Chapter 812 Oasis
Lightning strike?
The audience was stunned.
Bifang gave a simple explanation.
"The first field tests in Western Sahara have shown that electric fields are generated when grains of sand blown by the wind rub against each other."
"When this happens, the smaller dust particles often absorb electrons from the larger dust particles, thus becoming negatively charged themselves."
"As a result, dust particles are more likely to be blown higher into the air, while positively charged sand particles tend to stay closer to the ground. This separation of charge creates an electric field that charges up dust trapped in the sand, causing it to flow more into the air, creating a bigger storm."
"This ball not only has downward lightning, but also upward lightning."
[Hiss, this is too dangerous]
【Knowledge about cowhide has increased】
【How come I have never heard of it. 】
"That's right, because the probability of such an event happening is very low. I don't think I've heard of anyone being killed by lightning in a sandstorm."
Too Hell
[I haven’t heard of it either]
[Anyway, let’s celebrate, it’s another day of racing against death]
[There's a rocket behind Fang Shen's butt, right?]
[Death is like the wind, always by my side, but it can never catch up with me]
After surviving the sandstorm crisis, Bifang continued on the road with Alpha, but this time he did not choose to control the reins, but let it hang freely.
There are many ways to get water in the desert, but since we have camels, there is naturally no need to choose those complicated and slow-acting ones.
"I've said before that following animals will undoubtedly lead to finding water and even food, but the animals here definitely don't mean you can find water just by bringing a dog along."
"Almost all animals in nature have their own fixed living territories, even migratory birds. Although they migrate every year, their routes are fixed."
"They know where there is lush grass and water, where there are no predators, and where they can rest safely, and they rarely change their route. That's why Professor Etienne came all the way to find me and asked me to help change the migration route of white-fronted geese. If no changes are made, they will be driven to extinction by the increasingly urbanized migration route."
"Have you found the reason?"
"The reason most animals know where water is is not because they have some special talent or antennas on their heads that point to where there is water."
Bifang placed his hands on his temples, extended his index finger, and turned it around, making a rather comedic movement that made the audience laugh.
[Is it because they live here that they know? ]
"Yes, the animal's territory is like our house, and the water source is the tap water supply in the house. As the owner of the house, you naturally know where the tap is in your house."
"Animals get thirsty, and you know you just need to follow them to the water tap, but if you take a dog into unfamiliar territory, you have to rely on pure luck to find the water tap."
"Almost all animals don't have the ability to find water directly, so they usually don't leave their own territory."
"If the faucet in the house is broken, in nature where there are no plumbers, animals can only move. But moving is not that easy and often comes at a very painful price. Anyone who has seen the migration of the African savannah in Animal World should know this very well."
【Wildebeest!!!】
[Widow maker, African buffalo! ]
[It’s really shocking. Every time I see them crossing the river, they get torn apart by crocodiles and end up being their dinner, or they luckily get through with the rest of the group.]
[It may take a lifetime of savings and labor for humans to move, and it's not easy for animals either (dog head)]
[Almost all. I guess Lao Fang will definitely say there is an exception. I guess it is Alpha.]
"clever."
Bifang smiled and patted Alpha's neck.
"When humans are in the desert, the biggest difficulty they face is water. Without water, you may die in a few hours due to dehydration. But camels in the desert will not do that. They can always find oases in the desert to drink water. They are one of the very few animals that can actively find water sources."
"This is due to their peculiarly structured noses. Camels' nostrils are slanted and can open and close freely to prevent dust from entering. There is a valve-like structure inside, which is covered with olfactory cells. They can not only find food, but also sense the dampness of odorless water sources in the arid desert from a long distance away."
"Such a nose is enough for a camel to find a water source more than 20 kilometers away through its sense of smell, making it much more likely to survive when crossing the desert than a human carrying a large bag of mineral water."
"So, if you really get lost in the desert, experienced people will not give the camel water, but wait a few days, loosen the reins, let it move freely, and it will find its way by itself."
[Fuck, this sense of smell is invincible]
[Even if he was invincible, he was still caught by Fang Shen (funny)]
[Fang Shen is still better]
[By the way, is this amazing sense of smell better than that of dogs and bears? I don’t think they can find water by smell either.]
"It's true that dogs and bears can't find water sources by smell, but it's not necessarily true that camels have a better sense of smell than them."
Bifang shook his head, leaving everyone confused.
"In fact, camels have less than 800 olfactory receptor genes, which sounds like a lot, but on the contrary, camels have relatively few olfactory receptor genes among animals."
"Normal humans have over 1,000, dogs have 1,300, and the more powerful mice have 1,500."
"But neither humans, dogs nor rats can locate the water source. It's not a matter of distance. Even if it's less than ten meters away, they can't tell there's water in front of them just by smell."
"The camel's ability to distinguish smells is actually far inferior to that of dogs, bears, and mice. This is related to its living environment. In the desert, they do not need strong smell-distinguishing abilities because there are not many smells to distinguish in the desert."
"So it's not a problem that camels have fewer olfactory receptor genes. On the contrary, because there are not many smells to distinguish, these olfactory receptor genes are more specialized. They have been strengthened in some special senses of smell. Their sense of smell for water and other green plants is much stronger than that of other animals!"
"In the soil of vegetation, there is a chemical called 'geosmin'. This special smell is similar to the smell of freshly turned soil, and camels can smell it from a long distance."
"In fact, we can sometimes smell this smell, such as the 'earth smell' after rain on rainy days, which is also geosmin. This thing is essentially a metabolic waste of bacteria."
After a few days of drought in the summer, a heavy rain suddenly comes, washing the earth. The leaves become greener, the flowers become redder, and even the air is filled with the fragrance of earth.
You take a deep breath, filled with the fragrance of plants and the unique smell of soil, the fragrance of nature.
But scientists will tell you that this aroma of soil after rain is actually volatile organic compounds emitted by some fungi, which are "odor traps" of bacteria to attract springtails to eat and help spread the daughter spores of Streptomyces.
[Ah, this, this, this]
[I always like the smell after the rain...]
[It’s over, there’s no going back]
[What's the big deal? We don't know how many bacteria we consume every time we breathe]
A person with mediocre talent may become an outstanding person if he concentrates on doing one thing year after year.
There are so many smells in nature, but camels don't need any of them. They have few natural enemies, and their biggest enemy is the natural environment. So they only need to smell a few smells. Even if their sense of smell is a little poor, they can make up for it.
The reins fell beside Alpha's neck. Alpha walked under the sun for a while, and then walked straight for a long time before he seemed to realize something was wrong. He tilted his head to look at the rope beside his neck. For a moment, he didn't know whether he should continue to move forward, so he stayed where he was.
Bifang didn't let it stop. Instead, he gently clamped Alpha's abdomen with his legs, signaling him to keep moving forward.
[Can we really find it? Is there water source in the desert?]
[Of course there is, Oasis]
[Do oases really exist? I feel like they are all made up in movies, TV shows, or novels. Maybe they really exist, but there are only a few of them, right? ]
"You are wrong. The Sahara Desert is indeed the largest desert, but it is not the driest desert, nor the most monotonous desert."
"The so-called desert is more like a treeless surface. The 9 million square kilometers of desert is almost as large as China. Although it looks yellow and orange at first glance, the geological structure is actually not simple."
"For example, the four major oases in Egypt, if you look closely at the topography, are actually located on a fault zone. This type of topography is a natural guide and, most importantly, provides water sources."
"A few days ago I told you about the origin of the Sahara. I wonder if you still remember it."
"The Sahara desertification started very late. Before the agricultural era, the Nile Valley was uninhabitable because of the huge amount of rock layers that accumulated there. During the Ice Age, it was even 100 meters thick."
“So people gradually migrated inland from the grasslands before desertification, and where there are people there must be rivers.”
Bifang began to correct the netizens' ideas.
There is still prosperity hidden in the poverty.
"In the early days of Egyptian civilization, the Eastern Desert, Nubia, Libya, and the deserts around the Nile were not that dry, and there were still many rivers."
"Egypt's exchanges with external civilizations, mineral mining, timber, and even farmland itself are still very dependent on these rivers. Although the mainstream of the Nile River is now the absolute center, it is at least not the only one. It can even be said that the status of the wadi in the formation and maturity of Egyptian civilization is on par with the Mediterranean, Libya, Sinai, and Nubia."
"In Egyptian legend, Set, the god of the delta, and Horus, the god of the Nile Valley, fought for many years. In the end, Horus defeated Set and drove him into the desert to become the god of the desert. This clearly shows the superiority and inferiority of the river delta and the desert. But don't forget that since the desert can be listed alongside the river delta, it shows that Egypt attaches great importance to the desert."
If the so-called Sahara Desert is really worthless and no birds lay eggs there, how could it be taken seriously?
In fact, we can trace back some of the development of human beings in many local myths.
In areas with well-developed water systems, local people would never worship a powerful fire god, and the fire god in the system would never be able to defeat the water god.
“Maybe the conditions were not as good, or as fertile, but in the hearts of the Egyptians, the importance of the desert in culture was several levels higher than that of the desert in the eyes of modern people.”
“Even though the sky was filled with yellow sand at that time, there were still a large number of oases in the desert, and a large number of humans lived there, which is why they occupied a significant position in culture.”
"Unfortunately, desert archaeology did not begin until the end of the last century. Now, the main research is on the eastern wadi of the Upper Egypt bay. There are also some discoveries in the west, but not many."
Desert archaeology is too costly and is destined to have a very low input-output ratio.
It is very difficult to search for vague carvings on cliffs or rubble in a valley that stretches for hundreds of kilometers, eating sand and holding a brush.
"So a long time ago, there were actually quite a few oases and rivers in the Sahara Desert."
"Today, many of these rivers have disappeared on the surface, but they still exist underground, flowing and continuing to supply the emergence of oases."
The facts are just as Bifang said.
There are a considerable number of underground rivers under the Sahara Desert. The water resources in these underground rivers are relatively abundant, and some even form small rivers directly in the desert.
With the water supply from underground rivers, oases of considerable size will appear in the desert, with a variety of plants growing on them. Some larger oases will also have some animals living on them. When you come to such an oasis, it is difficult for humans to imagine that you are in the desert.
"The Kelzaz Oasis is a well-known oasis in the Sahara Desert. It was also formed by underground rivers. According to investigations, there are even various small fish in many underground rivers. People can fish directly in the underground rivers of the Sahara Desert."
“It’s definitely a wonder of the Sahara.”
[Another day of learning from both China and the West]
[Mythology Researcher, Fangshen Occupation +1]
[Although it is just a common myth, it still feels very awesome]
It is not surprising that a mathematician is proficient in mathematics and has a good handle on various professional problems. However, if he also shows a certain literary accomplishment, even if it is not at the level of a professional scholar, it will still surprise people and even make people admire him, because this is not only about the level of professional level, but also the breadth of breadth.
Unfortunately, things don't seem as easy as Bifang thought.
Without the restraint of the reins, Alpha did not change direction, but walked in a straight line, and did not change direction until several hours passed. It was not until the evening that he seemed to realize that he could walk freely.
For this reason, Bifang even held up the midday sun to prevent Alpha's "inspiration" from being interrupted.
Her lips were already lacking in water, and after an afternoon, they became dry and cracked, and she couldn't even make any bigger expressions, otherwise they would crack and bleed.
This situation continued until eight or nine o'clock in the evening, when the moon rose and Bifang finally reaped the rewards.
Within sight, a "black spot" appeared on the vast land.
