▷ Animal Facts: 132 Facts about Animals ←FACTSlides→

The original word for "bear" has been lost. Medieval people thought that saying the ferocious animal's name would summon it, so they used a euphemism that meant "the brown one" ("bear").

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Animals, including pigs, horses, and even insects, could be tried and convicted of crimes for several centuries across many parts of Europe.

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Animals avoid power lines because they see frightening ultraviolet flashes that are invisible to humans.

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The Rufous hornero is the national animal of Argentina.

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Humans are killing 1,776 animals for food every second.

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Giraffes are the tallest animals in the world. Males can grow up to 18 feet (5.5 meters) tall.

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Research has shown that domestic cats never forgive. They fail to show signs of reconciliation like other animals do.

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Global warming could drive to extinction as many as 1 in 6 animal and plant species.

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California 's official state animal, the California grizzly bear, is extinct.

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The blue whale can produce the loudest sound of any animal. At 188 decibels, the noise can be detected over 800 km (500 mi) away.

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Dogs and elephants are the only animals that seem to instinctively understand pointing.

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During the outbreak of WW2, London Zoo killed all their venomous animals in case the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped.

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The animal in the Firefox logo isn't a Fox. It's a Red Panda.

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The Macaw is the national animal of Brazil.

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The scientific name of the llama is "lama glama."

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The North American Beaver is the national animal of Canada.

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The Blue-ringed octopus is one of the world's most venomous marine animals: it can kill you in one bite, there is no antivenom.

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Zebras are responsible for more injuries to U.S. zookeepers than any other animal.

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Alex, an African grey parrot, was the first and only non-human animal to ask an existential question: he asked what color he was.

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The "No Animals Were Harmed" moniker on movies only applies while film is actually recording.

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The average meat-eating person eats about 7,000 animals in their lifetime.

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The Guinness World Records stopped awarding the fattest cats or any other animal to discourage deliberate overfeeding.

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The White-Tailed Deer is the national animal of Costa Rica.

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The Red Kangaroo is the national animal of Australia.

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The official animal of Scotland is the Unicorn.

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Dyeing pets to look like other wild animals is a trend in China.

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Spotted hyenas sometimes scavenge, but, contrary to popular belief, they kill 95% of their food.

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Female blanket octopuses can be 40,000 times more massive than the male, it's the largest sex size discrepancy in the animal kingdom.

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Jellyfish are the ocean's most efficient swimmers, consuming 48% less oxygen than any other swimming animal.

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Snakes can sense other animals approaching by detecting faint vibrations in the air and on the ground.

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The Brown bear is the national animal of Finland.

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Dolphins have the longest memory in the animal kingdom.

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Many animals have been reported to commit suicide, including dogs, cows, bulls, and sheep.

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The deepest living animal ever found is a "devil worm" living 2.2. miles (3.6 kilometers) below.

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Cats are believed to be responsible for the extinction of several species of animals.

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The Cuban trogon is the national animal of Cuba.

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Over 16,000 religious festivals across Spain are said to involve animal cruelty. About 60,000 animals die every year on them.

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Humans can beat almost all animals in long-distance running.

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Grizzly bears have a bite-force of over 8,000,000 pascals, enough to crush a bowling ball.

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The Gallic rooster is the national animal of France.

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People pay thousands of dollars to hunt Zebras and other African wildlife on large ranches in Texas.

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Plants and warm-blooded animals closer to the equator tend to be darker.

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The Bengal Tiger is the national animal of India.

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The Hoopoe is the national bird of Israel.

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The Red-billed streamertail is the national animal of Jamaica.

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The Xoloitzcuintli is the national dog of Mexico.

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When a crow dies, the other crows investigate if there's a threat where the death occurred, so they can avoid it in the future.

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The FBI tracks animal abuse just like homicide, arson and assault.

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Most mammals, from elephants to shrews, live for the same number of heartbeats, about 1.5 billion, before dying.

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Congo the chimp was a famous abstract painter in the 1950s who sold paintings to Picasso, Dalí and others for up to US$26,000.

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The horses in Olympic equestrian events have their own passports and fly business class.

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The loudest howler monkeys have the tiniest testicles, a study found.

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Female sharks can store sperm for up to a year before using it to fertilise their eggs.

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A species of hermaphroditic worm has a strange way to deal with loneliness: It injects sperm into its head to reproduce.

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Research has shown that all sorts of animals, from insects to monkeys, have a sense of personal space.

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American cows produce 4 times as much milk as they did in 1944.

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Humans have no more genes than worms.

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Naked mole-rats have a high resistance to cancer tumours because they produce an extremely high-molecular-mass hyaluronan and have ribosomes that produce extremely error-free proteins.

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Birds never crash into each other because they always veer right, a study found.

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In August 2016, a dog was elected mayor of Cormorant, Minnesota, for its third term in a row.

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Some insects

can see ultraviolet light.

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Some baby turtles talk to each other while they are still in their eggs so that they all hatch together.

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Horse-eating is called Hippophagy.

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Llamas usually spit to settle an argument over food or to decide which is the dominant llama.

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Chimps use medicinal plants to treat themselves for illness and injury.

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Giant anteaters do not have teeth; instead, they have tongues reaching as much as 610 mm (2 ft.) in length.

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Just one insectivorous bat can eat 600 or more mosquitoes in a single hour.

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African bongos eat burned wood after lightning storms.

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Opossums have fifty razor sharp teeth, the highest number of teeth found in any land mammal.

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Fruit flies use hairs on their head and thorax to catapult dust off of them at accelerations of up to 500 times Earth's gravity.

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A honeybee has the same amount of hairs as a squirrel: 3 million.

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Armadillo is a Spanish word meaning “little armored one.”

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A honeybee's true surface area is the size of a piece of toast.

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As soon as they find a rock to anchor themselves to, young sea squirts eat their own brains.

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In 1949, a flock of starlings perched on the minute hand of Big Ben, slowing it by 4.5 minutes.

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Walruses have the longest total gestation period of any seal: up to 16 months.

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Unlike most fish, seahorses are covered in bony plates instead of scales.

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Fruit flies take their time over difficult decisions.

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A study indicates that dolphins talk to each other in sentences.

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African elephants can disperse — with their dung — over 2000 seeds of diverse plants per square kilometre, every day.

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An estimated 1.2 million dogs are euthanized in shelters every year.

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The grasshopper mouse eats scorpions, centipedes, snakes and even other mice.

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Genetic and archaeological evidence suggests there were two distinct dog populations in the world, one in the east and one in the west, during the Palaeolithic.

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A dead gecko can stay stuck to the wall for half an hour.

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The bigger an animal's brain, the longer it will yawn.

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Bees know when it's going to rain, so they put in extra work the day before.

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Mice sing like birds, but humans can't hear them.

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Fruit-fly sperm is 20,000 times larger than porcupine sperm.

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Male spider mites prefer their sexual partners to be dead.

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Some woodpeckers like to eat the brains of baby doves.

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Elephants don't like peanuts.

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Giraffes flick insects away with their tongues.

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A single gram of poison from Bruno's casque-headed frog is enough to kill 80 people or 300,000 mice.

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A naked mole rat's four front teeth are located outside its mouth, and their lips are sealed just behind the teeth, preventing soil from filling its mouth while he is digging.

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The African giant pouched rat can smell tuberculosis more accurately than most lab tests.

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Cats can't see treats right in front of their faces.

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Comparative analysis indicated that chimpanzees and bonobos show population-level right handedness, whereas gorillas and orangutans do not.

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The name jaguar is derived from the Native American word yaguar, which means “he who kills with one leap.”

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Squids squirt water out fast enough to propel themselves through the air at up to 11.2 metres per second, faster than Usain Bolt's top speed of 10.31 metres per second.

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One of the oldest species of animal still with us are the horseshoe crabs who appeared 445 million years ago. They've survived for 75% of the entire span of animal life on the planet.

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A "Panther" isn't a real animal. It's actually a term used to describe black cougars, jaguars and leopards.

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The Chinese soft-shelled turtle is the first animal known to pee via its mouth.

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The Bull is the national animal of Spain.

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The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends $14 billion of its $31 billion annual budget on animal research.

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There is no such thing as a vegetarian snake. Snakes eat nothing except other animals.

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Scientists have noticed that humpback whales around the world have been rescuing animals being hunted by orcas.

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Spiders eat twice as much animal prey as humans do in a year, and even exceeds that of whales.

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Animal Facts 132 Facts about Animals

Animal Facts
132 Facts about Animals