Polar bears are among the largest carnivores in Numerous adaptations uniquely suit polar bears to life in icy habitats. Their fur is thicker than any other bears’ and covers even their feet, for warmth and traction on ice. A thick layer of blubber beneath their fur provides buoyancy and insulation. The long neck and narrow skull of the polar bear probably aid in streamlining the animal in the water, and the front feet are large, flat and oarlike. The polar bear is an excellent swimmers. Polar bears feed almost exclusively on ringed seals and, to a lesser extent, bearded seals. Polar bears travel great distances in search of prey.  They are also known to eat walrus, beluga whale and bowhead whale carcasses, birds, vegetation There are between 20,000-25,000 polar bears in the world. Polar bears are only found in the Arctic region and are highly dependant on the pack ice there since they spend much of their time hundreds of miles from land. The most important habitats for polar bears are the edges of pack ice, where currents and wind interact with the ice, forming a continually melting and refreezing matrix of ice patches. These are the areas of greatest seal abundance and accessibility. Did You Know? The polar bear is the most carnivorous member of the bear family: most of its diet consists of ringed and bearded seals. Individual polar bears can travel thousands of miles per year following the seasonal advance and retreat of sea ice. Polar bears are distributed throughout the Arctic region in 19 subpopulations. Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland and Norway have polar bears. At birth, polar bear cubs are 12 to 14 inches long and weigh around one pound. Unlike brown bears, non breeding polar bear females and males do not hibernate or den in the winter. Pregnant polar bears need to eat a lot in the summer and fall in order to build up sufficient fat reserves for surviving the denning period, during which time they give birth to one-pound cubs and then nurse them to about 20-30 pounds before emerging from the den in March or April. http://www.defenders.org/polar-bear/basic-facts

Seeing Colors

Some people are color blind and are unable to discern between certain colors.  Males are more likely to be color blind than females.  The links below have online tests you can take at home to screen for color blindness.  Follow up with your eye doctor if you think you are color blind.
http://www.colorvisiontesting.com/
http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html

It Was Hot Enough to Cook an Egg Outside!

It was very hot today, and I thought it would be a fun experiment to cook an egg outside.   I envisioned myself sitting in the sun and watching the egg cook on the sidewalk.  I then decided that the egg would not cook well on the sidewalk because pavement is not a good conductor of heat, and the egg would cool the sidewalk bringing the temperature down even more.  Besides…sidewalks are not very clean anyway! 

I saw a car sitting by the sidewalk.  The roof and the hood of a car are similar to a frying pan, and metal is a great conductor of heat.   I quickly decided not to cook the egg on the car because I was not sure what it would do to the paint job.  Besides…cars are probably not very clean either!

I then thought about using aluminum foil to hold the egg while it cooked.  I walked into the kitchen to find the foil.  The temperature in the kitchen was cool, and the stove was a lot cleaner than the sidewalk and the car.  That is when I decided…if it was hot enough to cook an egg outside…then it was too hot to be outside doing an experiment!  

Optical illusions . . .

I decided to find some optical illusions and post em' here!




Are the lines below straight or are they curved?

Try putting a straight edge against the lines on your screen to test your conclusion. 
http://www.eyetricks.com/0102.htm

The following pictures are NOT animated.

Your eyes are making them move. To test this, stare at one spot in each picture for a few seconds and everything will stop moving; OR look at the black center of each circle in the first picture, and it will stop moving; but when you move your eyes to the next black center, the previous one will move after you take your eyes away from it.

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/illusion/illusions.htm

Look at this Image and say the color of the text aloud.

A little slower then expected?

http://www.opticalillusions.net/userpics/37200944608PMtext-illusions.gif

Interesting Facts . . .

I was recently visiting a museum . . . Look what I learned!
The Pamankey Indians maintain their own government body- a chief and seven council members elected for four years.   Voters get a pea and a kernel of corn to cast for each nomination.  A pea rejects and a corn elects.


Funny, huh? It makes sense though. 

My Dogs and other info...

I decided to research why dogs like to lick.  I found out that they lick to show submissive behavior and to show love and affection.  They may also lick to offer you comfort, to gain your attention and get your approval.  They also lick if they smell something tasty on your hands!

Dogs are like people. Some people show affection by hugging and holding hands more than other people, and some dogs show affection by licking more than other dogs.  Different breeds are more prone to lick than other breeds too.  Btw...if your dog was older when you got him, he might have been trained to not lick. (Don't worry!  They still love you just as much!)

Here is my deer head chihuahua.  (One of my nieces made the cute bandanas for her. Didn't she do a great job!)

Here is  my labrador retriever.

My chihuahua is the smallest, but she is the "Alpha" dog of the two!

BTW...My chihuahua loves to lick, but my lab is the best behaved.  (Maybe that is because we sent him off to boarding school to be trained!)

Freckles the Dog

I have a dog named Freckles, she has attitude and rarely shows affection.  If she does show affection we always dismiss it;  "It was an accident", "Do you have meat on your hands?",  "She probably just needs to go to the restroom" and so on.  I kind of feel bad for her.

Just a couple minutes ago she started licking me.  Was she being kind?  When I stopped scratching her she went to the door of one of the bedrooms.  And then she barked.  She had just been sent out of that room BECAUSE of her barking.  Sam, our other dog, got to stay in there.  Wait . . . maybe she wanted to play with Sam!  I opened the door, sure enough, Sam ran out and they started play-fighting.  Now I know why she was licking me.  Maybe all the jokes about her never showing affection are true!