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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public Radio. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this podcast, Melody Beaudet and I help answer questions from curious kids all over the world just like you. You have sent us hundreds of questions about animals. Sometimes there are enough questions to do a whole episode about just one animal, like our episode about cats or our one about dogs. But today, we're going to ask you a question about animals.
or to spend a lot of time on how chickens lay eggs or why flamingos stand on one leg. We've done episodes about all of those things.
But sometimes you send us a question that doesn't really fit into another episode. And so today we're going to answer a few animal questions that haven't made it into other shows. And Melody is here to help answer the questions today. Hi, Melody. Hi, Jane. Let's get started with this question. Hi, my name is Jersey. I'm six years old. I'm from Arundel, Maine. And this is my question. Why are jellyfish so jiggly? My name is Corinne. I'm six and a half and I live here.
In Brooklyn, New York, and I'm going to start first grade. And my question is, why are jellyfishes made of jelly? Are they made of jelly? And why do they have stickers that want to touch it? I love all the places your mind went in that one question.
Jellyfish are not made of jelly. Well, at least not the kind you might eat on toast or in a sandwich. Jellyfish are actually 95% water. That's what allows them to float around in the water currents. The National Ocean Service says jellyfish are made out of three layers. An outer layer, called the epidermis, which is the same name as our outer layer, our skin, by the way...
The middle layer is where most of the stuff that looks like jelly is. It's called the mesoglia, and it's actually a thick, elastic, jelly-like tissue. Not really jelly. The inside layer is called the gastrodermis, and that's where digestion happens.
They have stingers so they can catch and paralyze their prey, the things they eat. So while you might want to touch them and they might look nice and soft and squishy and slimy, it's really not a good idea. Those stings can actually be quite painful or even dangerous.
I was actually stung by jellyfish, lots of them, when I was snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador once, and I can attest, those stings really hurt. Hi, my name is Armani, and I am eight years old, and I am from Fairbanks, Alaska. And my question is, how do jellyfish survive with no heart, lungs, or even a brain?
Hi, I'm Annabelle. I'm eight years old. I'm from Luz Creek, North Carolina. Do jellyfish have brains or hearts? Jellyfish do not have a brain. No brains. They don't have a heart. They don't have lungs. They do have a stomach. They like to eat. Jellies like to eat a lot. That's Jo Blasey. She works at the New England Aquarium in Boston, and she's answered a lot of great questions for us over the years. She knows more about jellyfish than I do.
They just move on instinct. They don't really have to think about where they're going or where they need to find food. Their food a lot of times sort of runs into them or they carry little plankton that can make food for them. But they don't have a brain. They don't have to do a lot of thinking.
So if you get stung by a jellyfish, it's not targeting you. You just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yep, you just got bumped into by a jelly. And some jellies actually don't have stinging cells at all. But if you get stung by a jelly, it's not because he was trying to be mean. It's just because those tentacles just happen to get in the way.
If you get stung by a jellyfish, is it really true that you should pee on it? Don't pee on it. No. Depending on the type of jelly, if you pee on it, it can make the sting worse. And you've also just been peed on, which nobody wants that. So the best thing to do if you get stung by a jelly is just to rinse it off with salt water. So that way you don't set off the additional stings. And then to go see a doctor because sometimes people can be allergic to jelly stings.
Hey, but why? My name is Adrian. I'm five years old. I live from Colorado. And my question is, do fish stink in the water or on land?
On land! When a fish is dead, bacteria and enzymes in the fish start to break down a naturally occurring chemical in the fish, and that's what causes that fishy smell. Now, some might argue that it doesn't really smell bad or stink, it just smells fishy. But I'll leave that to you. That's a matter of opinion.
As for whether fish stink in the water, it's pretty much impossible for humans to smell underwater because you have to inhale air in order to smell. So even if fish stank in the water, we wouldn't be able to smell them. And live fish don't really have that fishy smell to begin with. So we can't really smell underwater and live fish in the water don't smell fishy. So if we think fish stink, they stink on land.
By the way, fish can smell. I mean, like smell things. They have a sense of smell. And they use that sense to find their prey. Here's another fish question. Hi, my name is Kai. And I live in Maine.
I'm five years old. I want to know where fish sleep. So Kai is asking, where do fish sleep? In the water. Some fish have to keep swimming while they sleep to keep the water moving over their gills. Some will find a safe hiding place to sleep in. But the bottom line is fish need to live in the water to breathe. So that's where they sleep.
Now, here's a question about chickens. My name is Sonia. I live in Oakland, California. I'm six years old, and my question is, do chickens have tongues? So, hi, Sonia. This is Melody. And I'm going to answer your question today because I happen to have somebody living in my backyard to make it easy. And that would be seven chickens. All right, let's open the door and see who we can find. Well, I found a couple eggs. And the thing to know about chickens is...
that they don't see very well in the dark. And so I waited until it's just about dark to make them easier to catch so we can check out and see their tongue. All right, so sitting on my lap now, I have my friend Grayland, who is a lavender Orkington. So she's kind of a purpley color. She's really pretty. All right, let's see. We're going to open Grayland's mouth and we're going to see what we have going on in here. Chickens have beaks and their beaks are a little bit pointy.
And there it is, ta-da! A tiny little tongue. A little pointy tongue. It's actually very different looking than our tongues. What chickens do with their tongues is maybe a little bit different than what we do with ours. They don't really use them for talking the way that we do. They do make some noises, but that's mostly with their throat. Some animals, when they drink water, they use their tongue. Chickens will tilt their beak into the water and then roll their head back to let the water go down their throat. So it's a little bit unclear what they're using their tongues for.
I'm watching some of them eating grass right now, and they don't really seem to be using their tongue for that either. So what the chickens do with their tongue is a little bit of a mystery, but they do have one.
And so the sun is about to set, and as soon as that happens, the chickens go right inside their coop because they don't see very well at night. And so they have to get up onto something called a roost. They like to sleep on a high place where they feel like they're safe from predators. And they don't move at night. They stay in one spot because, as I said, they can't see. Okay, here's a question from Zoe, who's four and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. Can spiders sleep or not?
Yes. Most animals cycle through periods of activity and inactivity throughout the day, and so spiders do this too. They have active periods followed by inactive periods where their metabolic rate drops. Whether they're more active at day or night depends on what they hunt for. Coming up, snakes, springboks, and zebras. We'll have more short answers to your animal questions. Music
This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. In this episode, Melody and I are answering a few short questions about animals. Our next two questions are related. My name is Paula. I am nine years old. I live in Brooklyn. And my question is, how many types of animals are there in the world? Hi, my name is Nella. I live in Brooklyn.
I'm from Ronald, Virginia. I'm five years old. I want to know if there's more persons or animals in the world. There are around 1.2 million species of animals in the world. That's the number of types of different animals. So there are many more actual individual animals than that.
Let me give you an example. There are five species or different types of penguins that live in Antarctica, but there are 12 million actual individual penguins running around there. Now, what about animals versus humans when it comes to numbers? There's only one species of human on the planet, and there are 7.7 billion individual humans.
That's a lot. But there are 18 billion domestic chickens in the world. So there are definitely more animals than people. Also, technically, we should say humans are animals. Now, remember we were just talking about Antarctica and the penguins? Here's an Antarctica question from Anne Louise.
Hi, my name's Anne Louise. I live in South Carolina, and I'm five. And my question is, do snakes live in Antarctica? No, there are no snakes in Antarctica. Snakes can't live in places where the ground is frozen all year round, so there are no snakes in Antarctica. And there aren't any snakes at the North Pole either. Okay, here's a question from Ryan. Hi.
Hi, my name is Ryan from Arlington, Virginia. I am six years old, and my question is, is a springbok faster than a grizzly bear? Is a springbok faster than a grizzly bear? A springbok is a type of antelope that lives in Africa. Springboks are pretty fast. They can run up to 55 miles an hour. That's as fast as your car might go on the highway.
Grizzly bears are a type of brown bear found in the United States and Canada. They're big animals, but they can also run surprisingly fast. 35 miles an hour. Maybe what Ryan wants to know is if you put a springbok and a grizzly bear on a running track, who would win? Or maybe he's actually thinking about a predator-prey situation. Could a springbok outrun a grizzly bear if the grizzly bear was chasing it and wanted to eat it?
And the answer is, the springbok would likely win. But because they live on different continents, they're pretty unlikely to ever encounter one another in the wild. My name is Duncan. I live in Roanoke, Virginia. I'm eight years old. And my question is, are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
The zebra's coat is actually black and white fur, but according to National Geographic, their skin is black underneath their coat. You know, it's not actually known why zebras have black and white stripes, but it does turn out that zebras in warmer climates have more stripes than those that live in cooler climates, so perhaps the stripes help zebras cool down.
Another theory is that the stripes on the zebras kind of confuse insects that might want to bite the animals and suck their blood. In fact, in a study that just came out, researchers put zebra-like stripes on cows, they just painted them on the cows, and studied if those cows got fewer insect bites. And they did! Cows with the painted-on zebra stripes had about half the insect bites as their regularly cow-colored buddies.
Here's a question about another black and white animal. Do skunks have big tails or small tails? That question was from Victor, who's four and lives in Austin, Texas. I think what Victor is asking is whether that tail is a big bone or a small bone. So if you look at a skunk skeleton, it's actually a long, skinny bone inside some fluffy fur. If you've ever felt the tailbone of a big, fluffy cat, it's kind of like that.
Skunks and cats are somewhat closely related, and big fluffy cats are safer to feel their tail than a skunk. Not only will a skunk probably spray you if you grab their tail, it's really never a good idea to touch a wild animal. Keep that in mind, Jane.
Melody knows me all too well. I really struggle with that. Let me run this by you. So in some ways, I know that touching wild animals is not a great idea. They're wild and they deserve to stay wild and not have people touching them. And also sometimes, I mean, you never know a wild animal is not a pet could not be safe.
But I also know that sometimes getting up close and personal with an animal, even a wild animal, if you can ensure that it's safe, is a great way to learn more about that animal and then to care more about preserving its habitat and making sure it can survive. And it's a great way for kids to get to know more about different animals and start to learn. So
I'm torn. I don't quite know what the right thing to do is. Although I agree with Melody that by and large, for the most part, you should avoid touching wild animals. How do you think about this ethical conundrum? Let us know. But in the meantime, that's it for this episode. As always, if you have a question about anything, truly anything, you can have an adult record it for us. It's easy to do on a smartphone or a tablet using a voice recording app.
Then you have the adult email the file to us at questions at butwhykids.org. We definitely can't answer every question we get, but we love to hear your voices and know what's on your mind. But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with a whole new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PR.
