Tag: mechanism

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Nostril

Posted on by Jinavie

What would happen if your nostrils were facing up instead of down? Rain would fall into your nose and when you were sad or with a cold, mucus would fill up in the nose instead of draining, creating quite a problem. Then why do we have two nostrils? The reason being, if one is blocked, we can breathe through the other (unless you have bad hay fever or a cold and both are blocked). This shows how (almost) every part of the human body has a purpose, including its shape and characteristics.

Another fun fact about nostrils is that at one moment, only one nostril is used for breathing. In other words, you can breathe easily through one side of your nose but the other side will feel stuffy and blocked. This phenomenon alternates sides on a periodic cycle (where the blocked side becomes clear and vice versa). This mechanism is most likely to protect the inside of your nose (nasal cavity) from drying out.

Posted in Science & Nature

Northern White-Faced Owl

Posted on by Jinavie

The northern white-faced owl, found in the Sahara Desert of Africa, is a small, cute bird of about 22~24cm length. It is famous for a very unique defence mechanism. As shown in the photo, it normally has a round, puffy appearance, but when faced with a fearsome predator like a hawk, it undergoes a drastic transformation. The owl shrinks itself as much as possible to avoid the enemy’s attention, while looking like a sick bird that has lost a lot of weight. This appearance gives the predator the impression that the owl is not worth the effort of hunting and lowers the chance of it attacking. The ability to shrink to half its original width is achieved through elongating its body and pulling in its feathers as much as possible. Also, when assuming this shape, the owl always faces the predator and poses at an angle to minimise its exposure.

This transformation is only seen when the owl is placed in front of a large predator like a hawk or a much larger owl. When in front of a similarly-sized owl, it exhibits a different transformation where it flares up its wings to make itself look much larger, intimidating the opposition. But this behaviour is common in many other species of owls, whereas the shrinking performance is a rare behaviour only seen in the northern white-faced owl.

(Video showing transformation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFwgblszf6s)