FACTS ABOUT ANIMALS

i. ii. iii. iv. Skunks can shoot their bad-smelling spray only about two yards, but you can smell it upto two and a half miles away. Foxes sometimes nip at the heals of cattle so the stomping of the cattle makes mice and other rodents come out of the ground, for the fox to eat. Dinosaurs probably lived to be between 75 to 300 years of age. Scientists figured this out from looking at the structure of their bones. One way to tell the age of a fish is by looking at its scales. They have growth rings just like trees. These are called circuli. Clusters of them are called annuli. Each annuli show one year. The northern fur seal, rather than using a layer of fat to keep it warm, depends on its thick fur with some 300,000 hairs per square inch. Did you know porpoises could surf? They are frequently seen riding the bow wave of a ship. They make no swimming motions and can ride the wake for more than an hour. They can also turn on their side or flip completely around. Fish swimming at depths of 15,000 feet (almost 3 miles down!) can withstand a pressure of 7,000 pounds per square inch. They are able to live in these crushing depths by pumping gas into their swim bladder. You may have heard someone say, "It's raining cats and dogs." There have been actual documented cases from all over the world of fish, frogs, dead birds, snakes, snails, beetles, worms and jellyfish raining down from the sky in great numbers, but no reports of showers of cats or dogs. The blue whale, the largest animal to have ever existed, is 96 feet long and weights 125 tons. This is as much as 4 large dinosaurs (Brontosaur), 23 elephants, 230 cows or 1800 men. Some animals produce their own lights, called bioluminescence. The Brazilian railroad worm has a red light on its head and green lights down its side. All it needs to drive on the street is a turn signal. The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon. It can fly at a speed of 168-217 miles per hour. The largest egg laid by a living bird is that of the North African Ostrich. It is 6 to 8 inches in length and 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The smallest is that of the hummingbird. It is less than 0.39 inches in diameter.

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Whether an alligator is a male or female is determined by the temperature of the nest where the egg is hatched. 90 to 93 degrees will make it a male; 82 to 86 degrees will turn it into a female. Animals with some of the longest lives are the Marion's tortoise (152 years), the fin whale (116 years) and the deep-sea clam (100 years). An electric eel can produce a shock of 600 volts. That's enough to stun large animals and even knock a horse off its feet. Cows can sleep standing up. Giant squid's eye can be as big as a basketball. Salamanders are known to come out of wood when it was burning inside a fireplace, this is because Salamanders hibernate in wood. Some frogs can pull their eyes into their throat and help push food down! An African adult elephant eats about six hundred pounds of food a day; that's four percent of the elephant's body weight! The smallest fish in the world are the Pygmygoby and the Luzongoby, from the Philippines, which are only one-half-inch long when they are full grown. The 14-foot-long narwhal is a whale whose tooth can reach upto eight feet long! Chimpanzees use tools more than any other animal except man. Elephants purr like cats do, as a means of communication. The mandrill baboon has a red nose, blue cheeks, and an orange beard! Hummingbirds flap their wings between 50 and 70 times a second! When an octopus gets angry, it shoots a stream of black "ink". There are about 100 billion birds in the world, and about 6 billion of them make their homes in the United States. The emperor penguin is playful, and often times lies on its chest and side to slide along the ice and snow. The leatherback is the biggest sea turtle, and it can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds. The snapping shrimp, only 1 1/2 inches long, makes a noise with its one big claw, which sounds exactly like a fire cracker. Starfish can have upto 16 arms! Flying fish actually glide on wind currents above the surface of the water, sometimes up to 20 feet above the surface. Sea snakes are the most poisonous snakes in the world.

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Adult male giraffes bang their long necks together in a form of ritual fighting, during which no harm is done to either giraffe. The stonefish, which lives off the coast of Australia, is the most poisonous fish in the world. The black-necked cobra, which lives mostly in Africa, spits its venom into the eyes of its victim, to cause it blindness. When two love birds appear to be kissing, they are actually grooming each other with their bills to keep clean and neat. The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey! A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other animals is fun! The dipper bird builds nests behind waterfalls for protection. Vultures can soar for hours without one beat of their wings. Sea horses pull themselves around with their chins leading them. Sometimes birds show anger towards humans by taking out its feelings on other birds nearby, because they are too afraid to attack humans. The guanaco of South America, a cousin of the camel, has pads on its feet to keep its feet from burning on desert sand or freezing in mountain snow. The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own. Blue jays often forget where they hide winter supplies of food. The largest bird egg ever laid was laid millions of years ago by the Madagascar, or the elephant bird. Today, the ostrich is the bird that lays the largest eggs. Scallops swim with jet-propelled speed by clapping its shell open and shut. Some ducks and geese can fly as much as 332 miles a day! The lung fish can live out of water for as long as four years! The Egyptian vulture uses stones to smash ostrich eggs. Birds save energy by flying in a "V" formation. Theodore Roosevelt was the U.S. President with the most pets, including a lion, hyena, wildcat, five bears, and many more! Killer Whales are the only sea animal that outranks the Tiger Shark as top predator of the sea. Salamanders breath trough their skin. People used to think the Manatee was a mermaid. Some fish have eyes that are the same size as their stomach!

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A female seahorse lets her husband store her babies inside his stomach! Out of every 1,000 Mosquitoes, one female carries a disease that could be fatal to humans. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. You don't see all of them because most are too fine and light to be noticed. The bee frog of Africa is no bigger than a bee. An okapi's tongue can grow to be 17 inches long. Cows have four-chambered stomachs. Fish have gel-slime on their bodies that protects them from parasites. An owl's eyes are bigger than its brain. The faster kangaroos hop, the less energy they use. The flying fox of Africa has a wing span of fifty inches! Giraffes have black tongues. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it. Some frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and continue living. Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water. A duck's quack has no echo. Cats can make over100 vocal sounds, while dogs can only make 10. Texas horned toads can shoot blood out of the corners of their eyes. Starfish have eight eyes--one at the end of each leg. Honey bees have hair on their eyes. The only bird that can fly backwards is the Hummingbird. Female lions do 90% of the hunting. Alligators cannot move backwards. A duck has three eye lids. A starfish doesn't have a brain. Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. The average housefly lives for one month. There is only one insect that can turn its head -- the praying mantis. The Arctic tern flies an average of 22,000 miles a year! A slug has four noses. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny! Camels have three sets of eye lids.

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The flying fox is a bat with a wing span over five feet. One ostrich's egg weighs 3 1/2 pounds. A giant squid's eyes are bigger than dinner plates. Some male spiders pluck their cob webs like a guitar, to attract female spiders. Dogs sweat only through their tongues. A kangaroo can jump 45 feet! A rabbit's teeth never stop growing. A mosquito flaps its wings 500 times a second. You can lead a cow up a stairwell but not down a stairwell. Only male crickets can chirp. Dogs can't see colors. They're color blind. Squirrels can't remember where they hide half of their nuts. The stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut! Bats always turn left when they leave their caves. Octopuses have 3 hearts. A giraffe's tongue can measure 21 inches. There are almost 60 million dogs in the United States. Baby robins eat 14 feet of earth worms every day! Some wild tigers can eat up to 40 pounds of meat at a time, and not eat again for several days. About 80% of the Earth's animals are insects! The first animal sent up to outer space was a dog. The blue whale is the largest animal that ever lived (it could reach 100 feet long and weight up to 150 tons!) The chameleon has a tongue that is 1.5 times the length of its body! The smallest frog is less than 3/8 of an inch in length. The smallest cat is the Singapuras and weighs only 4 pounds. The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts. Most hamsters blink one eye at a time. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. Cows have four stomachs. It costs an average of $5,000 to raise a dog to ten years old. Only one mammal can't jump -- the elephant. Dragonflies can fly upto 50 miles per hour. A goldfish can live upto 40 years.

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A peregrine falcon can reach speeds upto 200 miles per hour. A skunk can spray its stench twelve feet away. Once in England, because of a water spout, it rained frogs! Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size. The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old - 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs! When polar bears get mad, they hiss like cats! The oar fish lives its whole life upside down at the bottom of the ocean. It does this because it needs to find krill, which is what they eat. The krill live in the mud on the ocean floor. A group of frogs are called an "army". The average man eats about 33 tons of food in his lifetimeor about the weight of 56 elephants! Don't run into a wombats bum! A wombat injures, sometimes kills its predators by letting them chase it then the wombat comes to a sudden stop and the predator crashes into its extremely hard bum bone. A gecko uses its tongue to clean its eye balls! The smallest dog recorded was a Yorkie and was only 4 inches tall. The biggest dog weighed 344 pounds-more than two full grown men! A chow chow ( dog), a polar bear and a giraffe are the only known animals to have black tongues. Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows! A polar bear has black skin but white fur! Elephants are not able to jump. There is a certain type of lizard that lives in the desert, and to scare predators off, it shoots blood from its eyes! A canary's heart beats 1000 times per minute! A pregnant guppy fish no bigger than 1/9 of an inch can deliver birth to 55 babies! Dolphins are not classified as fish-they are actually mammals! The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds. A puffin's beak can change colors! Inbreeding season its beak has very bright colors, but in the winter season they will become duller. Giraffes do not have vocal chords, therefore they do not make any sounds!

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Guinea pigs and rabbits do not sweat! The hummingbird must eat every 10 minutes or risk starvation! If a starfish loses an arm, it can regenerate one. The female black widow's poison is 15 times deadlier than a rattle snake's! There are worms in Australia that are over 4 Feet Long! The tongue of a blue whale weighs as much as a average elephant.