POLES APART (continued) • There are only three species of flowering plants living in the Antarctic, plus 75 kinds of moss and 400 kinds of lichen. In the Arctic, there are 900 types of flowering plants, 400 kinds of moss, and 2,000 species of lichen. The largest known land animal living on the Antarctic continent year-round is a wingless relative of the common housefly that is only 1/10th of an inch long. The Arctic teams with wildlife such as polar bears, wolves, and musk ox. Furthermore, there are about 315 million people living within a radius of 2,700 miles of the North Pole, but only 4,600 living within the same distance of the South Pole— and half of those only live there temporarily. SOUTH POLE COLDS • Scientists in Antarctica rarely suffer from colds because they are isolated from infected humans. However, when the supply ships arrive bringing visiting scientists, colds run rampant. In an experiment, each scientist was issued packets of iodine-impregnated tissues and instructed to sneeze and blow their nose into them, then wipe their faces and hands with a clean iodine tissue. Furthermore, they were asked to wipe their hands and faces every hour with the tissues. As a result, the number of new colds reported daily dropped from an average of 4.3 to 1.7. Biologists report that Antarctica has only one bacterium per pint of snow making it difficult to pick up illnesses that aren't imported. HIGH, WIDE AND COLD • The average altitude of the land is 6,000 feet which is more than twice as high as any other continent. The ice is about 8,000 feet thick on top of the mountains, making the total average height of the continent 14,000 feet.
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