You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only .000 000
000 000 071 ounce of its spray.
When
a dolphin is sick or injured, its cries of distress summon immediate
aid from other dolphins, who try to support it to the surface so that
it can breathe.
The Albatross has a
wing span of up to 14 feet and only needs to land once every couple of
years to breed. They can travel hundreds of thousands of miles each
flight.
Certain Chinese and
American alligators can survive the winter by freezing their heads in
ice, leaving their nose out to breath for months on end.
Sea Otters use so much energy that they need to eat as much
as one-third of their weight each day.
The biggest bird in the world is the ostrich, which can
grow up to nine feet tall.
According to hospital figures, dogs bite an average of 1
million Americans a year.
The sailfish, the swordfish and the mako shark have all
been clocked at swimming over 50mph.
Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves
fall off.
It takes around 10 dump-truck loads of wood to make a
proper funeral pyre for a full-size elephant.
The
notion that cats and dogs are natural enemies (suggested by the
phrase,"fighting like cats and dogs") is overstated, if not simply
false. Generally speaking, cats and dogs get along better than cats and
cats or dogs and dogs.
The last animal in the dictionary is the Zyzzyva, a
tropical weevil.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
The only continent without reptiles or snakes is
Antarctica.
There's a "meow" in the middle of "homeowner."
According to a survey by the American Animal Hospital
Association, 53 percent of pet owners vacation or travel with their
pets.
The Dalmatian breed of dog originates from the Dalmatian
Coast of Croatia.
Surveys show that 62 percent of dog owners admit that their
dog owns a sweater, wintercoat or raincoat.
Cats
prefer to eat their food at 86º F, which is why they don't
immediately
gulp down the half-eaten can of food from the refrigerator.
In 1987, cats overtook dogs as the number one pet in
America.
A
frightened dog puts it's tail between it's legs because it covers the
scent glands in the anal area. Since the anal glands carry personal
scents that identify individual dogs, the tail-between the-legs
behavior is the canine equivalent of insecure humans hiding their
faces.
At least 63% of dog
owners admitted to kissing their dogs. Of these, some 45% kissed them
on the nose, 19% on the neck, 7% on the back, 5% on the stomach and 2%
on the legs. An additional 29% listed the place they kiss their dog as
other!
The frog was an
ancient Egyptian symbol, later adopted by the conquering Romans. The
Frog-headed goddess Hekt was the goddess of birth and fertility, and
later also of resurrection.
The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
One in 5,000 North Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue.
The
biggest ant colony was found on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido: 306
million worker ants and 1 million queens lived in 45,000 interconnected
nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometres (1,7 square miles). A
worker ant will live for up to 5 years; while a Queen will live up to
25 years.
Newfoundland dogs are strong swimmers due to their webbed
feet.
Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they
can’t find any food.
The
fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those
of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
Fleas have changed
history. More human deaths have been attributed to fleas than all the
wars ever fought. As carriers of the bubonic plague, fleas were
responsible for killing one-third of the population of Europe in the
14th century.
The Dalmatian is the only dog that gets gout.
A tiger's paw prints are called pug marks.
A
dog was once the King of Norway for 3 years during the 11th centurey
AD. The Norwegian King, angry his subjects once deposed him put Saur on
the throne, demanding that he be treated regally.
Rabbits love licorice.
Emus have double-plumed feathers, and they lay
emerald/forest green eggs.
The tallest dog on record was named Shamgret Danzas. He was
42 inches tall (at the shoulder!) and weighed 238 lbs.
To
figure out your "true dog's age" in human terms, count the first full
year as 15 years, the second full year as 10 yeas and all the following
years as 3 years. In other words, a 5 year old dog would be:
15+10+3+3+3=34 years old.
Great Danes can eat up to 8 1/2 pounds of food a day.
Slugs have 4 noses.
The first dog show was held in England in 1859.
A cheetah can reach a top speed approaching 70 mph.
Greyhounds can jump a distance of 27 feet.
More than 5 million puppies are born in the United States
each year.
As of 2001, there are around 44 million sheep in New
Zealand, a country of around 4 million people.
Dolphins sleep with one half of the brain at a time, and
one eye closed.
Cat whiskers are found on the face and on the back of the
forelegs as well.
A hippo can run faster than man.
In
North America, a black cat crossing your path is thought to bring bad
luck. In Great Britain, a black cat crossing your path is thought to
bring good luck.
A white cat sleeping outside your home on your wedding day
is said to bring lasting happiness.
The Rottweiler makes an excellent family pet. They are
especially good with children and a fantastic guard dog.
The average cow produces 40 glasses of milk each day.
The membranes in a dog's nose, if unfolded and laid out,
would be larger than the dog itself.
Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat door.
Current domestic cats were the result of genetic mutation
so that they would be tame at birth.
A Panda's diet is 99% bamboo.
When two dogs approach each other, the dog which wags its
tail very slowly is in charge.
Some lions can mate over 50 times a day.
If you lift a Kangaroo's tail off the ground it can't hop -
they use their tails for balance.
For every person there are rougly 200 million insects.
Polar bears can swim 60 miles without pausing for a rest.
The leech has 32 brains.
The Galpagos Tortoise has a potential life span of 200
years.
At
the end of the Beatles' song 'A Day in the Life,' an ultrasonic
whistle, only audible to dogs, was recorded by Paul McCartney for his
Shetland sheepdog.
The praying mantis only has one ear.
A purring cat doesn't always mean a contented cat. Cats
will also purr if they are in pain.
Dachshunds were bred to fight badgers in their dens.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than
by a poisonous spider.
On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
Small dogs usually live longer than larger breeds.
40% of all cats are ambidextrous. The other 60% are either
"right-pawed" or "left-pawed".
The Chihuahua is the oldest breed of dog native to North
America.
Many cat lovers believe cats are intuitive. That's because
they are right-brain dominant.
Cats spend 30% of their waking hours grooming themselves.
Cat's can't taste sweets.
The
smallest dog in history was a tiny Yorkie from Blackburn, England. At
two years of age and fully grown he was only 2.5 inches tall by 3.75
inches long and weighed only 4 ounces.
Not all dogs eyes reflect green in the dark, some reflect
orange or red.
White cats with blue eyes are usually deaf.
Cats rarely meow at each other. Meowing is reserved for
"speaking" with humans.
The only dog in the world that cannot bark is the Basenji,
an African wolf dog.
The membranes in a dog's nose, if unfolded and laid out,
would be larger than the dog itself.
About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat
insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.
If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New
Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.
A group of owls is called a parliament.
Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.
A flea expert is a pullicologist.
A
pig is a hog -- hog is a generic name for all swine -- but a hog is not
a pig. In the terminology of hog raising, a pig is a baby hog less than
ten weeks old.
Ancient Romans ate flamingo tongues and considered them a
delicacy.
All elephants walk on tip-toe, because the back portion of
their foot is made up of all fat and no bone.
A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from
blowing sand.
Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the
Indian Ocean.
The
male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its
body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
"Eat like a bird?" Many birds eat twice their weight a day.
Dogs have about 100 different facial expressions, most of
them made with the ears.
Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
All swans and all sturgeons in England are property of the
Queen. Messing with them is a serious offense.
Kiwi birds are blind, they hunt by smell.
Rhinos are in the same family as horses, and are thought to
have inspired the myth of the unicorn.
Studies
show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off
the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat
to realize what is occuring, relax and correct itself. At about that
height it hits maximum speed and when it hits the ground it's rib cage
absorbs most of the impact.
The Honey Badger can withstand hundreds of African bee
stings that would kill any other animal.
Giraffes have no vocal cords.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during
World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop
bombs.
Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks.
The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.
When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing."
They actually pass out from sheer terror.
The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to
see all four feet at all times.
A full-grown bear can run as fast as a horse.
If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die, as they
need gravity to swallow.
A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.
The penguins that inhabit the tip of South America are
called jackass penguins.
Goat's eyes have rectangular pupils.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.
A dolphin's hearing is so acute that it can pick up an
underwater sound from fifteen miles away.
Chickens absorb vitamin-D through their combs from
sunshine.
The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both
infra-red and ultra-violet light.
Blue Whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long
as three Greyhound buses.
Butterflies taste with their hind feet.
Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally
nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places.
A snail can sleep for three years.
More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed
in plane crashes.
Lobsters can live up to 50 years.
Male flies only gather at the base of bright lights when
they are having a mating assembly.
In
1939, a shower of tiny frogs fell on the English town of Trowbridge.
Strong winds had carried them aloft from streams and ponds.
Bees have five eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a
bee's head and 2 larger ones in front.
The fruit flys DNA sequence is 180 million bases long,
whilst a humans is three billion.
In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been
domesticated.
Cows do not have upper front teeth.
A female oyster over her lifetime may produce over 100
million young.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much
as to any other colour.
Spider web filaments were used in gun sights as the 'cross
hairs' until the early 1960's.
No two zebras have the same markings.
Some male songbirds sing more than 2000 times each day.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
Killer Whales (Orcas) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the
shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Hippos have killed more than 400 people in Africa - more
than any other wild animal.
A baby elephant calf can weigh up to 260 pounds when it is
born.
Pandas in China have been given Viagra to help them mate.
Polar bears are the only mammal with hair on the soles of
its feet.
We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp - and 70% with a
slug.
Oysters can change from one gender to another and back
again depending on which is best for mating.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A bee must visit 4,000 flowers in order to make one
tablespoon of honey.
The
common Black Ants and Wood Ants have no sting, but they can squirt a
spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the
ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites.
The wingspan of the Indonesian fruitbat equals the height
of filmstar Sylvester Stallone.
Ticks are second only to the mosquito as the most dangerous
parasites to humans.
By swallowing water, the Pufferfish becomes too big for
other fish to swallow.
According to one study, plant and animal species are
becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.
The larva of the polyphemus moth consumes 86,000 times its
birth weight in its first 56 days.
Mayflies live for a year or more as larvae; but as adults
they live for only a few hours.
Great White Sharks can go as long as three months without
eating.
Mexico
is the world's pig tapeworm capital with estimates that about 4 percent
of all Mexicans have the adult tapeworm in their intestine.
A bee can see the colours green, blue and ultra-violet -
but red looks like black.
Shrimps' hearts are in their heads.
It takes 3000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather
for a year's supply of American Footballs.
Bats always turn left when leaving a cave.
Polar Bears cannot be detected by infrared cameras, due to
their transparent fur.
An elephant herd can move fifty miles in a day.
The biggest shark species has the smallest teeth. The 12
metre long whale shark has more than 4,000 teeth, each only 3mm long.
As
a general rule in the animal kingdom, the more complex or relatively
big the eye in relation to the body, then the smaller the rest of the
brain.
A large swarm of locusts can eat 80,000 tons of corn in a
day.
The female lion is a much more efficient hunter than the
male.
Giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands weigh up to 225
kilos and can live for over 150 years.
Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale.
A newborn giant panda is only the size of a stick of
butter.
An
Animal Hospital Association survey revealed that 62 percent of dog
owners sign letter or cards from themselves and their dogs.
The hydra - a close relative of jellyfish and sea anemones,
can regenerate or grow back if it's cut in half.
Coyotes are a close cousin of all pet dogs. The coyote's
scientific name (Canis Latrans) meands 'barking dog'.
The Dodo was first discovered in 1507 - 100 years later it
was hunted to extinction.
Female fleas consume fifteen times their weight daily.
Mosquitoes have been found to prefer biting people with
smelly feet.
A
rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's
back. That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized
cars around on his back.
The silkworm moth has eleven brains.
Americans spend more money on dog food each year then they
do on baby food.
The
Australian Sea Wasp or Box Jellyfish which is found off the coast of
Queensland causes death within 3 minutes if medical aid is not
administered.
When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of six
feet, normally without being hurt.
A dragonfly can spot an insect moving 33 feet away.
Giraffes can clean their ears with their half metre long
tongue.
There are an estimated five million, trillion, trillion
bacteria on Earth.
The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic
wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.
Inbreeding causes 3 out of every 10 Dalmation dogs to
suffer from hearing disability.
When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times
that of the space shuttle during launch.
Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.
Despite
its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about
127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the
same amount again in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot
survive on a vegetarian diet.
The remains of diatoms, algae with hard shells, are used in
making pet litter, cosmetics, pool filters and tooth polish.
When
a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens,
only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new
queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their
cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.
The cat was domesticated over 4,000 years ago. Today's
house cats are descended from wildcats in Africa and Europe.
Many
fish can change sex during the course of their lives. Others,
especially rare deep-sea fish, have both male and female sex organs.
Cats step with both
left legs, then both right legs when they walk or run. The only other
animals to do this are the giraffe and the camel.
The stuff (allergens)
that people are allergic to in cats is a protein in cat saliva. When
the cat grooms and the saliva dries it can become airborn. This protein
is 1/3 the weight of ordinary housedust, so it can travel farther. You
can find this allergen where cats have never been.
An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away,
and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.
The
oarfish, Regalecus glesne, is the longest bony fish in the world. With
its snakelike body_sporting a magnificent red fin along its 50-foot
length_horselike face and blue gills, it accounts for many sea-serpent
sightings.
Camel milk does not curdle.
Australian termites have been known to build mounds twenty
feet high and at least 100 feet wide.
The first house rats recorded in America appeared in Boston
in 1775.
A
father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they
are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may
take several weeks.
Animal gestation
periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12
to 13 days after conception; the longest is the Asiatic elephant,
taking 608 days, or just over 20 months.
A cat sees about six
times better than a human at night because of the tapetum lucidum , a
layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.
The Pacific Giant
Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea
to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years,
its entire life-span.
Horseshoe crabs have
existed in essentially the same form for the past 135 million years.
Their blood provides a valuable test for the toxins that cause septic
shock, which previously led to half of all hospital-acquired infections
and one-fifth of all hospital deaths.
Cats respond better to women than men. One reason this
might be is that women have higher pitched voices than men.
The cat's brain needs so much energy to function that over
twenty percent of blood that the heart pumps goes immediately to it.
The
male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two
month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body
weight.
A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No
two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.
A group of herring is called a seige. A group of jelly fish
is called a smack.
The
domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while
walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between
their legs while walking.
The catgut formerly
used as strings in tennis rackets and musical instruments does not come
from cats. Catgut actually comes from sheep, hogs, and horses.
Penguins "fly" underwater at up to 25 miles per hour.
The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the
planet.
Both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain
responsible for emotion.
According to experts, whale songs rhyme.
Electric light or light from your TV set will make your cat
shed her fur.