What keeps a duck afloat? Detailed answer

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What keeps a duck afloat? Detailed answer

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What keeps a duck afloat?

When we use the word "duck" we really mean a very wide variety of birds, from the familiar inhabitants of the poultry yard to the wild travelers in the sky. The duck family includes swans, geese, mergansers, or fishing ducks, and various types of ducks.

Most wild ducks live from the Canadian border to areas where rare trees are still found in the Far North. Only in winter they fly to the central and southern states. But in the south they remain for a short time. As soon as the ice begins to melt in the north, they return home - to reservoirs, rivers, swamps, on the shores of lakes and the sea coast, where they like to live.

Ducks can swim in icy water without any problems.

The reason they stay afloat is because the duck's body is densely covered with waterproof feathers. A gland located near the tail secretes an oily liquid that wets the feathers. Under them is a thick layer of fluff. Even the webbed feet of ducks protect them from the cold winter: since they have neither blood vessels nor nerves, they simply do not feel the cold.

The paws of ducks are located behind the body, which allows them to swim excellently, and on land gives them a characteristic waddling gait. Ducks can move quickly through the air and in short flights reach speeds of up to 112 km / h! Most ducks build nests on the ground near water. They lay them out with tender plants and crush them with their breasts. Females heat their eggs with their breasts while hatching. The duck lays from 6 to 14 eggs and sits on them herself.

Birds molt after mating season. Until the feathers on the wings grow back, they cannot fly. To protect themselves at this time from enemies, they become very quiet, trying not to draw attention to themselves.

There are about 160 species of ducks worldwide, and they are found on every continent except Antarctica.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is the largest man-made monolithic structure on Earth?

Incorrect answers: Cheops Pyramid, the Great Wall of China and (in the case of special smarties) the Mubarak al-Kabir tower in Kuwait. Our answer: Fresh Kills, a landfill on Staten Island in New York. Although we are madly in love with Jimmy Carr's alternative Holland.

Opened in 1948, the Fresh Kills (from the Dutch kil, "river") landfill for domestic and commercial waste eventually became one of the largest projects in world history and eventually surpassed (in terms of volume) the Great Wall of China, becoming the largest human creation. hands

The territory of the object is 12 km². When the landfill was still in operation, twenty barges were unloaded there every day, each carrying up to 650 tons of garbage. If Fresh Kills had remained open as planned, it would have grown to such a size that it would have become the highest point on the East Coast of the United States. Its top already towered over the Statue of Liberty by as much as 25 m.

Under pressure from the local population in March 2001, the authorities were forced to close the Fresh Kills, but soon the work of the landfill was resumed in order to receive the wreckage of the destroyed twin towers of the World Trade Center.

As of today, activity at Fresh Kills has been completely shut down, and the introduction of new restrictions means that it will never be able to resume (the creation of landfills within the city limits of New York is officially prohibited). Currently, work is underway to level the site and improve it in order to convert it into a nature reserve and a park zone. M-yes, very nice.

Of course, one can argue that there are structures that take up much more space than Fresh Kills. For example, the US road network? Internet? Or a GPS satellite network? And yet New York's Fresh Kills is still the largest man-made structure on Earth, forming a cohesive whole.

Test your knowledge! Did you know...

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The rarest combination of hair and eye color 22.10.2017

The appearance of each of us is unique. "Mom's" eyes, "dad's" nose, "grandmother's" figure - it's impossible to repeat such an explosive mixture. But even among the unique ones, there are even unicorns. So, scientists recently calculated a combination of eye and hair color, which come across so rarely that it is more likely to get struck by lightning than to meet the carrier of these genes. Do you think you are also one of their rare number?

Genetics is an amazing thing. And each discovery in this area cannot but amaze. No matter how absurd it may sound. For example, did you know that according to the modern hypothesis, all people on Earth with blue eyes are relatives? True, with the roots of kinship in a very, very distant past. And another popular theory says that in two centuries there will be no natural blondes left in the world. The blond hair gene will simply be pushed out of the evolutionary race by a much stronger dark brother. But, despite the sad statistics, blue-eyed blondes are not the rarest appearance on Earth. At least for now.

Researchers from the American Chemical Society found that the rarest combination is red hair and blue eyes. The secret of uniqueness is that both genes responsible for hair and eye color are recessive. And the probability of inheriting two at once is unusually small. For example, only 17% of people on the planet can boast of a “heavenly look” (although the rarest shade is not blue at all, but green). And red-haired among the entire population of the Earth - and not more than 2%. That is why there are so few blue-eyed "redheads" among us: only 12,7 million out of 7,5 billion.

Surprisingly, it is statistically more likely to be struck by lightning (0,03% chance) than to encounter a person with red hair and blue eyes (0,017% chance). Miracles, and more!

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