Book five : Chapter one
The Animal
World
| Though 1 milligram of fluoacetic acid will kill a dog, toads have been known to survive a dose of 10,000 milligrams without effect. |
Rats are more vulnerable to poisoon than most other animals because
they are unable to vomit.
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| Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air. |
Tigers have round pupils and yellow irises (except for the
blue eyes of white tigers). Due to a retinal adaptation that
reflects light back to the retina, the night vision of
tigers is six times better than that of humans.
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| A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time. |
No one knows exactly why tigers are striped, but scientists
think that the stripes act as camouflage, and help tigers hide
from their prey. The Sumatran tiger has the most stripes
of all the tiger subspecies, and the Siberian tiger has the
fewest stripes.
Tiger stripes are like human fingerprints; no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes. |
| The woolly mammoth, extinct since the Ice Age, had tusks almost 16 feet (nearly 5 metres) long. |
A new study shows that there is only enough fish in Loch Ness
to feed a 31 kg (about 67 lb) creature.
Scientists used sonar to estimate the number of fish in the lake and came up with an annual food supply of 93 kg. Since a cold blooded animal like Nessie would need to eat about three times its body weight each year, the legendary monster could only weigh about 31 kg. |
| Horses share one very unusual physical feature only with humans. We are the only two creatures to have hymens. |
Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow
to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar.
If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period
of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot
sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked.
The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%. |
| A Turtle's shell is actually its ribs and spine - fused together over many years of evolution. |
Cats eyes possess an image-intensifying device at the rear of their eyes.
This is a light-reflecting layer called the "apetum lucidum" (bright carpet).
It acts like a mirror behind the retina, reflecting light back to the
retinal cells. With this, the cat can utilize all of the light that
enters its eyes. We absorb far less of the light that enters our eyes.
Because of this difference cats can make out objects and movements in the semidarkness that would be quite invisible to us. Cats cannot see in complete darkness, however, but they can navigate by sound, smell, and the sensitivity of their whiskers. |
| If you could lay them all head to claw, the number of chickens consumed annually from Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets worldwide would stretch some 275,094 miles. The enough to run around the equator 11 times, or to extend 50,000 miles beyond the moon. |
A cargo of flatulent pigs caused an international passenger jet en
route to South Africa to make an emergency landing in London. The prize
porkers generated so much heat from their natural gases that they caused
a fire alarm to register in the cockpit.
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| No other animal gives us more by-products than the hog. These by-products include pig suede, buttons, glass, paint brushes, crayons, chalk, and insulation to name but a few. |
The longest sperm ever recorded is 10,000-times longer than a human
spermatozoon and belongs to the fruitfly Drosophila bifurca. The typical
Drosophila bifurca male sperm is approximately 60 millimeters long - and
that's 20 times the length of the fly itself!
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| The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers. |
There is a type of parrot in New Zealand that likes to eat the
rubber strips that line car windows.
New Zealand is also the only country that contains every type of climate in the world. |
| Chine produces and consumes more fresh pork than any other country. |
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
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| A typical double bed will normally house more than 6 billion dust mites. |
Bulls are actually colour-blind, so they couldn't care less if a matador's
cape is red, or blue, or green, or flourescent pink. The red colour was
chosen to mask any of the matador's blood that may be spilled.
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| Flatulance from domesticated cows has produced about 30% of the methane currently on this planet. |
Caviar (sturgeon roe) was a common food in California during the gold
rush days, until overharvesting led to the decline of sturgeon and its
eventual protection.
Until recently, most of the world's caviar has come from areas bordering the Caspian Sea. However, these countries are now cutting exports by as much as 80% because of short supplies. To complete the circle, California fish farmers have now developed a way to farm sturgeon and are preparing to ship their first harvest. |
| Dinosaur droppings are called coprolites, and are actually fairly common. |
The male scorpion fly gets other males to bring him food by imitating a
female fly.
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| More than 35,000 leeches are sold for medical purposes in the United States annually, at a cost of $6.00 for each leech. |
Chimpanzees used in AIDS vaccine studies get a pension of more than
$100,000 to pay for their care and containment for the duration of
their natural lives. While it is possible to infect chimpanzees
with HIV, they do not appear to get AIDS.
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Bird droppings (in the form of phosphorous) are the chief export
of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific.
The extensive mining - which has now all but exhausted supplies - has caused so much damage to the island that little habitable land remains, and the island itself is in danger of collapsing in on itself. |
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| A cockroach can live for several weeks after it's head has been chopped off. |
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette
in South Bend, Indiana.
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| Dolphins always sleep with one eye open. |
One particular breed of prehistoric horse - named eohippus - was
no larger than your average domestic cat.
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| Cockroaches just adore the glue on envelopes and on the back of postage stamps. |
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| Ants don't sleep. |
One Poison-Arrow Frog carries enough poison to kill about 2,200 human adults.
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| Rabbit's can see behind just as well as in front. |
Because of it's limited digestive system, a housefly regurgitates it's food
after eating, and then eats it again.
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| Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of the blue whale. |
Cows burp a lot, but until recently no one paid much attention.
Now researchers at the Texas Department of Highways in Fort Worth
are sitting up and taking notice. Each year the cow population
of the United States burps some fifty million tons of valuable
hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. If they could only be captured
and efficiently channeled, say the researchers, the accumulated
burps of ten average cows could keep a small house adequately, if
indirectly, heated and its stove operating for a year.
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| Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep elsewhere. |
Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although
they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself
chased by one, run in a zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every
time.
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| A giraffe can go without water for a longer time than a camel. |
Blue whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long as 3
Greyhound buses.
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| Ninety percent of all species that have become extinct have been birds. |
According to tests made at the Institute for the Study of Animal
Problems in Washington, D.C., dogs and cats, like people, are
either right-handed or left-handed --- that is, they favor either
their right or left paws.
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| There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world. |
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