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BIG ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS
What is a molt? Detailed answer
Directory / Big encyclopedia. Questions for quiz and self-education Did you know? What is a molt? When an animal sheds its skin or feathers, replacing them with new ones, we call this molting. Beasts, reptiles, birds, and even some insects molt. Birds grow a whole range of different feathers in their lifetime. Upon reaching adulthood, the plumage takes on a typical adult appearance, after which, as it wears out, the old feathers fall out and new ones grow in their place. The same thing happens after pulling feathers. In addition, some birds grow bright new feathers during the mating season. Thus, most birds molt twice a year: before and after the mating season. Since almost all birds do not shed many "bearing" feathers at the same time, they do not lose the ability to fly during molting. In addition, in order not to disturb the aerodynamic balance, the feathers are dropped in pairs: one on the left, one on the right. The exceptions are ducks, geese and swans, which lose all their feathers during molting and cannot fly. But since they are waterfowl, in order to elude danger, they do not need to take off, it is enough just to go into the water. During molting, brightly feathered males often take on a solid color, which provides them with additional camouflage. The snakes are very interesting. They do not shed all the skin at once, but only a small extreme part. The snake rubs its head against something to free itself from the skin around the mouth, then it hooks the exfoliated parts of the skin on stones or branches and crawls out of the old skin head first, leaving it inside out. Author: Likum A.
How long and why were Europeans afraid to eat tomatoes? The tomato story is one of the funniest mistakes made by Old World botanists. All the plants of the nightshade family they knew before (and there are less than a dozen of them in Europe) were poisonous to varying degrees. The first European botanist to mention the tomato in 1554 was the Italian Pietro Andrea Mattiolli. Due to its large size, he attributed this fruit to the genus Mandrake, famous for its poisonousness. And since yellow-colored tomatoes came to Europe, they received the Italian name "pomo d'oro" (golden apple). Beautiful fruits of tomatoes, hanging in elegant clusters, aroused interest among flower growers. Therefore, new ornamental plants have firmly established themselves in the collections of botanical gardens and flowerbeds. The French called them "pom d'amour" (apple of love). Which of the Europeans was the first to try the tomato and when it happened is unknown, but back in the 1780th century this plant was rarely eaten. In XNUMX, the Russian ambassador to France reported to Catherine II that French vagabonds were eating tomatoes from the flower beds and did not seem to suffer from this. Moreover, even in America, on the continent where the Peruvian and Mexican Indians have long grown tomatoes (the name "tumatl" after the Mexicans was first used in 1572 by the Italian scientist Gilandini), the tomato was considered poisonous until the middle of the 1776th century. And so poisonous that in XNUMX, during the American War of Independence, George Washington's cook tried to poison him with meat cooked with tomatoes. The cook himself was so frightened by what he had done that he cut his own throat in fear of punishment, and George Washington, having tasted the tomato sauce, did not notice anything. This is how the botanists, who were smart with tomatoes, frightened the Europeans for a long time with their imaginary poisonousness. The tomato boom in the world began only after the First World War - more than 350 years after the first acquaintance of Europeans with tomatoes.
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