Reels tagged #nature

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Nature

Honey never spoils

Low moisture, high acidity and natural hydrogen peroxide make honey hostile to microbes. Sealed pots from ancient Egypt are still edible.

#nature#honey#bees

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Nature

The Sahara was green just 6,000 years ago

Grasslands, lakes and hippos covered North Africa during the African Humid Period. A slow wobble in Earth's orbit shifted the monsoon and the desert took over.

#nature#sahara#climate

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Nature

Bananas are berries, strawberries are not

Botanically a berry grows from one flower with one ovary and seeds inside. Bananas qualify; strawberries are "accessory fruits" with seeds on the outside.

#nature#food#botany

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Nature

Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth

A desert is defined by rainfall, not heat. Antarctica gets so little precipitation that it beats the Sahara for the title.

#nature#antarctica#geography

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Animals

Leafcutter ants invented farming first

They do not eat the leaves they carry. They feed them to an underground fungus they have cultivated for tens of millions of years, weeding it and dosing it with antibiotic bacteria.

#animals#insects#nature

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Animals

Bees give directions by dancing

A returning forager performs a waggle dance whose angle encodes the direction to food relative to the Sun and whose duration encodes the distance.

#animals#insects#nature

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Chernobyl

The exclusion zone became a wildlife sanctuary

With humans gone, the 2,600 km² zone filled with wolves, lynx, bison and wild horses. Radiation still lingers, but for most species the absence of people has been the bigger factor.

#wikipedia#chernobyl#animals#nature

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Firsts

The first national park was created in 1872

Yellowstone was set aside as a public park before Wyoming was even a state. It sits on top of one of the planet's largest volcanic systems.

#firsts#nature#usa

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Inventions

Velcro was copied from burrs stuck to a dog

After a walk in 1941 George de Mestral studied the burrs clinging to his dog's fur under a microscope and saw tiny hooks. It took him eight years to reproduce them in nylon.

#inventions#velcro#nature

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Countries

Canada holds more lake area than the rest of the world combined

With over two million lakes covering nearly 9 percent of its territory, Canada contains an enormous share of the planet's fresh surface water.

#countries#canada#nature

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Countries

New Zealand has about five sheep per person

Once over 20 sheep per person, the ratio has fallen but still leaves roughly 25 million sheep to five million people across steep green pasture.

#countries#newzealand#nature