The animal kingdom is forever amazing us. Smarter, more beautiful and more unique than could possibly imagine, animal behaviour constantly fascinates us. To celebrate the often weird but always wonderful natural world, here are some funny, crazy and engaging facts about animals:
- Did you know that a shrimp’s heart is in its head?
- Thought that snail was dead? Think again. A snail can sleep for up to 3 years! Not even students can boast that!
- Koala fingerprints are so similar to those of humans that they have even confused crime scenes before.
- A slug has four noses.
- Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump. Celebrate your favourite part of the animal kingdom with a Bronze Wildlife Sculpture by Gill
- Fancy hypnotising a frog? All you have to do is place it on its back and gently massage its tummy.
- A sloth is slow, and so is its digestive system. It takes a fortnight for a sloth to digest a meal.
- Don’t eat yellow snow! In the Antarctic, 3% of the ice in the glaciers is actually penguin urine.
- A kangaroo cannot pass wind!
- One humble cow can provide almost 200,000 glasses of milk in its lifetime.
- When bats exit a cave, they always fly left.
- You won’t hear much from a giraffe. They have no vocal chords.
- An ostrich might have big eyes, but just one of those eyes is bigger than its brain.
- Orangutans are great climbers but nobody’s perfect. Around 50% of the orangutan population has fractured bones as a result of falling out of trees a lot.
- Trained pigeons are able to differentiate between artwork by Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso.
- Ever heard of a chevrotain? Don’t be fooled by its cute deer-like appearance because it has fangs as well!
- The stripes on a tiger are as individual and unique as a fingerprint.
- Baby elephants are known to suck their trunk for comfort.
- Sea Otters hold each other’s hands while they sleep to prevent them from drifting apart.
- The bite from a grizzly bear is strong enough to crush a bowling ball!
- An elephant shrew might look like other shrews, but they are in fact, more closely related to the elephant.
- The whitetail deer can reach speeds of up to 30 miles an hour.
- Prairie dogs greet each other and say hello by kissing.
- The blue jay can copy the call of a hawk so as to scare away other birds.