Kids News - Environment Articles

Each year around this time, stargazers anxiously await nature's finest fireworks show - the Perseid meteors. The 'fireball' champions of all annual meteor showers have already been streaming through our skies at the rate of about a dozen an hour, for the last few weeks. However, things will really heat up from early August 11th to the 13th, when between ninety to a hundred meteors will come zooming across the skies, making them easy to spot, even with the naked eye....

Mention koalas and the image that comes to mind is that of a cuddly animal snoozing, whilst clinging on to a tree trunk for dear life - and rightfully so, given that the animals sleep for up to 20 hours a day! However, while the fact that their sedentary lifestyle is caused by their unusually small brains and the limited nutritional content of the eucalyptus leaves they consume is well-known, what was never questioned was their penchant for tree trunks. Turns out that the smart koalas have figured out that staying close to trees is the best way to beat the heat, during the hot Australian summers....

On June 19th, a group of animal lovers on a whale watching cruise off the coast of Sydney, were treated to a rare sight - a pod of mammals that included Migaloo, the world's first documented white humpback whale. The gorgeous 55-ton all-white humpback, was sighted with five other whales as they made their annual migration from the Antarctica to the breeding areas off Queensland and Western Australia....

On Sunday, May 25th, 2014, India's Malavath Poorna, became the youngest female to climb to the summit of the world's highest peak - Mount Everest. The 13-year-old girl handily surpassed the previous record holder - Nepal's Nima Chemji Sherpa, who accomplished same feat in 2012, at the age of 16....

The plan had been to create a beautiful nature park complete with a large artificial lake on the outskirts of the city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province in north-central China. However thanks to a cruel trick played by nature, what the officials have ended up with, is an unsalvageable sandy mess!...

Visitors that dare to venture deep into the Western Amazon rainforest often encounter a strange sight - groups of butterflies hovering above yellow-spotted river turtles that are basking in the sun. What's even stranger is why they are there - To drink the tears from their eyes! And it's not because the beautiful insects are trying to comfort the reptiles, but because the tears contain the one ingredient that is lacking in their diet - sodium....

Scientists have often pondered over how the eight-armed octopus avoids getting tangled around itself. This mystery was particularly perplexing given that each tentacle is lined with hundreds of suckers that are strong enough to stick to almost anything. Also, unlike animals with rigid skeletons, the mollusks have no idea where their arms are at any given moment....

With fishing trawlers increasingly tossing nets deeper into the ocean, tales of innocent marine animals being entangled are becoming all too common. Late last month, that was exactly what happened to a humpback whale that was making its way through the waters of California's Monterey Bay....

A team of scientists led by University of Texas, Austin, astronomer Ivan Ramirez have identified a star that they believe is one of many siblings our sun has floating around the Universe. Formed 4.5 billion years ago from the same large interstellar cloud that gave birth to our sun, it is 15% larger and lies 110 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. Though not visible with the unaided eye, HD 162826 that lies close to bright star Vega, can be easily viewed with low-power binoculars....