Animal migrations

A lot of animals travel from one place to another. We call this migration.

A lot of birds migrate to find food and better weather, too. They spend the summer in northern Europe, because there are lots of insects there. In the winter there aren't any insects, so the birds fly south to southern Europe and Africa. Some insects migrate, too. In North America, millions of butterflies fly south to spend the winter were it's warmer.

Fishes migrates to breed. Salmon for example swim over 20,000 km in their life. They are born in rivers in Ireland, Scotland and other places in northern Europe. The young fish swim down the river to the sea and into the Atlantic Ocean. They live in teh ocean until they are adults. Then they return to the river where they were born. They lay their eggs in the river because then other fish can't eat them, after they have done it they usually die.

Blue food

Nature's way of making food attractive is to colour it so that it looks delicious, so we expect our food to come in familiar colours.

Food companies sometimes need to add colour to their products to make them more natural-looking. We think that it tastes better, although the taste hasn't changed at all.

The colour blue isn't often found in natural food. THere aren't any blue vegetables and there isn't any blue meat. As a result, we don't have  an automatic desire to eat blue food. A million years ago, when our ancestors searched for food, vlue, plurple and black were 'warning' colours that the food may be poisonous.

However, as blue suppresses the appetite, it is used to help a lot of people who want to lose weight. Diet specialists advise people to eat off blue plates and to use knives, forks and spoons with blue handles.