• Frogs use their sticky, muscular tongue to catch and swallow food. Unlike humans, their tongue is not attached to the back of its mouth. Instead it is attached to the front, enabling the frog to stick its tongue out much further. • Frogs can see forwards, sideways and upwards all at the same time. They never close their eyes, even when they sleep. • Remarkably, frogs actually use their eyes to help them swallow food. When the frog blinks, its eyeballs are pushed downwards creating a bulge in the roof of its mouth. This bulge squeezes the food inside the frog’s mouth down the back of its throat. • When lions breed with tigers the resulting hybrids are known as ligers and tigons. There are also lion and leopard hybrids known as leopons as wel as lion and jaguar hybrids known as jaglions. • It is possible to identify the sex of the giraffe from the horns on its head. Both males and females have horns but the females are smaller and covered with hair at the top. Male giraffes may have up to 3 additional horns. • Drinking is one of the most dangerous times for a giraffe. While it is getting a drink it cannot keep a look out for predators and is vulnerable to attack. • Male giraffes sometimes fight with their necks over female giraffes. This is called “necking”. The two giraffes stand side by side and one giraffe swings his head and neck, hitting his head against the other giraffe. Sometimes one giraffe is hit to the ground during a combat. • Your sense of smell is around 10,000 times more sensitive than your sense of taste. The colored area around the pupil is called the iris; it controls the size of the pupil and can be coloured brown, blue, green or other colors and shades depending on the person. • The smallest bone found in the human body is located in the middle ear. The staples (or stirrup) bone is only 2.8 millimeters long. • The left side of your body is controlled by the right side of your brain while the right side of your body is controlled by the left side of your brain. • Two positive charges repel each other, as do two negative charges. Opposite charges on the other hand attract each other. Just like magnets. • Red blood cells have the important job of carrying oxygen around the body. They also contain a protein called hemoglobin. Hemoglobin contains iron which combines with oxygen to give hemoglobin and our blood, a red color. • White blood cells are an important part of the body’s immune system. They defend against certain bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, infectious diseases and other unwanted materials. • Grouping human blood types can be a difficult process and there are currently around 30 recognized blood types (or blood groups). You might be familiar with the more simplified “ABO” system which categorizes blood types under O, A, B and AB. Do you know which blood type you are? The author is a student at Lycee De Kigali Secondary School.
