Stan Thekaekara

Founder of Just Change India and Co-Founder of ACCORD, Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu. Having lived and worked with Adivasi communities for close to 50 years, he is a repository of many tribal folk stories.
Python Facts Uncoiled!

Python Facts Uncoiled!

PYTHONS COULD DO WITH GLASSES

Pythons have pretty poor eyesight. But they have a super power. Heat sensors! These are on their lips. From the heat radiated from their prey, they can find them even in the dark!

MUMMY MUMMY…

Pythons, like most reptiles, are very maternal. Some lay up to a hundred eggs. The mother then coils around to keep them warm until they hatch, which can be up to 90 days! She never leaves them even to feed herself!! Mother's love at its best.

Pythons, a ‘Magic’ Mound, and the Mullukurumba

Pythons, a ‘Magic’ Mound, and the Mullukurumba

The Mullukurumba tribe lives in the lower forest ranges of Wayanad and Kerala. They were originally hunters, but they never hunted for sport; only for food. Gradually, over the years as hunting came to be banned, the Mullukurumbas shifted to practising agriculture.

Veliyamuthan is the elder or head of Karikunnu village which is nestled in the forest. As a young man, he had led most of the hunts of the Mullukurumbas. He, like many of his tribe, knows everything there is to know about the animals in the surrounding jungle. He no longer hunts, but is a storehouse of knowledge about the forest and the animals that live in them. One day, when he was resting under a jackfruit tree, some children came running excitedly...

Meet the Bee Family

Meet the Bee Family

A buzzing catalogue of some important bee-types—the rock bee, little bee, Indian hive bee, European bee, and dammer bee.

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So far, we have only touched upon a few of the many things about the life of bees and what an important part they play in saving our planet. Honey is not just something sweet and tasty; but what makes it sweeter is the makers of honey—the bees. There are over 2,000 bee species across the world and not all of them make honey. In India, there are five major bee types that produce honey...

Bee-lieve It or Not

Bee-lieve It or Not

Check out some amazing honeybee facts about these nature's tiny engineers and their sweet secrets.

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How many eyes do honeybees have? Bees have FIVE EYES and SIX LEGS.

How do honeybees share information with each other? By DANCING. They do a figure of 8 dance called the ‘waggle dance’. Through this dance, they tell the other bees where pollen, water, etc. is available. 

How many flowers do honeybees have to visit to get a kilo of honey? About 40 LAKH flowers. But one bee makes only about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. So, you need thousands of bees to make a kilo of honey...

The Bees, the Bears, and the Kattunayakans

The Bees, the Bears, and the Kattunayakans

A fascinating narrative by Grandpa Marigan to a curious child, discovering the sacred traditions of the Kattunayakan tribe and how it honours the bees, the bears, and trees for honey.

This is the rallying call of the village elder when he invites his companions to join him in going to the forest to collect honey among other things. Marigan, the wise old Kattunayakan elder from Chembakolli village in the Gudalur Valley of the Nilgiris, has been collecting wild honey from the time he was a child.

MasterClass: The Story of Honey

MasterClass: The Story of Honey

For young and curious minds, one of nature’s enduring mysteries is how an eternally busylooking, buzzing insect – the honey bee – manages to create a food (honey) that is so sublime. And added to that is the question that always comes up: is the honey that I am eating ‘really good for my health’ and ‘pure and natural’?

We invite children, teachers and parents to a special Young Environmentalist MasterClass on the subject of honey and honey bees, with two well-known experts – Stan Thekaekara of Just Change India and Amit Khurana of Centre for Science and Environment.