Your friend wrinkles her face with disgust while tasting some food, and seeing her, you too feel the same disgust. Such feeling often occurs to us when we can immediately and instinctively understand other people’s experiences and feel as if we too are going through the same. This phenomenon occurs due to the presence of…
We can taste food because the salivary glands in the mouth secrete saliva that mix with the food. Without saliva, we would not know the taste of any kind of food. The chemoreceptors or taste buds need a liquid medium that makes flavours bind into the receptor molecules. For example, if a pinch of salt…
A spider’s web is not its home, but rather a trap for its prey. It is woven by the spider using the spider silk produced by special glands in their abdomen. The webs are as unique as snowflakes, with no two ever being the same. Some tropical spiders have built webs over 5.5 m across.
Camels are known to live without water for many weeks in the desert. But it has been found that giraffes and kangaroo rats can live for more days than the camels. Giraffes eat food high in water content, and so they can live without water for weeks. Kangaroo rats never drink water but metabolise water…
The word ‘arachibutyrophobia’ is derived from arachis, meaning peanuts. The full meaning of the word is fear of peanut oil sticking to the roof of the mouth. Arachis is a kind of oil found in many nuts and peanuts which stick to the roof of the mouth. In many cases, the saliva fails to dissolve…
