| 2861/
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
2862/ The largest eggs
in the world are laid by a shark.
2863/ The embryos of
tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother's womb,
the survivor being the baby shark that is born.
2864/ There are 60,000
miles (97,000 km) in blood vessels in every human.
2865/ Clouds form as
warmer air pass over the ocean or large open lakes, the air
picks up water vapour. As the air warms, it rises because
warm air is less dense than cold air. As the warm air rises,
the air cools and the water vapour in the air condenses to
form clouds of water droplets.
2866/ Clouds that form
at the surface of the Earth are known as fog.
2867/ Sleet forms when
partially frozen water droplets, or rainwater, in the clouds
falls and freezes completely when it hits the surface of the
Earth.
2868/ Many of the plants
and foods in your home originated in the rainforests. Common
house plants, such as bromeliads, African violets, periwinkle
and the Christmas cactus, began in the rain forest.
2869/ The rosy periwinkle
contains an anti-leukemia drug; a person with lymphocytic
leukemia has a 99% chance that the disease will go into remission
because of the rosy periwinkle. more than 1,400 varieties
of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer.
2870/ There are more
than 20,000 varieties of orchid.
2871/ A typical forest
in the United States contains from 5 to 12 different kinds
of trees, while a typical rainforest may have over 300 different
kinds. Rainforests usually contain 10 times more tree species
and 5 times more bird species than temperate forests. The
Amazon forest in South America is home to more than 1600 species
of birds and about a million different kinds of insects.
2872/ Until about forty
years ago, the lack of roads prevented most outsiders from
exploiting the rainforest. These roads, constructed for timber
and oil companies, cattle ranchers and miners, have destroyed
millions of acres of rainforest each year.
2873/ Most of the nutrients
of a rainforest ecosystem are stored in its vegetation rather
than in its soil.
2874/ On September 9,
1987, a satellite picture of the Amazon River Basin showed
a total of 7,603 fires burning in the rainforest.
2875/ Some 25% of all
pharmaceuticals used by Americans originated in a tropical
rainforest.
2876/ Almost 65% of Central
America has been cleared to create pastureland for grazing
cattle.
2877/ In 1990, Brazil's
President Jose Sarney signed laws providing for extractive
reserves to protect more than five million acres of forest
areas to be managed by rubber tappers, nut gatherers and others
whose livelihood depends on the rainforest harvest.
2878/ Since the turn
of the century, 90 tribes of indigenous peoples have been
wiped out in Brazil alone. The pace of annihilation is increasing;
26 of those tribes were killed or scattered in the past decade.
2879/ The most species-rich
plot of rainforest so far enumerated is in Peru: 283 species
of trees 0.1 m in diameter, or over 580 stems on one hectare.
Here, every second tree is a different species. While this
is the most species-rich area, this kind of growth and biodiversity
is typical for most rainforest ecosystems.
2880/ Costa Rica was
the first Central American nation to cultivate bananas for
export.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
More
next week... |
