Category: Vaccines

Taz in Big Trouble

10/20/2022

Laurence Pringle
celebrating nature, inspiring good writing

Lots of people are fond of the cartoon character called Taz. He is loud, always hungry, not very smart, and sometimes spins his body around like a little tornado. He pops up in video games and even appears in television ads.

Cartoon Taz is based on a real animal known as a Tasmanian devil. The “devils” are marsupials related to kangaroos and wombats. They used to live in Australia, but now survive only on Tasmania, an island state just south of the Australian mainland.

Tasmanian devils have black fur, short legs, and are about the size of a beagle dog or a big house cat. Long ago, people named them "devils" because of their sounds. They grunt, huff, snarl, and click their teeth but especially give out loud, fierce, blood-curdling screeches and screams.

And you know that spinning tornado thing that cartoon Taz does? It is based on the animal's actual behavior. When a Tasmanian devil is in a fight, or defending itself, it moves very rapidly. It flashes a view of its side, making itself look as big as possible. Then it quickly shows its front, with gaping mouth and teeth. Back and forth, back and forth it turns, showing two kinds of threats, and appearing to be whirling around.

Tasmanian devils fight a lot. They battle over food, and in mating season, males compete for females. This behavior has helped put their whole species in big trouble. Beginning in 1996, a disease began to kill the devils. It's a cancer that grows quickly on the faces of these mammals. When they fight, they often bite one another's face. This spreads the disease. An infected animal soon dies. In less than 20 years the whole Tasmanian devil population dropped by ninety percent.

Still, there is hope. Scientists have learned more about the disease, and perhaps a vaccine can be created to protect devils. Also, healthy devils are being kept in zoos and other places where the disease can't reach them. And scientists have learned that some wild devils in Tasmania seem able to resist the disease.

With help from people, Tasmanian devils may survive. We can hope these fascinating creatures make a comeback, and once again scream loudly in the Tasmanian night.

The Tasmanian Devil is characterized by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, pungent odor, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding. Photo by JJ Harrison via Wikipedia

Devil facial tumour disease causes tumours to form in and around the mouth, interfering with feeding and eventually leading to death by starvation. By (Photo: Menna Jones) [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Three Tasmanian devils feeding. Eating is a social event for the Tasmanian devil, and groups of 2 to 5 are common. By Willis Lim (http://www.flickr.com/photos/willislim/3173810890/) via Wikimedia Commons

The Looney Tunes Taz making a personal appearance in a parade in California. "Taz Looney Tunes parade" by V Smoothe - Tasmanian devil. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons -

We have been taught to fear scorpions in any form. But scorpions usually sting either to subdue their prey or to protect themselves. In fact, Earth has two thousand scorpion species, but only a few dozen are deadly to humans. With vivid descriptions of scorpions’ life cycle, body structure, habits, and habitat and beautiful, realistic illustrations, Laurence Pringle's Scorpions! Strange and Wonderful explores one of nature’s feared and misunderstood creatures. For more information, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Pringle, Laurence. "Taz in Big Trouble." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 9
Feb. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
taz-in-big-trouble.

2 Comments

Why Do We Have a School Summer Vacation?

6/3/2022

4 Comments

Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

Chances are you are eagerly looking forward to the last day of school and nearly three months of free time.

Chances are also that you heard that this nice long summer vacation is somehow connected to the early years of the country when agriculture was the most important industry and kids had to help out on their farms during this time. If so, you heard wrong.

For starters, there wasn’t much to do on farms in the summer. The busy times were spring (planting) and fall (harvesting). As a result, most farm kids went to school during the summer and winter. At best they spent a total of six months learning the three Rs.

It was a very different situation in cities as the country became increasingly urbanized. Big-city kids might spend as much as 48 weeks in class, with a week off every 12 weeks. Since attendance wasn’t mandatory, though, they probably only attended school about as much as they do now.

But if so many kids were playing hooky, reformers said, why bother keeping schools open all year? Some doctors backed up the idea of closing for a period of time, saying that keeping kids cooped up for most of the year wasn’t good for their health.

So education officials decided to eliminate the summer quarter. The first reason was that schools were not air conditioned back then and almost unbearable during heat waves. Also, there was also a strong belief that summer was the time when epidemics of serious diseases such as polio got started. Many people thought having so many children packed so close to each other in classrooms helped spread the illnesses. Third, upper-class and middle-class families often took vacations during the hot months.

With increasing mechanization on farms and many farm families moving to the cities, helping with planting and harvesting wasn’t as important. Farm states added those spring and fall months to the school year and gave kids the summers off, just like big-city folk.

However, some research suggests that the “summer slide” causes students to lose an average of a month of learning. Students typically don’t do as well on tests in the fall—after the long summer break—than in the spring when they’ve been in school for several months. Most other developed countries spend more time in the classroom and generally do better on standardized testing. As a result of these factors, a few states are considering lengthening the school year from the current 180 days to 200.

What do you think?

Jim Whiting hopes all of you have a wonderful summer and that you can carve out some time to read! Your local library may have some of his books, as well as many by the other wonderful authors who have made the Nonfiction Minute such a great success. And be sure to check out Jim's updated website, www.jimwhiting.com

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "Why Do We Have a School Summer Vacation?" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think
Tank, 15 June 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Why-Do-We-Have-a-School-Summer-Vacation?

All of the iNK authors will be working over the summer to create new Minutes for next year. We will be posting three lists of 10 Minutes for the Summer. It will highlight each of our wonderful authors. The first Summer Minutes will be published on June 23rd, tghe next on July 20 and the final list before the school year starts on August 10th. Make it a wonderful summer and every Minute!

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Taz in Big Trouble

Why Do We Have a School Summer Vacation?

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