STRANGE BUT TRUE
Q: “The birds that steal fire,” the title reads. Do you know the story behind these “arsonist” birds of prey?
A: Based on stories and firsthand observations, it’s likely that some Australian birds of prey — black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons — intentionally spread wildfires to flush out prey, Andy Coghlan said in New Scientist magazine. Australian ornithologist Bob Gosford said the birds pick up burning twigs from existing fires and drop them elsewhere to start new blazes. Twenty eyewitness accounts corroborate this view, including a firefighter in the North Territory, who, as he tried to put out a fire, saw a whistling kite 65 feet away, carrying a smoking stick and dropping it to create a new fire. In all, he “extinguished seven new blazes started by the kites” (Journal of Ethnobiology).
It appears that the birds only start fires if an existing one has reached a barrier and might go out, since an extinguished fire would not expose any more prey.
As Coghlan says, “Some birds of prey have learned to control fire, a skill we thought was unique to humans.” The story continues as the research team gathers evidence on birds outside Australia.
Q: Public art comes in many shapes and sizes, but one of the more unusual ones was created by a group of Swedish artists who got access to a tower in a Stockholm suburb. What was their “brilliant” idea?
A: They started with a common trend among landmark towers for management to change the colors of the lights to mark holidays and other special occasions, Dan Lewis said on his Now I Know website. But they wanted to bring coloring to the masses by having random people make the choices. Folks would merely go to the Color by Numbers website, find instructions and then dial in or use a smartphone to begin. The lights go live at sundown. Nine floors are open for display, and red, green and blue can be blended to “paint the night sky.”
If you’re not prepared to travel to Stockholm, New York City’s Empire State Building also displays colored lights to honor various events or organizations, such as April 22: green to honor Earth Day; May 2: red for World Blood Cancer Day; May 4: blue and purple for Police Memorial Week; May 20: yellow, white and blue with a red siren in honor of Emergency Medical Services week. Other nights, the building’s signature white is on display.
Q: What are just a few of the incredible numbers that make up the human brain, reportedly “the most complex thing in the universe”?
A: Crammed inside the brain are “approximately 86 billion neurons, surrounded by 112,000 miles of insulated fibers connected at 100 trillion synapses,” yet it makes up just 2 percent of our total body weight, reports “How It Works: Book of Amazing Science.” “It’s a vast biological supercomputer,” operating so efficiently that it uses less energy than a standard light bulb.
All of this stems from a single cell that divides and grows, and at its peak, the developing brain can generate 250,000 new neurons every minute. Though the growth process continues after a baby’s birth, by age two, the brain is 80 percent of its adult size.
When a team at the Salk Institute in California studied actual brain capacity, it estimated that storage can reach about 1 million gigabytes of information housed in the connections between nerve cells. “That’s around 2,000 years’ worth of MP3 music or 223,000 DVDs.”