Three happy, true stories for today. Read them together with a grown-up!
🐠 Ocean
Corals Help Their Twins Get Better!
Corals are tiny animals that live together and build beautiful reefs in the sea. When the water gets too hot, corals can lose the tiny helpers that live inside them, called algae. Then the corals turn white and get weak. Scientists at Stanford University tried something simple. They put a pale piece of coral right next to a healthy piece from the very same coral, so the two pieces touched. The healthy coral shared its helpers through tiny tunnels! The pale pieces got all better in about seven weeks.
🤩 Wow fact: Once the helpers moved in, they doubled about every four days. That is about ten times faster than in corals out in the sea!
💭 Think about it: Who helps you feel better when you are not feeling well?
For grown-ups: sources: ScienceDaily (Stanford) · Smithsonian Magazine
🦕 Fossils
A Bird From Dinosaur Times That Liked to Walk!
Scientists in China found the fossil of a very, very old bird. It lived about 150 million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth! The bird was about as big as a crow. It had little sharp teeth, like some small dinosaurs, and a curved claw on one toe. Its wings were short, and its body was built a lot like birds today that live on the ground. So scientists think it walked and ran around instead of flying high in the sky. They named it Yuezhuornis.
🤩 Wow fact: It may be the oldest bird ever found from a bird family that stopped flying. And birds today are close cousins of the dinosaurs!
💭 Think about it: Would you rather fly like a bird or run super fast? Why?
For grown-ups: sources: ScienceDaily · Sci.News
🦜 Animals
A Hornbill Gets a Brand-New Beak!
At Artis Zoo in Amsterdam, a big black bird called a southern ground hornbill hurt his beak. Both the top and the bottom broke, so eating was very hard. A team of animal doctors and helpers got to work. They used a special picture called a CT scan and the old beak pieces to design a new beak. Then they made it with a 3D printer, plus strong metal parts. The very same day, the hornbill started using his new beak! A few days later, he was cleaning his feathers again.
🤩 Wow fact: As far as the zoo knows, he is the first bird ever to get a new top AND bottom beak made this way!
💭 Think about it: If you could invent something to help an animal, what would it be?
For grown-ups: sources: NL Times · UPI
