Q&AGET T Y IMAGES X4 ILLUSTRATIONS: DAN BRIGHTNATURE’S WEIRDEST CREATURES...THE PANGOLINIf an anteater and a pinecone had children,
this is what they’d look like. The pangolin is
the only mammal to sport an armour of
scales. These sharp, overlapping plates cover
the animal’s entire body, apart from its snout
and belly, and, when threatened, a pangolin
will curl itself into a ball, helping to deter
predators such as lions, tigers and hyenas.
Pangolins don’t have teeth. Instead, they
feed on ants and termites using a stickytongue which is rooted in the animal’s chest
and can be up to 40cm long – sometimes
longer than the pangolin itself! Pangolins
also swallow small stones, which help to
grind up the insects inside their stomach.
Their powerful front claws are great for
breaking into termite mounds, but rubbish
for walking. There are few sights more
appealing than the hunched figure of a
pangolin scurrying along on its back legsonly, like a dinosaur. Google it, I urge you.
There are eight species of pangolin. Four
live in Africa; four in Asia. All are threatened,
and pangolins are now the most trafficked
animal in the world. They are poached for
their meat, and for their scales which some
think have medicinal qualities. But their
scales aren’t medicinal: they’re made from
keratin, which is the same protein that
makes up hair, claws and horns.HPBananas are slightly radioactive because they are
rich in potassium, and one of its natural isotopes
(variants) is potassium-40, which is radioactive.
A lorry full of bananas is radioactive enough to
trigger a false alarm on a radiation detector looking
for smuggled nuclear weapons. But you can’t
become radioactive by eating bananas, because you
already are radioactive! A typical adult contains
around 140g of potassium, of which about 16mg is
potassium-40 – making you 280 times more
radioactive than a banana. Eating one increases your
total amount of potassium-40 by 0.4 per cent, which
is detectable with a sensitive Geiger counter, but the
effect is temporary since your metabolism closely
regulates the amount of potassium in your body, and
you will excrete the excess within a few hours.LV
JOHNNYPEREZ, VIA EMAIL
HOWMANY BANANAS
WOULD I NEED TO EAT TO
BECOME RADIOACTIVE?