This blog post is going to be my final one for this series. I have one more- an end of the year reflection- but this is it for free choice posts. I feel like I've done a pretty good job expressing my thoughts, likes/dislikes, and quite simply, my personality. I really am going to miss being allowed to elaborate on any kind of topic and vent out to the world. I doubt I'll be able to do something like this next year. Who knows? Maybe I'll start my own personal blog over the summer.
As for this specific blog post, I've come back to animals. It's pretty hard to stay away from this topic because it's always interesting to realize how little we actually know about the fantastic creatures of this world. So, here we go:
I've always learned in school that while each animal has its own special qualities, bats are particularly interesting- they're blind. That's where the expression "blind as a bat" comes from. They have eyesight that is just as good as any other animal in the daytime, but because they are nocturnal, they spend all night hunting in the dark for food, and so cannot see. So I thought.
On the contrary- bats can see, and are sensitive to light change, otherwise they wouldn't be able to tell when it was nighttime and become active. However, as compared to other nocturnal hunters, bats have poor eyesight. So, like any other diurnal animal, they cannot see as well in the dark. They use echolocation alongside their normal vision- not instead of it.
To make up for this lack of perceptive vision in the dark, bats use echolocation to help them. They emit an extremely high pitched noise that is not even within the range of human hearing. It then bounces off of an object, returning to the bat, which can now detect where it is, how big it is, and what direction it's moving in. Just like we process noise and images naturally, bats take the information from their echolocation and form an image in their head, allowing them to maneuver through tricky areas at break-neck speed.
I can almost guarantee that you know at least one interesting fact about a fish (you'd better if you read my post about sharks). You might know about how angler fish use a hanging light in front of their face to attract prey. You might know that pollution in the water causes fish to change sex. But you might not know a whole lot about goldfish. The only fact you've probably been exposed to is that goldfish have a memory of up to 3 seconds. Some people even say that to a goldfish, each lap of their fishbowl is like seeing it for the first time.
It's often compared to elephants, who are said to never forget things. To put it bluntly, goldfish are considered relatively unintelligent fish. Recently, goldfish have proven themselves to be more than we thought them to be.
After leaving them alone for a week, the boy came back and put the red Lego block into the fishbowl. To his and everyone's surprise, the goldfish were able to recall it perfectly. I've learned a very important lesson from this: fish may be more intelligent than we think. So be careful. We may have a future aquatic uprising on our hands.
We've all been scolded by our parents as we tried to pet or pick up a baby bird that we had found. "If you even touch that baby bird," they'd say, "it's mommy will abandon it and it'll grow up all alone. Would you want someone to do that to you?" You'd vigorously shake your head and leave it alone.
It's been said that birds abandon their young if they detect a human scent on them. This is not true for the simple fact that birds don't even have a very good sense of smell to begin with. It can't even begin to compare with a human's sense of smell, and when was the last time you detected a hint of bird on someone?
Other animals, such as rabbits, are highly sensitive to disturbances in their nests. This is why you are always advised to never approach young rabbits. I've been told that if you suspect that a nest has been abandoned, you should place an 'X' made out of yarn on top of it. If it has been moved and the nest is covered, that's a good sign that the mother has returned to care for its young. If it hasn't changed at all, contact the Humane Society and they will take care of it.
But while a mother bird won't reject its young if touched by a human, it's still not a good idea to disturb any kind of wild animal at all, just to be safe.