The World of Creatures

Read and learn about things. That is a way to broaden our horizons.

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” - Benjamin Franklin

Today, we take a peek into the world of other creatures that roam the earth. Here are some interesting fun facts about them – courtesy of Facebook pages ‘Mr. Scientific’, ‘Zootopia’, ‘Plant Care Today’, ‘Mechanics Mix', etc… However, I do not know if they are true. Some of them sound really incredible.

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That frog sitting still in the dirt is not resting. It is reading something invisible.

Every inch of a frog's skin works like a living sensor — absorbing water directly from the ground instead of drinking through a mouth. When soil moisture drops even slightly, that change moves through the skin and fires nerve signals almost immediately.

The frog does not wait for puddles to disappear or leaves to wilt. It feels the shift while the ground still looks perfectly fine to everything else. Plants will not show visible stress for another 48 hours. Birds will not notice. People definitely will not. But the frog already knows.

This is not instinct in the blurry, hard-to-define way people use that word. It is a biological early warning system so precise it detects what satellites and soil probes are still being built to measure.

One small animal, sitting quietly at the edge of a pond, holding information the rest of the ecosystem has not received yet. The quietest things are often the first to know. – A Facebook post by ‘Plant Care Today’

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The Argentine Horned Frog is widely known as the "Pacman Frog" due to its comically round shape and a massive head that accounts for up to half of its entire body mass.

This distinct appearance, dominated by a cavernous mouth that will attempt to swallow almost anything that crosses its path, perfectly mirrors the classic arcade character.

These ambush predators are native to the grasslands and rainforest floors of South America, primarily found in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. – A Facebook post by ‘Zootopia’

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Male sand lizards turn bright green to attract a mate during the spring and early summer breeding season.

The males develop vivid lime or emerald-green coloring along their sides, making them stand out to females and rival males. Once breeding season ends, their bright colors gradually fade back to their usual brown and patterned appearance. - A Facebook post by 'Zootopia'

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Female frogs generally do not hunt down males simply because they dislike them, yet under certain circumstances males can become unintended meals. During breeding season, many male frogs compete intensely for access to females.

In species where females are much larger than males, a female may attack and eat a smaller male if he approaches at the wrong time or becomes easy prey.

This has been documented in several species of bullfrogs, horned frogs, and other large predatory frogs.

Frogs are opportunistic feeders. Their brains are often wired to respond to movement rather than social relationships. If a moving animal is small enough to swallow, it may be treated as food regardless of whether it is a potential mate. - A Facebook post by ‘Mr Scientific’

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Chameleons change color through an incredible feat of living nanotechnology rather than by merely shifting pigments. Their skin contains specialized cells called iridophores, which are packed with a microscopic lattice of guanine nanocrystals. When a chameleon relaxes or tenses its skin, it directly alters the distance between these crystals; tighter spacing causes the cells to reflect shorter wavelengths of light like vibrant blues and greens, while expanding the space shifts the reflection to longer wavelengths like vivid yellows, oranges, and fiery reds. Far from being just a camouflage trick, this optical mastery serves as a dynamic emotional language used to ward off rivals, court mates, and regulate internal body temperature. Remarkably, many chameleons also possess a deeper, second layer of iridophores that reflects invisible near-infrared sunlight, effectively functioning as a built-in thermal shield to prevent them from overheating in harsh environments. – A Facebook post by ‘Mechanics Mix’

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