90 Amazing Facts About Animals That May Surprise You

Pets complete a home for single people and families. Like any type, all animals require care and love. Animals are amazing things; all of us are unique and sometimes very unusual in our behavior.

With an estimated 8 million species of animals on the planet, the animal kingdom is a fully diverse place. But while the breadth of earthly biodiversity may be well known, the incredible things our animal counterparts can do are often hidden to humans. The list below is a tribute to such facts.

At petshyme.com, we are fascinated by all things nature, and so we have put together a list of all of the very best and most interesting and amazing facts about animals we could find.

1. Ostrich can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.
2. The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants and is as long as three Greyhound buses.
3. An adult panda typically spends 12 hours a day eating and must consume 28 pounds of bamboo daily to fulfill its dietary needs.
4. Giraffe age can be calculated from its spots. The darker the spots, the older the giraffe.
5. At birth, baby kangaroos are only about an inch long, no bigger than a large water bug or queen Bee.
6. Pigs are very intelligent animals. They can be taught to dance, hunt for truffles, race and pull carts. They can be taught to play video games.
7. Blue whales are the loudest mammals, producing low frequency “pulses” that can be heard from more than 500 miles away.
8. To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, push your thumb into its eyeballs, it will let you go instantly.
9. There is an average of 50,000 spider acre in green areas.
10. Unlike any mammals, bear can see in color.
11. Starfish don’t have brains. Special cells on their skin gather information about their surroundings.
12. A dog’s nose is the equivalent of a human fingerprint: each has a unique pattern.
13. Giraffes only need 5 to 30 minutes of sleep in a 24 hour period.
14. It is illegal in many countries to perform surgery on an octopus without anesthesia due to their intelligence.
15. Lobsters, like snails and spiders, have blue blood due to the presence of hemocyanin which contains copper.
16. Cougar holds the Guinness record for the animals with the highest number of names, with over 40 in English alone.
17. Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans and share nearly 99 percent of our DNA.
18. A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night.
19. Kangaroo can’t jump unless its tail is touching the ground for balancing.
20. A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.
21. A newborn Chinese water deer is so small it can almost be held in the palm of the hand.
22. The mola mola, or ocean sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000! Eggs at one time.
23. Shark can lose 30,000 teeth in a lifetime. Most sharks have lifespan of 20 to 30 years.
24. The slowest mammal on earth is the tree sloth. It only moves at speed of 6 feet (1.8 meters) per minute.
25. With more than 80,000 arms, the basket starfish has the greatest number of arms.
26. The smallest fish in the world is the trimattum nanus of the chagos archipelago. It measures 0.33 inches
27. Male dolphins are called bulls, female dolphins are called cows and baby dolphins are called calves.
28. Generally, puppies can sleep around 18 to 20 hours a day during that rapid body growth phase.
29. Lions are the national animal of several countries, including Albania, Belgium, England , Ethiopia, Luxemburg, The Netherlands and Singapore.
30. There are more kangaroos than human in Australia. They are the national symbol of Australia and appear on postage stamps, coins and aeroplanes.
31. when horses look like they’re laughing, they are actually engaging in a special nose enhancing technique known as “fleheman”, to determine whether the smell is good or bad.
32. Elephants have incredibly poor digestion, with only 50% efficiency. as a result, they release an incredible amount of gas(methane) and produce around 250 pounds of a manure a day.
33. Rats multiply so quickly that, in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants!
34. The aardvark can eat up to 60,000 ants and termites in one night. This is largely thanks to its 30 cm long sticky tongue.
35. An average shark has 40 up to 45 teeth in up to seven rows. Sharks loose teeth regularly and can go through 30,000 teeth in their lifetime.
36. Sharks communicate through body language, some common communication involve zigzag swimming, head shaking, hunched backs, and head butts.
37. Great white sharks can detect one drop of blood in 25 gallons of water and can even sense tiny amounts of blood from three miles away.
38. The average dairy cow produces 90 glasses of milk per day, 16,000 glasses of milk per year and 200,000 glasses of milk per life time.
39. Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
40. An elephant can use its tusks to dig for ground water. An adult elephant needs to drink around 210 liters of water a day.
41. Sheep have excellent peripheral vision. Their large, rectangular pupils allow them to see almost 360 degrees. In fact, they can see behind themselves without turning their heads!
42. You can tell a turtle’s gender by the noise it makes. Male grant and female hiss.
43. Infant pygmy marmosets babble to develop their language skills, similarly to the way human babies babble.
44. In china, it is mandatory that cosmetic products are tested on animals while in Europe it is prohibited.
45. A “panther” isn’t a real animal. It’s actually a term used to describe black cougars, jaguars and leopards.
46. The deadliest animal in Africa is hippopotamus.
47. Heavily hunted animals live in Chernobyl. Because it is safer where there are no humans.
48. 1/3 of pet owners let their animals sleep in bed with them.
49. Humans have caused 322 animal extinction over the past 500 years.
50. African elephants have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom.
51. Alex, an African grey parrot, was the first and only non-human animal to ask an existential question: he asked what color he was!
52. The most talkative bird in the world is African grey parrot. One parrot could say over 800 words.
53. Most species of parrots can learn only 50 words.
54. A bird’s heart beats 400 times per minute while resting and up to 1000 beats per minute while flying.
55. Gentoo penguins are the world’s fastest underwater swimming penguins, can reach speeds up to 36 km per hour
56. Parrots name their children and those names like ours stick for life.
57. A species of Indonesian parrot called goffin’s cockatoo can solve complex mechanical puzzles.
58. The smallest bird egg belongs to the hummingbird and is the size of pea. The largest bird egg, from which ostrich hatches, is the size of cantaloupe.
59. An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while cruising at 25 mph.
60. 1 in 50,000 penguins are born with brown rather than black plumage.
61. Ostrich eyes are the largest of any animals that lives on land. Approximately the size of a billiard ball, their eyes are actually bigger than their brains.
62. Humming birds eat about every ten minutes, slurping down twice their body weight in nectar every day.
63. The normal body temperature of birds is usually 78 degree Celsius hotter than humans.
64. The ostrich is the only take bird that willingly care of other females’ eggs.
65. Chickens have over 200 distinct noises they make for communicating.
66. Prairie dogs say hello with kisses. Look at the picture; they’re exotic!!
67. California’s official state animal is extinct.
68. Leonardo da Vinci used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free.
69. Many animals have been reported to commit suicide, including dogs, cows, bulls and sheep.
70. Dolphins have longest memory in the animal kingdom.
71. The deepest animal ever found is a “devil worm” living 2.2 miles (3.6 kilometers) below.
72. Animals including pigs, horse, and even insects could be tried and convicted of crimes for several countries across many parts of Europe.
73. The animal in the fire fox logo isn’t a fox. It’s a red panda.
74. Charles Darwin ate every animal he discovered.
75. Humans are killing 1,776 animals for food every second!
76. Pope Paul VI claimed that animals can go to heaven.
77. The Chinese soft shelled turtle is the first animal known to pee via its mouth.
78. The last animal in the dictionary is the Zyzzyya, a tropical weevil.
79. The wood frog and other animals have the ability to freeze solid during winter, thaw in the spring and remain perfectly healthy.
80. Plants and warm blooded animals closer to the equator tend to be darker.
81. The longest feather ever seen was in a chicken in japan. Its tail feathers measured 34.7 feet (10.59 m) long.
82. An owl has three eyelids: one for blinking, one for sleeping and one for keeping the eyes healthy and clean.
83. A group of owl is called parliament, wisdom, bazaar or study.
84. The largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to 4m deep, 2.5 m wide, and 1 metric ton in weight.
85. An ostrich egg can weigh approximately 3 pounds. That is equal to two dozen of chicken eggs.
86. Adult flamingos are four to five feet tall, but only weigh between four and eight pounds. That is the kind of astonishing body density needed for flight.
87. When penguin mothers lose a chick, they sometimes attempt to “steal” another mother’s chick.
88. When a crow dies, the other crows investigate if there’s a threat where the death occurred, so they can avoid it in the future. by the way when i
89. wrote this one, I remembered Benjamin Franklin word “today is yesterday’s pupil.”
90. Magellanic penguins always return to same mate after solo journeys totalling 200,000 miles.

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