Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 /January 2025 från What on Earth! Magazine

The Maori - Polynesian people from what is now New Zealand - may have been the first humans to discover Antarctica, more than 1,300 years ago At just 16 years old, Shoshone explorer Sacagawea guided an American expedition through more than 8,000 kilometres of wilderness, carrying her baby the whole way. Some explorers on long expeditions claimed they needed fresh milk for their health. In the 1930s one group took three cows to Antarctica Antarctic emperor penguins rock back and forth on their heels to keep their feet from The word ‘goth’ comes from the Visigoths, a group of Germanic peoples whose warriors conquered Rome in 410 CE One of the most revered Mongols was Khutulun, a warrior princess who was also an undefeated wrestling champion The coldest temperature ever…

HOW TO READ IT Each clock shows two circles that each represent 12 hours, and so add up to a 24-hour day. The pink portion shows the average time each animal sleeps per day. Giraffes sleep standing up for several ten-minute stints with their eyes barely closed. They sometimes lean against a tree or another giraffe for support. Dolphins, like whales and other aquatic mammals, sleep differently from humans. Instead of its whole brain going to sleep as ours does, one side of a dolphin’s brain gets some rest, while the other side keeps the dolphin semi-alert and breathing. Dolphins even sleep with one eye open! Koalas eat more than a kilogram of leaves every day. All that eating and digesting requires a lot of energy, so they spend a…

How chocolate is made… 1. HARVEST Chocolate comes from the cacao tree. Pods are harvested from the tree and beans are taken out. 2. FERMENT & DRY The cacao beans are fermented and dried, which helps to kill germs and develop the chocolate flavour. 3. ROAST Roasting helps the beans develop even more flavour. The time and temperature affect the taste. 4. WINNOW The beans are cracked and their shells are removed, leaving pieces called cocoa nibs. 5. GRIND The nibs are ground up, which creates a paste called cocoa liquor. 6. COCOA LIQUOR Cocoa liquor is pressed at high pressure to create cocoa butter and cocoa powder. 7. MIX The chocolate ingredients are mixed together. They might include cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, milk powder or sugar. 8. TEMPER The…

PHOTOS MAKING A SPLASH! When whales propel themselves out of the water it’s called breaching. Whales breach for several reasons, including to communicate. The splash can be heard for miles underwater. To find out more about the way whales communicate, turn to page 42. DOUBLE VISION This popular bookshop in the Chinese city of Chongqing has a mirror on the ceiling, which means you can see many of the books and staircases twice. This creates a great effect but does it also make it harder to find the book you want? OH, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE! This pair of Adelie penguins were snapped on an island near Antarctica. The penguin on the right looks as if it has fallen over. The penguin on the left’s expression makes it seem as if…

9 The number of reindeer that pull Santa Claus’s sleigh. Can you name them all*? 3.28 tonnes The weight of the largest Christmas pudding, made in Lancashire, UK, in 1992. That’s heavier than a car! 364 The total number of gifts that ‘my true love gave to me’ in the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’. So one for every day of the year except for Christmas Day. 23.7 million The number of Spotify streams of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ on Christmas Eve, 2023. Carey’s festive hit has broken the record for most Spotify streams on a single day four times. 88 The percentage of people in the UK who said they celebrated Christmas last year. Dear Santa… 6 million+ The estimated number of letters…

Humpback whales are masters of underwater concerts – and if you don’t like their songs, tough luck! They are so loud that they can be heard up to four kilometres away! Humpback whale songs use very low notes that sound like groans and also incredibly high notes that sound like screeches. Their songs can go on for 30 minutes or more and be very complicated. Humpback whales also repeat songs in sessions, like concerts, which can last all day. Humpback whales learn each other’s songs, but also mix them up, singing certain parts for longer and cutting out other sections. Very quickly, these songs change and become slightly different versions of the original song. We don’t know for sure why humpback whales sing, but we do know that it’s only…

Iceberg shapes There are two types of iceberg: those that look like tables, and those that don’t look like tables. Scientists decided to call them tabular and non-tabular icebergs. Calving glaciers Some icebergs come from glaciers, or large masses of slowly moving ice. Glaciers are made of snow that has been pressed together over hundreds of years. In a process called calving, pieces of a glacier break off into the ocean. On the maps to the right, you can see that there is much more ice in the Antarctic than in the Arctic. This is because the ice in the Antarctic sits on top of land, and the ice in the Arctic sits on top of ocean. Ocean holds more heat than land, and so the Arctic is warmer than…

The Galápagos islands are a hotspot for biodiversity, with an exceptional variety of species found on the islands themselves and in the water around them. Biodiversity is higher on the Galápagos than in many other places because there are so many different habitats, places where life can thrive on particular foods, water sources and places to sleep and mate. Endemic species – those found only in the Galápagos – make up most of the indigenous land birds, mammals and reptiles – and around a third of the indigenous land plants. Indigenous species were the ones here when humans arrived. Endemic species were here when humans arrived, plus don’t live anywhere else in the world. And so the number of endemic species living on and around the Galápagos islands is a…

What do snowmen eat for breakfast? Frosties! Question: What did the bald man say when he was given a comb for Christmas? Answer: Thanks – I’ll never part with it! Question: What falls but never gets hurt? Answer: Snow! What is a reindeer’s favourite party game? Truth or deer! What do you call a snowman with a six-pack? The Abdominal Snowman! HA! HA! Why are Christmas trees bad at sewing? They always drop their needles! What does Santa suffer from if he gets stuck in a chimney? Claustrophobia! What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck? A Christmas quacker! Question: What goes ‘Oh, oh, oh’? Answer: Santa Claus walking backwards! What is a snowman’s favourite drink? Who is the naughtiest of Santa’s reindeer? Rude-olph! Question: What do…

The asteroid that made Earth’s oceans boil… Scientists have been investigating the site of a huge meteorite crash in South Africa. The giant space rock was 200 times the size of the asteroid that doomed all the dinosaurs. It hit our planet when Earth was very young, about 3 billion years ago. The crash caused a tsunami, or giant wave, bigger than any in known history. It also boiled the oceans, causing extreme evaporation and raising the temperature of the air. But its impact had a positive effect, too – it churned up nutrients that acted like lots of fertiliser, allowing life on Earth to thrive. Why spiders really are BIGGER IN AUTUMN! When the weather gets colder, spiders like to come indoors, and you may see more of them.…

HHAI! HHAI! (Where’s my baby?) Elephant seal mums use this noise to call for their pups when they come ashore after fishing. ROO-UH-UH-OOAAAR! (I’m the SCARIEST!) This nasal roar means trouble’s afoot. This sound is made by males when they are challenging each other for the females. It means ‘if you don’t back down, there’s going to be trouble!’ Send It In! We want to hear your best elephant seal impressions! Record yourself making the seal noises listed here and email the file to letters@whatonearth.co.uk The best seal will win a copy of the new book How to Chat Chicken! YEEEELLLP YEEEELLLP! (I’m right here!) It can be tricky for females to find their pup in a crowd. So, a pup will shout back to their mum when they hear…

Which coloured line is longer? Look at the red and blue coloured lines in the image above. Which line do you think is longer? At first glance, it seems as if the blue line must be longer than the red line. Now take a ruler and measure both lines. Incredibly, the red and blue lines are exactly the same length! This optical illusion is created by the way in which your brain interprets the grids of black lines that connect the red and blue lines together. The black lines form a shape that looks as if it is three-dimensional. This apparently three-dimensional shape fools your brain into thinking that the red line is closer to you and that the blue line is further away. Your brain knows from experience that…

According to Juan Pablo Muñoz, a marine biologist at the Galápagos Science Centre, ‘The Galápagos is the last frontier, the best preserved place on Earth. I think every kid in the world should visit here once in their life and experience this place that is like something out of a storybook.’ So why is this group of 21 islands, located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America (see map, right), so special? The main reason is the Galápagos islands’ extraordinary wildlife. People live on just 3 per cent of the land. The other 97 per cent – and the ocean surrounding it – has been set aside as the giant Galápagos National Park, so that the many rare species that live here are safe and continue to…

The Galápagos giant tortoises are remarkable. They can live to be well over 100 years old, much older than all but the longest-lived humans. The oldest one we know of lived to be over 170. The largest Galápagos tortoises (which are usually males) can reach 1.8 metres long and weigh more than 250 kilograms. These tortoises are a big success story, with 20,000 to 25,000 giant tortoises currently living in the wild. This is a lot fewer than the 250,000 of the 1500s, but much more than the dangerously low population of the 1970s, when the Galápagos giant tortoises looked in danger of vanishing altogether. Even with this success, three giant tortoise species may be extinct, including Chelonoidis abingdonii, the Pinta Island tortoise, of which Lonesome George, who died in…