Page 67 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October 2015

From Invaders to Blinking to Eggs! 67
THE INVADERS
We’re being invaded by creatures that cause
untold destruction. These beasts aren’t from
outer space; they’re from Earth itself. And
they are looking for trouble!
An “invasive” species is any living organism
that moves from the environment where
devolved into a new ecosystem. When these
organisms arrive in a new area and find no
natural enemies waiting for them, they run
rampant. And invasive species can be
microscopic organisms like bacteria and fungi,
or insects, plants, marine creatures, or even
animals like birds, snakes, or large mammals.
IT CAME FROM YOUR LUGGAGE
They travel in various ways: sometimes the
reintroduced on purpose-as new crops,
livestock, or pets-and then escape into the wild.
Usually though, invasive species are introduced
by accident. Called “tramp species,” they hit
rides with unwary travelers in luggage or in
other cargo on airplanes and ships that traverse
the globe.
Invasive species can hurt native species
in numerous ways: by competing with the locals
for food sources, or simply by using the locals
for food. Invaders also bring their own luggage:
exotic parasites or pathogens that can make
local species sick. They can also alter the
environment so that local species can no longer
survive.
AND IT’S EXPENSIVE
In the U.S. alone, invasive species cost an
estimated $100,000,000,000 every year, which
includes damage to agriculture and the
degradation of natural ecosystems. (For
example, invader weeds alone cost the economy
$35,000,000) and on the range, invasive plants
like cheat grass shove aside more nutritious
forage plants, cause soil erosion, and poison
livestock. Another invader plants, the purple
loosestrife, produces nearly 3 million seeds per
plant per year and damages wetlands to the tune
of over $40,000,000 annually.
NEW KUDZ ON THE BLOCK
Kudzu arrived in America amid a loft of fanfare:
It was supposed to be the answer to a gardener’s
prayer, a fast-growing ornamental vine and
ground cover. It settled in the American South,
where the weather was just perfect. And it
grows like crazy there. The Kudzu vine can
grow up to 1 foot per day. Vast parts of the
South are now covered in it. It smothers local
plants, kills trees, and crowds of native animals.
In fact, kudzu is so tough that some herbicides
actually make it grow faster.
DRIVING US BUGGY!
Insects account for more than $30,000,000 in
damage per year.
- The glassy winged sharpshooter,
recently introduced a California, Carries a
bacterium that causes a devastating disease in
grapes, which is bad news for a wine-producing
state (not to mention their customers).
- The Argentine fire ant has become
established across the American South and has
displaced quit a few native species of ants.
- The famous Africanized honeybee
(a.k.a. the killer bee) has moved to the U.S. and
threatens native bees in a lot of areas-that it least volume of international travel and trade, there is
they’ve given something back form of the
producers and comedians.
- The most harmful book of the mall is the
gypsy moth, introduced to America for silk
production in the 19th century; it escaped into
the wild and continues to destroying native trees
even today.
A FUNGUS AMONG US
The threat from invaders doesn’t come from
bugs alone. Every organism wants to get into
the act. In the early 20th century, a fungus that
attacks chestnut trees entered the U.S. and
within decades virtually wiped the native
American chestnut off the map.
SNAKES, WHY DIDN’T HAVE TO BE
SNAKES?
What’s more disturbing than having your yard
covered with kudzu? How will bode have in
your yard covered with 10-foot snakes? Guam
has been invaded by the brown tree snake, a
native to New Guinea that arrived in Guam after
World War II, most likely in a military
transports. It grows up to 10 feet (3 m) long and
in the last half-century it has depleted Guam of
most of its native species of lizards, and bats,
and all of its songbirds. Now that most of its
natural prey is gone, the snakes are attacking
farm birds and pets.
These snakes also cause thousands of
power outages every year by crawling onto
electrical lines. They’re nocturnal, mildly
poisonous, and do bite humans-usually at night
while people are sleeping in their beds. It has
been estimated that some sections of Guam
have nearly 12,000 brown tree snakes per
square mile!
TIE ME CANE TOAD DOWN, SPORT
Like Guam, Australia is an island, albeit a much
larger one, with serious invasion problems.
Australia is under siege-toads, cats and rabbits
are just a few of the invaders that are driving
down the populations of Australia’s unique
native animals that exist nowhere else in the
world.
Cane toads - imported originally too tied
the cane beetle, a sugarcane a pest-breed of
faster than native frogs. They are bigger, too, so
they are now the new bosses of the lily pond.
And they are a danger to curious were hungry
animals like dogs because of their poisonous
skin.
Generations of pet kitties have escaped
from homes to join the ranks of feral marauders.
Cats can kill a wallaby with one pop to hide
behind their backs, and they thrive in varied
environments from desserts to rain forests, just
like the domesticated rabbits that escaped into
the Aussie bush where the bread like…well, you
know. Now there are huge hordes of rabbits
devastating the plant life of delicate ecosystems,
causing erosion and loss of topsoil, as well as
depriving food to native species.
NOT TONIGHT, HONEY, I HAVE
A…HONEY
The good news (yes, there is a little) is increased
awareness: Governments worldwide are
becoming more and more concerned about the
economic and ecological consequences of
invasive species. But, sad to say, with the
no way to completely prevent the transfer of
potentially harmful species between countries
and regions of the world. So keep watching the
skies! Or you could wake up to find the brown
tree snake in your bed. []
IT’S A BLINKING A
MARVEL
You’re going to do something about
15,000 times a day and for the most part,
you aren’t even going to be aware of
doing it. See? You did it again.
The human I has been compared to a fully
automatic, three-dimensional, self-focusing,
full-color, motion-picture camera. When not in
use, a camera’s delicate lens is covered with a
cap. But the I does better than that. It the blinks.
EYES WIDE SHUT
Most of your eye lies protected in its socket,
thank goodness. But the remaining 10% of its
surface is exposed to the hazards of the
atmosphere. To protect against this, each eye
has a retractable “lens cap” made of the thinnest
skin on your body. In snapping shut and then
retracting, the eyelid draws a thin film of fluid
across the eye, rinsing and polishing at the same
time.
THE BLINKING - THINKING
CONNECTION
A blink lasts only about a 10th of a second and
occurs some 15 times every minute. The rinse
and polished job only requires about two blinks
permit, so why all the extra blinks?
Anxiety, for instance, makes you blink
more often. If you were cross-examined by a
hostile lawyer, your blinkers would work
overtime (especially if he were guilty). On the
other hand, visual concentration makes you
blink less frequently. Imminent danger restricts
blinking even further, so the eyes can dart
quickly from the main field of view to the
periphery and back again (like that shifty-eyed
look we have seen in some politicians).
Blinking also takes place at the moment
that we stop singing and start thinking. It serves
as a kind of mental punctuation, indicating the
transition from information input to information
processing. []
EGG TRIVIA:
- Eggshells contain as many as 17,000 tiny pores
over their surface. Through these pores, the egg
can absorb flavors and odors (like rotting
vegetables in your refridgerator.)
- About 240 million laying hens produce some
5.5 billion dozen egges per year in the United
States,.
- Egg yolks are one of the few foods that
naturally contain Vitamin D.
- Yolk color depends on the diet of the hen.
- White-shelled eggs are produced by hens white
white feathers and ear lobes; brown-shelled eggs
are produced by the girls with red feathers and
ear lobes. []