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In the Fact File section we bring you a new collection of quick facts each week. (Click on the links below for more facts)

 
 

2861/ The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

2862/ The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

2863/ The embryos of tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother's womb, the survivor being the baby shark that is born.

2864/ There are 60,000 miles (97,000 km) in blood vessels in every human.

2865/ Clouds form as warmer air pass over the ocean or large open lakes, the air picks up water vapour. As the air warms, it rises because warm air is less dense than cold air. As the warm air rises, the air cools and the water vapour in the air condenses to form clouds of water droplets.

2866/ Clouds that form at the surface of the Earth are known as fog.

2867/ Sleet forms when partially frozen water droplets, or rainwater, in the clouds falls and freezes completely when it hits the surface of the Earth.

2868/ Many of the plants and foods in your home originated in the rainforests. Common house plants, such as bromeliads, African violets, periwinkle and the Christmas cactus, began in the rain forest.

2869/ The rosy periwinkle contains an anti-leukemia drug; a person with lymphocytic leukemia has a 99% chance that the disease will go into remission because of the rosy periwinkle. more than 1,400 varieties of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer.

2870/ There are more than 20,000 varieties of orchid.

2871/ A typical forest in the United States contains from 5 to 12 different kinds of trees, while a typical rainforest may have over 300 different kinds. Rainforests usually contain 10 times more tree species and 5 times more bird species than temperate forests. The Amazon forest in South America is home to more than 1600 species of birds and about a million different kinds of insects.

2872/ Until about forty years ago, the lack of roads prevented most outsiders from exploiting the rainforest. These roads, constructed for timber and oil companies, cattle ranchers and miners, have destroyed millions of acres of rainforest each year.

2873/ Most of the nutrients of a rainforest ecosystem are stored in its vegetation rather than in its soil.

2874/ On September 9, 1987, a satellite picture of the Amazon River Basin showed a total of 7,603 fires burning in the rainforest.

2875/ Some 25% of all pharmaceuticals used by Americans originated in a tropical rainforest.

2876/ Almost 65% of Central America has been cleared to create pastureland for grazing cattle.

2877/ In 1990, Brazil's President Jose Sarney signed laws providing for extractive reserves to protect more than five million acres of forest areas to be managed by rubber tappers, nut gatherers and others whose livelihood depends on the rainforest harvest.

2878/ Since the turn of the century, 90 tribes of indigenous peoples have been wiped out in Brazil alone. The pace of annihilation is increasing; 26 of those tribes were killed or scattered in the past decade.

2879/ The most species-rich plot of rainforest so far enumerated is in Peru: 283 species of trees 0.1 m in diameter, or over 580 stems on one hectare. Here, every second tree is a different species. While this is the most species-rich area, this kind of growth and biodiversity is typical for most rainforest ecosystems.

2880/ Costa Rica was the first Central American nation to cultivate bananas for export.

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