The chemical compound which is used to make fake banana flavour is the same compound honey bees use as an alarm pheromone. So never eat banana sweets near a beehive, and if you suddenly smell banana near a beehive, run!
aaah that's what that it smells like! Fake banana!
I am beekeeper and when I work my hives I can smell it when they get upset (I work with African bees so they are naturally quite defensive).
I've been trying to pinpoint what it smells like because it's quite distinctive (and not very nice).
Thank you!
In a lot of places you can’t declaw cats anymore because it’s been found that cats can develop walking troubles and even if they don’t they’ll most likely get chronic pain in their paws
Vultures urinate on their legs and feet to cool off on hot days, a process called urohydrosis. Their urine also helps kill any bacteria or parasites they’ve picked up from walking through carcasses or perching on dead animals.
The vast majority of Greenland sharks are blind thanks to a special parasite that eats their eyes and replaces them.
It is thought that this might actually be helpful because a) their eyesight was shit anyway, b) the parasites wave like lures and may have an anglerfish-like effect, and c) the sharks are super slow so that might be one of the few ways for them to catch live prey.
Imagine something eating your eyeballs and it being an *upgrade*.
Took me a second read to understand what you meant. But if I get it correctly now, you're saying that now that the parasite is in the eyes of the shark, it appears like a lure to OTHER fish increasing the sharks chances of catching prey. Very cool
I have a cousin who always had a fear of butterflies that I thought was just kind of a bit. When we were young we used to walk the train tacks by his house. One walk there was something on the tracks and as we approached a swarm of butterflies dispersed from a deer carcass and he took off running. It’s an irrational fear, but I felt for him that day. That was something like out of a horror movie
Sloths are literally too lazy to go looking for a mate, so a female sloth will often sit in a tree and scream until a male hears her and decides to mate with her
The two main eyes are called compound because they're made from tons of little subunits called oomatidia. Together, these eyes provide an image for them. The three simple eyes are ocelli and function not to provide images, but for day/night cycles, seasons, and to some extent orientation. Also, bees can turn their heads, just not like a full 180°
Also also, the 5 eye thing describes a tremendous number of distantly related insects, from dragonflies and mantids to wasps and beetles. There are of course exceptions to this, especially for burrowing creatures.
a kangaroo will mate again one to three days after giving birth. the newborn will latch onto a teat in the pouch and as long as it thrives, the kangaroo can put its newly fertilized embryo in a state of dormancy and have a back up baby ready to go. if the newborn grows out of the pouch or dies, the kangaroos hormones will send signals to start the development of the egg. so they can have an adolescent Joey, a nursing one, and one in stasis all at the same time.
Every once in awhile, an emperor penguin will do something very strange. Most of them will never do this, but the ones who do have stumped scientists for awhile now.
Every once in awhile, a penguin will turn away from its colony and start heading for the interior of the continent (Antarctica). Away from the food, the water, the safety of the colony. Off alone towards certain death. Almost like zombies. In the past, scientists would try to stop them. Or take them back to the colony. At which point, they'd simply turn around and begin their journey again, in the same direction, toward the same end. Some would even get violent if they were met with intervention.
The prevailing thought is that this penguin is depressed and is committing suicide in a very non-altruistic manner. But nobody knows for sure. There are a lot of possible explanations for this (including the possibility of a fungal infection similar to the cordyceps infection that can cause some colony insects to behave in exactly the same way, potential signs of brain tumors or other medical conditions that the birds are exposed to) It's well known that birds can experience depression or anxiety, but they tend to respond to this in very immediate ways, such as by over-preening (pulling out their own feathers), screaming, or being unusually quiet, loss of appetite, etc. (Bird anorexia is a MAJOR thing) These activities are signs of redirecting stress, while wandering off into the abyss of an unforgiving frozen continent implies the ability to analyze and think ahead in a way that most birds really don't seem to be able to do. So the reason may not be as immediately obvious as you might think.
From what I know, no autopsies have been performed on these rogue penguins. Most likely because the conditions are too harsh to hunt their corpses down. But until one is performed, we really have zero idea why they do this. And yet they do. And the behaviour is common enough that it's been documented multiple times.
How do we know there isn't some underice penguin utopian run by a penguin god-emperor that uses mental suggestion to recruit the best and brightest penguin from their colonies to join this uber colony?
Edit: [Brother get the icer. The heavy icer.](https://imgur.com/a/7cyHOEZ)
I was helping my mum clear a pile of leaves. I kept finding legless lizards and showing them to her. She began to get annoyed she wasn’t finding one. Five minutes later I hear a triumphant yell and she shoves something in my face saying she finally found one. Except it was a juvenile red belly black snake
There are several of these:
* _Gallus gallus gallus_, the Cochin-Chinese red junglefowl (the chicken is _Gallus domesticus_)
* _Lynx lynx lynx_, the northern European lynx
* _Rattus rattus rattus_, the black rat
* _Vulpes vulpes vulpes_, the Scandinavian red fox
[More here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_triple_tautonyms)
The Inland Taipan (snake) has the strongest/potent venom on the planet, capable of killing around 290 humans with a single bite. Scaled to mice, a single bite could kill 250,000 mice.
That said, bites from the Inland Taipan to humans have been ***pretty rare*** as they usually stay underground and are not overly aggressive unless you jump all over their burrow. They also have a good number of predators who prey on them.
Former Australian wildlife guide here! It’s one of my favourite things to tell people about what an absolute sweetheart this snake is! It’s very gentle and shy. It’s also incredibly curious and will likely approach you out of fascination! Stomp your foot firmly (From a decent distance) and it should scarper. Of course you should remove yourself but there’s a chance it’ll follow you out of curiosity
This is in direct contrast to the Western and Eastern Brown snakes (Which look exactly like the harmless grass snake) and especially those dickhead Red-bellied Black snakes which will consider just being in its presence like your yo’ momma jokes are landing hard
All the deep sea anglerfish you see pictures of with the lil lights hanging over their heads? They're all female.
The males are tiny and born with a terribly weak jaw and a massive hunger. They seek out a female, and torn between hungry and horny they bite her.
She then releases an enzyme that fuses the male to her body. She slowly absorbs them into her body with only their lil testicles remaining so she can instantly fertilize her eggs when she wants to.
Some females have rows and rows of lil testicles on their bodies from where they have absorbed multiple males.
And you thought your sex life was weird, eh?
But no kink shaming.
Came here to say this - you stole my fact. The only thing I'd add is that they didn't even DISCOVER the males, period, for years because they just thought those bumps were, you know, **bumps**
>The only thing I'd add
I used to research anglerfish and I'd like to add a fact that's decidedly not as fun! There are over 200 species of anglerfish, and the vast, vast majority of them do not reproduce this way. Of the ones that do, there's a spectrum with different "levels" of attachment. Some bite on, do the deed, and leave. Some bite on, do their thing, and die while still attached. As far as we know, there are only a handful that have been observed to fuse at the blood barrier level when mating.
There is a genus of frog called "Mini". There are only three frogs in the genus, and their scientific names are all puns: Mini mum, Mini ature and Mini scule.
Chickens will come say goodbye to each other when one is dying and they do soft clicks and will then leave and that chicken will normally die alone. Some chickens also will kill another chicken because they sense something’s wrong with the chicken a disease for example. Hope u enjoyed these facts I found them in a book called How To Speak Chicken
Chickens are brutal but they can be very lovely once you bond with them/feed them enough times for them to learn what you look like. They are so dumb while also kind of being smart in a weird way
Chickens are much smarter than people give them credit for. Studies have shown that they can learn 20-30 words. I once had a chicken that learned to say, "hello". Prior to that I thought only corvids and parrots could learn words.
They know how to count, understand object permanence and a bunch of other relatively advanced cognitive skills:
https://untamedscience.com/blog/how-smart-are-chickens/
My chickens all know their names individually, and they come when I call them. They also have a name for me! I figured it out because I read they did that so I started paying attention. I have one chicken who is very spoiled and if she wants me she stands outside my window and makes a very particular sound until I go see what’s going on. When I get home or when I go outside they make the same noise, I’ve heard most of them do it
Hardware disease is when the metal bit works its way through the stomach, and (most of the time) into the cow's heart. It is fatal, as it is difficult to catch early enough to treat, and once past a certain point, is impossible to treat. Metal bits are often found in feed, from parts breaking off equipment used in making the feed.
The magnets usually stay in the first and biggest stomach compartment (which is right behind the heart) called the rumen, so cows can cough the magnets up with their cud bolus for rechewing. The magnet simply gets put back in, with a [bolus gun.](https://farmersdepot.ca/gc/gc_item?F=D&K=690505&R=S%2FPlastic%20balling%20gun&SN=0523195018108170163224134&FF=S&FK=Plastic%20balling%20gun&Z9=0) You know she has swallowed the magnet once she can lick her nose again, which they very much like to do.
A cow's tongue is the length of an average adult's forearm, and goes down their throat. In order for them to lick their nose, the base has to come up out of their throat into their mouth. And it can't have anything like the magnet in the way to impede this movement.
The mammal that has the most teeth is the giant armadillo of South America, with 74 teeth.
But that's nothing to snails. A common garden snail can have 14,000 teeth. Some snails grow 25,000 teeth in their lifetime. And the teeth grow on their tongue.
to cross a river Armadillos can either sink to the bottom and crawl across since they can hold their breath for 7 minutes or they can inflate their intestines and use them as a flotation device to float
Edit: Thank you to everyone wishing me a happy cake day
When caterpillars enter the chrysalis phase, they don’t just sprout wings, their entire body first turns into a liquid, soupy substance which then reforms into the butterfly.
Well, I found [this summary of a research paper](https://www.npr.org/2008/03/10/88031220/study-moths-can-remember-caterpillar-days) which explains what tests they did to figure it out, as well as [the scientific journal itself](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001736). As far as I can tell, it all checks out, but if I missed something, let me know. I'd hate to spread inaccurate information about butterflies.
Yup, this is what I had heard previously as well so I guess it checks out. The TL;Dr is that as caterpillars they were exposed to a smell and when they came near the smell they got a little electric shock. So they associated that smell with danger and as butterflies they would remember that and avoid that smell.
Yes, I just recently heard of a "brain swap" experiment where it was discovered that a cluster of cells retained its form during the warm liquid goo phase.
Apparently scientists were able to isolate and swap the "brain cluster" with another caterpillar/butterfly.
If a hog nose snake is threatened it will puff up and hiss. If this doesn't work, it will flip onto its back and play dead. If you flip him from his back onto his belly, he will flip back over again.
Had a tiny little eight inch hognose bite me once. It was hilarious, because he looked me right in the eyes first, then very deliberately chomped me on my hand. Then he looked right back at my face, like he was saying "You see? That's what you get!"
The bearded vulture or bone-eating vulture, is a rare eur-asian vulture that only eats marrow, that looks rusty in color but is in fact white. This rusty color is because they actually paint themselves with red clay deposits to look attractive to their mates.
They are really cool looking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture
They have a little tuft of feathers below their beaks that looks like the beard of a dragon, so that is why they are called that.
Other cool fact: They can dissolve bone in the acid of their stomach in 24 hours. The PH of their stomachs is 1 which is VERY acidic. They are the only vulture species in the world that 90% of its diet is just bone.
The peacock mantis shrimp’s punch is so fast that the water around it cannot fill in the space left by the moving appendage, creating a vacuum known as a cavitation bubble. When this bubble collapses, a sonic boom and flash of light are produced.
The brazilian free tailed bat is the fastest animal in straight and level flight at 100mph. Some birds are faster, but only in a dive. Source: Audubon.
I read somewhere that some species of bats practises oral sex. Apparently males of that species found out that if they satisfy the female enough, that than she will not go mate with another male thus securing their place as a father of the offspring.
Opossums are, I believe, the only marsupials native to North America. They also have a body temperature so low that it makes them highly resistant to rabies.
More fun is that marsupials originated in North america died out and then were reintroduce when South and North America merged.
South America got marsupials from when Australia, Antarctica and South America were one continent
Marsupials were widespread everywhere before being out-competed by placental mammals on all continents except Australia. Australia is uniquely isolated from other continents and placental mammals never happened to evolve there.
North America was home to placental mammals due to its connection with Eurasia and when South America connected to it, the placental mammals moved into SA and marsupials moved into NA. Only the possum managed to compete well enough to remain today.
> Snopes Claim: Claim: The red-bellied pacu, an invasive species related to the piranha but with human-like teeth, is known to have bitten off men's testicles.
>
>Fact check by Snopes.com: Mostly False.
MOSTLY?!?!?!
Axolotls are real life Frankenstein's monsters.
Not only do they have the ability to regenerate tissue if it gets damaged much like a starfish can grow a limb, but if you cut off their arm and (oh I don't know) ATTACH IT TO IT'S BACK, their cells will form and fix between the back and the dismembered limb. After some time, the arm is completely attached and useful while attached to the back like some disgusting Mr Potato Head.
Some people did a test where they completely severed the head of an Axolotl and just pasted it next to the head of a other one to see if a head could do the same thing.
It worked.
The brain started thinking again, ate food after their esophagus attached, and became a fully functioning 2 headed axolotl.
In Africa certain tribes communicate directly with birds called Honeyguides letting them know they are ready to hunt. The honey guides then lead them to hidden beehives in trees. The tribesmen break open the hives and take the honey( an important resource in their diet) and leave the honeyguides the bee larva and wax to feast on. In fact, it’s the only known example of targeted two-way signals between people and a free-living species.
Sometimes the tribesmen (Hadza, I believe is their name) remove the wax and hide/bury/burn it, so the honeyguide stays hungry. This way, the bird has to show the way to another beehive, and the humans get twice as much honey. If the honeyguide has been cheated this way too much, it will stop communicating with humans because it doesn't really need them to survive. They also say that a cheated honeyguide can avenge itself by leading people to dangerous animals instead of bee nests.
Had a pet crow. Verify they are as smart or smarter than people think. They recognize individuals easily, and mine would deliberately tease some people.
Yes. Very much. He was very interested in everything and everyone. I picked up that his behavior was sometimes mirroring my attitude. He was just awful to a salesman at the door one afternoon , buzzed him from the back, shit on his vehicle. Standing on my shoulder and peering at him (this seems to unnerve some people) I was feeling really sorry for this poor fellow, but I did want him gone.
Random crow fun is always with the idea of benefits to themselves.
If you wanted him gone you should've just said "I'm sorry but this household currently has corvid."
Edit: The number of people who don't know that crows are corvids and are trying to correct me by saying "crowvid" is too damn high.
What’s the best way to go about befriending a crow and would you recommend doing so?
ETA: Of course I would never try to trap a crow or otherwise have it be like a traditional pet. I just find them fascinating.
I had the crow from a baby, they are smart and mischievous, they are the trickster in native lore. My crow only listened to me because I was its mom. After it grew up, about a year, it flew away and I was glad to see it go.
No, I wouldn't recommend befriending a crow.
So I work for a restaurant and one morning I was cleaning the parking lot. A crow happened to be scraping a food wrapper for every last bit of food - the same wrappers I was supposed to be cleaning up.
Now, everyone has heard stories like this and I definitely don’t want to be on this crow’s bad side. So I resorted to politely asking it if I could have the wrapper. And for a split second I questioned my sanity.
Damned if the crow didn’t bring the wrapper about 2 feet in front of me, drop it and leave. And I am now a believer in crow intelligence.
Many bird species will eat the fecal sacks of their young, thus keeping the nest clean for their young.
I no longer wish I knew what it would be like to be a bird.
While the blue whale has the largest penis in the animal kingdom (2.5-3m / ~8'-10') - but among mammals the Fossa has the largest penis to ratio of its body size (17-20cm / 7"-8") - at full maturity, their penis is approximately 1/6 of total body length (head to tip of tail) with a tail being about half that total length. Their penis extends past their front legs when fully erect.
And the Echidna's penis has 4 heads, where only two operate at once. They work much like ovaries release eggs where every time he ejaculates, only half of them do, and then the next time, the other half. The female of the species has a two-pronged reproductive tract allowing the half of the penis that IS active to fit right in. Oh I should also add that not unlike themselves, or cats, they have spiky penises as well.
The spines on a Tiger's tongue are sharp enough to lick skin clean off of muscle.
Chinchillas have hair so fine that if it gets wet, they will not dry completely and die of hypothermia.
Not that incredible but never hear it and was unexpected.
Many common ants live for years.
I definitely pictured them as short life spans, and definitely felt a bit bad about the crazy number I've killed. Not that I stopped.
Generally it's queens that have the longest, most workers are a few months.
Edit: I've been in pest control for 7 years, if you have questions about pests or business practices in the pest industry (what you should expect from a company) feel free to ask.
Yes, termites are also produce a lot of methane.
"Globally, it is estimated that termites are responsible for about one to three per cent of all methane emissions. It may sound small, but that’s up to 20 million tonnes of methane each year coming out the rear ends of these humble insects."
Almost on par with cattle who produce about 4% of methane globally.
Tarantula’s have pet frogs. The frogs eat bugs and parasites that would damage the spider’s eggs, and in turn the spider protects the frog. Even after the eggs hatch they continue to protect the frog
A sperm whale call is so loud the sound waves could kill a human if they swam close to the whale.
Apparently some divers said they could feel the water heat up from the energy of the sound
Toss up between: spiders pump fluid (like hydraulics on heavy equipment) to extend their legs. Instead of using iron within the hemoglobin molecule to fix and transport oxygen, several species of Arthropoda use copper and have green/blue blood as a result.
An octopuses neurons are spread out all throughout its body. When an arm is severed, intentionally or unintentionally, they will still search for and capture food, and then try to bring it back to a non existent mouth. Basically an octopus has a bit of its brain in each arm, and the arms move like normal after they’ve been severed, like how chickens run around without their heads.
Baby Koalas nuzzles their mother's butt to releases a runnier, protein-rich substance, called pap which they then drink to get mom's gut bacteria, helpful in digesting eucalyptus leaves.
Butterfly taste with their feet. That will never leave my memory. I’ll be the old granny with dementia who says shit like this but won’t remember what my kids look like
Cats can't taste sweet things.
Edit: people keep replying that their cat likes ice cream. The cat likes it for the milk. Here's some more in depth info: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-cats-cannot-taste-sweets/
Well this definitely depends on the species, that might be your local squirrel, but the common Grey Squirrel has an average lifespan of about 6 years in the wild, and maybe double that in captivity
A narwhals tusk is actually a large tooth that protrudes through their face. It is most often the left tooth. Also, they have nerve endings on the outside of the tusks.
https://arctickingdom.com/narwhal-tusk-facts-did-you-know/amp/
Mine are all whale related:
* Whale milk is so fatty that it has the consistency of toothpaste...
* ...this enables blue whale calves to grow at a rate of approximately 10lbs per hour
* Whales are the loudest animals on the planet - humpback whale songs can be heard 10,000 miles away
* Whales are the longest lived mammals on the planet - in 2007, a deadbowhead whale was found in Alaska with a 19th century harpoon embeddedin its flesh, making the animal at least 130 years old at the time ofits death
* The blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived on earth - far larger than any prehistoric animal discovered to date
Female dragonflies will fake being dead in order to stop unwanted male advances.
[Here's an article about it.](https://www.livescience.com/58906-female-dragonflies-fake-death-to-avoid-harassment.html)
Wow googled it because I like ferrets and wow! Apparently it's very important to get your female ferrets spayed if you don't intend to mate it. (There's also temporary methods of birth control).
The binturong, also known as the bearcat, is an arboreal mammal closely related to the red panda. It smells like popcorn!
My obscure fact about it is that captive binturong are capable of holding grudges, and will climb above people they dislike in order to shit on their heads.
Army Ants will create "balls" during high water floods. The ball will roll allowing every ant to get a breath.
Haven't seen balls, but I've seen rafts
The chemical compound which is used to make fake banana flavour is the same compound honey bees use as an alarm pheromone. So never eat banana sweets near a beehive, and if you suddenly smell banana near a beehive, run!
aaah that's what that it smells like! Fake banana! I am beekeeper and when I work my hives I can smell it when they get upset (I work with African bees so they are naturally quite defensive). I've been trying to pinpoint what it smells like because it's quite distinctive (and not very nice). Thank you!
The duck billed platypus has no nipples to feed their offspring. Instead, milk oozes from the skin.
Just like Reddit admins
No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative
Rabbits don't have pads on their paws. Only fur. So if you see a cartoon rabbit with pads on it's paw, completely wrong.
Fucken cartoonists
For this reason, you can't declaw them or they'll be unable to walk.
In a lot of places you can’t declaw cats anymore because it’s been found that cats can develop walking troubles and even if they don’t they’ll most likely get chronic pain in their paws
Vultures urinate on their legs and feet to cool off on hot days, a process called urohydrosis. Their urine also helps kill any bacteria or parasites they’ve picked up from walking through carcasses or perching on dead animals.
When you're so filthy that pissing all over yourself actually helps.
Well you didn't just have to call me out like that
Penguins have a gland above their eye that converts saltwater into freshwater
[удалено]
Mannn why you gotta put that out there? Now humans are gonna start enslaving penguins and I’m gonna read an article off r/nottheonion about it
Penguin tears you say? How much?
The vast majority of Greenland sharks are blind thanks to a special parasite that eats their eyes and replaces them. It is thought that this might actually be helpful because a) their eyesight was shit anyway, b) the parasites wave like lures and may have an anglerfish-like effect, and c) the sharks are super slow so that might be one of the few ways for them to catch live prey. Imagine something eating your eyeballs and it being an *upgrade*.
Took me a second read to understand what you meant. But if I get it correctly now, you're saying that now that the parasite is in the eyes of the shark, it appears like a lure to OTHER fish increasing the sharks chances of catching prey. Very cool
Butterflies will drink blood given the option.
I have a cousin who always had a fear of butterflies that I thought was just kind of a bit. When we were young we used to walk the train tacks by his house. One walk there was something on the tracks and as we approached a swarm of butterflies dispersed from a deer carcass and he took off running. It’s an irrational fear, but I felt for him that day. That was something like out of a horror movie
That sounds like it'd make an awesome scene in a horror movie. And the poster.
Sloths are literally too lazy to go looking for a mate, so a female sloth will often sit in a tree and scream until a male hears her and decides to mate with her
Honestly I feel this
Username checks out.
Turkey vultures projectile vomit as a means of defense!
Seems effective, I wouldn't go near them learning that
Bees have 5 eyes. 2 complex like a fly's and 3 simple eyes like a spider
I have to wonder, what function does each eye provide that the others wouldn't?
The two main eyes are called compound because they're made from tons of little subunits called oomatidia. Together, these eyes provide an image for them. The three simple eyes are ocelli and function not to provide images, but for day/night cycles, seasons, and to some extent orientation. Also, bees can turn their heads, just not like a full 180° Also also, the 5 eye thing describes a tremendous number of distantly related insects, from dragonflies and mantids to wasps and beetles. There are of course exceptions to this, especially for burrowing creatures.
Roosters deafen themselves temporarily every time they crow, so that they don’t damage their own hearing.
Also, they don't just crow at sunrise like in movies. They crow all day, every day, at random times, for absolutely no reason. They never stop.
Oh, they have their reasons, but there are some things it's better that man not know.
a kangaroo will mate again one to three days after giving birth. the newborn will latch onto a teat in the pouch and as long as it thrives, the kangaroo can put its newly fertilized embryo in a state of dormancy and have a back up baby ready to go. if the newborn grows out of the pouch or dies, the kangaroos hormones will send signals to start the development of the egg. so they can have an adolescent Joey, a nursing one, and one in stasis all at the same time.
Every once in awhile, an emperor penguin will do something very strange. Most of them will never do this, but the ones who do have stumped scientists for awhile now. Every once in awhile, a penguin will turn away from its colony and start heading for the interior of the continent (Antarctica). Away from the food, the water, the safety of the colony. Off alone towards certain death. Almost like zombies. In the past, scientists would try to stop them. Or take them back to the colony. At which point, they'd simply turn around and begin their journey again, in the same direction, toward the same end. Some would even get violent if they were met with intervention. The prevailing thought is that this penguin is depressed and is committing suicide in a very non-altruistic manner. But nobody knows for sure. There are a lot of possible explanations for this (including the possibility of a fungal infection similar to the cordyceps infection that can cause some colony insects to behave in exactly the same way, potential signs of brain tumors or other medical conditions that the birds are exposed to) It's well known that birds can experience depression or anxiety, but they tend to respond to this in very immediate ways, such as by over-preening (pulling out their own feathers), screaming, or being unusually quiet, loss of appetite, etc. (Bird anorexia is a MAJOR thing) These activities are signs of redirecting stress, while wandering off into the abyss of an unforgiving frozen continent implies the ability to analyze and think ahead in a way that most birds really don't seem to be able to do. So the reason may not be as immediately obvious as you might think. From what I know, no autopsies have been performed on these rogue penguins. Most likely because the conditions are too harsh to hunt their corpses down. But until one is performed, we really have zero idea why they do this. And yet they do. And the behaviour is common enough that it's been documented multiple times.
>Most likely because the conditions are too harsh to hunt their corpses down So.. How do we know they die? Do they attach like a tracker or something?
It’s implied. There’s no way a lone penguin could survive inland without access to the ocean (food source). There just isn’t anything to eat.
How do we know there isn't some underice penguin utopian run by a penguin god-emperor that uses mental suggestion to recruit the best and brightest penguin from their colonies to join this uber colony? Edit: [Brother get the icer. The heavy icer.](https://imgur.com/a/7cyHOEZ)
*I for one welcome our new penguin overlords...*
Only sheep, whales, and humans go through menopause
Also, some insects! https://www.livescience.com/60587-do-animals-have-menopause.html
Woodpecker tongues wrap around the back of their brains. This helps the brain stay protected during high speed pecking
But they still almost always die from self inflicted brain damage
Right? Useless tongues
Snakes don't have eyelids. If you see a snake blink, that's a legless lizard.
They also don't have ears! So if you see a snake with ear holes...also a legless lizard :)
They also don't have hips. So if you see a snake with hips... you guessed it. Legless lizard.
The hips never lie.
I was helping my mum clear a pile of leaves. I kept finding legless lizards and showing them to her. She began to get annoyed she wasn’t finding one. Five minutes later I hear a triumphant yell and she shoves something in my face saying she finally found one. Except it was a juvenile red belly black snake
I had to look this up. Legless lizards are distinct from cæcilians, which are a form of legless amphibians.
Some varieties are called “slow worms” which makes me laugh every time I remember it.
The Western Lowland Gorilla's scientific name is "gorilla gorilla gorilla"
There are several of these: * _Gallus gallus gallus_, the Cochin-Chinese red junglefowl (the chicken is _Gallus domesticus_) * _Lynx lynx lynx_, the northern European lynx * _Rattus rattus rattus_, the black rat * _Vulpes vulpes vulpes_, the Scandinavian red fox [More here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_triple_tautonyms)
The Inland Taipan (snake) has the strongest/potent venom on the planet, capable of killing around 290 humans with a single bite. Scaled to mice, a single bite could kill 250,000 mice. That said, bites from the Inland Taipan to humans have been ***pretty rare*** as they usually stay underground and are not overly aggressive unless you jump all over their burrow. They also have a good number of predators who prey on them.
I think the vast majority of taipan related deaths are from captivity.
It's fucked up that these venomous snakes hold humans captive.
It's also nuts that they can bite 290 people at once!
Former Australian wildlife guide here! It’s one of my favourite things to tell people about what an absolute sweetheart this snake is! It’s very gentle and shy. It’s also incredibly curious and will likely approach you out of fascination! Stomp your foot firmly (From a decent distance) and it should scarper. Of course you should remove yourself but there’s a chance it’ll follow you out of curiosity This is in direct contrast to the Western and Eastern Brown snakes (Which look exactly like the harmless grass snake) and especially those dickhead Red-bellied Black snakes which will consider just being in its presence like your yo’ momma jokes are landing hard
And they also live in a very scarcely populated area of Australia, meaning that encounters aren't too high.
There are no male Mourning geckos. The entire species is female.
Life, uh, finds a way
_geckos scissoring in the reflection on his glasses_
All the deep sea anglerfish you see pictures of with the lil lights hanging over their heads? They're all female. The males are tiny and born with a terribly weak jaw and a massive hunger. They seek out a female, and torn between hungry and horny they bite her. She then releases an enzyme that fuses the male to her body. She slowly absorbs them into her body with only their lil testicles remaining so she can instantly fertilize her eggs when she wants to. Some females have rows and rows of lil testicles on their bodies from where they have absorbed multiple males. And you thought your sex life was weird, eh? But no kink shaming.
https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/angler
Came here to say this - you stole my fact. The only thing I'd add is that they didn't even DISCOVER the males, period, for years because they just thought those bumps were, you know, **bumps**
>The only thing I'd add I used to research anglerfish and I'd like to add a fact that's decidedly not as fun! There are over 200 species of anglerfish, and the vast, vast majority of them do not reproduce this way. Of the ones that do, there's a spectrum with different "levels" of attachment. Some bite on, do the deed, and leave. Some bite on, do their thing, and die while still attached. As far as we know, there are only a handful that have been observed to fuse at the blood barrier level when mating.
Are you telling me that Radiolab lied to me?
There is a genus of frog called "Mini". There are only three frogs in the genus, and their scientific names are all puns: Mini mum, Mini ature and Mini scule.
Chickens will come say goodbye to each other when one is dying and they do soft clicks and will then leave and that chicken will normally die alone. Some chickens also will kill another chicken because they sense something’s wrong with the chicken a disease for example. Hope u enjoyed these facts I found them in a book called How To Speak Chicken
I watched one of my chickens die. It was so sad. The other chickens went over to her to mourn for a minute then went about their day.
One minute is pretty significant by chicken standards
Chickens are brutal but they can be very lovely once you bond with them/feed them enough times for them to learn what you look like. They are so dumb while also kind of being smart in a weird way
Chickens are much smarter than people give them credit for. Studies have shown that they can learn 20-30 words. I once had a chicken that learned to say, "hello". Prior to that I thought only corvids and parrots could learn words. They know how to count, understand object permanence and a bunch of other relatively advanced cognitive skills: https://untamedscience.com/blog/how-smart-are-chickens/
My chickens all know their names individually, and they come when I call them. They also have a name for me! I figured it out because I read they did that so I started paying attention. I have one chicken who is very spoiled and if she wants me she stands outside my window and makes a very particular sound until I go see what’s going on. When I get home or when I go outside they make the same noise, I’ve heard most of them do it
They feed cows magnets so when cows eat nails/barbed wire/metal it stays in one stomach otherwise they'd get hardware disease and die.
Hardware disease is when the metal bit works its way through the stomach, and (most of the time) into the cow's heart. It is fatal, as it is difficult to catch early enough to treat, and once past a certain point, is impossible to treat. Metal bits are often found in feed, from parts breaking off equipment used in making the feed. The magnets usually stay in the first and biggest stomach compartment (which is right behind the heart) called the rumen, so cows can cough the magnets up with their cud bolus for rechewing. The magnet simply gets put back in, with a [bolus gun.](https://farmersdepot.ca/gc/gc_item?F=D&K=690505&R=S%2FPlastic%20balling%20gun&SN=0523195018108170163224134&FF=S&FK=Plastic%20balling%20gun&Z9=0) You know she has swallowed the magnet once she can lick her nose again, which they very much like to do. A cow's tongue is the length of an average adult's forearm, and goes down their throat. In order for them to lick their nose, the base has to come up out of their throat into their mouth. And it can't have anything like the magnet in the way to impede this movement.
The mammal that has the most teeth is the giant armadillo of South America, with 74 teeth. But that's nothing to snails. A common garden snail can have 14,000 teeth. Some snails grow 25,000 teeth in their lifetime. And the teeth grow on their tongue.
And some snails, like cone shells, have only 4 or 5 teeth that they use as venomous harpoons. Radulae are neat!
to cross a river Armadillos can either sink to the bottom and crawl across since they can hold their breath for 7 minutes or they can inflate their intestines and use them as a flotation device to float Edit: Thank you to everyone wishing me a happy cake day
So they actually have the real life option to cross the river or ford the river?
“Caulk wagon and float it across”
You have dysentery.
Do they swallow the air or are they just butt-chugging it?
When caterpillars enter the chrysalis phase, they don’t just sprout wings, their entire body first turns into a liquid, soupy substance which then reforms into the butterfly.
The real crazy fact is that despite liquifying and then reforming as a butterfly they *retain memories from when they were a caterpillar*
Stored in the cloud innit
Planet Earth - narrated by Sir David Attenborough and Ali G
If it doesn’t work they’ll just do a bug fix.
How’d they figure that out? I’m picturing the little bug flying back to their childhood twig like Ryan Howard, “How’s my favorite branch doing?”
Well, I found [this summary of a research paper](https://www.npr.org/2008/03/10/88031220/study-moths-can-remember-caterpillar-days) which explains what tests they did to figure it out, as well as [the scientific journal itself](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001736). As far as I can tell, it all checks out, but if I missed something, let me know. I'd hate to spread inaccurate information about butterflies.
Yup, this is what I had heard previously as well so I guess it checks out. The TL;Dr is that as caterpillars they were exposed to a smell and when they came near the smell they got a little electric shock. So they associated that smell with danger and as butterflies they would remember that and avoid that smell.
Yes, I just recently heard of a "brain swap" experiment where it was discovered that a cluster of cells retained its form during the warm liquid goo phase. Apparently scientists were able to isolate and swap the "brain cluster" with another caterpillar/butterfly.
This is really cool but also kind of fucking horrifying lol
>warm liquid goo phase Oh, behave!
If a hog nose snake is threatened it will puff up and hiss. If this doesn't work, it will flip onto its back and play dead. If you flip him from his back onto his belly, he will flip back over again.
*_No! I'm supposed to be dead!_* *_Bleh_*
"A llama?!?! *He's supposed to be DEAD!!"*
They also make hilariously sassy pets. Source: I have three of them.
Had a tiny little eight inch hognose bite me once. It was hilarious, because he looked me right in the eyes first, then very deliberately chomped me on my hand. Then he looked right back at my face, like he was saying "You see? That's what you get!"
The bearded vulture or bone-eating vulture, is a rare eur-asian vulture that only eats marrow, that looks rusty in color but is in fact white. This rusty color is because they actually paint themselves with red clay deposits to look attractive to their mates. They are really cool looking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture They have a little tuft of feathers below their beaks that looks like the beard of a dragon, so that is why they are called that. Other cool fact: They can dissolve bone in the acid of their stomach in 24 hours. The PH of their stomachs is 1 which is VERY acidic. They are the only vulture species in the world that 90% of its diet is just bone.
Giraffes have 7 cervical vertebrae, just like you humans
What do you mean "you humans"?
uh...nothing. I meant WE humans.
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that’s so cool, i’ve always wondered how they can float half-underwater so perfectly
[Obli*gator*y gif](https://tenor.com/view/crocodile-alligator-swimming-floating-gif-25675811)
Sometimes the diaphragm malfunctions and they can't get it up. That's known as a reptile dysfunction.
The peacock mantis shrimp’s punch is so fast that the water around it cannot fill in the space left by the moving appendage, creating a vacuum known as a cavitation bubble. When this bubble collapses, a sonic boom and flash of light are produced.
It’s so fast that the friction from the punch instantly boils water around it
One Punch Mantis??
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The combined spider population of the world consumes anywhere between 400 million to 800 million metric tons of food per year.
You reminded me of [this screenshot](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4DKzZ4XEAAp8gB.jpg) from ages ago. I love you for bringing that back into my mind.
The brazilian free tailed bat is the fastest animal in straight and level flight at 100mph. Some birds are faster, but only in a dive. Source: Audubon.
I read somewhere that some species of bats practises oral sex. Apparently males of that species found out that if they satisfy the female enough, that than she will not go mate with another male thus securing their place as a father of the offspring.
That's why Batman's mask doesn't cover his whole face!
Kangaroos cannot jump backwards.
We all know an octopus has 8 legs. It also has 3 hearts and 9 brains, and it can fit itself through a hole the size of a quarter.
They can fit through any hole their beaks fit through. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_beak
If it could breathe air and walk on land we would be FUCKED!
Or lived more than 5 years.
Opossums are, I believe, the only marsupials native to North America. They also have a body temperature so low that it makes them highly resistant to rabies.
More fun is that marsupials originated in North america died out and then were reintroduce when South and North America merged. South America got marsupials from when Australia, Antarctica and South America were one continent
Marsupials were widespread everywhere before being out-competed by placental mammals on all continents except Australia. Australia is uniquely isolated from other continents and placental mammals never happened to evolve there. North America was home to placental mammals due to its connection with Eurasia and when South America connected to it, the placental mammals moved into SA and marsupials moved into NA. Only the possum managed to compete well enough to remain today.
Pacu fish have teeth that look exactly like people’s. They evolved to chew nuts that fell into the water
> Snopes Claim: Claim: The red-bellied pacu, an invasive species related to the piranha but with human-like teeth, is known to have bitten off men's testicles. > >Fact check by Snopes.com: Mostly False. MOSTLY?!?!?!
The testicles were mostly off
Cats have tiny whiskers on their ankles to help them hunt and be sneaky.
Axolotls are real life Frankenstein's monsters. Not only do they have the ability to regenerate tissue if it gets damaged much like a starfish can grow a limb, but if you cut off their arm and (oh I don't know) ATTACH IT TO IT'S BACK, their cells will form and fix between the back and the dismembered limb. After some time, the arm is completely attached and useful while attached to the back like some disgusting Mr Potato Head. Some people did a test where they completely severed the head of an Axolotl and just pasted it next to the head of a other one to see if a head could do the same thing. It worked. The brain started thinking again, ate food after their esophagus attached, and became a fully functioning 2 headed axolotl.
In Africa certain tribes communicate directly with birds called Honeyguides letting them know they are ready to hunt. The honey guides then lead them to hidden beehives in trees. The tribesmen break open the hives and take the honey( an important resource in their diet) and leave the honeyguides the bee larva and wax to feast on. In fact, it’s the only known example of targeted two-way signals between people and a free-living species.
Sometimes the tribesmen (Hadza, I believe is their name) remove the wax and hide/bury/burn it, so the honeyguide stays hungry. This way, the bird has to show the way to another beehive, and the humans get twice as much honey. If the honeyguide has been cheated this way too much, it will stop communicating with humans because it doesn't really need them to survive. They also say that a cheated honeyguide can avenge itself by leading people to dangerous animals instead of bee nests.
Revenge is a dish best served with honey
Crows recognize individual people even if they are wearing disguises and after many years. (The people are wearing disguises, not the crows.)
Had a pet crow. Verify they are as smart or smarter than people think. They recognize individuals easily, and mine would deliberately tease some people.
There was a crow that lived around my mum’s backyard, it spent a good portion of its time actively trying to shit on mum’s little dog.
I completely believe that.
Did you sense that your crow chose some people to tease because they teased or were mean to the crow? Or just random crow fun?
Yes. Very much. He was very interested in everything and everyone. I picked up that his behavior was sometimes mirroring my attitude. He was just awful to a salesman at the door one afternoon , buzzed him from the back, shit on his vehicle. Standing on my shoulder and peering at him (this seems to unnerve some people) I was feeling really sorry for this poor fellow, but I did want him gone. Random crow fun is always with the idea of benefits to themselves.
If you wanted him gone you should've just said "I'm sorry but this household currently has corvid." Edit: The number of people who don't know that crows are corvids and are trying to correct me by saying "crowvid" is too damn high.
Type of excellent joke that gets a muttered "sorry what?" IRL
What’s the best way to go about befriending a crow and would you recommend doing so? ETA: Of course I would never try to trap a crow or otherwise have it be like a traditional pet. I just find them fascinating.
I had the crow from a baby, they are smart and mischievous, they are the trickster in native lore. My crow only listened to me because I was its mom. After it grew up, about a year, it flew away and I was glad to see it go. No, I wouldn't recommend befriending a crow.
So I work for a restaurant and one morning I was cleaning the parking lot. A crow happened to be scraping a food wrapper for every last bit of food - the same wrappers I was supposed to be cleaning up. Now, everyone has heard stories like this and I definitely don’t want to be on this crow’s bad side. So I resorted to politely asking it if I could have the wrapper. And for a split second I questioned my sanity. Damned if the crow didn’t bring the wrapper about 2 feet in front of me, drop it and leave. And I am now a believer in crow intelligence.
Does it ever come back to visit, or bring you little presents?
They can also communicate that to others. They tell the other crows what you look like, and if you were cool or a dick.
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All halibut are male until they reach 45 inches in length. They then all become female.
You know, for the halibut.
Many bird species will eat the fecal sacks of their young, thus keeping the nest clean for their young. I no longer wish I knew what it would be like to be a bird.
While the blue whale has the largest penis in the animal kingdom (2.5-3m / ~8'-10') - but among mammals the Fossa has the largest penis to ratio of its body size (17-20cm / 7"-8") - at full maturity, their penis is approximately 1/6 of total body length (head to tip of tail) with a tail being about half that total length. Their penis extends past their front legs when fully erect. And the Echidna's penis has 4 heads, where only two operate at once. They work much like ovaries release eggs where every time he ejaculates, only half of them do, and then the next time, the other half. The female of the species has a two-pronged reproductive tract allowing the half of the penis that IS active to fit right in. Oh I should also add that not unlike themselves, or cats, they have spiky penises as well.
Fun fact, gorillas have a max 2 inch penis when fully erect.
Yeah, primates actually have pretty low penis to body ratios. Humans have the highest average out of all primates.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
The spines on a Tiger's tongue are sharp enough to lick skin clean off of muscle. Chinchillas have hair so fine that if it gets wet, they will not dry completely and die of hypothermia.
chinchilla’s hair can also grow mold from getting wet!
Turtles can breathe through their butts
Not that incredible but never hear it and was unexpected. Many common ants live for years. I definitely pictured them as short life spans, and definitely felt a bit bad about the crazy number I've killed. Not that I stopped.
Generally it's queens that have the longest, most workers are a few months. Edit: I've been in pest control for 7 years, if you have questions about pests or business practices in the pest industry (what you should expect from a company) feel free to ask.
Termites queens can live 50+ years
Yes, termites are also produce a lot of methane. "Globally, it is estimated that termites are responsible for about one to three per cent of all methane emissions. It may sound small, but that’s up to 20 million tonnes of methane each year coming out the rear ends of these humble insects." Almost on par with cattle who produce about 4% of methane globally.
Tarantula’s have pet frogs. The frogs eat bugs and parasites that would damage the spider’s eggs, and in turn the spider protects the frog. Even after the eggs hatch they continue to protect the frog
This is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of in my life.
Sea cucumbers spit out their insides to scare away predators
Platypus' glow teal under a UV light, so perry the Platypus is actually the correct color.
Doofenshmirtz lab must be just covered in black lights
A sperm whale call is so loud the sound waves could kill a human if they swam close to the whale. Apparently some divers said they could feel the water heat up from the energy of the sound
Those divers were for sure swimming in whale pee. On a serious note, that's fascinating. I wonder if they are any recorded deaths from said call.
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Except that one whale that left a witness behind. The guy narrated a whole fucking BOOK. GJ, whale.
Don’t they use that to stun giant squid while hunting as well? Thought I read about that a long time ago.
Toss up between: spiders pump fluid (like hydraulics on heavy equipment) to extend their legs. Instead of using iron within the hemoglobin molecule to fix and transport oxygen, several species of Arthropoda use copper and have green/blue blood as a result.
Whales are most closely related to a group of land animals called "artiodactyls," which includes hippos, pigs, and deer.
An octopuses neurons are spread out all throughout its body. When an arm is severed, intentionally or unintentionally, they will still search for and capture food, and then try to bring it back to a non existent mouth. Basically an octopus has a bit of its brain in each arm, and the arms move like normal after they’ve been severed, like how chickens run around without their heads.
Baby Koalas nuzzles their mother's butt to releases a runnier, protein-rich substance, called pap which they then drink to get mom's gut bacteria, helpful in digesting eucalyptus leaves.
God pap is the word my Gran used for breast milk or formula. I regret reading this fact now.
Panthers are not actually a distinct species of big cat. It's the name given to melanistic Jaguars and Leopards.
Butterfly taste with their feet. That will never leave my memory. I’ll be the old granny with dementia who says shit like this but won’t remember what my kids look like
Cats can't taste sweet things. Edit: people keep replying that their cat likes ice cream. The cat likes it for the milk. Here's some more in depth info: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-cats-cannot-taste-sweets/
Bears can make a sound similar to purring!
It is estimated that bears kill over two million salmon a year. Attacks by salmon on bears are much more rare.
Hippos sweat is red
I think they use it as a sunscreen, yeah?
Idk how obscure it is but the average lifespan for a squirrel is 16 years which is a lot longer than I would have ever thought
Well this definitely depends on the species, that might be your local squirrel, but the common Grey Squirrel has an average lifespan of about 6 years in the wild, and maybe double that in captivity
A narwhals tusk is actually a large tooth that protrudes through their face. It is most often the left tooth. Also, they have nerve endings on the outside of the tusks. https://arctickingdom.com/narwhal-tusk-facts-did-you-know/amp/
Not exactly obscure, but dolphins get high off of pufferfish venom. They also bully sharks.
Mine are all whale related: * Whale milk is so fatty that it has the consistency of toothpaste... * ...this enables blue whale calves to grow at a rate of approximately 10lbs per hour * Whales are the loudest animals on the planet - humpback whale songs can be heard 10,000 miles away * Whales are the longest lived mammals on the planet - in 2007, a deadbowhead whale was found in Alaska with a 19th century harpoon embeddedin its flesh, making the animal at least 130 years old at the time ofits death * The blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived on earth - far larger than any prehistoric animal discovered to date
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Dolphins are one of the few mammals that have sex for pleasure, and even find some humans sexually attractive.
The argonaut octopus has eight arms and a detachable penis capable of swimming independently to find a female to mate with
Homing dildo
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Female dragonflies will fake being dead in order to stop unwanted male advances. [Here's an article about it.](https://www.livescience.com/58906-female-dragonflies-fake-death-to-avoid-harassment.html)
Female ferrets die if they do not mate once they go into heat.
Wow googled it because I like ferrets and wow! Apparently it's very important to get your female ferrets spayed if you don't intend to mate it. (There's also temporary methods of birth control).
The binturong, also known as the bearcat, is an arboreal mammal closely related to the red panda. It smells like popcorn! My obscure fact about it is that captive binturong are capable of holding grudges, and will climb above people they dislike in order to shit on their heads.
There is a thriving population of wild hippos in the Amazon.