Note: These facts are not verifed, and may be false.
When reflected from bright lights (head lights) deer's eyes are orange, wheras cats and dogs are green. Rabbits eyes remain black.
Your body temp is lowest at 4 a.m.
Lightning is five times hotter than the Sun.
Dolphins don't automatically breath, they have to tell themselves to.
Pigs killed off the dodo bird
Eagles can live in captivity for up to 46 years.
Forty-five different kinds of antelope can be found in Africa.
Centipedes have between 28 and 354 legs.
Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.
The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.
A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
Armadillos can be house broken.
A shark can grow a new set of teeth in a week.
The Vampire Bat has chemicals in its saliva to prevent the victim's blood from clotting for 2-3 minutes.
The Vampire Bat can live up to 9 years feeding on the blood of domestic animals, particulary cows, pigs, and horses.
In one year a colony of 100 vampire bats consumes the equivalent of the blood in 25 cows.
Given the chance, gray squirrels will eat bird eggs & chicks.
A sparrow has more bones in its neck than a giraffe.
Cochroaches favorite foods are the glue on the back of stamps & envelopes.
Dragonflies have a life span of 24 hours.
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
Ancestors of both common short-haired and long-haired domestic cats were not indigenous to the United States and were imported from foreign countries. The book of Cat Facts by Marcus Schneck and Jill Caravan
The average house cat weighs in at 11 pounds.
Tylenol and chocolate are both poisionous to cats.
The ancestor of all domestic cats is the African Wild Cat which still exists today.
In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.
In ancient Egypt, mummies were made of cats, and embalmed mice were placed with them in their tombs. In one ancient city, over 300,000 cat mummies were found.
In the Middle Ages, during the Festival of Saint John, cats were burned alive in town squares.
The first cat show was in 1871 at the Crystal Palace in London.
Today there are about 100 distinct breeds of the domestic cat.
Genetic mutation created the domestic cat which is tame from birth.
Like birds, cats have a homing ability that uses its biological clock, the angle of the sun, and the Earth's magnetic field. A cat taken far from its home can return to it. But if a cat's owners move far from its home, the cat can't find them.
Hunting is not instinctive for cats. Kittens born to non-hunting mothers may never learn to hunt.
Cats bury their feces to cover their trails from predators.
Mother cats teach their kittens to use the litter box.
Among other tasks, cats can be taught to use a toilet, come, sit, beg, eat with their paws, heel, jump through a hoop, play a piano, play dead, roll over, open a door, hide food in boxes, shake, and fetch.
Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.
When cats are asleep, they are still alert to incoming stimuli. If you poke the tail of a sleeping cat, it will respond accordingly.
In Great Britain, black cats are thought to bring good luck.
Besides smelling with their nose, cats can smell with an additional organ called the Jacobson's organ, located in the upper surface of the mouth.
The chlorine in fresh tap water irritates sensitive parts of the cat's nose. Let tap water sit for 24 hours before giving it to a cat.
The average cat food meal is the equivalent to about five mice.
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.
A large majority of white cats with blue eyes are deaf. White cats with only one blue eye are deaf only in the ear closest to the blue eye. White cats with orange eyes do not have this disability.
Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or three years.
Pregnant women are advised not to come in contact with cat feces, because it can contain an organism which can affect the unborn child and even cause miscarriage.
Ten human years translate to about 60 cat years. A one year old cat is similar in age to an 18 year old human.
Elephants are particularly fond of beer and other forms of alcohol; they are known to seek out fermenting durian fruits in
Male bees will try to attract sex partners with orchid fragrance.
The typical termite colony is composed of members showing structural characteristics that scientists use to classify the termites. The four groups of termites, workers, soldiers, immature individuals, and reproductives each have particular roles in the colony. The workers, which are sterile, blind, and wingless, tend the eggs, feed the soldiers and the young, and maintain the nest. Protozoans living in the termites digestive tract convert wood to sugars that the termites can use for nourishment. Without these one celled animals, the termites would starve. Soldiers' sole purpose in life is to defend the colony against intruders. The variety of these defense mechanisms that have been evolved in different species will be discussed later. A young individual will develop into a winged reproductive, soldier, or a worker depending on the current needs of the colony. Reproductives obviously supply the colony with new individuals. Only one pair of active reproductives exists in a colony. The king and queen are usually sealed into a chamber where they are tended by workers. The queen also circulates different chemicals among the workers for stimulating the transformation of immature termites into soldiers, workers, or "secondary" reproductives - members who will develop wings and found new colonies. When a worker feeds the queen, the queen immediately knows if a particular group needs replenishing. For example, if a large number of soldiers were killed while repelling an enemy, the queen intercepts this information from the chemicals transferred from a worker. The queen then circulates a greater amount of "soldier chemical" in the colony by exuding the chemical from its body. Workers tending the queen take the chemical to other members and the young who will eventually develop into soldiers.
Houseflies have a lifespan of two weeks.[Source: Did you ever wonder]
The termites of the world outweigh humans 10:1
Aramadillo babies are identical quads. (clones that is)
On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.
Although tornadoes occur throughout the world, including India and Bangladesh, they are most intense and devastating in the United States. Toradoes can strike at any time of day, but they are much more frequent in the afternoon and evening, after the heat of the day has produced the hot air that is a requirement of a tornadic thunderstorm.
Frog-eating bats identify edible from poisonous frogs by listening to the mating calls of male frogs. Frogs counter by hiding and using short, difficult to locate calls.
Mice feeding on colored crayons will produce droppings based on the color of the crayon they were feeding on.
There are believed to be about 300 separate varieties of house mice in the United States.
Mice are more acceptable to humans than rats, possibly because of what is known as the 'Disney influence.'
Some scientists speculate that mice developed from rats under conditions where it was less important to be large and ferocious than to be able to get into a smaller hole.
The word 'mouse' can be traced to the Sanskrit word 'musha' which is derived from a word 'to steal.'
Rats are omnivorous, eating nearly any type of food, including dead and dying members of their own species.
Rats are cautious, and if their food is in an exposed area where it cannot be consumed quickly, they usually carry or drag it to a hiding place.
Rats rely predominantly on smell, taste, touch and hearing as opposed to vision. They move around mainly in the dark, using their long, sensitive whiskers and the guard hairs on their body to guide them.
Rats damage structures, chew wiring and cause electrical fires, eat and urinate on human and animal food, and carry many diseases.
Rats can get into your home through a hole about the size of a quarter.
Rats memorize specific pathways and use the same routes habitually.
A camel can lose up to 30% of its body weight in perspiration and continue to cross the desert. A human would die of heat shock after sweating away only 12% of body weight.
Alaska is a land of almost unimaginable scale. Stretching across 586,000 square miles of untamed wilderness, Alaska is one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States. It contains the tallest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley, which many Alaskans simply call "the mountain." And of course, the Land of the Midnight Sun has longer summer days than any other state. This majestic landscape borders two oceans and three seas, with a 47,300 mile coastline. Alaska boasts over three million lakes, 3,000 rivers, 1,800 islands, and more than 100,000 glaciers.
Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance, and is also one of the most valuable natural substances. Diamonds are crystals formed almost entirely of carbon. Because of its hardness, the diamond is the most enduring of all gemstones. They are among the most costly jewels in the world, partly because they are rare, Only four important diamond fields have been found - in Africa, South America, India, and the Soviet Union.
Rennin, the enzyme obtained from the fourth stomach of a cow and used chiefly in the manufacture of cheese, is capable of coagulating more than 25,000 times its weight of fresh milk.
There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in it's body to kill six cats
Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals.
Tiny ants can lift objects that weigh more than they do. Ants also have remarkably strong jaws and can give a painful nip. When some species bite, they are able to squirt formic acid from the end of their abdomen into the wound -- making it doubly painful.
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.
Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
The Midwestern United States has the world's greatest number of tornadoes per year.
A bee's buzz is caused by its wings flapping at the rate of 250 times a second.
The only rocks in the ice of Antarctica are meteorites.
Sailfish can leap out of the water and into the air at a speed of 50 miles per hour.
The earth weighs 13,176,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (13 septillion, 176 sextillion pounds.)
The earth's revolution time increases .0001 seconds annually.
If the water in the world's reservoirs were allowed passage to the oceans, global sea level would rise 1 1/5 inches.
Because the Antarctic icecap is up to 15,700 feet thick, the continent has the highest average elevation.
Only 2 more blue moons (the saying "only once in a blue moon" refers to the occurrence of two full moons during one calendar month) are to occur between now and 2001. Those times are January 1999 and March 1999.
The bark of the redwood tree is fireproof. Fires in redwood forests take place inside the trees. 2201 Fascinating Facts
The odds against a person being struck by a celestial stone, a meteorite, are ten trillion to one.
The density of the universe is 1 atom per 10 cubic yards.
Methane gas can often be seen bubbling up from the bottom of ponds. It is produced by the decomposition of dead plants and animals in the mud.
Mosquitos have teeth.
An estimated 80% of animals on Earth have six legs, i.e., are insects. The more than 10 quintillion bugs fall into some 800,000 species.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
There are 100 different species of large trees in a single acre of rainforest.
"The Chief" in BC, Canada is the worlds second largest rock.
Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface - 360 million square km Ocean Voice International
The average depth of the ocean is 4 km
The area of the Pacific Ocean exceeds that of all the land
The world's oceans contain 328 million cubic miles of sea water
The deepest spot in the ocean is in the Mariana Trench at 11.7 km
There may be as many as 6 million diatoms, tiny floating plants in a cubic foot of sea water
Turtles have special sacs (or bursae) located in the cloaca, a pouch near the tail which contains the rectal and urogenital openings. These bursae are covered with thousands of tiny, fingerlike projections called villi, each filled with tiny blood vessels which absorb oxygen. By drawing water into and out of the cloaca, the turtle can absorb more than enough oxygen to survive. This is how most turtles breathe underwater.
Pigs can become alcoholics.
Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.
Bamboo (the tallest grass in the world) can grow up to 90 cm in a day.
The lightest calf ever born weighed in at 14 pounds, 5 ounces.
The solid central core of the earth seems to rotate at a slightly different rate than the rest of the earth.
On Tahiti, high tides occur every day at noon and midnight, regardless of where the moon is.
Every bird and mammal except the spiny anteater experiences REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
Canaries can grow NEW brain cells.
Antarctica is actually a desert.
The world's most active volcano is Kilauea, in Hawaii. [Boston Globe]
Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's highest waterfall, at 3,212 feet.
The shock waves from earthquakes travel faster in a north-south direction through the Earth's inner core than they do east-west. The effect is called anisotropy.
A clitoris is a type of flower
Penguins are found in the Antarctic, not Arctic.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not 'playing.' They actually pass out from sheer terror.
The 1983 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia was heard in Australia 2,400 miles way. Pieces of pumice from this eruption were found on beaches in Madagascar 4,200 miles away. Ash rose 50 miles into the atmosphere. Tsunamis, or giant waves, were created as the volcano collapsed on itself.
There are over 500,000 craters on the moon that can be seen from the planet Earth.
A rainbow can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above the horizon.
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.
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 Tiger Information Center
If the Loch Ness monster exists at all, he (or she) could only be about as big as a sixth grader. A new study shows that there is only enough fish in the loch to feed a 31 kg (about 67 lb.) creature. The 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, it could only weigh about 31 kg. Access Excellence
The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.
The longest sperm ever recorded is 10,000-times longer than a human spermatozoon and belongs to the fruit fly Drosophila bifurca. The typical Drosophila bifurca male sperm is approximately 60 millimeters long, 20 times the length of the fly itself.
Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings.
Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight.
Africanized honeybees are no more venomous than their northern cousins, they are just meaner and more likely to swarm. Two deaths have been attributed to the 'killer bees" since their arrival in the U.S. in 1990. In contrast, more than 60 people die each year as a result of the stings of ordinary honeybees.
There was a prehistoric horse breed (called eohippus) that was about the size of a housecat.
Ants do not sleep.
Some birds use stars to orientate themselves during migration.
The wettest spot in the world is located on the island of Kauai. Mt. Waialeale consistently records rainfall at the rate of nearly 500 inches per year.
Vampire bats have fewer teeth than any other bat because they do not have to chew their food.
Along with flying, vampire bats can run, jump, and hop with great speed, using their chest muscles to fling themselves skyward.
Vampire bats in the same colony support their roostmates by regurgitating blood to bats that are unable to find food.
Vampire bats don't suck blood. They make a small incision and lap up the blood of their hosts.
A single little brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in just one hour.
The Amazon region contains the largest body of fresh water and the largest rain forest in the world. It is home to at least 15,000 documented animal species, 8,000 of which were new to biology when they were discovered. At least 40% of the world's freshwater fish and 25% of the world's bird species reside there. [Agronomy Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison ]
The elephant snout, an African fish, communicates with other fish by emitting an electrical signal -- sort of a fish's version of Morse Code.
On average, the United States experiences 100,000 thunderstorms each year, causing about 1,000 tornadoes. The National Weather Service says an average of 42 people are killed by tornadoes annually.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs.
Try to catch a cockroach and it seems very elusive. They are among the fastest runners, reaching 30 cm per second, but this is only 1.88 KIT /h. But, they lack endurance. The centipede("thousand legger") can move at 50 centimeters a second, 24 miles per hour. The National Pest Control Association
A German cockroach can survive a month or more without food, but less than two weeks without water.
A tiny biting midge, or "no-seeum," Forcipomyia, beats its hairy wings 62,760 times a minute.
When provoked, a bombardier beetle swivels the tip of its abdomen and shoots a jet of boiling chemicals at its attacker. The chemicals are produced in a "reaction chamber" with an explosion you can hear. The spray of foul-smelling, burning vapor is a result of rapid firing. It shoots out at 500-1,000 pulses per second at a temperature of 100?C.
The stings of ants, bees and wasps are modified (egg laying tools), used to inject poison in defense or to paralyze prey. More than 50 different chemicals have been identified from various species. Some cause itching, pain, swelling and redness; others destroy cells and spread poison. Honey bees cannot pull their barbed stingers from human skins, and will eventually tear themselves away leaving their stingers behind, dying soon afterwards.
Never squash a yellowjacket wasp near the nest. A dying yellowjacket releases an alarm pheromone that alerts its comrades. In less than 15 seconds, yellowjackets within a 15-foot radius will rally to the victim's aid.
Butterfly wings are covered with tiny over-lapping scales. The beautiful, iridescent colors are the result from the way some scales reflect light, and depend on structure, not pigment.
The largest known butterfly is Queen Alexandra's Birdwing from New Guinea which has a wingspan of approximately 11 inches; the smallest butterfly, the Dwarf Blue from Africa has a wingspan of only one-half inch.
Most Monarch butterflies spend the winter in Mexico. Only one roost is known, and more than 14 million Monarchs cluster on branches and trunks of an area that only measures 140 yards wide. Incidentally, the two-way flight averages 2,500 rniles.
Each day some forty-five thousand thunderstorms occur worldwide, resulting in as many as one hundred lightning strikes every second.
Lightning strikes the earth somewhere more than seventeen million times every day, or about two hundred times every second.
A bolt of lightning travels at speeds of up to one hundred million feet per second, or seventy-two million miles per hour.
A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface.
The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun.
They say I'm disturbed. Well, of course I'm
disturbed. I mean, we're all disturbed. And if we're not, why not? Doesn't this
blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why
not do something crazy? It makes a helluva lot more sense than blowing your
fucking brains out. -Mark Hunter
