Curious Facts

Page 24

“Capturing a single hour of sunlight that reaches the Earth would meet our global energy needs for a whole year.” This is based on the calculation that sun provides 100,000 TWh and we need 128TWh to run the economy. ^{1 & 2}
Covering just 1% of the Sahara desert in solar panels – and area 90,600 km² – would provide as much electricity as all the world’s power stations in 2012 combined. ²
The adder's-tongue fern (Ophioglossum) has 1260 chromosomes, more than any other known living organism. Humans have 46 (23 pairs).
Male Jack Jumper ants have only 1 chromosome.
When dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way. ³
The longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up. Once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. ⁴
In the 1830s a German naturalist named Renous was arrested in San Fernando, Chile for heresy for claiming that he could turn caterpillars into butterflies. A few years later, Renous recounted his tale to Charles Darwin, who noted it in The Voyage of the Beagle. ⁵

1. Project Sunshine, Steve McKevitt & Tony Ryan, Icon Books, 2013.

2. Powering the Planet, Lewis, N. S., MRS Bulletin, 2007, 32, 808-820

3. Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation, Dacke, Marie; Baird, Emily; Byrne, Marcus; Scholtz, Clarke H.; Warrant, Eric J. Current biology : CB doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.034 (volume 23 issue 4 pp.298 - 300).

4. "Are Cows More Likely to Lie Down the Longer They Stand?" Bert J. Tolkamp, Marie J. Haskell, Fritha M. Langford, David J. Roberts, Colin A. Morgan, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 124, nos. 1-2, 2010, pp. 1–10.

5. "How Did Insect Metamorphosis Evolve?" by Ferris Jabr, Scientific American, Aug 10, 2012. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insect-metamorphosis-evolution/)

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