Gibson’s World

Hermit crabs are really interesting animals. They take empty shells from sea snails and live in them for a little while. They have to change shells sometimes, though. If a hermit crab has a shell too small, it won’t grow as fast and it’s more likely to be eaten.

Hermit crabs live all over the world and there are more than 500 different species of them. Most of them live in the water but there are at least 15 different terrestrial species. Even though a hermit crab is called a hermit CRAB, hermit crabs aren’t closely related to true crabs.

Some big hermit crabs can grow to be as big as a coconut and might have a sea anemone on its shell. The hermit crab and the anemone both get a good deal, though. The sea anemone gets the hermit crab’s left-over food and a ride, and the sea anemone scares away all the fish that might want to eat the hermit crab.

A hermit crab reproduces by laying eggs. Once the eggs hatch and the baby hermit crabs come out, they all run to the shore hoping to find an empty snail shell that fits them. To survive, they feed on algae and debris. Some hermit crabs can live up to 30 years (I hope my hermit crab Cow lives that long)!

While we were in Phuket, I found two hermit crabs on the beach. I named one Cow and the other Purple. Cow was cool because his shell was black and white, so he looked like a small cow. I really liked playing with them and hope to see more hermit crabs in Africa, South America, and Antarctica :-).

Fun Facts:

1. Hermit Crabs live in colonies of more than 100 hermit crabs. They don’t do as well by themselves.

2. Hermit crabs are called hermit crabs because they are like a hermit living alone in a cave even though they live in colonies.

A mahout is a person who drives an elephant. A mahout is assigned an elephant when he is a young boy. The boy will stay with that elephant for the elephant’s whole life. While the mahout is with the elephant, they will give the elephant baths, ride on it, give it lots of food, and work with the elephant. Some of the things that the elephant might have to do are moving huge logs, begging on the streets for food, or even taking part in religious ceremonies.

Mahouts are usually nice to their elephants, but they can often be mean. They might overuse their anlius, not give the elephant enough food, or work the elephant way too much. To guide an elephant, the mahout must use a tool called an anlius. An anlius is a short stick with a sharp hook on the end. The mahouts poke the elephant’s head with the point of the anlius. They poke the elephant in order to get the elephant to turn, go, stop, or slow down. While the mahout is poking the elephant, he must also say “by!” When an elephant feels the anlius and hears a loud “BY!” it knows that he has to start moving.

While we were in Chiang Rai, we got to ride elephants and meet the mahouts. The mahouts lived with their families next to the elephants’ stalls. Every morning, the mahouts would wake up, give the elephants a bath, give them some bananas, sugarcane, and water, and then we would ride the elephants for a few hours. Riding the elephants in Chiang Rai was really fun and I hope we do it again sometime.

A skink is a really cool type of lizard. Skinks are the most diverse and successful group of lizards and are found worldwide. One reason why they are doing so well is because of their good sense of smell, sight, and hearing. Like other lizards, skinks can also lose their tail, but some can only lose their tail once. Even though skinks are doing so well, there are still some species of skinks that are endangered. The Blue Mountain Skinks, White’s Skinks, and Broadhead Skinks are some examples of skinks that are either endangered or threatened.

One reason why I think skinks are such cool reptiles is because they look different from almost all other reptiles. Skinks usually have short legs or none at all and their whole body is covered with smooth, shiny, overlapping scales. These scales are striped in bright reds, oranges, blues, yellows, blacks, and browns so they blend in almost perfectly in a garden. Pacific Skinks are the best skinks at camouflaging. These skinks can change colors, like chameleons, in a matter of seconds. This is probably why there are so many skinks in and around gardens. If you happen to have a skink in yours, don’t try to kill it because when skinks are in a garden, it usually means that your garden is healthy. Skinks are also really nutritious and help gardens a lot. They help almost as much as fertilizer!

If you asked some skinks what their favorite food was, most of them would probably say insects. Some might say spiders, earthworms, isopods (a type of crustacean), or lizards, though. Every once in a while, a big skink might eat a small rodent, but since the average skink is rarely longer than 200 mm, they can’t eat anything too big. The longest recorded skink was huge (350 mm long!).

So far on our trip, we have seen a Rainbow Skink, a Many-lined Sun Skink, and a Speckled Forest Skink, but I hope to see more of these amazing reptiles. So, next time you see a skink, instead of ignoring it, remember how important and helpful they are to people!

Fun Facts:

1. There aren’t any venomous skinks, but there are two types of venomous lizards (the Gila Monster and the Mexican Bearded Dragon). They both live in the southwestern part of the United States and northern Mexico.

2. Some people own skinks, iguanas, bearded dragons, leopard geckos, or even monitor lizards as pets!

3. Skinks have eyelids that blink, but other lizards don’t even have eyelids.

4. Many lizards can change color according to where they are like the chameleon.

5. The Collared Lizard is the fastest type of lizard recorded.

Asian shopping and American shopping are really different. So far, we have been to markets in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Burma, and Cambodia. This is how they are different.

.

Asian markets are made up of lots of different little tiny stores that are really close together. Each “store” is usually small, and owned and run by one person. People also don’t have refrigerators, so they need to come to the market every day. In this picture, a man is selling live ducks on the street.

.

You can buy all sorts of things in an Asian market. They sell pig noses, pig tongues, pig hearts, chicken heads, live ducks, live chickens, live eels in a bucket, and much more. They definitely don’t like to waste any parts from an animal. In some places, certain streets can be for different items. There are shoe streets with people only selling shoes, dress streets, lantern streets, metal streets, toy streets, flower streets, and even fish streets.

Since there are so many stores and everybody wants you to buy from their store, you can bargain with almost all of the stores. One time, my dad was in a store when a lady tried to sell him something. At first, it was 350 yuan, then it was 250 yuan, and then they asked him to write down what he would pay for it. In some places, though, they would increase the price if you seemed interested. This picture (above) is of a lantern street in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The stores need to be so close together because local people walk to the market every day and the more room it takes up, the longer people would have to walk. The market is also easy to walk to because it is downtown. Most of the people don’t have a car to drive to a Super Stop and Shop or Walmart with every 1 or 2 weeks to fill up their car with food. If Walmart took over, fewer people would have jobs and there would probably be more homeless people. There are Walmarts in some of the big cities, though. This picture (above) is of the flower market we went to in Bangkok.

Asian markets and American markets are different for many reasons. I think it was really interesting to get to see the differences between Asian and American markets.

Gibson’s Shadow Puppet Play

Once upon a time there was a king named King Joe and a queen named Queen Thickbrick. King Joe and Queen Thickbrick had a son. His name was Prince Baaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. His nickname was Peanut Butter (P.B.).

One day, Peanut Butter decided to go into the forest in search of a flower for Queen Thickbrick. While he was searching, he came across a jewel. As he was reaching down for it, he heard a loud hiiiiiiiiisssssss and saw a huge three-headed King Cobra coming towards him. He immediately ran back and forgot about the jewel. While he was running, he saw a lotus and a daisy but he was too scared to pick them up. When he got back, he told his father the news. King Joe told Peanut Butter he would get their eagle to come with them in search of the two flowers and the jewel.

First, they got to the lotus now guarded by a pink demon. The King thought it was so beautiful though, so he told them that he thought that they should hunt the demon for the lotus. They fought the demon and finally got the lotus, but noticed that the eagle had been killed. Then, they found the daisy, but it was guarded by another demon. They killed that demon too and got the daisy.

Finally, they found the jewel now guarded by the same huge three-headed King Cobra. The King and Prince fought and fought. Finally, they killed the snake. But the Prince noticed that the King had also been killed. Peanut Butter was really sad as he picked up the jewel and walked home. When he got home, he gave the items to the Queen. She was also sad about the news, but after awhile, they both got over it and lived happily ever after.

Check out the video of this great shadow puppet play.

Bananas are really interesting plants. They are also one of my favorite fruits and are rich in Vitamin A, B6, C, and potassium.

Bananas are grown in 132 out of 192 countries and the world produced 72.5 million metric tons of bananas just in 2005! The top producer in 2005 was India which produced 16.8 million metric tons of bananas. Second was Brazil with only 6.7 million metric tons. Next were China, Ecuador, Philippines, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Thailand, Columbia, and Burundi.

One tree of bananas usually weighs from thirty to fifty kg’s and there can be from 60-400 bananas on a tree. Bananas are non-seasonal so the banana tree can produce bananas all year round. Not all bananas are green or yellow. Some can be red or purple!

Banana plants are usually from 2-8 meters long and their leaves can be up to 3.5 meters long. Since the leaves are so big, people sometimes use them to serve food on. Some people take dried bananas and grind them into banana powder. They can also be used for banana ketchup, banana pudding, banana splits, banana sauce, or even banana rum!

Bananas are one of my favorite foods and these were some facts about them.

Snakes are really interesting reptiles because all snakes can swim even though they are thought of as land reptiles. Snakes are also carnivores and don’t chew their food. Because of that, they can die from trying to eat something to big. Did you know that some anacondas and pythons can go for up to a year without eating after they’ve had only one big meal?!

You also probably didn’t know that snakes evolved from a type of lizard and that most pythons and boa constrictors have super short, stubby hind legs that act kind of like suction cups.

When a snake swims, it moves its tail side to side but they can only move forwards. Only sea snakes can move backwards. Snakes swim using surface tension. We did an experiment and found out that a metal needle can also float because of surface tension.

Lots of people have been bitten and/or killed by snakes in certain countries. Of the 22,000 Americans bitten by venomous snakes every year, less than 20 die but in Africa, 1,000,000 people get bitten a year and 20,000 people die. In Asia, 4,000,000 people get bitten by snakes and 100,000 people get killed by them a year.

Snakes are one of my favorite an animals and these were just a few facts about them. The only thing I don’t like them is they’re hard to find and that they bite. I have only seen the black tiger snake and the common tree snake, but I hope to see more in Asia, Africa and South America.

Fun Fact: When snakes are charmed in India, they don’t move because of the music. Snakes can’t hear. They move from the charmer moving the flute or their feet. Snake charming is banned in most places in India.

Once upon a time, there was an animal called a mammoth-horned doggie. They looked like a dog, except they had a horn sticking out of their head and its back. The two horns connected and another horn came out of the two in the middle. They looked like this. The tip of their tail also had a sharp bit of horn, so that they could cut people with it if they were attacked. The mammoth-horned doggies were unusual because they could burrow, stay under water for up to two hours, climb trees, inject venom when they bite, poke at you with their horn, and run up to 45 miles per hour.

Once, there lived a mammoth-horned doggie named Scallop. Scallop lived in Beijing with her three other brothers and sisters named Murphy (her brother), Magazine (her first sister), and Duchess (her second sister). They all liked Beijing. It had lots of skyscrapers, it was flat, the sky was usually cloudy, and there were lots of bikes, but one day, a tragedy happened. The government said that mammoth-horned doggies were no longer allowed in Beijing because Boo, an evil mammoth-horned doggy, was eating too many people. All of the mammoth-horned doggies were really sad to leave Beijing.

Scallop, Murphy, Magazine, and Duchess all were forced to move, so they chose to go to Hong Kong. When they got there, they were amazed at how many shops there were and how clear the sky was. They also liked how there were lots of birds for them to eat. They were really glad that Hong Kong didn’t ban all mammoth-horned doggies. While Scallop and her three brothers and sisters were there, they started a baseball league. Scallop, Murphy, Duchess, and Magazine all played in the league and all turned out to be really good. Eventually, they were so glad that they had moved to Hong Kong and they lived happily ever after.

Before I went to Hong Kong, I thought that Hong Kong was just a city in China or Japan or somewhere, but after I went there, I realized it is its own country. It isn’t completely obvious that it is a separate country though.  Hong Kong is small – you could fit two Hong Kongs into Bullo River Station.  And Hong Kong is right next to China, which plans to take it over by 2047. 

These are some reasons why I think Hong Kong is a separate country.   Hong Kong has its own currency, its own language and its own legal system.  You also need a visa to go from Hong Kong to China or from China to Hong Kong.  However, you don’t need one to go from city to city within mainland China. 

People in Hong Kong believe that they are a separate country.  In the Special Olympics, there was a team from Hong Kong and a different from the China.  The Special Olympics was in Shanghai and, even there, they thought Hong Kong was a separate country.

The Three Gorges Project is really interesting.  It involves building a dam on the Yangtze River that will be longest dam ever in the world on the Yangtze River. It will cost 25 billion dollars and will be used for flood control, power generation, and navigation, but over 1 million people will have to be moved because the water level will have risen.

On December 14th, 1994, the Chinese announced that construction of the Three Gorges Dam had begun.  When we visited it, it was mostly done, and the government says it will be done in 2009.  It is a really, really big construction project, using more concrete than any other man-made project in the history of the world.

The dam is 2.3 kilometers long, which is about 18 times longer than it is from home plate to center field in Fenway Park, and is 181 meters tall.  The dam has a five step ship lock, which is 1,607 meters long.  A ship lock is like a bath tub that boats come into, with gates behind it and in front of it.   Once the doors are closed, they pump water in or out to move the ship up or down, before opening the front door and letting the ship move to the next lock.  It took our boat about three hours to get through five locks.

The dam will also have a ship elevator to lift smaller boats more quickly, but it isn’t ready yet.  The elevator can lift 3,000 ton ships in about 45 minutes and is the biggest ship elevator in the world.   While it is lifting a 3,000 ton ship, it is also lifting 7,000 tons of water so that the boat can float on water as it comes up or down.

The power generator is so strong that it could provide enough energy for 4 to 5 New York Cities.  The dam includes two power generators.  It provides energy by using turbines that water runs through to make electricity without pollution. 

The dam is really cool and it’s one of my favorite things in China.