• In ancient Canadian legend, the turtle was the oldest and wisest creature on earth before man came to the Americas.
• Monkeys fling faeces at each other when agitated.
• Ravens can learn to open a box to get a treat, and then teach others to do the same.
• Cockroaches can find their way in a dark room by dragging one antenna against the wall.
• A Brazilian MP has drawn up a new law to ban people from giving their pets ‘human’ names.
• Finches practise songs in their sleep.
• Crickets hear through their knees.
• A Chinese man has trained his pet dog to walk on its hind legs for up to five miles.
• The heart of a blue whale only beats nine times a minute.
• Baboons and chimps dig for clean water when the surface water is polluted. Chimps even use sticks as digging tools.
• A weddell seal can hold its breath for seven hours.
• Conservation workers introduced an exercise regime for giant pandas in Chinese zoos because they were too fat to mate.
• Turkeys were first brought to Britain in 1526 by Yorkshireman William Strickland, who sold six, acquired from American Indians, for sixpence each, in Bristol.
• The Basenji, an African dog, is the only dog that does not bark.
• One in three dog owners say they have talked to their pets on the phone.
• A Belgian company is producing ice cream specifically for dogs.
• A course teaching people how to perform the kiss of life on dogs has been launched in Chile.
• A church in Connecticut is giving Holy Communion to pets and offering them special worship services.
• Chimps live in groups that each has its own culture.
• The average American dog will cost its owner £9,000 in its lifetime.
• Only male turkeys gobble. Females make a clicking sound.
• The average pregnancy of an Indian elephant lasts 650 days.
• A geriatric dwarf mouse that lived at a university in Michigan became the world’s oldest after celebrating his fourth birthday.
• A Swiss woman is offering lessons on how to talk with animals for £360 a time.
• Cows drink anywhere from 25 to 50 gallons of water each day.
• The red kangaroo can produce two different types of milk at the same time from adjacent teats to feed both younger and older offspring.
• Firefighters in Florida are carrying oxygen masks for cats, dogs and even hamsters to help save pets suffering from smoke inhalation.
• A German basset hound with the longest dog ears in the world has had them insured for £30,000.
• Hard rock music makes termites chew through wood at twice their usual speed.
• Red squirrels are being given rope bridges to help them cross busy roads in Formby, Merseyside.
• A Michigan woman who runs a boutique for pets is stocking a special range of Halloween costumes for dogs.
• Domestic turkeys cannot fly because of their size and breeding but, in the wild, they can fly at up to 50mph over short distances and run at 20mph.
• The Giant African cricket enjoys eating human hair.
• Ninety-five per cent of the creatures on earth are smaller than a chicken egg.
• The first known ‘zeedonks’ were the result of an accidental mating between a male Chapman’s zebra and a female black ass (donkey) at Colchester Zoo in 1983.
• Ziggy, the largest and oldest elephant ever in captivity, was taught to play ‘Yes, Sir, that’s my baby’ on the harmonica.
• The Antarctic notothenia fish has a protein in its blood that acts like antifreeze and stops the fish freezing in icy sea.
• Goat’s eyes have rectangular pupils.
• The megalodon shark became extinct about 1.6 million years ago. Marine biologists have estimated the megalodon shark was double the size and weight of today’s great white shark.
• Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers.
• Sheep can detect other sheep faces in the way that humans do. Researchers claim they can remember up to 50 sheep faces.
• Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of
any mammal.
• When mating, a hummingbird’s wings beat 200 times a second.
• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
• The average American bald eagle weighs about 9lb.
• Robins eat three miles of earthworms in a year.
• The beautiful Cone Shell Molluscs are just 2in long but have a deadly poison-filled harpoon-like tooth that spears their prey, injecting it with lethal toxins.
• A study has concluded that if a woodchuck could chuck wood it could chuck about 700lb.
• Baby elephants can drink over 80 litres of milk a day.
• An experiment in Canada determined that chickens lay most eggs when pop music is played.
• A cow has four stomachs.
• Two dogs were hanged for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.
• All polar bears are left-handed.
• A mother shark can give birth to as many as 70 baby sharks per litter.
• The top speed of a pigeon in flight is 90mph.
• An adult crocodile can go two years without eating.
• Emus cannot walk backwards.
• The oldest bird on record was Cocky, a cockatoo, who died in London Zoo at the age of 82.
• A chicken’s top speed is 9mph.
• Both gorillas and housecats purr.
• Ostriches can run faster than horses and the males can roar like lions.
• Squirrels cannot see the colour red.
• If birds could sweat, they wouldn’t be able to fly.
• The decapitated jaws of a snapping turtle can keep snapping for about a day.
• Jackrabbits got their name because their ears look like a donkey’s (Jackass).
• Sheep can survive up to two weeks buried in snowdrifts.
• The last animal in the dictionary is the zyzzyva, a tropical American weevil.
• The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
• Armadillos can catch malaria.
• Baboons cannot throw overhand.
• Lions are the only cats that live in packs.
• To get a gallon of milk, it takes about 345 squirts from a cow’s udder.
• A warthog has only four warts, all of which are on its head.
• The penalty for stealing a rabbit in 19th century England was seven years in prison.
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