery. Scientists think that they are born with a knowledge of which direction to travel, and that they then use the position of the Sun in the sky to calculate their…

FUNNY WORD SEARCH Can you spot the 20 funny-sounding words hidden in our jumbo word search puzzle? Good luck! CUBE IT! The six-sided shape on the left can be folded up to form a cube. Only two of the cubes next to it can be made by it. Which are they? SPOT THE DIFFERENCE Can you spot all 2O differences between these two science lab illustrations? WORD WHEEL Use the word wheel to help find the answers to the five clues below. All the answers contain the middle letter, and each letter can only be used once. Clue: a strip of hair left to grow on an adult’s upper lip (9 letters). Answer: Clue: what you wear to a fancy dress party (7 letters). Answer: Clue: a space object made…

In the early 13th century, changes were afoot all over the world, but especially in Asia. We know about year-by-year climate changes on the grasslands of Mongolia, north and west of China, because in 2014 scientists Neil Pederson and Amy Hessl worked out something quite amazing. If you’ve ever looked at the end of a log, you know you can see rings there. Each of those rings is the new growth of a particular year, so you can count the rings to learn how old a tree is. And you can see by the width of the rings how warm and wet (or cold and dry) each year was. Pederson and Hessl looked at very old trees in Mongolia and found that there was an intense drought in the area…