How Come? » animals

If a bee dies, is its stinger still active?

Kathy Wollard — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:38:57 +0000

I heard that if a bee dies, its stinger is still active. Is that true? asks reader Tim Younquist.

Luckily for us, most bees have a live-and-let-live attitude. It takes a lot to provoke the average bee, like stepping on a worker bee on a blade of grass, or — especially — threatening her home. [...]

How come flies don’t fall off the ceiling?

Kathy Wollard — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:54:03 +0000

How come flies don’t fall off the ceiling? asks reader J. Jones.

If we could look closely at our ceilings, we’d see the crisscrossing paths of thousands of tiny footprints, left by flies, ladybugs, and other insects (as well as by spiders). In fact, the problem for flies and other bugs may not be holding [...]

Is it true that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly?

Kathy Wollard — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:52:55 +0000

Is it true that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly? asks a reader.

No one’s sure where the myth started, but it has legs (er, wings): Bumblebee flight is impossible. According to the principles of aerodynamics, the story went, a big, fuzzy bumblebee, powered only by tiny wings, shouldn’t leave the ground. A French book [...]

How come humans can’t use sonar in the dark, like bats?

Kathy Wollard — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:17:04 +0000

How come humans can’t use sonar in the dark, like bats? asks Kevin Guan, via email.

Listening for the echoes of their own rapid-fire, high-pitched calls, bats navigate the night, while snatching tiny insects from the air. Dolphins (along with many whales and shrews) are also skilled “echolocaters.” And it turns out that we humans, [...]

How can hummingbirds fly upside-down and backwards?

Kathy Wollard — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:49:52 +0000

How can hummingbirds fly upside-down and backwards? asks a reader.

Hummingbirds use enormous amounts of energy simply being themselves. When a hummingbird is sitting quietly on a branch, its heart beats a staccato 550 times a minute. When a bird is engaged in aerial acrobatics, its [...]

How do dogs smell things we can’t?

Kathy Wollard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:43:07 +0000

How do dogs smell things we can’t? asks Olivia Minogue, a student in Sayville, NY.

Sniff sniff sniff. You can actually see a dog’s nose hard at work, picking up a scent wafting through the air, following the invisible trail a rabbit left in the yard, or investigating your pants leg for evidence of a [...]

Where do bugs like flies go when the weather gets cold?

Kathy Wollard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:55:27 +0000

Where do bugs like flies go when the weather gets cold, so they can appear like magic when it gets warm again? asks Jonathan Conway, of Syosset, NY.

Unfortunately, many insects don’t survive the freezing cold of winter. Others, however, have come up with clever schemes to hang on until spring.

For example, cluster flies [...]

How do cats see in the dark?

Kathy Wollard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:53:13 +0000

How do cats see in the dark? asks Fenny Samuel, a student in Kerala, India.

Domestic cats evolved to do much of their hunting at night. Nowadays, that may mean locating the bowl of cat chow in a dark kitchen (and your cat could as easily do that by smell). But in a power failure, [...]

How can birds sit on electrical wires and not get electrocuted?

Kathy Wollard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:52:17 +0000

How can birds sit on electrical wires and not get electrocuted? asks Jonathan Sanchez, a student in Lynbrook, NY.

High above the ground, electrical and telephone poles and their connecting wires must seem made for birds, like artificial trees with limbs that stretch on forever. Sometimes a hundred birds will be stretched out along a [...]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Kathy Wollard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:47:51 +0000

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? asks Jessica Bolz, a student in Melville, NY.Chicken or egg? Like a hall of mirrors at the carnival, each attempt at an answer just leads to another question. If the chicken came first, then didn’t it hatch from an egg? And if the egg came first, wasn’t [...]