This muscle is in the middle ear and is connected to the malleus or hammer bone.
When you are chewing your food that would be really loud in your ears since the ear is right by the mouth.
But the tensor tympani muscle tightens up when you are chewing and that helps to block the sounds that your mouth makes so it is not so loud when you eat.
This country is in Central America, and borders Mexico, the Caribbean Se, and Guatemala.
It is about 23,000 square miles, and about 419,000 people live there.
The people in this country mostly speak English, Creole or Spanish.
Belize is the only country in Central America that has English as one of it's official languages.
The flag of Belize has sideways stripes of red, blue and red for the two different groups of people there that run the country.
In the middle is the Belize coat of arms, which shows the history of logging by the British in the country long ago.
Visiting this country you might go see El Castillo, which means "the castle", a 130 foot tall castle built by the Mayans long ago.
(from: wikipedia - xunantunich)
Near the coast of Belize is a giant sinkhole called The Great Blue Hole.
It is about 400 feet deep, and 1,000 feet wide, and is a famous place for scuba diving.
The famous diver Jacque Cousteau said it was one of the top 5 best scuba diving places in the world.
Another famous Christmas carol is Good King Wenceslas.
This song is was written about an old story of a king and his helper who went out during cold winter snowy weather and help take care of poor people.
Around 930 AD, Wenceslas was the Duke of Bohemia which is now called the Czech Republic, and the story says he did this during the Feast of Stephen, which is on December 26th, and is meant to honor the apostle Stephen from the Bible.
The words for the song wer writen in 1853 by John Mason Neale from England, and the music came from another old song from 1582 in Finland called "Tempus adest floridum" which means "Eastertime has come".
Lyrics:
Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night, tho’ the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel.
“Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know’st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes’ fountain.”
“Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither:
Thou and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together;
Through the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather.
“Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.”
In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.
Another painting from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo is The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise.
This painting shows the story from the Bible book of Genesis where Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and God gets angry at them and makes them leave the Garden of Eden.
This is the part inside the computer that all of the other parts are hooked into.
The monitor, keyboard and mouse that we talked about all have cables that go to the computer.
They are plugged into connectors that are all plugged into the motherboard so they can work with each other.
The motherboard is usually made of something hard called resin that has metal like silver, tin, nickel or gold that the motherboard uses to connect all of the parts together with electricity.
Another type of primate is the Greater Dwarf Lemur, or cheirogaleus major.
Lemurs are part of a whole different group of primates, not like chimpanzees, apes or monkeys.
There are a lot of different types of lemurs, and they all come from the island of Madagascar.
The greater dwarf lemur can grow to about 10 inches long, and weigh about 1 pound.
Their fur is gre or red, with dark circles around their eyes.
They live up in the trees eating mostly fruits, flowers and nectar, and sometimes bugs.
Unlike a lot of other monkeys that leap from tree to tree, these primates are not good leapers and they mostly walk along on all fours.
These primates are also quieter than most others and will just someetimes make quiet calls to other greater dwarf lemurs.
