With Parvati by his side, Shiva became a family man. Inspired by her beauty, Shiva became the fountainhead of the arts, dance and drama. But he did not abandon his ways as a hermit and continued to meditate. His carefree attitude and his refusal to shoulder household responsibilities sometimes angered Parvati. But then she would come to terms with his …

An Amur tiger (Panthera tigeris altaica) lives in the Siberian plateau covered with snow, while the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigeris) lives in marshes and grasslands of the Indian subcontinent. The Amur tiger is fatter than the Bengal tiger. It also has more fur than its Bengal cousin. Owing to its weight, the Amur tiger can’t run faster than the Bengal …

Gelding is a castrated male horse while a stallion is a male horse that isn’t castrated. Geldings are calmer and better behaved, making them potentially more suitable as an everyday working animal.

Cocktail is a style of mixed drinks, and usually contains one or more types of liquor and mixers, such as bitters, fruit juice or herbs. Mocktail is a non-alcoholic cocktail. Mocktail is also know as ‘virgin cocktail’. A non-alcoholic beverage is a beverage that contains no alcohol. Non-alcoholic mixed drinks (including punches, “virgin cocktails”, or “mocktails”) are often consumed by …

Quite amazingly fast! Even the common sparrow can reach fifty miles an hour, and the duck can reach seventy. But the speed records goes, not surprisingly, to the aptly named swift. This amazing bird can reach speeds of over a hundred and six miles an hour!

It is very difficult to estimate the speed of insects in flight but it is thought that some dragonflies can reach 30 miles an hour. Dragonflies are easily the most skilled fliers of the insects. You may have seen them on a summer’s evening along the river bank, flitting and darting in vivid flashes of beautiful iridescent colour. You can …

Some breeds of dog can run much faster than others, and the fastest dog of all is the greyhound. A fully grown greyhound can run at the astonishing speed of about 56 k.p.h., that is, at nearly a kilometer a minute. Because greyhounds runs so fast, greyhound racing is a poplar sport. At a greyhound racing track, the dogs are …

Jerboas are small rodents that look rather like miniature kangaroos. Their back legs are four times as long their front legs, and the tail is longer than the head and body put together. Like kangaroos they travel by leaps and bounds and at top speed can over 10 feet in a single jump. The tail trails behind and helps to …

In the broadest terms, venom functions as a neurotoxin, hemotoxin, or combination. Neurotoxins attack the nervous system and cause death by heart failure or suffocation (your lungs stop working). They also cause pain and paralysis. Hemotoxins attack the circulatory system and body tissues. The result is pain, swelling and thinning or thickening of the prey’s blood and degeneration of organs. …

The ringhals is a king of cobra, and it has two methods of self-defence. When danger first threatens, the ringhals pretends to be dead. It turns its body over, and lies there with its mouth open. Sometimes this has the desired effect and the would-be predator goes away. But if the predator persists the ringhals has another way of defecting …