Your nails have a job to do. The hard surface of your nails helps to protect the tips of your fingers and toes. We have also evolved to have nails because they help us pick things up (like food), pick things off (like bugs), and hold tightly onto things. Nails themselves are made of keratin.…
Question Answered by Sue Miller, Paleontologist “Shovel-tuskers” Way cool! They are ancient, now extinct, cousins of elephants. Their nickname comes from the shape of their large, flat and extended lower incisors and small upper tusks – instead of long and curved upper tusks like mammoths, mastodons, and modern elephants. They were about the size of…
Answered by Alana Jensen, Environmental Educator, ESER Program You’ve probably noticed that whenever the weather starts to turn cold, you see more insects crawling around your home. The reason for this is that the colder weather drives insects to seek refuge in a warm and dry place, like the conditions your home provides. They get…
Answered by Gregg Losinski, Conservation Educator First things first. In Idaho, when we are talking about kokanee, we are actually talking about the same fish that we also call a sockeye salmon. These are the fish that are famous for turning bright red when the time comes for them to spawn. (Spawning is the way…
Great question about dams! While dams change the ecological makeup of any river that they are placed in, their biggest impact for fish comes in relation to movement. Unless a dam is specifically built to allow fish to move both downstream and upstream, it becomes a barrier. To some fish this is more critical than…
Answered by Diana Lowrey, Archaeologist and Bat Expert, Idaho National Laboratory (This post was originally published on April 15, 2008.) Bats have evolved to have an exceptional navigation system called echolocation, which helps them to find their prey in the dark. Bats make sounds just like we humans make sounds, by expelling air from the…
Answered by Doug Halford, Wildlife Biologist, INL ESER Program Bird migration is the regular seasonal movement, often north and south along a flyway, between breeding and wintering grounds. Many species of bird migrate. Migration carries high costs in predation and mortality, including from hunting by humans, and is driven primarily by availability of food. It…
Question Answered by Marilyn Case, Health Physicist, INL ESER Program Mosquitoes are pests whose only purpose seems to be to torment humans and animals with their vicious, blood-sucking bites. However, as annoying as mosquitoes are, they do play an important role in the food web on the planet. During the course of their lifespan, mosquito…
Answered by Alana Jensen, INL ESER Program http://www.idahoeser.com If you’ve seen cartoons where chameleons can seemingly change to almost any color to match their environment, you may be disappointed to learn that the truth is quite different. Many species can’t even change to a color other than different shades of gray, green, and brown. Chameleons…
Answered by Kurt Edwards, Geologist and GIS Analyst, INL ESER Program he short answer is yes, coal is a sedimentary rock. Coal is formed mainly from plant material that accumulates in a swampy environment. These plants that become coal, lived before and during the time of the dinosaurs. When the plants died they would sink…
