50 amazing facts about animals

1. Elephants are excellent swimmers but they cannot trot, jump, or gallop.

2. Elephants have an exceptional sense of hearing. This is because their hearing receptors are not located only in their ears, but also in trunks that are sensitive to vibrations, and even more significantly feet, which have special receptors for low frequency sound.

3. 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread large land mammal after humans.

4. Lions are the only members of the cat family where males and females look distinctly different.

5. During a mating bout, a lion couple may copulate 20 to 40 times a day for several days.

6. The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.

7. Tiger paws are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.

8. There are more than 20,000 ants species living on our planet.

9. Ant queen can live up to 30 years, significantly longer than the ant workers who live up to 3 years.

10. Army ants can consume up to 100,000 prey animals each day.

11. Polar bears can breed with brown bears, and the result of this breeding are fertile grizzly–polar bear hybrids.

12. Fat polar bears rarely attack humans (it takes serious provocation to get them going), but hungry polar bears have extremely unpredictable behavior and there were some cases when hungry polar bear killed and sometimes even ate human.

13. The giraffe needs less food than typical grazing animals because the foliage it eats has more concentrated nutrition and it has a more efficient digestive system compared to other grazing animals.

14. Giraffe, in average, sleeps less than 2 hours per day.

15. The DNA of gorillas is between 95 and 99% the same as ours.

16. Almost all gorillas have the same blood type (B).

17. Cheetah is the fastest land animal. Adult cheetah can reach speeds between 112 and 120 km/h (70 and 75 mph).

18. Cheetah can purr but not roar like lions and tigers can.

19. The cheetah kills its prey by tripping it during the chase, then biting it on the underside of the throat to suffocate it.

20. Some dolphin species have up to 250 teeth.

21. Mosquitoes transmit disease to more than 700 million people annually in Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico and much of Asia with millions of resulting deaths. At least 2 million people annually die of these diseases.

22. There are many scientists who believe that eradicating mosquitoes would not have serious consequences for any ecosystem.

23. All bee species are non-aggressive if undisturbed and many cannot sting at all.

24. There are over over 100,000 wasp species in the world.

25. Hamsters are nearsighted and colorblind but they do have an acute sense of smell and can hear extremely well.

26. Rats are edible by humans, for instance rat meat makes up half the locally produced meat consumed in Ghana,.

27. Mice have poor eyesight but an excellent sense of hearing and smell.

28. Scientists estimate that the largest dinosaurs may have weighed 80,000 to 100,000 kilograms.

29. The smallest dinosaurs known were about the size of a chicken, if not smaller.

30. At this moment there are around 1500 named dinosaur species.

31. Flies consume only liquid food because they have no teeth or any other organ that would allow them to eat solid food.

32. Fly has lifespan of only few days.

33. One hornet can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense, which can be highly dangerous to humans.

34. Hyenas have very powerful digestive system with highly acidic fluids which makes them capable of eating and digesting their entire prey, including skin, teeth, horns and bones.

35. Tasmanian devil can eat up to 40% of their body weight in just 30 minutes.

36. Blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed on Earth, at 35 m (115 ft) in length and weighing incredible 150 tonnes.

37. Whales are mammals so they need to sleep but their sleeping differs from other mammals, it is believed that only one hemisphere of the whale's brain sleeps at a time, so they rest but are never completely asleep.

38. Some whale species have lifespan longer than 100 years.

39. Killer whales or orcas are highly social animals with sophisticated hunting techniques as they usually hunt in groups similar to wolf packs.

40. Wolfs have an excellent stamina, and can run in continuation for more than 20 minutes. Their maximum speed is around 40 miles per hour.

41. Fox can be domesticated, the best example to this was the Russian Silver Fox that was domesticated after nearly 50 years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia.

42. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, which they use for scanning the area for possible predators.

43. Rabbits are extremely reproductive, in just one season a single female rabbit can produce as many as 800 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

44. The smallest snake in the world has length of only 4 inches while the longest can be more than 10 meters long.

45. Snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces so they must swallow prey whole.

46. The inland taipan is by far the most venomous snake on Earth, a single bite from this snake has enough poison to kill more than one hundred adult humans.

47. Crocodiles are among the oldest animals on our planet, it is believed that they have been on our planet for more than 200 millions years, for comparison dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.

48. Crocodiles have by far the strongest bite of all animals, around 15 times more powerful than great white shark.

49. Sharks may have up to 3000 teeth at one time. Their teeth are not able to chew food, but only to tear it into mouth-sized pieces, and are replaceable.

50. When penguin mother loses a chick, she sometimes attempts to "steal" another mother's chick but this is rarely successful because not only does the real mother defend her chick but also because other females in vicinity assist the defending mother in keeping her chick.