Page 94 - World of Animals - Issue #36

Animal answers

questions@animalanswers.co.uk

Why do bees make honey?

Bees make honey as a food source for of nectar during the colder months, they
the colony. Usually their preferred snack is make honey throughout the year and
nectar, which is a sugary liquid produced stockpile reserves for when winter arrives.
by plants to attract pollinating insects. The Bees are certainly not risk takers and they
only problem is that bees have a sweet tend to produce far more honey than the

tooth and there aren’t any flowers around hive will ever need. The excess is what
during winter. To compensate for the lack humans harvest.
Bees also
produce wax
to seal in the
honey into
separate cells
If rhino horns are made of
hair, why are they so strong?

Rhino horns are made out of the same protein that makes our
hair and fingernails: keratin. So why are they so strong and

pointy? Well the horns grow from the bottom upwards; the outer
part is so ened over time by repeated Sun exposure and is worn

away when the rhino clashes and rubs it on the ground and on
vegetation. Over time this creates the distinctive horn shape. The
middle part of the horn – the part that has not been exposed to the
Sun – is much stronger and tougher.

“ Bonobos work for
the good of the

group and solve
disputes by making

love instead of war”

Are we more closely related to bonobos or chimps?

It has always been generally accepted that chimpanzees ago these two populations were distinct enough to be love instead of war. It turns out that, a er studying the

are our closet relatives, but recent genome sequencing separate species a er evolving separately for 1 million bonobo genome, it was found that there are portions
has shown this may not be the case. The common years. In this time chimpanzees became famously of our DNA more similar to bonobos, and other parts
ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos split away aggressive, tearing through the jungle and terrorising more similar to a chimpanzee. So although we would
around 4.5 million years ago. Fast-forward to around rival groups. Meanwhile, bonobos went in the opposite probably like to think of ourselves as having more in
2 million years ago and the remaining primates were direction, living in a democratic society, all working for common with the peaceful primates, we share around
separated by the Congo River. Just 1 million years the good of the group and solving disputes by making 98.7 per cent of our DNA with both.
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