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If you should be so adventurous as to visit the Arctic regions at the top of the world, you might have occasion to meet up with Nanuk. And if you do, you’ll want to mind your manners. Now you might be asking yourself, “Who is Nanuk?” but the correct question is “What is Nanuk?”

Nanuk is the Inuit name for a Polar Bear. The Inuit Indians considered Nanuk to be wise, powerful and “almost a man.” The Inuit had seen polar bears walking upright just like a man and their legends told of polar-bear men that lived in igloos where they secretly shed their furry skins and spoke like humans.

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Polar Bears are found throughout the Arctic regions. They inhabit the ice floes, waters, islands, and coastlines of the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland. Polar Bears roam far and wide and the people who encounter them have given them descriptive names.

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Jim was savoring the last days of summer before the new school term. Sitting in a pocket of willow tree roots, his back bolstered by the trunk, he closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. The narrow margin of grass next to the pond was still green and its sweet tang mixed pleasantly in the warm air with the dusty brown aroma from the adjacent fields.

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Dragonflies have been around 300 million years. One prehistoric fossil had a wingspan of 2 1/2 feet! Today, the largest dragonfly is found in Costa Rica. It has a wingspan of 7 1/2 inches. Below you’ll find more interesting facts about dragonflies.

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Cars and Corn? Would you have ever guessed that corn might fuel the car or bus that takes you to school every day? Yes, corn.

Ethanol is a clear, colorless liquid made from corn. When ethanol is mixed with gasoline it helps the gasoline to burn more efficiently. That means that while you are increasing the number of miles you can go on a gallon of gas you are also reducing the amount of pollution that the car creates.

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Did you know that there is a creature that still walks upon the earth just as it did 200 million years ago? Dinosaurs may have disappeared into extinction, but this tough and intelligent denizen survived and has outlived them by 65 million years! It has even survived the deadliest of all predators, man.

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Where Can You Find Crocodiles? There are 23 species of crocodile and they inhabit the Southern reaches of the world. They can be found in the swamps and everglades of the southeastern U.S., in Central and South America, in Africa, Australia, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Borneo.

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Johnny ran back to the jeep as fast as his legs could carry him! “Mom, Dad,” he shouted breathlessly, “you’ve got to come see!” When Johnny’s parents and his older sister Pam reached the clearing, it was almost too good to be true.

There, just about a hundred feet away on the grassy savanna, were three statuesque giraffes! Even Pam who had protested their safari vacation, lost her resentful slouch and watched intently as the tallest of the trio reached high into the thorny acacia trees with his tongue to snatch the tender top growth.

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Giraffes are beautiful creatures. Here are some giraffe facts:

• Giraffes live 20 to 25 years.
• Different species of giraffe have different spot patterns. In one species, the reticulated giraffe, spots darken from tan to a deep chocolate brown as the giraffe ages.
• Giraffes have little horns covered with skin and tufts of hair on the top of their heads. The size of the horns is different in the different species. Since giraffes are closely related to deer, it is thought that these little horns are the remnant of a time when giraffes may have had antlers.
• Giraffes do occasionally sit and they often lie down to sleep.
• Giraffes only sleep for a few minutes at a time, the most being 20 minutes.
• While giraffes are usually quiet, they sometimes grunt, snort, or bleat.
• Adult males can weigh more than a ton (2,000 lbs.). Some weigh two tons!
• Giraffes are found in East Africa and in many African countries that lie south of the Sahara Desert, or in “sub-Saharan Africa.”
• The word “giraffe” means “the tallest of them all” and comes from the Arabic word “zirafah.”
• Giraffes are herbivores, which means they only eat plants. Their favorite plants are Acacia and Combretum trees.

A glass bowl of deep red cherries gleams on the dining room table. As you reach for a piece of the shiny fruit you remember your mother’s stern look and admonition to eat them anywhere but over her good white tablecloth. You know why she’s so adamant about it too! Last summer, just as you bit into a sweet cherry, a little juice squirted right out onto the tablecloth. That bright red stain stubbornly clung to the fabric despite heroic attempts to remove it.

Well, you may not have made your mom too happy and you probably won’t ever eat a cherry around a white damask tablecloth again, but you have discovered an ancient and very practical bit of knowledge. We can recreate the vivid colors that Mother Nature displays all around us and we can do it with her very own paint box!

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If you think there’s not much difference between a hedgehog and a porcupine, you may be surprised to find out just how different they could be! Here’s what we found out.

While you won’t find hedgehogs in North or South America, you may cross paths with a porcupine. Snub-nosed and pigeon-toed, a large porcupine weighs in at a hefty 15 pounds, almost four times as heavy as an average, pointy-snouted hedgehog. A funny thing about porcupines is that they have four toes on their front feet and five toes on their back feet!

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If one summer evening, just after dusk, you saw a little creature waddling out from under the shrubbery on its 4 bare feet, sporting a thick coat of closely cropped quills, and making loud snuffling noises with its pointy snout, would you: a) Rub your eyes to see if you’re dreaming b) run for the hills, c) check to see if you’ve been transported back to prehistoric times, d) bust up laughing, e) try to pet it.

Well, if you’re just about anywhere in the world besides North or South America, you are probably looking at a very cute, though somewhat strange looking critter called a hedgehog.

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