Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2019 i National Geographic Kids

Sea otters use their stomachs as plates when they eat. I’VE GOT YOUR BACK, PLANET EARTH. 1 POLLUTION PREVENTERS 1 A sea otter watches a crab scuttle across a mud bank at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve, an estuary in Monterey Bay, California. (An estuary is where the ocean meets a river.) The otter drags its body across the mud with its forepaws, then … snatch! It grabs the crab and chows down. Believe it or not, this sea otter meal helps prevent pollution in the estuary. Eelgrass, a kind of seagrass that grows in the habitat, filters out pollution from water flowing into the estuary. The eelgrass thrives with just the right amount of algae in the environment — too much algae can smother the grass. Crabs eat sea slugs…

1 MYTH: Pirates made treasure maps showing where they buried their loot. BUSTED! No pirate treasure maps have ever been found. And since each crew member expected to get paid after an expedition, they usually split up their loot instead of burying it. Old Hollywood movies such as Treasure Island have been blamed for starting this myth. WHY ARE PIRATES CALLED “PIRATES”? BECAUSE THEY ARR! 2 MYTH: Pirates said “arr” and “matey” all the time. BUSTED! You can blame Hollywood for this myth too. English actors in 1950s pirate films overdid it a bit on their pirate slang, and their exaggerated take on “pirate speak” stuck. No evidence proves that real pirates said “arr” or “matey” very much. 3 MYTH: All pirates made their captives walk the plank. BUSTED! Pirates did…

1. Fill in the thought balloon. 2. Cut out the entire picture (or make a photocopy of it). 3. Mail it along with your name, address, phone number, and date of birth to Nat Geo Kids, Back Talk, P.O. Box 96000, Washington, DC 20090-6000. Selection for publication in a future issue will be at the discretion of Nat Geo Kids. What do YOU think this lion is thinking? FROM THE DECEMBER 2018 / JANUARY 2019 ISSUE Is there something on my face? Parker T., 11 Tooele, Utah I am the bird whisperer. Adair C., 10 Honolulu, Hawaii I should have checked the barber’s reviews. Roman K., 12 Short Hills, New Jersey Check out my bird earrings! Lilly-o L., 5 Providence, Rhode Island You guys are so ear-itating! Judah B., 8…

SUPER LONG TAIL You better watch out when Keon the Irish wolfhound starts wagging his tail—because it’s nearly three feet long. The pooch holds the record for the longest tail on a dog, measuring 30.2 inches long. That’s almost the size of an average two-year-old kid! SO. MANY. ICE POPS! This guy’s definitely going to get brain freeze. Kevin Strahle holds the record for the most ice pops eaten in one minute, having scarfed down six of the sweet treats. Strahle’s also the titleholder for nine other extreme-eating challenges, including fastest time to drink a bottle of maple syrup and most powdered doughnuts eaten in three minutes. We’re guessing he’s not a picky eater. MAN JUMPS FROM DRONE Parachute jumping from a plane is so yesterday. Ingus Augstkalns made history when he became the first person…

1 FOR THE BIRDS WHAT Boulders Beach WHERE Simon’s Town, South Africa WHY IT’S BIZARRE You might expect to see penguins on an icy coast. But these birds like it hot! African penguins splash in the warm waters of this national park next to 540-million-year-old granite boulders. 2 HIDE-AND-BEACH WHAT Hidden Beach WHERE Marieta Islands, Mexico WHY IT’S BIZARRE Tucked inside a crater, this spot might have been formed in the early 1900s when the Mexican government was testing military weapons on these then-ninhabited islands. It’s so secluded you can only reach the beach by first swimming through a 40-foot-long rock tunnel. 3 BLACK OUT WHAT Punaluu Black Sand Beach WHERE Big Island, Hawaii WHY IT’S BIZARRE The jet-black sand on this skinny stretch of beach is made up of…

THE PROBLEM Scientists are stumped by an increasing threat to California’s sea otters: great white sharks. THE QUESTION Otters aren’t normally on a shark’s menu. But recently they’ve been taking a bite anyway. “We think most of these interactions are investigative bites,” says Mike Harris, a senior environmental scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Unfortunately for the otters, a nip from a shark can be deadly. Experts think these bites are on the rise because—among other reasons—great whites are a protected species in California, so more roam the area than in the past. THE SOLUTIONS Experts like Harris are working on ways to protect the sea otters from great whites. In the meantime, you can help protect the otters too. “Kelp forests camouflage sea otters from sharks,…

It’s rush hour in Africa. Every October, thousands of wildebeest and zebras gather along the banks of the Mara River. They wait to cross the deep, rushing waters as part of their seasonal journey from the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The river flows so fast that full-grown animals struggle to swim to the other side. “When the river is full, lots of animals drown trying to cross,” says Tom Yule, who ran the nearby Lemala Mara safari camp. Watching from the river’s edge, Yule sees a wildebeest calf and later a zebra foal jump into the water. But he doesn’t expect what happens next. 1 The little wildebeest tries to paddle across the river but is swept away by the strong…

Salt Hotel TAYKA HOTEL DE SAL WHERE Tahua, Bolivia HOW MUCH About $130 a night WHY IT’S COOL You’ve stayed at hotels made of brick or wood. But salt? Tayka Hotel de Sal is made mostly of salt (sal means salt in Spanish), including some beds—though you’ll sleep with regular mattresses and blankets. The hotel sits on the border of Salar de Uyuni, a prehistoric dried-up lake that’s the world’s biggest salt flat. Builders use the salt from the over 4,000-square-mile flat to make the bricks and glue them together with a paste of wet salt that hardens when it dries. When rain starts to dissolve the hotel, it’s no problem: The owners just mix up more salt paste to strengthen the bricks. COOL THINGS ABOUT BOLIVIA During rainy summer…

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii When veterinarian Claire Simeone received nearly a dozen mysterious, silent phone calls from the Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital, Ke Kai Ola, she worried it might be an emergency. But back at the clinic, nobody admitted to calling her. So Simeone, who’s also the hospital’s director, searched through each room until she found the prank caller: a gold-dust day gecko lounging on the touch screen of a telephone. After sneaking into the hospital, the lizard was probably attracted by the bright screen. Then the cold-blooded creature stuck around to soak up the phone’s warmth, reptile expert Ron Tremper says. The gecko’s feet—covered in tiny hairs that help it grip leaves and branches—pressed against the touch screen like human fingertips. “Every time it moved its feet, the…

Yo-ho, yo-ho—uh-oh! A mysterious ship on the horizon flying a skull-and-crossbones flag wasn’t a welcome sight to sailors in the 18th and 19th centuries. That flag meant one thing: pirates. Faced with faster, cannon-crammed vessels typically crewed by pirates, a ship captain was left with two choices: lower their sails and surrender—or turn and fight. Life wasn’t one big swashbuckling adventure for the pirates, however. Lousy food, cramped quarters, stinky crewmates, and hurricanes were all part of the job. Still, a handful of pirates managed to enjoy success at sea … and inspired fear in those who were unfortunate enough to meet them face-to-face. Check out some of history’s most famous pirates. RACHEL WALL REIGN OF TERROR New England coast, late 1700s Rachel Wall and her husband, George, worked together…

THE CODE: CAESAR CIPHER To use this cipher, just shift every letter of the alphabet forward or backward a fixed number of spaces—you can move the entire alphabet as many spaces as you want. In this example, we shifted the alphabet just one space: A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on until you reach the end of the alphabet. Then Y becomes Z, and Z becomes A. You can write this out as a table. The bottom row is the code, and the top letters are the translations. So you could write GOOD JOB like this: HPPE KPC HAIL, CAESAR! This code got its name because according to an ancient writer, the Roman politician Julius Caesar used this simple substitute cipher to keep his letters secure. CRACK THIS…