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Three weeks before the postman caterpillar turns into an adult, it eats 25,000 times its own body weight in passion flower leaves.


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Squirting urine at others is acceptable behaviour if you're a lobster. Researchers have discovered that lobsters greet each other by squirting urine. This behaviour appears to help them to both avoid fights and select mates. Scientists have long wondered why many marine animals have bladders to store urine when they could just allow it to leak out into the water. To discover the answer, researchers glued catheters onto lobsters to measure the animals' urine release. Their findings showed that lobsters do not urinate when predators may be nearby, but that when two males meet, their urine carries a record of who is the boss. As well, males and females squirt urine at each other before choosing mates.
MARCH 20, 1999, P. 20
New Scientist
MARCH 20, 1999, P. 20

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