Here are thirteen facts about the incredible cougars.
* * * * * * * * * * *

1. Cougar is the most widespread of all the New World Mammals. Its
geographic range in Americas is larger than that of any other animal.

2. Owing to its historic presence across a multitude of regions and
cultures, Cougar has earned more names than any other animal, including mountain lion, mountain screamer, pi-twal, carcajou, puma, catamount and many others.

3. Despite its heavy build, Puma Concolor, the Cougar resembles smaller felines in its physical makeup and is often not included in big cats owing to its inability to roar.

4. With its rudder-like tail and bodily structure, Cougar is often said to be related to the Cheetah in its evolution, though there is currently insufficient evidence to validate this.

5. Cougars are great athletes. Their long hind legs give them an incredible horizontal leaping ability of nearly forty feet in one bound, second only to the Snow Leopard which can reputedly cover forty five feet in a jump.

6. Versatile predators, Cougars are capable of taking down a variety of animals, ranging from rodents to moose. The predominant prey species though, in most parts, is deer.

7. Stalk and ambush predators, Cougars employ their great speed and momentum to take down their prey, and then proceed to make the kill with a lethal neck bite.

8. If they don't finish their meal in one sitting, Cougars usually cache
their kill under leaves and shrubs to return to it later.

9. Despite their prolific hunting profile, Cougars are not at the top of
food chain in many of their native ecosystems and face stiff competition at the hands of Bears, Wolves and Jaguars.

10. As a result, Cougars have evolved into developing unique survival strategies in many parts, including the ability to swim and climb trees.

11. Even with their vast distribution and adaptive ability, Cougar numbers are declining in the wild owing to loss of habitat and prey.

12. Conflicts with humans also do not bode well for the Cougars who are increasingly coming into contact with people who keep pushing into their territory.

13. The highest numbers of attacks by Cougars on humans occur in the infamous 'Cougar Island' in British Columbia.

MORE ANIMAL TRIVIA

The Ancient Egyptian word for cat was mau, which means "to see".

The normal temperature of a hibernating opossum falls from 95 degrees Fahrenheit to 50.9 degrees.

Spider silk is a protein that is formed as a liquid by silk glands and squeezed out of spinnerets like toothpaste from a tube. The liquid thread hardens as it leaves the spinneret and some types of such thread become stronger than a steel thread of the same diameter.

Spiders are believed to have existed for more than 300 million years.

Never give your cat aspirin, unless advised to do so by your vet. Aspirin can cause hemorrhaging in the gastorintestinal tract. It can also depress bone marrow activity, which makes red blood cells and may also damage the kidneys.

A group of cats is called a clowder; a group of kittens is called a kendle.

Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva while grooming themselves as they do through urination.

Cats roll on their backs to show affection. They expose their bellies like this only when they feel totally secure.

Cats with long, lean bodies are more likely to be outgoing personalities than their stockier cousins. They are also more protective of their home and more vocal and demonstrative.

There are an estimated 2,500 collisions between birds and planes each year in the US.

Tree crickets are called the poor man's thermometer because temperature directly affects their rate of activity. Count the number of chirps a cricket makes in 15 seconds, then add 37. The sum will be very close to the outside temperature!

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

 
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

Spiders have noses on their feet that can pick up the odours of possible prey, predators, or mates.

 
The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

Wolves may howl messages to each other from a mile or two apart.

Reptiles were responsible for such body part innovations as fur, feathers, claws, differentiated teeth, water impervious skin, water impervious eggs, and the penis.

Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played by six different cats.

The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.

A typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year.

The left leg of a chicken in more tender than the right one.

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.

Pigs can cover a mile in 7.5 minutes when running at top speed.

Many hamsters blink one eye at a time.

The average human will eat 8 spiders while asleep in their lifetime.

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

Mosquito repellents don't repel - they hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

Livestock excrete 130 times as much waste as people.

African elephants are the largest mammals living on solid ground. They reach lengths up to 7.5 m and weights up to 7500 kg.

A mole can dig 60 feet of tunnel or more per day. This is equivalent to a five-foot woman burrowing the length of two football fields, while pushing two-ton objects out of her way.

The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

More types of fish swim in Brazil's Amazon River than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The owl can catch a mouse in utter darkness, guided only by tiny sounds made by its prey.

The Golden mole is one of the strongest animals by size of body weight. A captive Golden mole was able to exert a force equal to 150 times it's own weight.

The camel first evolved in North America. It died out in the ice ages, but some had emigrated and survived in South America, Eurasia, and North Africa.

Dogs cannot see as well as humans and are considered color blind. A dog sees objects first by their movement, second by their brightness, and third by their shape.

The sperm of a mouse is longer than the sperm of an elephant.

The East Alligator River in Australia's Northern Territory was misnamed. It contains crocodiles not alligators.

The largest recorded flea is the North American Hystrichopsylla schefferi, measuring 12mm in length - almost 1/2-inch!
If left to her own devices, a female cat may have three to seven kittens every four months. This is why population control using neutering and spaying is so important.

Squids can commit suicide by eating their own tentacles.

The typical housefly cruises at 8 km/hr.

Kittens are born with both eyes and ears closed. When the eyes open, they are always blue at first. They change color over a period of months to the final eye color.

Recent studies have shown that interacting with companion animals may speed recovery from illness, reduce stress, and promote family bonding.

Cats are pure carnivores. They need a high level of protein in their diets - around 30% - and lack the digestive equipment to do well on a diet of grains, fruits or vegetables. Hence although dogs do just fine on a vegetarian diet, cats do not.

A young male gorilla (about 8 to 10 years old) is called a black jack. He’s almost as big as a Silver Back, but his hair has not turned silvery yet, and he still has a lot to learn.

 
Ants are said to never cross a chalk line. So if you've got ants, draw a line on the floor with chalk or wherever the ants are coming in and see for yourself! They won't cross the line. Baking soda works, too!

 
Coral reefs are massive limestone structures that provide shelter for over 25 percent of all marine life.

The most popular marine aquarium saltwater fish is the clown fish. Other popular saltwater aquarium fish include angelfish, royal gamma, hamlets, spotfin, yellowtail damsels, and blue tangs. 

Siamese kittens are born white because of the heat inside the mother's uterus before birth. This heat keeps the kittens' hair from darkening on the points. 

All dogs are probably descended from an animal called Tomarctus. This animal lived approximately 15 million years ago.

To purr, cats use extra tissue in the larynx (voice box). This tissue vibrates when they purr.

The snow leopard protects itself from extreme cold when it sleeps by wrapping its 3-foot-long tail around its nose.

Despite man's fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-rabid wolf ever attacked a human.

The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake.

Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.

All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.

A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.

Octopus and squid are thought to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates.

During warm weather hippopotamus's secrete sweat that is pink. This substance not only cools them down but also helps fight infections of the skin.

By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks.

A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

The female dairy goat is a doe; the male, a buck; the young, kids; and a castrated male, a wether. Their life span is eight to twelve years.

A rabbit's teeth never stops growing. They are kept worn down by gnawing on food.

In the US, it is reported that the 5 most popular dog tricks are - Sit, Paw, Roll Over, Speak and Lie Down.

In 1888, an estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and shipped to England to be ground up and used for fertilizer.

An adult giraffe's kick is so powerful that it can decapitate a lion.

Not all polar bears hibernate; only pregnant females polar bears do.

The anaconda, one of the world's largest snakes, gives birth to its young instead of laying eggs.

 
In the 1800's cats were used to deliver mail. In 1879, in Belgium 37 cats were used to deliver mail to villages, however they found that the cats were not disciplined enough to do this.

In a day, an elephant can drink 80 gallons of water.

Found in Argentina, the ornate horned frog can eat an entire mouse with one swallow.

A seagull can drink salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.

A female donkey's milk is closest to human milk.

The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.

There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.

Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.

More than 99.9% of all the animal species that have ever lived on earth were extinct before the coming of man.

Platypuses aren't the only egg-laying mammals on earth. Echidnas, which resemble a cross between a Hedgehog and Anteater, also lay eggs and produces milk for its young.

Asian tree frogs build nests in trees over water. When their tadpoles hatch, they drop directly into the water.

 
A blue whale's tongue is so large that fifty people could stand on it.

 
It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in the course of a summer.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

The world's oldest known captive goldfish, Tish, died peacefully at home in his tank at the age of at least 43 in 1999.

Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.

An average city dog lives approximately three years longer than an average country dog.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth.

Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

 
Desert snails can stay in their shell for up to three years.

The Australian Brown Snake's venom is so powerful that only 1/14,000th of on ounce is needed to kill a human being.

Dairy cows can produce 20 to 35 gallons of saliva a day.

Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.

Ninety-five percent of tropical fish sold in North America originate from Florida.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

A starfish can turn its stomach inside out.

On June 20th, 1782, the United States Congress made the "American Eagle" the national emblem of the United States.

You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.

According to one study, plant and animal species are becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.

Unlike other four legged mammals, kangaroos cannot walk backwards.

The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

Police detectives have used snapping turtles to help them locate dead bodies.

The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery called an onychectomy, in which the entire claw and end bone of each toe of the animal are amputated.

Only 4% of the lost cats that enter U.S. animal shelters are returned to their caregivers.

In ancient Egypt, entire families would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when the family cat died.

According to scientific studies, a rat's performance in a maze can be improved by playing music written by Mozart.

A mole can dig a tunnel three hundred feet long in a single night.

A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

The 'Silverback' gorilla is 30 per cent taller and almost twice as heavy as the females in the group he dominates.

In their lifetime, house cats spend approximately 10,950 hours purring.

In Central America, a scientist caught over 500 different species of insects by sweeping a net through the air fewer than 2000 times.

The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.

The pom-pom cut was originally developed to increase the Poodle's swimming abilities as a retriever. The haircut allowed for faster swimming but the pom-poms were left to keep the joints warm.

Pekingese dogs were sacred to the emperors of China for more than 2,000 years. They are one of the oldest breeds of dogs in the world.

Desert plants, like cactus, developed pointy spines as protection from animals.

The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.

There are 15 puppies and 45 kittens born for every human in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

As a general rule in the animal kingdom, the more complex or relatively big the eye in relation to the body, then the smaller the rest of the brain.

There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.

A rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's back.

That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized cars around on his back.

Most parrots are left-handed.

The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.

Ireland has only about half the number of animal species that Britain has, including no snakes or toads (although there are some frogs).

Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird's chirp or a dog's yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

The biggest pig in recorded history was Big Boy of Black Mountain, North
Carolina, who was weighed at 1,904 pounds in 1939.

The Saw-Scaled Viper is thought to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually in Africa and Asia. They don't have the most lethal snake venom but they are numerous and aggressive.

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.

Julius Caeser, Henri II, Charles XI and Napoleon all had ailurophobia, a fear of cats.

 
Cats have a third eyelid, called a haw, that is rarely visible. If it can be seen, it could be an indication of ill health.

The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - "Island of Dogs."

There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in the United States.

Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.

Dogs that do not tolerate small children well are the St. Bernard, the Old English sheep dog, the Alaskan malamute, the bull terrier, and the toy poodle.

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

Camel's hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr Camel. 

 
About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.    

Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves. 

Almost every known dog except the Chow and the Shar Pei has a pink tongue.

If a male cat is both orange and black it is (besides being extremely rare) sterile. To have both the orange and the black coat colors, the male cat must have all or part of both female X chromosomes. This unusual sex chromosome combination will render the male cat sterile.

The 1st buffalo ever born in captivity was born at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo in 1884.

It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.

The biggest member of the cat family is the male lion, which weighs 528 pounds (240 kilograms).

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.

Cats have more than one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere, and no one knows why.

Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating. They sweat through the pads of their feet.

The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

During the 1982 Falklands war British pilots reported that penguins toppled over backward while gazing at the planes. British navy pilots were then banned from flying low over penguin colonies. It led to a UK government study of the penguin-toppling effect. For seventeen days two helicopters were flown from varying directions and heights over the penguins. The result? Penguins do not topple over while gazing at aeroplanes.

The tsetse fly infests 36 African countries and a total of 9-10 million square kilometres of land.

Sharks sometimes eat other sharks. For example, a tiger shark might eat a bull shark, a bull shark might eat a blacktip shark and a blacktip shark might eat a dogfish shark.

A mature male gorilla is called a Silver back This refers to the silver-colored hair covering his back, which occurs when he’s about 10-12 years old.

Nationwide, grandparents annually spend an average of $195.24 on their companion animals and $178.68 on their grandchildren.

A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.

Lewis and Clark traveled with a 150-pound Newfoundland named "Seaman." This pooch was a respected member of the expedition team and his antics were included in the extensive diaries of the famous explorers.

'Zorro' means 'fox' in Spanish.

The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."

For Stephen King's "Cujo" (1983), five St. Bernards were used, one mechanical head, and an actor in a dog costume to play the title character.

Dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that get pleasure out of sex. They are also the only other animals that have sex for reasons other than reproduction.

A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as feelers or antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any passage.

The distance between an alligator's eyes, in inches, is directly proportional to the length of the alligator, in feet.

Scientists estimate that there are currently 1.4 million animal species known to science; with possibly as many as 30 million on the planet.
The Venus flytrap takes less than half a second to slam shut on an insect.

All dinosaurs walked on their toes.

Brazil has the most species of mammals (524), fresh water fish, insects and parrots of anywhere.

The honey badger can withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill any other animal.

The fruit flys dna sequence is 180 million bases long, whilst a humans is three billion.

Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostate glands.

When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.

The world record frog jump is 33 feet 5.5 inches over the course of 3 consecutive leaps, achieved in May 1977 by a South African sharp-nosed frog called Santjie.

A 7-year study, which concluded in the summer of 2000, found that 33 U.S. deaths were caused by rottweilers, pit bulls were responsible for 27 deaths.

The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.

A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.

The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.

 
Swans are the only birds with penises.

An American Animal Hospital Association poll showed that 33 percent of dog owners admit that they talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on an answering machine while away.

Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than man.

The theobromine in chocolate that stimulates the cardiac and nervous systems is too much for dogs, especially smaller pups. A chocolate bar is poisonous to dogs and can even be lethal.

When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.

Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.

Cougar purr just like a house cat, Only a whole lot louder

The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws

Pigs can't sweat, so they wallow in the mud to stay cool

A group of crows is called a murder
A group of bears is called a sloth
A group of lions is called a pride
A group of kangaroos or wallaby is called a mob

When camel run they move the front and back leg on the same side at the same time, causing them to rock back and forth as they run

Camels have 3 eyelids to protect them from dust

Deer and goats chew a cud just like a cow

The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people

A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.

It would require an average of 18 hummingbirds to weigh in at 1 ounce

A baby caribou is so fast, it can easily outrun its mother when it is only

three days old.

A baby bat is called a pup

It can take as long as two days for a chick to break out of its shell

It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in the course of a summer

Despite its hump, a camel has a straight spine

A camels hump is made up of fat not water

The ostrich is the largest living bird at 8 feet tall, and can run up to 40 miles an hour

Rabbits are born with their eyes shut and without fur. Hares are furred with eyes open

A vixen is a female fox

Studies have shown that people with pets tend to live longer than those without pets

The Albatross has a wing span of up to 14 feet and only needs to land once every couple of years to breed. They can travel hundreds of thousands of miles each flight

Turtles are long living animals who can reach ages exceeding 100 years

Emus have double-plumed feathers, and they lay emerald/forest green eggs.

Polar bears can swim 60 miles without resting

For every person there are rougly 200 million insects

A group of owls is called a parliament

A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.

A baby elephant calf can weigh up to 260 pounds when it is born.

Camel milk does not curdle.

The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.

A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump

All porcupines float in water

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain

The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

Cat's urine glows under a black light.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

A snail can sleep for three years.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of lobsters is blue.

An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride

The ostrich is the largest living bird at 8 feet tall, and can run up to 40 miles an hour

Rabbits are born with their eyes shut and without fur. Hares are furred with eyes open

Raccoons are found only in North America. Raccoon means ... scratches with hands.

Turtles are long living animals who can reach ages exceeding 100 years

Emus have double-plumed feathers, and they lay emerald/forest green eggs.

A cheetah can reach a top speed approaching 70 mph.

A full-grown bear can run as fast as a horse

Giraffes have no vocal cords.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

No two zebras have the same markings.

Coyotes are a close cousin of all pet dogs. The coyote's scientific name (Canis Latrans) meands 'barking dog'.

Giraffes can clean their ears with their half metre long tongue.

Rabbits are born with their eyes shut and without fur. Hares are furred with eyes open

The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.

Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.

The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.

Turtles are long living animals who can reach ages exceeding 100 years

Polar bears can swim 60 miles without resting

The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.

The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.

Ants don't sleep.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.

There are no penguins at the North Pole. In fact, there are no penguins anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere (outside of zoos). All 17 varieties of the bird are found below the equator, primarily in the Antarctica.

The smallest Bird is the Male bee hummingbirds (mellisuga helenae), which live in Cuba, weigh 0.056 ounces and are 2.75 inches in length.

The bill and tail account for half of this length.

The phoenix fowl or Yokohama chicken (a strain of the red junglefowl Gallus is bred in Japan for ornamental purposes. A rooster with a 34 ft. 9.5 in. Tail covert was reported in 1972.

The eyes of the woodcock are set so far back in its head that it has a 360 degree field of vision, enabling it see all round and even over the top of its head

A common tern (Sterna hirundo) that was banded in June 1996 in Finland was recaptured alive 16,250 miles away at Rotamah Island, Victoria, Australia in January 1997. It had traveled at a rate of 125 miles a day

The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the fastest living creature, reaching speeds of at least 124 mph and possibly as much as 168 mph when swooping from great heights during territorial displays or while catching pray birds in midair.

The highest recorded flying bird was a Ruppell's vulture (gyps rueppellii) it collided with a commercial aircraft over Abidjan, Ivory Coast, at an altitude of 37,000 feet in November 1973.

Despite its bulk, the ostrich can run at speeds of up to 45 mph if necessary, making it he fastest bird on land.

Hummingbirds (family Trochilidon) requires at least half their own body weight in food (mainly nectar and tiny insects) every single day. With the possible exception of shrews, they have the highest metabolic rate of any known animal.

The male emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) spends several months without feeding on the frozen wastes of the Antarctic sea ice. It travels overland from the sea to the breeding colony, courts the female, incubates the egg for 62-67 days, waits for the female to return and travels back to the open sea, going without food for up to 134 days.

The largest wild animal known to have been killed and carried away by a bird was a 15 pound male red howler monkey killed by a harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) in Manu National Park, Peru in 1990. The harpy eagle is considered the world's most powerful bird of prey, although it weighs only 20 pounds.

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An incredible video of a Golden Eagle taking a small Mountain sheep or goat and carrying it off to it's nest.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4irYqe5yjcE

The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is believed to be able to spot a pigeon from a distance of more than 5 miles under ideal conditions.

A 9 ft. 6 in. Wide 20 foot deep nest was built by a pair of bald eagles ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and possibly by their successors, close to St Petersburg, Florida. When examined in 1963, the nest was estimated to weigh in excess of 2.2 tons.

The kinkajou's tail is twice as long as its body. Every night, it wraps itself up in its tail and uses it as a pillow.

You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only .000 000 000 000 071 ounce of its spray.

When a dolphin is sick or injured, its cries of distress summon immediate aid from other dolphins, who try to support it to the surface so that it can breathe.

Certain Chinese and American alligators can survive the winter by freezing their heads in ice, leaving their nose out to breath for months on end.

Sea Otters use so much energy that they need to eat as much as one-third of their weight each day.

The biggest bird in the world is the ostrich, which can grow up to nine feet tall.

According to hospital figures, dogs bite an average of 1 million Americans a year.

The sailfish, the swordfish and the mako shark have all been clocked at swimming over 50mph.

Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off.

It takes around 10 dump-truck loads of wood to make a proper funeral pyre for a full-size elephant.

The notion that cats and dogs are natural enemies (suggested by the phrase,"fighting like cats and dogs") is overstated, if not simply false.

 Generally speaking, cats and dogs get along better than cats and cats or dogs and dogs.

The last animal in the dictionary is the Zyzzyva, a tropical weevil.

Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica.

There's a "meow" in the middle of "homeowner."

According to a survey by the American Animal Hospital Association, 53 percent of pet owners vacation or travel with their pets.

The Dalmatian breed of dog originates from the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia.

Surveys show that 62 percent of dog owners admit that their dog owns a sweater, wintercoat or raincoat.

Cats prefer to eat their food at 86º F, which is why they don't immediately gulp down the half-eaten can of food from the refrigerator.

In 1987, cats overtook dogs as the number one pet in America.

A frightened dog puts it's tail between it's legs because it covers the scent glands in the anal area. Since the anal glands carry personal scents that identify individual dogs, the tail-between the-legs behavior is the canine equivalent of insecure humans hiding their faces.

At least 63% of dog owners admitted to kissing their dogs. Of these, some 45% kissed them on the nose, 19% on the neck, 7% on the back, 5% on the stomach and 2% on the legs. An additional 29% listed the place they kiss their dog as other!

The frog was an ancient Egyptian symbol, later adopted by the conquering Romans. The Frog-headed goddess Hekt was the goddess of birth and fertility, and later also of resurrection.

The study of ants is called Myrmecology.

One in 5,000 North Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue.

The biggest ant colony was found on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido: 306 million worker ants and 1 million queens lived in 45,000 interconnected nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometres (1,7 square miles). A worker ant will live for up to 5 years; while a Queen will live up to 25 years.

Newfoundland dogs are strong swimmers due to their webbed feet.

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food.

The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.

Fleas have changed history. More human deaths have been attributed to fleas than all the wars ever fought. As carriers of the bubonic plague, fleas were responsible for killing one-third of the population of Europe in the 14th century.

The Dalmatian is the only dog that gets gout.

A tiger's paw prints are called pug marks.

A dog was once the King of Norway for 3 years during the 11th centurey AD. The Norwegian King, angry his subjects once deposed him put Saur on the throne, demanding that he be treated regally.

Rabbits love licorice.

Emus have double-plumed feathers, and they lay emerald/forest green eggs.

The tallest dog on record was named Shamgret Danzas. He was 42 inches tall (at the shoulder!) and weighed 238 lbs.

 
To figure out your "true dog's age" in human terms, count the first full year as 15 years, the second full year as 10 yeas and all the following years as 3 years. In other words, a 5 year old dog would be: 15+10+3+3+3=34 years old.

Great Danes can eat up to 8 1/2 pounds of food a day.

Slugs have 4 noses.

The first dog show was held in England in 1859.

A cheetah can reach a top speed approaching 70 mph.

Greyhounds can jump a distance of 27 feet.

More than 5 million puppies are born in the United States each year.

As of 2001, there are around 44 million sheep in New Zealand, a country of around 4 million people.

Dolphins sleep with one half of the brain at a time, and one eye closed.

Cat whiskers are found on the face and on the back of the forelegs as well.

A hippo can run faster than man.

In North America, a black cat crossing your path is thought to bring bad luck. In Great Britain, a black cat crossing your path is thought to bring good luck.

A white cat sleeping outside your home on your wedding day is said to bring lasting happiness.

 
The Rottweiler makes an excellent family pet. They are especially good with children and a fantastic guard dog.

The average cow produces 40 glasses of milk each day.

The membranes in a dog's nose, if unfolded and laid out, would be larger than the dog itself.

Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat door.

Current domestic cats were the result of genetic mutation so that they would be tame at birth.

A Panda's diet is 99% bamboo.

When two dogs approach each other, the dog which wags its tail very slowly is in charge.

Some lions can mate over 50 times a day.

If you lift a Kangaroo's tail off the ground it can't hop - they use their tails for balance.

For every person there are rougly 200 million insects.

Polar bears can swim 60 miles without pausing for a rest.

The leech has 32 brains.

The Galpagos Tortoise has a potential life span of 200 years.

At the end of the Beatles' song 'A Day in the Life,' an ultrasonic whistle, only audible to dogs, was recorded by Paul McCartney for his Shetland sheepdog.

The praying mantis only has one ear.

A purring cat doesn't always mean a contented cat. Cats will also purr if they are in pain.

Dachshunds were bred to fight badgers in their dens.

 
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Small dogs usually live longer than larger breeds.

 
40% of all cats are ambidextrous. The other 60% are either "right-pawed" or "left-pawed".

The Chihuahua is the oldest breed of dog native to North America.

Many cat lovers believe cats are intuitive. That's because they are right-brain dominant.

Cats spend 30% of their waking hours grooming themselves.

Cat's can't taste sweets.

The smallest dog in history was a tiny Yorkie from Blackburn, England. At two years of age and fully grown he was only 2.5 inches tall by 3.75 inches long and weighed only 4 ounces.

Not all dogs eyes reflect green in the dark, some reflect orange or red.

White cats with blue eyes are usually deaf.

Cats rarely meow at each other. Meowing is reserved for "speaking" with humans.

The only dog in the world that cannot bark is the Basenji, an African wolf dog.

The membranes in a dog's nose, if unfolded and laid out, would be larger than the dog itself.

About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.

If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.

A flea expert is a pullicologist.

A pig is a hog -- hog is a generic name for all swine -- but a hog is not a pig. In the terminology of hog raising, a pig is a baby hog less than ten weeks old.

Ancient Romans ate flamingo tongues and considered them a delicacy.

All elephants walk on tip-toe, because the back portion of their foot is made up of all fat and no bone.

A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.

"Eat like a bird?" Many birds eat twice their weight a day.

Dogs have about 100 different facial expressions, most of them made with the ears.

All swans and all sturgeons in England are property of the Queen. Messing with them is a serious offense.

Kiwi birds are blind, they hunt by smell.

Rhinos are in the same family as horses, and are thought to have inspired the myth of the unicorn.

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 occuring, relax and correct itself. At about that height it hits maximum speed and when it hits the ground it's rib cage absorbs most of the impact.

The Honey Badger can withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill any other animal.

Giraffes have no vocal cords.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs.

Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks.

The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times

 
A full-grown bear can run as fast as a horse.

If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die, as they need gravity to swallow.

A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

The penguins that inhabit the tip of South America are called jackass penguins.

Goat's eyes have rectangular pupils.

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.

A dolphin's hearing is so acute that it can pick up an underwater sound from fifteen miles away.

Chickens absorb vitamin-D through their combs from sunshine.

The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light.

Blue Whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long as three Greyhound buses.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places.

A snail can sleep for three years.

More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

Lobsters can live up to 50 years.

Male flies only gather at the base of bright lights when they are having a mating assembly.

In 1939, a shower of tiny frogs fell on the English town of Trowbridge. Strong winds had carried them aloft from streams and ponds.

Bees have five eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a bee's head and 2 larger ones in front.

The fruit flys DNA sequence is 180 million bases long, whilst a humans is three billion.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Cows do not have upper front teeth.

A female oyster over her lifetime may produce over 100 million young.

Mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as to any other colour.

Spider web filaments were used in gun sights as the 'cross hairs' until the early 1960's.

No two zebras have the same markings.

Some male songbirds sing more than 2000 times each day.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

Killer Whales (Orcas) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

Hippos have killed more than 400 people in Africa - more than any other wild animal.

A baby elephant calf can weigh up to 260 pounds when it is born.

Pandas in China have been given Viagra to help them mate.

Polar bears are the only mammal with hair on the soles of its feet.

We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp - and 70% with a slug.

Oysters can change from one gender to another and back again depending on which is best for mating.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

 
A bee must visit 4,000 flowers in order to make one tablespoon of honey.

The common Black Ants and Wood Ants have no sting, but they can squirt a spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites.

The wingspan of the Indonesian fruitbat equals the height of filmstar Sylvester Stallone.

Ticks are second only to the mosquito as the most dangerous parasites to humans.

By swallowing water, the Pufferfish becomes too big for other fish to swallow.

According to one study, plant and animal species are becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.

The larva of the polyphemus moth consumes 86,000 times its birth weight in its first 56 days.

Mayflies live for a year or more as larvae; but as adults they live for only a few hours.

Great White Sharks can go as long as three months without eating.

Mexico is the world's pig tapeworm capital with estimates that about 4 percent of all Mexicans have the adult tapeworm in their intestine.

A bee can see the colours green, blue and ultra-violet - but red looks like black.

Shrimps' hearts are in their heads.

It takes 3000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of American Footballs.

Bats always turn left when leaving a cave.

Polar Bears cannot be detected by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur.

An elephant herd can move fifty miles in a day.

The biggest shark species has the smallest teeth. The 12 metre long whale shark has more than 4,000 teeth, each only 3mm long.

As a general rule in the animal kingdom, the more complex or relatively big the eye in relation to the body, then the smaller the rest of the brain.

A large swarm of locusts can eat 80,000 tons of corn in a day.

The female lion is a much more efficient hunter than the male.

Giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands weigh up to 225 kilos and can live for over 150 years.

Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale.

A newborn giant panda is only the size of a stick of butter.

An Animal Hospital Association survey revealed that 62 percent of dog owners sign letter or cards from themselves and their dogs.

The hydra - a close relative of jellyfish and sea anemones, can regenerate or grow back if it's cut in half.

Coyotes are a close cousin of all pet dogs. The coyote's scientific name (Canis Latrans) meands 'barking dog'.

The Dodo was first discovered in 1507 - 100 years later it was hunted to extinction.

Female fleas consume fifteen times their weight daily.

Mosquitoes have been found to prefer biting people with smelly feet.

A rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's back. That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized cars around on his back.

The silkworm moth has eleven brains.

Americans spend more money on dog food each year then they do on baby food.

The Australian Sea Wasp or Box Jellyfish which is found off the coast of Queensland causes death within 3 minutes if medical aid is not administered.

When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of six feet, normally without being hurt.

A dragonfly can spot an insect moving 33 feet away.

Giraffes can clean their ears with their half metre long tongue.

There are an estimated five million, trillion, trillion bacteria on Earth.

The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.

Inbreeding causes 3 out of every 10 Dalmation dogs to suffer from hearing disability.

When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.

Despite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.

The remains of diatoms, algae with hard shells, are used in making pet litter, cosmetics, pool filters and tooth polish.

When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.

The cat was domesticated over 4,000 years ago. Today's house cats are descended from wildcats in Africa and Europe.

Many fish can change sex during the course of their lives. Others, especially rare deep-sea fish, have both male and female sex organs.

Cats step with both left legs, then both right legs when they walk or run. The only other animals to do this are the giraffe and the camel.

The stuff (allergens) that people are allergic to in cats is a protein in cat saliva. When the cat grooms and the saliva dries it can become airborn. This protein is 1/3 the weight of ordinary housedust, so it can travel farther. You can find this allergen where cats have never been.

An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.

The oarfish, Regalecus glesne, is the longest bony fish in the world. With its snakelike body_sporting a magnificent red fin along its 50-foot length_horselike face and blue gills, it accounts for many sea-serpent sightings.

Camel milk does not curdle.

Australian termites have been known to build mounds twenty feet high and at least 100 feet wide.

The first house rats recorded in America appeared in Boston in 1775.

A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.

Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception; the longest is the Asiatic elephant, taking 608 days, or just over 20 months.

A cat sees about six times better than a human at night because of the tapetum lucidum , a layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.

The Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years, its entire life-span.

Horseshoe crabs have existed in essentially the same form for the past 135 million years. Their blood provides a valuable test for the toxins that cause septic shock, which previously led to half of all hospital-acquired infections and one-fifth of all hospital deaths.

Cats respond better to women than men. One reason this might be is that women have higher pitched voices than men.

The cat's brain needs so much energy to function that over twenty percent of blood that the heart pumps goes immediately to it.

The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.

A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.

A group of herring is called a seige. A group of jelly fish is called a smack.

The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between their legs while walking.

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.

Penguins "fly" underwater at up to 25 miles per hour.

The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the planet.

Both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain responsible for emotion.

According to experts, whale songs rhyme.

Electric light or light from your TV set will make your cat shed her fur.

The fastest dog, the greyhound, can reach speeds of upto 41.7 miles per hour. The breed was known to exist in ancient Egypt 6,000 years ago.

One 15 foot great white was found with 200 plus crabs in its stomach.

The air is so polluted in Cubato, Brazil, that no birds or insects remain and most trees are blackened stumps. It's Mayor reportedly refuses to live there.

In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.

The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.

A cat cannot see directly under its nose. This is why the cat cannot seem to find tidbits on the floor.

On average, there are only about 100 shark attacks each year and only 10 of those result in a human death.

You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you eat bananas.

If you could count the number of times a cricket chirps in one minute, divide by 2, add 9 and divide by 2 again, you would have the correct temperature in Celcius degrees.

Rats are omnivorous, eating nearly any type of food, including dead and dying members of their own species.

Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.

Great White Sharks can live for 30 to 40 years.

A capon is a castrated rooster.
One in four animals on our planet is a beetle!

Because of the fact that food is sparsely distributed, many creatures of the deep such as the umbrellamouth gulper eel have extendable mouths and stomachs so that they can swallow prey bigger than themselves.

The penalty for killing a cat 4,000 years ago in Egypt was death.

Cat's urine glows under a black light.

Over 100,000 birds, whales, seals and turtles worldwide are killed by plastic rubbish every year. Marine life, in particular turtles, is prone to mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish, ingesting them and dying of intestinal blockage.

On a beach holiday, you are more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head than a shark attack.

Infant beavers are called kittens.
There are about 100 breeds of cats.
It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.

The most common name for a goldfish is "Jaws."

The animal with the highest normal blood pressure is the giraffe. However the animal with the highest peak blood pressure is the flea, whose blood reaches a pressure of 10 atmospheres just before take off for a big jump.

Male flies only gather at the base of bright lights as they are having a mating assembly.

The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.

Whales annually feeding in the Bering Sea rework at least 120 million cubic metres of seabed sediment.

Left to their own devices, pearls grow naturally only once in every 20,000 oysters.

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.

The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.

Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

The normal temperature of a cat is 101.5 degrees.

Macaroni, Gentoo, Chinstrap and Emperor are types of penguins.

A shrimp's heart is in their head.
Ants don't sleep.

The Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000 eggs at one time.

Basenji dogs and Australian dingoes are virtually identical.

The only two animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.

The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs... but not downstairs.

Baby seals are called pups, but they're also referred to as "weaners."

Prairie dogs are not dogs. A prairie dog is a kind of rodent.

Of the million-plus species of insects on earth, 3,000 of them are mosquitoes. More than 165 of those live in the United States.

Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.

The average laying hen lays 257 eggs a year.

A cockroach breaks wind every 15 minutes.

The American alligator is a member of the crocodile family, whose members are living fossils from the Age of Reptiles, having survived on earth for 200 million years.

All porcupines float in water.

Reindeer milk has more fat than cows milk.

Some butterflies are poisonous. When a predator, like a bird, eats one of these butterflies it becomes sick, vomits violently, and quickly learns not to eat this type of butterfly.
Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink".

Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem and with legs dangling, fall asleep.

Goldfish history can be traced back over 1500 years to Ancient China.

A scallop has 35 blue eyes.

The black widow spider can devour as many as twenty 'mates' in a single day.

Between 1902 and 1907, the same tiger killed 434 people in India.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

Boxers are named for their playful habit of using their front paws in frolic.

Of people with companion animals, 18% sleep with them.

A cow's only sweat glands are in its nose.

Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.

The closest relative to the manatee is the elephant. Scientists think the elephant crawled back into the sea to become a manatee.

About 22% of the world's catch of tuna goes into cat food in the United States.

The fastest moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed of 0.0313 mph.

Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz.

Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.

Yak milk is pink in color.

A male moth can smell a female moth from 100 yards away.

An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.

The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood daily.

Each day in the US, animal shelters are forced to destroy 30,000 dogs and cats.

When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.

A cow produces 200 times more gas a day than a person.

26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats, 25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused, and rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world's food supply each year. The rat has been called the world's most destructive mammal-other than man.

Chinese Crested dogs can get acne.
When a dog licks you with a straight tongue, he's saying "I Love You."

Cat's urine glows under a black light.

It was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city in Iceland.

Cats can have freckles. They can appear anywhere on a cat's skin and even in its mouth.

Siberian tigers are the largest of all of the tiger subspecies. Their size and extra thick, long coat help them survive temperatures as low as -49 degrees Fahrenheit.

A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.

The badger is the best digger of all meat-eating or carnivore mammals.

The grey whale migrates 12,500 miles from the Artic to Mexico and back every year.

The tallest bird in North America, the whooping crane stands 5 feet tall with a long, sinuous neck and long legs. The wings measure about 7 feet across.

The bald eagle is truly an all-American bird - it is the only eagle unique to North America.

It can take a deep-sea clam up to 100 years to reach 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) in length. The clam is among the slowest growing, yet longest living species on the planet.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day. A female can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year: one pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendants in a year.

Mayflies live for a year or more as larvae, but as adults they live for only a few hours.

Did you know that at Disneyland they have like hundreds of wild domesticated cats running around the park? They never come out during the day because there's too many people, but the reason they're there is to catch the mice.

Polygerus ants in the Chirivhaua Mountains in Arizona have been known to raid nearby nests, kidnap the pupae and return home with their triumphant prizes. The enemy infants are raised as their own offspring and turned into 'slaves' who work 'willingly' for the good of their new hosts.

Scientists found a whole new phylum of animal on a lobster's lip.

A dairy cow drinks 20-50 gallons of water a day - about as much as a full bathtub.

A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.

Of the approximately 200 eggs laid by a female leatherback sea turtle an average of two will survive their youth and grow to sexual maturity.

The slightest touch on a cat's whiskers will make its eyes blink.

Elephants can detect the aroma of ripening fruit from over 20 kilometres away.

The fastest bird is the Spine-tailed swift, clocked at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour.

Stag beetles have stronger mandibles than humans.

The Whale Shark can get up to 50 feet long and weigh over 16 tons. Its mouth can open as wide as five feet.

A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby or a cat.

Amphibians’ eyes come in a variety shapes and sizes. Some even have square or heart-shaped pupils.

Fish cannot live in the Dead Sea because the water has too much salt in it.

A cat's tongue consists of small "hooks," which come in handy when tearing up food.

The average outdoor only cat has a lifespan of about three years. Indoor only cats can live sixteen years and longer.
Cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.

A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.

The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.

The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws.

Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Only 2 out of 10 kittens born in the U.S. ever find a life-long home.

The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.

The turkey was named for what was wrongly thought to be its country of origin.

Dachshunds are the smallest breed of dog used for hunting. They are low to the ground, which allows them to enter and maneuver through tunnels easily.

The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.

A baby bat is called a pup.

When a dolphin is sick or injured, its cries of distress summon immediate aid from other dolphins, who try to support it to the surface so that it can breathe.

Cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.

Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they cannot move their eyes.

The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.

When a domestic cat goes after mice, about one pounce in three results in a catch.

The poisonous copperhead snake smells like fresh cut cucumbers.

Herons stamp and peck at mosquitoes around their feet up to three thousand times an hour. This behaviour prevents more then 80 percent of the mosquitoes from feeding on the heron's blood.

French poodles did not originate in France. Poodles were originally used as hunting dogs in Europe. The dogs thick coats were a hindrance in water and thick brush, so hunters sheared the hindquarters, with cuffs left around the ankles and hips to protect against rheumatism. Each hunter marked his dogs' heads with a ribbon of his own color, allowing groups of hunters to tell their dogs apart.

The Antpitta avis canis Ridgley is a bird that looks like a stuffed duck on stilts and barks like a dog. The bird was discovered by ornithologist Robert S. Ridgley in the Andes in Ecuador in June 1998. Thirty of these long-legged, black-and-white barking birds were found. It apparently had gone undetected because it lives in remote parts and, of course, doesn't sing. The size of a duck, it is one of the largest birds discovered in the last 50 years.

A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.

Almost 65% of Central America has been cleared to create pastureland for grazing cattle.

The greatest number of dogs ever owned by one person were 5000 mastiffs owned by Kubla Khan.

Ancient Chinese royalty carried Pekingese dogs in the sleeves of their royal robes.

The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.

A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.

Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine.

In Ventura County, California, cats and dogs are not allowed to have sex without a permit.

A 42-foot sperm whale has about 7 tons of oil in it.

Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.

Ducks on the outer edges of a group sleep with one eye open. Those in the center of the group confidently close both eyes.

Cats have better memories than dogs. Tests conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that while a dogs memory lasts no more than 5 minutes, a cat's can last as long as 16 hours - exceeding even that of monkeys and orangutans.

Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.

Eighty-five percent of all life on Earth is Plankton.

The Maine Coon cat is America's only natural breed of domestic feline.

A crocodile's digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail.

The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly. It lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind, and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 70 million years.
Mockingbirds can imitate any sound from a squeaking door to a cat meowing.

Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.

Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.

A female oyster over her lifetime may produce over 100 million young.

House mice are able to drop vertically down 12 feet without injury. Mice can jump straight up 12 inches.

The male platypus has venom strong enough to can kill a small dog and cause excruciating pain among humans.

The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in an American court.

The average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

The largest cockroach on record is one measured at 3.81 inches in length.

The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.

A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

Koalas have been known to make extremely loud and agressive growling noise.

Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed and continue living.

The venom of the stonefish can kill a human in two hours.

Polar Bears cannot be detected by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur.

The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.

If a shark doesn't continually swim, it will sink.

A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food.

Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.

Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.

Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.

You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito.

One square mile of rainforest has more types of butterflies than all of North America.

A newborn giant panda is only the size of a stick of butter.

A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or three years.

It may take longer than two days for a chick to break out of its shell.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.

A female dog, her mate and her puppies can produce 12,288 dogs in five years.

Snakes are immune to their own poison.

The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs, covering a meter a second.

Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.

The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined.

Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth's food crop.

It would require an average of 18 hummingbirds to weigh in at 1 ounce.

Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.

A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.

The first bird domesticated by man was the goose.

Cats respond most readily to names that end in an "ee" sound.

Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.

A woodchuck breathes only 10 times during hibernation.

The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of lobsters is blue.

Rats like boiled sweets better than they like cheese.

A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.

Honeybees may collect pollen from as many as 500 flowers, all of the same species - in a single trip.

The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

Most brands of lipstick and some kinds of fruit drinks are tinted with extract from the cochineal insect.

The hummingbird's brain, 4.2 percent of its body weight, is proportionately the largest among birds.

The dog equivalent of catnip is called Stinking Goosefoot, a foul-smelling plant.

In Knoxville, Tennessee, it's against the law to lasso a fish.

The world's most endangered cetacean is the Baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin.

The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy.

Generally, flies are abundant in the immediate vicinity of their breeding site. Under certain conditions, they may migrate 1 to 4 miles, but are usually limited to one-half to 2 miles.

Hibernating ground squirrels' blood has four times the amount of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) than their blood contains when they are not hibernating.

In Kingsville, Texas, it is against the law for two pigs to have sex on the city's airport property

An alligator has about 80 teeth in its mouth at one time. An alligator can go through 3,000 teeth in a lifetime.
The hippopotamus has skin an inch and a half thick - so solid that most bullets cannot penetrate it.

In 1997, the record for the highest skydive by a dog at 4,572 feet was established by a dog named Brutus.

If a lobster loses a claw or an eye, it is usually able to grow another, although the new one is usually smaller.
Ticks can be as small as a grain of rice and grow to be as big as a marble.

Most birds will incubate nearly any round object. Similarly, ground-nesting birds tend to roll round objects into their nests.

Almost 50 percent of North American species of cricket were discovered only by their different songs, they are that similar to each other.

About three new species of bird are discovered each year.

In certain species of seals, like the elephant seal, males may be several times larger than females because larger males can better defeat their rivals in territorial fights and so acquire larger harems.

Some scientists think that 10% of the animal biomass of the world is ants.

Scientists in Brazil have reported the emergence of a species of superflea; they are bigger than cockroaches and can jump 20 feet.

The viper's venom is harmless as long as it does not mingle with the blood. Courageous experimenters have tasted, swallowed it, and yet afterward were no worse off than before.

Squirrels are immune to rabies.
A snail only mates once.

Flamingos are not naturally pink. They get their color from their food -- tiny green algae that turn pink during digestion.

Scorpions can withstand 200 times more nuclear radiation than humans can.

Entomologists Dr. Yao and Dr. Yuan of China studied more than 378,046 common house flies and estimated that each carried no less than 1,941,000 bacteria on their bodies. Another source estimates that 33 million microorganisms may flourish in a single fly's gut.

Only humans and horses have hymens.
Flies have 4000 lenses in each eye.
USDA sources reveal that flies contaminate or destroy 10 billion dollars of agricultural products each year.

"J'embrasse mon chat sur la bouche" is French for, "I kiss my cat on the lips".

Folklore has it that the tabby cat got the M on the forehead as a gesture of thanks from Mary, the mother of Jesus. She gave this to the kitties to show her appreciation for the kitties purring the baby to sleep.

Houseflies watch each other constantly and follow each other to food sources. That's why there are always so many enjoying the same food.

There are 6,500+ species of fly living in Britain alone. (There are over 16,000+ in North America)

The weight of insects eaten by spiders every year is greater than the total weight of the entire human population.
Experiments show that softly talking to kittens as soon as they are born results in their growing up to be more confident and independent adults.

A crocodile can't move its tongue and cannot chew. Its digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail.
Laika became the world's first space traveler. Russian scientists sent the small dog aloft in an artificial earth satellite in 1957.

Cats can successfully navigate through mazes in complete darkness, but lose that ability if their whiskers are cut off (they wander aimlessly).

After being petted, sometimes you will see a cat cleaning himself. He is trying to get the "person" smell off.
Non-pedigree cats have an higher incidence of tabby markings than pedigree cats. Non-pedigree cats are also more often more robust than highly bred cats.

A cat's brain is more similar to a human's brain than that of a dog.

Female chickens, or hens, need about 24 to 26 hours to produce one egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again. In addition to the half-hour rests, some hens rest every three to five days and others rest every 10 days.

Dogs' eyes have large pupils and a wide field of vision, making them really good at following moving objects. Dogs also see well in fairly low light.

Black cat superstitions originated in America. In Asia and England, a black cat is considered lucky.

Who first thought of using dogs to guide blind people? At the end of World War I, the German government trained the first guide dogs to assist blind war veterans.

The material to build the Taj Mahal was brought in from various parts of India by a fleet of 1,000 elephants.

A fifteen year old cat has probably spent ten years of its life sleeping.

A cat will almost never meow at another cat. Cats use this sound for humans.

A cat in a hurry can sprint at about thirty-one miles per hour.

An estimated 1 million dogs in the United States have been named the primary beneficiary in their owner's will.
According to a recent survey, the most popular name for a dog is Max. Other popular names include Molly, Sam, Zach, and Maggie.

Increased water consumption in animals is sometimes a sign of illness.

Pets like the sound of laughter, and most know when you're in pain.

Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight. They depend completely on their slaves for survival.

Having your pet altered will not change its personality, but pets that have been spayed or neutered are less apt to fight or wander off.

Brazoria County in Southeast Texas is the only county in the United States and Canada to have every kind of poisonous snake found in those two countries.

Green plants - what biologists call autotrophs - are the basis for all life on our planet, at the beginning of nearly all food chains.

Scandinavian lemmings are famous for moving in huge numbers over the countryside and jumping into the ocean. This is not an act of suicide; the lemming just sees rivers, lakes, cliffs, and oceans as something to cross in its search for food.

Of all known forms of animal life ever to inhabit the Earth, only about 10 percent still exist today.

Spider monkeys like banana daquiries.

The calories burned daily by the sled dogs running in Alaska's annual Iditarod race average 10,000. The 1,149-mile race commemorates the 1925 "Race for Life" when 20 volunteer mushers relayed medicine from Anchorage to Nome to battle a children's diphtheria epidemic.
The viscera of Japanese abalone can harbor a poisonous substance which causes a burning, stinging, prickling and itching over the entire body. It does not manifest itsef until exposure to sunlight - if eaten outdoors in sunlight, symptoms occur quickly and suddenly.
Lovebirds are small parakeets who live in pairs. Male and female lovebirds look alike, but most other male birds have brighter colors than the females.

If attacked by a person or coyote, its main enemies, the badger acts quickly. The badger digs itself quickly into a hole in a few minutes, throwing dirt and dust into its attacker's face.

A large porcupine can have over 30,000 quills covering its body.

There are more species of rodent than of any other animal group in the world.

Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air.

An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while cruising at 25 mph.

Woodchucks use a whistling sound to warn one another of danger, so in some places the woodchuck is called the whistling pig.

A female swine, or a sow, will always have a even number of teats or nipples, usually twelve.

In parts of Northern Ontario, at their peak in numbers, there can be 3,500 snowshoe hares per square hectare.

The pygmy shrew is the smallest mammal in North America and the second smallest mammal in the world. At 2.2 g, it weighs less than a dime and is only 7.8 to 9.8 cm long.

The Sumatran tiger has the most stripes of all the tiger subspecies, and the Siberian tiger has the fewest stripes.
A penguin only has sex twice a year.

Cats can hear ultrasound.

Shrimp can only swim backwards.
Chickens that lay brown eggs have red ear lobes. There is a genetic link between the two.

If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.

Polar bears camouflage themselves more completely during a hunt by covering their black noses with their paws.
Octopi have gardens.

A whale's penis is called a dork.
The female ferret is referred to as a `jill'.

Female orcas live twice as long as male orcas. The larger numbers of female orcas in a pod are because of the female's longer lifespan, not because the males have collected a harem.


Other than fruit, honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life! What about milk, you say? A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living!

Crows have the largest cerebral hemispheres, relative to body size, of any avian family.

Most armadillos seen dead on the road did not get hit by the wheels. When an armidillo is frightened it jumps straight into the air.

Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes and man all have seven neck vertebra.

Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian or some other Slavic tongue.

Reindeer like to eat bananas.

A type of jellyfish found off the coast of England is the longest animal in the world.

Armadillos can walk underwater.
The Pug dog is thought to have gotten it's name from looking like the pug monkey.

Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that may have blue eyes.

The Madagascan Hissing Cockroach is one of the few insects who give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs.
It is a misdemeanor to kill or threaten a butterfly -- so says City Ordinance No. 352 in Pacific Grove, California.
When angered, the ears of Tazmanian devils turn a pinkish-red.

Only one in one thousand animals born in the sea survives to maturity.

Elephants and camels both have four knees.

The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

Hamsters love to eat crickets.

The "wild" horses of western North America are actually feral, not wild.

Big Ben was slowed five minutes one day when a passing group of starlings decided to take a rest on the minute hand of the clock.

A pig's skin is thickest at the back -- 1/6 of an inch.

The word rodent comes from the Latin word `rodere' meaning to gnaw.

The difference between male and female blue crabs is the design located on their apron (belly). The male blue crab has the Washington Monument while the female apron is shaped like the U.S. Capitol.

Most snakes have either only one lung, or in some cases, two, with one much reduced in size. This apparently serves to make room for other organs in the highly-elongated bodies of snakes.

Animals attend church services on St. Anthony's Day in Mexico. This popular saint, who is regarded as a healer of people and animals, is asked to protect pets, who are decorated with flowers and ribbons for the occasion. In rural areas, peasants also bring bags of insects and worms to be blessed in church, in the hope that this will prevent these creatures from damaging crops.

Today's cattle are descended from two species: wild aurochs -- fierce and agile herd animals that populated Asia, North Africa and Europe -- and eotragus -- anantelope-like, Asian forest creature.
The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was so devastated upon the death of his beloved Newfoundland, whose name was Boatswain, that he had inscribed upon the dog's gravestone the following: "Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices."

The calories burned daily by the sled dogs running in Alaska's annual Iditarod race average 10,000.

The elephant, as a symbol of the US Republican Party, was originated by cartoonist Thomas Nast and first presented in 1874.

According to tests made at the Institute for the Study of Animal Problems in Washington. Dogs and cats, like people are either right or left handed - that is, they favor either their right or left paws.

A cat's arching back is part of a complex body language system, usually associated with feeling threatened. The arch is able to get so high because the cat's spine contains nearly 60 vertebrae which fit loosely together. Humans have only 34 vertebrae.

The average adult male Polar Bear weighs between 850 and 900 pounds, but one was killed in 1960 that weighed 2,210 pounds. That is the weight of a small family car!

Scientists have managed to mix a goat with a spider to create a goat that produces spider's silk in its milk. The goats look completely normal, and they are in fact only 1/70,000th spider. By inserting just one spider gene into a goat's egg, the adult goat produces milk that can be processed to create an incredibly strong spider's silk fabric. The 'Biosteel' fabric is estimated to be five times as strong as steel, and about the same weight as cotton.

The small Darwin's frog, which lives in Chile's cool forest streams, nurtures its young in an unusual manner. After the female lays 30 or so eggs, the male guards them for two weeks and then swallows the surviving ones. In the male's vocal pouch, the offspring develop until they're able to survive on their own and hop out.

The name 'raccoon' comes from the Algonquin Indians word Arakun, which is translated as "he scratches with his hands".

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

If you have a tape worm, and you put your head over a pot of coffee with your mouth open the tape worm will crawl out of your mouth and extend toward the coffee, therefore you can just grab it and pull it out.

Armadillos have four babies at a time, and they are always the same sex.

You can hypnotise a frog by placing it on it's back and gently stroking it's stomach.

A snail’s genitals are on its head.
Marie Antoinette's dog was a spaniel named Thisbe.

A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.

A well-fed polar bear's blood has 10 times more omega-3 fatty acid-- than in a fasting bear. Studies with human volunteers have shown that omega-3 fatty acids in the diet reduce cholesterol in the blood stream.

Blood taken from Polar Bears during the seal-free season showed levels of cholesterol nearly 25 percent higher than blood taken while the bears had plenty of seal blubber to eat.

You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be eaten by a shark.

Crowded together, 200 to a cubic-foot cage, male houseflies die after about 16 days. With 100 flies in the same cage, they are less agitated by their cagemates, fly about less and live 20 days. Put into a vial by themselves, the solitary (and probably bored) flies last 50 days.

Hibernating ground squirrels' blood has four times the amount of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) than their blood contains when they are not hibernating.

Barbara Bush's book about her English Springer Spaniel, Millie's book, was on the bestseller list for 29 weeks. Millie was the most popular "First Dog" in history.

During the nineteenth century, mammoth finds were frequent enough in Siberia that some persons became professional mammoth ivory hunters.

The last member of the famous Bonaparte family, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, died in 1945, of injuries sustained from tripping over his dog's leash.

The Chinese, during the reign of Kublai Khan, used lions on hunting expeditions. They trained the big cats to pursue and drag down massive animals - from wild bulls to bears - and to stay with the kill until the hunter arrived.

Cat scratch disease, a benign but sometimes painful disease of short duration, is caused by a bacillus. Despite its name, the disease can be transmitted by many kinds of scratches besides those of cats.

If a normal mouse is forced to overeat, it becomes obese. When the force feeding stops, the mouse won't eat as much as normal until it loses the excess weight it gained.

The top knot that quails have is called a hmuh.

Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high probability of having six toes.

Lions are the only truly social cat species, and usually every female in a pride, ranging from 5 to 30 individuals, is closely related.

Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.

The male Californian sea-otter grips the nose of the female with his teeth during mating.

The ice worm, less than an inch long, lives on the pollens, insects, minerals and bacteria blown onto the surface of glaciers by the wind.

The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and dogs" and led to the current expression.

The only way to stop the pain of the sting of the flathead fish is by rubbing the slime of the belly of the same fish that you were stung by on the wound that it inflicted upon you.

Giraffes were at one time referred to by Europeans as "cameleopards," believing giraffes were the offspring of camels and leopards.

The smallest fish in the world is the Trimattum Nanus of the Chagos Archipelago. It measures 0.33 inches.

There is a species of cat smaller than the average housecat. It is native to Africa and it is the Black-footed cat (Felis nigripes). Its top weight is 5.5 pounds.

Back in the late 1940s in Buenos Aires, a black female cat climbed a 40 foot tree where she resided for six years. Her name was Mincha and she wasn't lonely for companionship. She had three litters while living in the tree. The local Argentinians fed her by putting her food on poles.

There are 18 species of Piranha, and 4 of those species are dangerous to man.

George Washington's favorite horse was named Lexington. Napoleon's favorite was Marengo. U.S. Grant had three favorite horses: Egypt, Cincinnati, and Jeff Davis.

Just .016 mg of the toxin produced by the Poison Frog can kill a 180-pound man.

The blowfish or fugu is a highly sought after and expensive delicacy in Japan, but it can also be lethal. Its liver is deadly poisonous; it is the gourmet equivalent of Russian roulette. Chefs have to be highly trained and licensed to serve the fish, yet despite this precaution at least a hundred people die each year, most from ingesting unseen traces of liver tissue.

Many animals seem to be able to detect the Earth's magnetism. The Arctic Tern's migratory route follows the Earth's lines of magnetic force. Many other animals such as caribou, sea turtles, whales, birds and fish may also use the Earth's magnetism to find their way.
Peru has the greatest bio-diversity and density of birds with 1780 species representing 18.5% of all bird species on Earth.

According to ancient Greek literature, when Odysseus arrived home after an absence of 20 years, disguised as a beggar, the only one to recognize him was his aged dog Argos, who wagged his tail at his master, and then died.

The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was formed in 1866.

The expression "three dog night" originated with the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm.

The "caduceus" the classical medical symbol of two serpents wrapped around a staff - comes from an ancient Greek legend in which snakes revealed the practice of medicine to human beings.

A pioneering technique using dogs to detect prostate cancer is being developed in Cambridgeshire.

In 2002, a peasant in China (where alcoholic drinks containing preserved snakes are quite popular) uncorked a liquor bottle - and was bitten by the snake (which had been trapped for a year). The porous stopper had allowed enough air into the bottle for the snake's continued survival.

A Bloodhound can distinguish and identify several scents at the same time.

Bulldogs were originally bred to bait and fight bulls and bears.

Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2) poodle; 3) golden retriever. Least smart: afghan

The earliest fossil finds of dogs date back to 10,000 BC.

The "Dingo" is the wild dog of Australia.

The smallest of the recognized dog breeds, the Chihuahua, is also the one that usually lives the longest. Named for the region of Mexico where they were first discovered in the mid-19th century, the Chihuahua can live anywhere between 11-18 years.

Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was known before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such small game as hares.

A cat will clean itself with paw and tongue after a dangerous experience or when it has fought with another cat. This is believed to be an attempt by the animal to soothe its nerves by doing something natural and instinctive.

Korea's poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime menus, despite outcry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve women's complexions.

Flattened out, the rat cortex would be the size of a postage stamp, that of the chimp would be the size of a piece of standard typing paper, while the human brain would be four times greater still!
In Norfolk, Virginia, it is unlawful for chickens to lay eggs before 8AM and after 4PM.

The peacock is the national bird of India.

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.

Dogs only see shades of grey and most of them are short-sighted.

At present even the most powerful PCs cannot process as many instructions as the .1gm of a goldfish brain.

Young giraffes can grow an inch a month.

60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor - the Mesonycid.

The saddleback tortoise has evolved a long neck and an arched shell in order to reach leaves a staggering 5 feet above the ground.

Cleopatra used a mixture of horse teeth, bear grease, burnt mice and deer marrow in her attempt to cure Julius Caesar's baldness (it didn't work). Hedgehog urine was also thought to be beneficial.

The fox, the coyote, and the hawk often follow badgers in order to catch animals that it has discovered.

The Ancient Egyptian word for cat was mau, which means "to see".

The normal temperature of a hibernating opossum falls from 95 degrees Fahrenheit to 50.9 degrees.

Spider silk is a protein that is formed as a liquid by silk glands and squeezed out of spinnerets like toothpaste from a tube. The liquid thread hardens as it leaves the spinneret and some types of such thread become stronger than a steel thread of the same diameter.
Spiders are believed to have existed for more than 300 million years.

Never give your cat aspirin, unless advised to do so by your vet. Aspirin can cause hemorrhaging in the gastorintestinal tract. It can also depress bone marrow activity, which makes red blood cells and may also damage the kidneys.

A group of cats is called a clowder; a group of kittens is called a kendle.

Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva while grooming themselves as they do through urination.

Cats roll on their backs to show affection. They expose their bellies like this only when they feel totally secure.
Cats with long, lean bodies are more likely to be outgoing personalities than their stockier cousins. They are also more protective of their home and more vocal and demonstrative.

There are an estimated 2,500 collisions between birds and planes each year in the US.

Tree crickets are called the poor man's thermometer because temperature directly affects their rate of activity. Count the number of chirps a cricket makes in 15 seconds, then add 37. The sum will be very close to the outside temperature!

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

Spiders have noses on their feet that can pick up the odours of possible prey, predators, or mates.

The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

Wolves may howl messages to each other from a mile or two apart.

Reptiles were responsible for such body part innovations as fur, feathers, claws, differentiated teeth, water impervious skin, water impervious eggs, and the penis.

Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played by six different cats.

The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.

A typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year.

The left leg of a chicken in more tender than the right one.

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.

Pigs can cover a mile in 7.5 minutes when running at top speed.

The average human will eat 8 spiders while asleep in their lifetime.

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Mosquito repellents don't repel - they hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

Livestock excrete 130 times as much waste as people.

African elephants are the largest mammals living on solid ground. They reach lengths up to 7.5 m and weights up to 7500 kg.

A mole can dig 60 feet of tunnel or more per day. This is equivalent to a five-foot woman burrowing the length of two football fields, while pushing two-ton objects out of her way.

The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

More types of fish swim in Brazil's Amazon River than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The owl can catch a mouse in utter darkness, guided only by tiny sounds made by its prey.

The Golden mole is one of the strongest animals by size of body weight. A captive Golden mole was able to exert a force equal to 150 times it's own weight.

The camel first evolved in North America. It died out in the ice ages, but some had emigrated and survived in South America, Eurasia, and North Africa.

Dogs cannot see as well as humans and are considered color blind. A dog sees objects first by their movement, second by their brightness, and third by their shape.

The sperm of a mouse is longer than the sperm of an elephant.

The East Alligator River in Australia's Northern Territory was misnamed. It contains crocodiles not alligators.
The largest recorded flea is the North American Hystrichopsylla schefferi, measuring 12mm in length - almost 1/2-inch!
If left to her own devices, a female cat may have three to seven kittens every four months. This is why population control using neutering and spaying is so important.

Squids can commit suicide by eating their own tentacles.

The typical housefly cruises at 8 km/hr.

Kittens are born with both eyes and ears closed. When the eyes open, they are always blue at first. They change colour over a period of months to the final eye colour.

Recent studies have shown that interacting with companion animals may speed recovery from illness, reduce stress, and promote family bonding.

Cats are pure carnivores. They need a high level of protein in their diets - around 30% - and lack the digestive equipment to do well on a diet of grains, fruits or vegetables. Hence although dogs do just fine on a vegetarian diet, cats do not.

A young male gorilla (about 8 to 10 years old) is called a black jack. He’s almost as big as a Silver Back, but his hair has not turned silvery yet, and he still has a lot to learn.

Ants are said to never cross a chalk line. So if you've got ants, draw a line on the floor with chalk or wherever the ants are coming in and see for yourself! They won't cross the line. Baking soda works, too!

Coral reefs are massive limestone structures that provide shelter for over 25 percent of all marine life.

The most popular marine aquarium saltwater fish is the clown fish. Other popular saltwater aquarium fish include angelfish, royal gamma, hamlets, spotfin, yellowtail damsels, and blue tangs.
Siamese kittens are born white because of the heat inside the mother's uterus before birth. This heat keeps the kittens' hair from darkening on the points.

All dogs are probably descended from an animal called Tomarctus. This animal lived approximately 15 million years ago.
To purr, cats use extra tissue in the larynx (voice box). This tissue vibrates when they purr.

The snow leopard protects itself from extreme cold when it sleeps by wrapping its 3-foot-long tail around its nose.
Despite man's fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-rabid wolf ever attacked a human.
The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake.

Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.

A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.

Octopus and squid are thought to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates.

During warm weather hippopotamus's secrete sweat that is pink. This substance not only cools them down but also helps fight infections of the skin.

By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks.

A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

The female dairy goat is a doe; the male, a buck; the young, kids; and a castrated male, a wether. Their life span is eight to twelve years.

A rabbit's teeth never stops growing. They are kept worn down by gnawing on food.

In the US, it is reported that the 5 most popular dog tricks are - Sit, Paw, Roll Over, Speak and Lie Down.
In 1888, an estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and shipped to England to be ground up and used for fertilizer.

An adult giraffe's kick is so powerful that it can decapitate a lion.

Not all polar bears hibernate; only pregnant females polar bears do.

The anaconda, one of the world's largest snakes, gives birth to its young instead of laying eggs.

In the 1800's cats were used to deliver mail. In 1879, in Belgium 37 cats were used to deliver mail to villages, however they found that the cats were not disciplined enough to do this.

In a day, an elephant can drink 80 gallons of water.

Found in Argentina, the ornate horned frog can eat an entire mouse with one swallow.

A seagull can drink salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.

A female donkey's milk is closest to human milk.

The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.

There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.

Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.

More than 99.9% of all the animal species that have ever lived on earth were extinct before the coming of man.

Platypuses aren't the only egg-laying mammals on earth. Echidnas, which resemble a cross between a Hedgehog and Anteater, also lay eggs and produces milk for its young.

Asian tree frogs build nests in trees over water. When their tadpoles hatch, they drop directly into the water.
A blue whale's tongue is so large that fifty people could stand on it.

It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in the course of a summer.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

The world's oldest known captive goldfish, Tish, died peacefully at home in his tank at the age of at least 43 in 1999.
Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.

An average city dog lives approximately three years longer than an average country dog.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
Desert snails can stay in their shell for up to three years.

The Australian Brown Snake's venom is so powerful that only 1/14,000th of on ounce is needed to kill a human being.

Despite man's fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-rabid wolf ever attacked a human.
Dairy cows can produce 20 to 35 gallons of saliva a day.

Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.
Ninety-five percent of tropical fish sold in North America originate from Florida.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

A starfish can turn its stomach inside out.

On June 20th, 1782, the United States Congress made the "American Eagle" the national emblem of the United States.
You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.

According to one study, plant and animal species are becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.

Unlike other four legged mammals, kangaroos cannot walk backwards.

The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

Police detectives have used snapping turtles to help them locate dead bodies.

The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery called an onychectomy, in which the entire claw and end bone of each toe of the animal are amputated.

Only 4% of the lost cats that enter U.S. animal shelters are returned to their caregivers.

In ancient Egypt, entire families would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when the family cat died.

According to scientific studies, a rat's performance in a maze can be improved by playing music written by Mozart.
A mole can dig a tunnel three hundred feet long in a single night.

A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

The 'Silverback' gorilla is 30 per cent taller and almost twice as heavy as the females in the group he dominates.
In their lifetime, house cats spend approximately 10,950 hours purring.

In Central America, a scientist caught over 500 different species of insects by sweeping a net through the air fewer than 2000 times.

The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.

The pom-pom cut was originally developed to increase the Poodle's swimming abilities as a retriever. The haircut allowed for faster swimming but the pom-poms were left to keep the joints warm.
Pekingese dogs were sacred to the emperors of China for more than 2,000 years. They are one of the oldest breeds of dogs in the world.

Desert plants, like cactus, developed pointy spines as protection from animals.

The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.

There are 15 puppies and 45 kittens born for every human in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

As a general rule in the animal kingdom, the more complex or relatively big the eye in relation to the body, then the smaller the rest of the brain.

There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.

A rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's back. That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized cars around on his back.

Most parrots are left-handed.

The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.

Ireland has only about half the number of animal species that Britain has, including no snakes or toads (although there are some frogs).

Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird's chirp or a dog's yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

The biggest pig in recorded history was Big Boy of Black Mountain, North Carolina, who was weighed at 1,904 pounds in 1939.

The Saw-Scaled Viper is thought to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually in Africa and Asia. They don't have the most lethal snake venom but they are numerous and aggressive.

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.

Julius Caeser, Henri II, Charles XI and Napoleon all had ailurophobia, a fear of cats.

Cats have a third eyelid, called a haw, that is rarely visible. If it can be seen, it could be an indication of ill health.

The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - "Island of Dogs."

There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in the United States. Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.

Dogs that do not tolerate small children well are the St. Bernard, the Old English sheep dog, the Alaskan malamute, the bull terrier, and the toy poodle.

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

Camel's hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr Camel.

About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.

Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.

Almost every known dog except the Chow and the Shar Pei has a pink tongue.

If a male cat is both orange and black it is (besides being extremely rare) sterile. To have both the orange and the black coat colors, the male cat must have all or part of both female X chromosomes. This unusual sex chromosome combination will render the male cat sterile.
The 1st buffalo ever born in captivity was born at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo in 1884.

It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.

The biggest member of the cat family is the male lion, which weighs 528 pounds (240 kilograms).

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.

Cats have more than one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere, and no one knows why.

Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating. They sweat through the pads of their feet.

The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

During the 1982 Falklands war British pilots reported that penguins toppled over backward while gazing at the planes. British navy pilots were then banned from flying low over penguin colonies. It led to a UK government study of the penguin-toppling effect. For seventeen days two helicopters were flown from varying directions and heights over the penguins. The result? Penguins do not topple over while gazing at aeroplanes.
The tsetse fly infests 36 African countries and a total of 9-10 million square kilometres of land.

Sharks sometimes eat other sharks. For example, a tiger shark might eat a bull shark, a bull shark might eat a blacktip shark and a blacktip shark might eat a dogfish shark.

A mature male gorilla is called a Silver back This refers to the silver-colored hair covering his back, which occurs when he’s about 10-12 years old.

Nationwide, grandparents annually spend an average of $195.24 on their companion animals and $178.68 on their grandchildren.

A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.

Lewis and Clark traveled with a 150-pound Newfoundland named "Seaman." This pooch was a respected member of the expedition team and his antics were included in the extensive diaries of the famous explorers.

'Zorro' means 'fox' in Spanish.
The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."

For Stephen King's "Cujo" (1983), five St. Bernards were used, one mechanical head, and an actor in a dog costume to play the title character.

Dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that get pleasure out of sex. They are also the only other animals that have sex for reasons other than reproduction.

A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as feelers or antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any passage.

The distance between an alligator's eyes, in inches, is directly proportional to the length of the alligator, in feet.
Scientists estimate that there are currently 1.4 million animal species known to science; with possibly as many as 30 million on the planet.

The Venus flytrap takes less than half a second to slam shut on an insect.

All dinosaurs walked on their toes.
Brazil has the most species of mammals (524), fresh water fish, insects and parrots of anywhere.

The honey badger can withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill any other animal.

The fruit flys dna sequence is 180 million bases long, whilst a humans is three billion.

Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostate glands.

When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.

The world record frog jump is 33 feet 5.5 inches over the course of 3 consecutive leaps, achieved in May 1977 by a South African sharp-nosed frog called Santjie.

A 7-year study, which concluded in the summer of 2000, found that 33 U.S. deaths were caused by rottweilers, pit bulls were responsible for 27 deaths.

The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.

A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.
The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.

The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.

German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

There are 701 types of pure breed dogs.

Swans are the only birds with penises.

An American Animal Hospital Association poll showed that 33 percent of dog owners admit that they talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on an answering machine while away.

Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than man.
This animal trivia has been gathered from various places around the globe and credit goes to whomever deserves it. GarLyn Zoo stakes no claim to any of it.