Most people recoil in horror at seeing a toad in the garden. Toads are certainly more ugly than frogs. They have large flattened bodies with dry, wrinkled and primply skins. The head of toad is blunter than a frog’s and its arms and legs are shorter. The toad spends most of its time on land and it is a slow …

Dandiya and Garba are the featured dances of Navratri evenings in Gujarat. Originated as devotional Garba dances, which were performed in the honor of Goddess Durga, this dance form is actually the staging of a mock-fight between the Goddess and Mahishasura, the mighty demon-king. The sticks of the dance represent the sword of Durga. Women normally perform it in a …

Antelopes, cows, goats and sheep have horns. Horns are composed of a bony central core attached to the skull and converted in a horny sheath. The horny sheath is ‘grown’ by a lair of tissue covering the bony core. Horns continue to grow throughout the life of the animal. (When people used horns for drinking from, it was the horny …

Sea lions have external ear-flaps, but seals do not. Also, sea lions can pulls their hind limbs forward to use as ‘back legs’ when on land. Seals cannot do this.

A blazer is for formal wear and a coat is for anytime wear. Formal blazers are generally made in deep shades. Coats can be made of any fabric like cotton, linen and leather. There is a slight difference though. Typically, coats form part of a man’s suit, while blazers are available without pants as you can wear them with formal …

A millipede does not have a million legs but it has twice as many as centipede about the same length – two pair to each segment. In spite of this the millipede moves more slowly than the centipede. It feeds on vegetation and often destroys valuable crops like potatoes, whereas the centipede is a carnivore and catches worms, spiders and …

The devil or ‘evil quartet’ is a sobriquet used to describe the four major causes that have led to the accelerated rate of extinction of species. These causes have been attributed mainly to human activities like extensive deforestation and poaching. These cause habitat loss and fragmentation, over-exploitation, alien species invasion and co-extinction. In the context of music, the word quartet …

The term Wushu consists of two Chinese characters: wu meaning martial or military and shu meaning skill or method. Together, it translates as martial art. Bruce Lee films brought the first images of kung fu to Cuba. Since then, martial art fans in Cuba started discovering the harmonic, philosophical and therapeutic bases of what is known as Wushu today -a …

Doomsday is also known as the Day of Last Judgment, as pronounced by God. According to the New Testament, the Armageddon is the decisive battle between God and Satan, at the end of which a destructive effect will fall on Earth. The world will not be the same again, and the human race may not survive. There will be a …

The Cinderella effect is a term used by psychologists to describe the high incidence of stepchildren being physically or sexually abused, neglected or murdered, or otherwise mistreated at the hands of their step parents at a significantly higher rate than their genetic counterparts. It takes its name from the character Cinderella from the fairytale, who in the story was cruelly …