interesting facts about india

1- In ancient times, Indian doctors used live ants to ‘stitch’ wounds together. The doctor would hold the edges together and get the ant to bite through the skin.The ant’s head would then be snapped off leaving its jaws as the ‘stitch’!

2- Some horseshoe bats in India share their burrows with porcupines.

3- The coconut crab lives on land and will drown if submerged in water. It grows to about 1 metre (39 inches) across and lives on islands around the Indian Ocean.

4- Meghalaya in India has 1,187 millimetres (467 inches) of rain a year, making it the rainiest place in the world.

5- In 2001 a geologist in India found fossilized raindrops! The imprint was found in ancient rocks, proving that it rained on earth 1.6 billion years ago.

6- 180 million years ago, India was an island off the coast of Australia. The Earth’s land masses slowly move around, at up to 10 centimetres (4 inches) a year.

7- The largest mountain ranges on Earth are under the sea! They form an area called the mid-ocean ridge, which stretches all around the world running through the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

8- In 2004, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed around 230,000 people and was the ninth deadliest natural disaster since the Middle Ages.

9- Toba was the last super volcano to erupt.The eruption was so violent that parts of India were covered with a layer of ash 6 metres (19 feet) thick, and in Malaysia the ash was 9 metres (29 feet) thick.

10- Amazonian Indians heat poison arrow frogs over a fire to sweat the poison out of them. They use the poison to tip their hunting arrows.

11- The heat of chilli peppers is measured in Scoville heat units. The world’s hottest chilli pepper is the Bhut Jolokia from India, at 577,000 units.

12- The world’s ‘cheapest’ motorcar was unveiled in India in 2008. The Tata Nano is made by Tata Motors and will sell brand new for $2,500 (£1,277). It keeps the costs down by having no air conditioning, air bag, electric windows or assisted steering, and can only reach speeds of 70 kilometres (43 miles) per hour.