I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Way back in A.D. 77 (a long time ago) a Roman philosopher called Pliny started the a rumour that elephant’s hate mice above all other creatures.
I saw an episode of MythBusters when Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman tested this far-fetched idea that an enormous mammal could be frightened by a minuscule mouse. The MythBusters traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, to set a few mice loose around wild elephants and see what happened.
To slip the mice into elephant territory, Jamie and Adam placed the mice in mouse-sized holes in the ground and covered them with balls of elephant dung. When an elephant approached, they yanked away the dung to reveal the mice.
Much to their surprise, the mice stopped the elephants dead in their tracks. Once the elephants noticed the mice, they backed away and went in the other direction. Jamie and Adam thought that it might’ve been the dung-ball disturbance that explained the elephant’s nervous reaction, and so tried to scare the elephants by moving the dung without any mice around. But only the presence of mice could sufficiently startle them.
There were no stampedes, but the elephants’ cautious behaviour was enough evidence for Jamie and Adam to declare the Philosopher Pliny’s proposition plausible.
What do you think?
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