Free What Does the Moon Smell Like?: 151 Astounding Science Quizzes by Eva Everything Page B

with a hint of avocado, or maybe clam, depending on who you ask.
    Other tasty bugs on the edible menu include locusts, which are similar to fried shrimp, and witchety grubs, which are big, succulent moth larvae, or caterpillars.
    They were the most important insect food in the Australian desert, where they were enjoyed by
    Aborigines. Cooked in hot ashes, witchety grubs, apparently, taste like almonds. Ten of them provide a day’s worth of calories, protein, and fat. Despite the nutritional punch some bugs pack, most of us consider them to be pests, not food items.
    SmellyMoon_Final 4/21/08 10:30 AM Page 116
    SmellyMoon_Final 4/21/08 10:30 AM Page 117
    THE CAT CONNECTION
    Where Have All the
    Cat Mummies Gone?
    Bast had the body of a shapely woman and the head Q
    of a domestic cat, but that only enhanced her appeal as one of the most popular goddesses in ancient Egypt. Cats were sacred to her, and thousands of them lived a life of luxury in her beautiful red granite temple. When they died, they were mummified. Soon enough, cat lovers took to mummifying their pets too.
    Some pampered pussies were buried with mummi-
    fied rodents to enjoy for all eternity, but for most of them it only seemed like eternity. The peaceful after-life of some 10,000 cats was disturbed in 1888, when a Nile farmer dug into one of the vaults in a cat cemetery, or necropolis. The cat mummies were
    stacked as far, and as high, as the eye could see.
    What happened to these stacks of cat mummies?
    They . . .
    a) fueled the Orient Express
    b) were processed and ground up for fertilizer
    c) were taken to the Cairo Museum
    d) were used as ballast in ocean-going vessels
    117
    Where Have All the
    Cat Mummies Gone?
    What happened to these stacks of cat mummies?
    A
    They . . .
    a) fueled the Orient Express
    b) were processed and ground up for fertilizer
    THE
    c) were taken to the Cairo Museum
    CA
    d) were used as ballast in ocean-going vessels
    TCONNECTION
    CORRECT ANSWER:
    b) were processed and ground up for fertilizer
    Mummies were used for all kinds of things, including fuel for trains, and even ships’ ballast, but the cat mummies dug up by the Nile farmer in what is now Tell Basta were processed into 17 tonnes (19 tons) of fertilizer. It was a bargain at just £4 a tonne, and was plowed into British soil. Mummies were a cheap and plentiful commodity more than 100 years ago, but these days, they’re priceless. The ones that escaped being processed into mummy “products” have given us a glimpse into the cat’s mysterious past.
    SmellyMoon_Final 4/21/08 10:30 AM Page 118
    SmellyMoon_Final 4/21/08 10:30 AM Page 119
    Egyptian Cat Fancy
    Ancient Egyptian cat lovers mummified millions of Q
    cats. Over thousands of years, more and more
    cemeteries were built to accommodate the felines, but they couldn’t be built fast enough. Eventually, THE
    there was standing room only for the eternal kitties.
    CA
    Three hundred thousand crowded cat mummies were TCONNECTION
    excavated from the necropolis in Beni-Hassan alone, but by the time scientists became interested in studying them to learn about the domesticated cat’s evolution, they were fairly rare. Luckily, there were enough “surviving” cat mummies to uncover the mystery of which cats the Egyptians revered and loved.
    What kinds of cats did the ancient Egyptians
    mummify?
    a) Abyssinian cats
    b) Mau cats
    c) wildcats
    d) all of the above
    119
    Egyptian Cat Fancy
    What kinds of cats did the ancient Egyptians
    A
    mummify?
    a) Abyssinian cats
    b) Mau cats
    THE
    c) wildcats
    CA
    d) all of the above
    TCONNECTION
    CORRECT ANSWER:
    d) all of the above
    Based on the shape of the skull, the ancient
    Egyptians kept felines that were dead ringers for today’s Abyssinian and Mau cats. Unlike us, the ancient Egyptians didn’t recognize breeds. They called all cats, whether wild or domesticated, Mau or Miu. They mummified lots of wildcats, and several of the same species are still found in the area today.
    Would some of