Today, I Learned: Where Are We Most Likely To Be Hit By Hailstorm? // How Many Legs Octopus Has?
Today, I learned more interesting facts.
I found out in which place on Earth it is the most likely to be hit by hailstorm, and how many legs the octopuses have.
Where it is the most likely to experience hailstorm?
In Kericho in Kenya's Western Highlands.
This place has the largest average hail precipitation in the world - 132 days per year. It is not completely known why but there are few hypotheses. One hypothesis says that it may be caused by organic dust particles from tea plantations getting trapped in the atmosphere that behave like kernels around which hail starts to grow. Another explanation points out to the high altitude and structure of the area which could contribute to sudden lift of warm air that quickly condenses once it reaches freezing heights in the atmosphere.
[Kericho hills. Image Source]
The hailstone is usually of 1 cm in diameter but can grow up to 20 cm in diameter which can cause serious damage to anything on the ground. The worst recorded hailstorms happened in Gopalganj, Bangladesh, in 1986 (at least 92 people were killed), and in Bavaria, Germany, in 1984 (around $4 billion worth of damage and 400 people injured).
[The largest measured hailstone found in Vivian, South Dakota, in 2010. Image Source]
How many legs does the octopus have?
It has two legs.
The other six of its limbs are arms, according to the research from 2008. Octopuses use their rear tentacles to push themselves across the bottom of the sea while their remaining tentacles are used for pumping. Their tentacles are part of very complex nervous system. More than half of their 500 million neurons are found in their limbs.
This complexity allows their tentacles to be highly independent - when severed, they are able to move and live for up to few months. Their limbs are equipped with suction cups that despite being used for grasping, also work as "taste buds" allowing the octopus to taste anything it touches. For self-defense, some octopuses are able to use their limbs to imitate the movement of different sea animals.
Today, I learned!
Other sources not included under hyperlinks:
Top 5 - "What Places in the World Usually Have the Most Hail in One Year?".
The Telegraph - "Octopuses have two legs and six arms".
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The hailstones was very interesting to me . I have personally witnessed baseball sized hail . up voted and followed
Cheers!
Wow that's very lucky (and dangerous).
Followed back
I am definitely using the octopus question on my Math classes tomorrow. They will love the trick question!
I find cephalopods like octopuses, squid and cuttlefish fascinating. They are really intelligent and like true aliens on our own planet.
They have eyes that are organised in a much more efficient way than ours - instead of the backwards way where our blood vessels and some neural fibres are in front of the photoreceptors (reducing effective resolution) they have things arranged in the more logical manner. That is they have the photoreceptors at the front.
They also have some other fascinating eye differences that are well worth reading about but I won't write a long essay here. It is considered a good example of convergent evolution since it is almost impossible that the vertebrate eyes that we have are derived from the same evolutionary source.
That is very interesting. Thanks for adding this information. Maybe you could turn this essay into post.
Perhaps at some point:)
Great things to learn!
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