My Pepe Ha

Antarctica

Why Antarctica Is Cold.

Antarctica is cold because the sun is always low in the sky over Antarctica - sun light is spread out over a large area.  There are 24 hours of darkness each day during the winter. The whiteness of the ice reflects much of the suns energy. Antarctica is high, the average height is 2500 m (the height of Mt Taranaki) and cold ocean surrounds Antarctica. 

The Worlds Oldest Woman.

Meet The Worlds Oldest Woman

The worlds oldest woman turns 117 on November the 27th. Emma Morano says the secret to her long life is eggs. For the last 90 years she has eaten at least two eggs a day - which equates to over 100,000 eggs consumed in her lifetime. Born in Verbania, Italy in 1899. Morano began eating eggs at the age of 20, after a doctor diagnosed her with anaemia. He told her to eat two raw eggs and one cooked egg daily. Her doctor, Carlo Bava, confirmed that his patient didn't follow conventional nutritional advice. Despite turning 117, she says it's unlikely she'll even have a bite of her birthday cake. "Last time I ate a little, but afterwards I didn't feel good." she recalled. Morano has a few birthdays to go before she beats the record for the oldest verified age: 122 years and 164 days, held by french woman Jeanne Calmet who died in 1997. Morano hasn't left her two-room apartment for the last 20 years, has outlived all of her immediate family and isn't planning on a birthday party.

Kiwi Kids News

Spiders are listening to you?

According to scientists spiders can hear everything you do and say. This is a huge surprise because spiders do not have ears. US and Israeli scientists have been monitoring spiders and testing them for sometime and they have found some alarming facts. The researchers say that tiny hairs on the forelegs of jumping spiders – and likely others – get stimulated by vibrations in the room. This then activates an area in their brains involved with sound processing. Previously it was believed that spiders could only detect sounds from a few centimetres away. 

This amazing discovery was found by accident. The group of scientists had been working on ways to make neural recordings from the brains of jumping spiders using tiny probes in their tiny brains. One of the researchers crossed the room and his chair squeaked, which pinged their recording equipment.

So, they tested for distance, clapping close to the spider then farther and farther away, until they were outside the recording room five metres from the spider. Amazingly, the spider picked up the sound. Based on everything that we know about spider this shouldn’t be possible. It seems those sensory hairs that work up close also work over a long distance.