Your funny bone isn’t a bone at all - it's an unprotected part of a nerve! Nerves carry messages between your brain and your muscles, and are very sensitive. The end of a nerve is where they’re meant to receive sensations, like touching or feeling, and every other part of the nerve is usually protected by bones or muscles. The funny bone is one of the few places on your body where there’s a gap in your nerve armor, and when you hit it, it generates fake “signals” to your brain, which causes that unpleasant buzzing feeling. Try this - gently tap your funny bone, and you’ll feel a small tingle in your pinky. That’s because you’re touching your Ulnar nerve, which is the nerve that tells you what your pinky is feeling!

Do a male and female bacteria who love each other very much make a beautiful baby bacteria? Absolutely not! Bacteria reproduce through binary fission - a fancy way of saying they just split into two. A bacterium will first make a complete copy of its DNA, then put each copy on opposite sides of itself. Then it splits right down the middle! Under perfect conditions, some bacteria can reproduce every 15 minutes!

Mosquito bites itch for the same reason some people get runny noses in the spring - allergies! Mosquito bites are inherently harmless to humans (except for the risk of spreading disease), but while they’re feeding, they inject saliva into our blood in order to prevent it from hardening, like it does when you get a scab. Our body treats this chemical as a harmful invader, like it sometimes does with pollen or other allergens, and sends white blood cells to fight off the intruder! This immune response is what causes the red bump and itching.

Insects have lots of teeny-tiny hairs on their feet called setae, which are so small that their molecules bond with the forces of the surface they’re sticking to. With thousands and thousands of setae on each foot, these little bonds are enough to overcome the force of gravity and let the insect stick to the wall or ceiling.

DNA is like a blueprint for how to build every single living thing. Every cell of every living thing - from humans, to trees, to bacteria - has a copy of that organism’s DNA, which is a super long sequence of genetic “code” that works as a set of instructions to build that living thing. DNA is passed down from parents to their children, which is why puppy dogs look like their parent dogs.

Germs are another word for tiny living things called bacteria that are too small to see without a microscope. Bacteria are all around us, on almost every surface, and most of them are harmless to humans. Some are even helpful - we need certain bacteria to help us digest food. But some bacteria also cause disease, and those are the ones people are usually talking about when they talk about germs. Keeping your hands clean is the best way to make sure harmful bacteria don’t get a chance to enter your body.

The common cold is caused by the same thing that causes lots of other diseases - a virus. A virus is a tiny thing, even smaller than bacteria, and it uses the cells in your body to replicate itself, destroying the cells in the process. To fight off the virus, your body turns on its defense mechanisms: it increases your temperature, causing a fever, and makes a lot of mucus (snot) to trap the virus. It also makes you cough to force the virus out of your body. Usually, when you’re sick, the things that are making you feel bad are actually the ways your body is defending itself.

The oldest living things on Earth are microscopic organisms called endoliths, which are tiny creatures that live inside of rocks. Scientists have discovered endoliths living in the rocks a mile beneath the ocean floor that they believe are millions of years old!

The oldest living thing is microscopic organisms called endoliths, which live inside of rocks. Scientists have discovered endoliths living in the rocks a mile beneath the ocean floor that they believe are MILLIONS of years old!