A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each
year.
A 7-year study, which concluded in the summer of 2000, found that
33 U.S. deaths were caused by rottweilers, pit bulls were responsible for 27 deaths.
A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby
or a cat.
A capon is a castrated rooster.
A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.
A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.
A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys
can't.
A cockroach can live for up to a week without a head.
A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks
of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.
A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
A father Emperor penguin withstands the Antarctic cold for 60 days
or more to protect his eggs, which he keeps on his feet, covered with a feathered flap. During this entire time he doesn't
eat a thing. Most father penguins lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch. Afterward, they feed the
chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the mother penguins return to care for the young, the fathers go to sea to
eat and rest.
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.
A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows
have exactly the same pattern of spots.
A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's
skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were
once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.
A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.
A normal cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum
(storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices).
A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.
A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic
in 1872.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.
A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
A zebra is white with black stripes.
All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some
point in their lives.
All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden
hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae
of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight.
They depend completely on their slaves for survival.
An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns
off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.
An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while
cruising at 25 mph.
An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Ancient Egyptians believed that "Bast" was the mother of all cats
on Earth. They also believed that cats were sacred animals.
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.
Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many
as 500,000 individuals.
Ants don't sleep.
Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can
give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
At 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound
produced by any animal.
At the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life", an ultrasonic
whistle, audible only to dogs, was recorded by Paul McCartney for his Shetland sheepdog.
Australian termites have been known to build mounds twenty feet
high and at least 100 feet wide.
Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as
knife blades.
By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored
yolks.
Camel milk does not curdle.
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit
by a lightning strike.
Cat scratch disease, a benign but sometimes painful disease of short
duration, is caused by a bacillus. Despite its name, the disease can be transmitted by many kinds of scratches besides those
of cats.
Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.
Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites
them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed and continue living.
Chameleons can move their eyes in two different directions at the
same time.
Chameleons can reel in food from a distance as far away as more
than two and a half times their body lengths.
Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird's chirp
or a dog's yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away.
Cojo, the 1st gorilla born in captivity, was born at the Columbus
Zoo, in Ohio, in 1956 and weighed 3 1/4 pounds.
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.
Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was
known before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such small game as hares.
Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They
frequently rise to the surface for air.
Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.
During World War II, the very first bomb dropped on Berlin by the
Allies killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth's food crop.
Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh
more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks.
Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human
hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz.
Every year, $1.5 billion is spent on pet food. This is four times
the amount spent on baby food.
Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made
into a balloon for a parade.
Female chickens, or hens, need about 24 to 26 hours to produce one
egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again. In addition to the half-hour rests, some hens rest every
three to five days and others rest every 10 days.
George Washington's favorite horse was named Lexington. Napoleon's
favorite was Marengo. U.S. Grant had three favorite horses: Egypt, Cincinnati, and Jeff Davis.
German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed
in a body of running water, such as a stream.
Hippos have killed more than 400 people in Africa - more than any
other wild animal.
Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be
heard over 2 miles away.
Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their
enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon
of honey.
Infant beavers are called kittens.
It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers
for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.
It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
Korea's poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime
menus, despite outcry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve
women's complexions.
Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name,
because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.
Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled
Lassie Come-Home written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight's real life collie, Toots.
Lions are the only truly social cat species, and usually every female
in a pride, ranging from 5 to 30 individuals, is closely related.
Lovebirds are small parakeets who live in pairs. Male and female
lovebirds look alike, but most other male birds have brighter colors than the females.
Macaroni, Gentoo, Chinstrap and Emperor are types of penguins.
Mockingbirds can imitate any sound from a squeaking door to a cat
meowing.
Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.
Mosquitoes are the common vector for malaria, encephalitis, yellow
fever and dengue fever.
Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.
Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.
No two spider webs are the same.
Of all known forms of animals life ever to inhabit the Earth, only
about 10 percent still exist today.
On average, pigs live for about 15 years.
Only female mosquitoes bite. Females need the protein from blood
to produce their eggs.
Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.
Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they
cannot move their eyes.
Parrots, most famous of all talking birds, rarely acquire a vocabulary
of more than twenty words, however Tymhoney Greys and African Greys have been know to carry vocabularies in excess of 100
words.
Pet parrots can eat virtually any common "people-food" except for
chocolate and avocados. Both of these are highly toxic to the parrot and can be fatal.
Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.
Prairie dogs are not dogs. A prairie dog is a kind of rodent.
Rats are omnivorous, eating nearly any type of food, including dead
and dying members of their own species.
Rats can't throw-up.
Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far
as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective
carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without
cutting themselves.
Snakes are immune to their own poison.
Some baby giraffes are more than six feet tall at birth.
Swans are the only birds with penises.
Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet
in length.
The "caduceus" the classical medical symbol of two serpents wrapped
around a staff - comes from an ancient Greek legend in which snakes revealed the practice of medicine to human beings.
The 1st buffalo ever born in captivity was born at Chicago's Lincoln
Park Zoo in 1884.
The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)
was formed in 1866.
The anaconda, one of the world's largest snakes, gives birth to
its young instead of laying eggs.
The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the
mosquito.
The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird,
weighs up to 345 pounds.
The biggest member of the cat family is the male lion, which weighs
528 pounds (240 kilograms).
The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and
the blood of lobsters is blue.
The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in
an American court.
The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.
The calories burned daily by the sled dogs running in Alaska's annual
Iditarod race average 10,000. The 1,149-mile race commemorates the 1925 "Race for Life" when 20 volunteer mushers relayed
medicine from Anchorage to Nome to battle a children's diphtheria epidemic.
The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They
were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - "Island of Dogs."
The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.
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.
The chameleon has several cell layers beneath its transparent skin.
These layers are the source of the chameleon's color change. Some of the layers contain pigments, while others just reflect
light to create new colors. Several factors contribute to the color change. A popular misconception is that chameleons change
color to match their environment. This isn't true. Light, temperature, and emotional state commonly bring about a chameleon's
change in color. The chameleon will most often change between green, brown and gray, which coincidently, often matches the
background colors of their habitat.
The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its
claws.
The Chinese, during the reign of Kublai Khan, used lions on hunting
expeditions. They trained the big cats to pursue and drag down massive animals - from wild bulls to bears - and to stay with
the kill until the hunter arrived.
The elephant, as a symbol of the US Republican Party, was originated
by cartoonist Thomas Nast and first presented in 1874.
The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was so devastated upon the
death of his beloved Newfoundland, whose name was Boatswain, that he had inscribed upon the dog's gravestone the following:
"Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices."
The expression "three dog night" originated with the Eskimos and
means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm.
The fastest bird is the Spine-tailed swift, clocked at speeds of
up to 220 miles per hour.
The fastest -moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed
of 0.0313 mph.
The first house rats recorded in America appeared in Boston in 1775.
The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone. It weighs
up to 2.5 tons and grows up to 55 feet long. Each eye is a foot or more in diameter.
The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous
snakes combined.
The hummingbird is the only bird that can hover and fly straight
up, down, or backward!
The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe
are all birds that cannot walk.
The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly, lives in a hole
in the ground, is almost blind and lays only one egg each year. Yet is has survived for 70 million years.
The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly. It lives in a
hole in the ground, is almost blind, and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 70 million
years.
The largest animal ever seen alive was a 113.5 foot, 170-ton female
blue whale.
The largest bird egg in the world today is that of the ostrich.
Ostrich eggs are from 6 to 8 inches long. Because of their size and the thickness of their shells, they take 40 minutes to
hard-boil.
The largest cockroach on record is one measured at 3.81 inches in
length.
The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed
24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930.
The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with
the record being a 59 footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
The largest pig on record was a Poland-China hog named Big Bill,
who weighed 2,552 lbs.
The last member of the famous Bonaparte family, Jerome Napoleon
Bonaparte, died in 1945, of injuries sustained from tripping over his dog's leash.
The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise
made by a living creature. The call of the humpback whale is louder than Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.
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.
The most frequently seen birds at feeders across North America last
winter were the Dark-eyed Junco, House Finch and American goldfinch, along with downy woodpeckers, blue jays, mourning doves,
black-capped chickadees, house sparrows, northern cardinals and european starlings.
The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.
The name of the dog from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" is Max.
The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.
The only dog to ever appear in a Shakespearean play was Crab in
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
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.
The penalty for killing a cat, 4,000 years ago in Egypt, was death.
The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England.
During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in
the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and
dogs" and led to the current expression.
The pigmy shrew - a relative of the mole - is the smallest mammal
in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce - less than a dime.
The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.
The poisonous copperhead snake smells like fresh cut cucumbers.
The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's
largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and
claims to be the worlds only museum devoted solely to mollusks.
The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to
Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating
exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."
The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.
The turkey was named for what was wrongly thought to be its country
of origin.
The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels
off several times a year with new growth.
The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that
of a rattlesnake.
The viscera of Japanese abalone can harbor a poisonous substance
which causes a burning, stinging, prickling and itching over the entire body. It does not manifest itself until exposure to
sunlight - if eaten outdoors in sunlight, symptoms occur quickly and suddenly.
The world record frog jump is 33 feet 5.5 inches over the course
of 3 consecutive leaps, achieved in May 1977 by a South African sharp-nosed frog called Santjie.
The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth.
Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog
that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.
The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing
less than a penny.
The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp,
is smaller than the eye of a housefly.
There are around 2,600 different species of frogs. They live on
every continent except Antarctica.
There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there
are human beings on the entire earth.
There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in the United States.
Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.
There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly
applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water.
Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards
and forwards.
When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called
a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.
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.
When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone,
so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.
When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats
caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept
their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long
as 15 years.
You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume
bananas.
