CoolFacts--Animals--Mammals
- A camel's backbone is just as straight as a horse's.
- A deer cannot eat hay.
- A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.
- A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
- A ground hog breathes 2,100 times an hour, but it only breathes ten times an hour while it is hibernating.
- A group of goats is called a Trip.
- A group of hares is called a Husk.
- A group of rhinos are called a crash.
- A hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute on average.
- A mole can dig over 250 feet of tunnel in a single night.
- A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
- A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair.
- A rodents teeth never stop growing. They are worn down by the animal's constant gnawing on bark, leaves, and other vegetables.
- A single sheep's fleece might well contain as many as 26 million fibers.
- Anteaters prefer termites to ants.
- At birth a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.
- Australia has the largest sheep population.
- Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
- Bats are the only mammals that can fly.
- Between 1902 and 1907 the same tiger killed 436 people in India.
- Bulls are colorblind and will usually charge at a cape regardless of color.
- Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
- Dolphins can kills sharks by ramming them with their snout.
- Every single hamster in the U.S. today comes from a single litter captured in Syria in 1930.
- Frog-eating bats identify edible from poisonous frogs by listening to the mating calls of male frogs. Frogs counter by hiding and using short, difficult to locate calls.
- Fur seals get miserably sick when they're carried aboard ships.
- Giant flying foxes that live in Indonesia have wingspans of nearly six feet.
- Gorillas beat their chests when they get nervous.
- Gorillas often sleep for up to fourteen hours a day.
- In 1859, 24 rabbits were released in Australia. Within six years the population grew to 2 million.
- In 1978, more deer were killed by Connecticut automobile drivers than by Connecticut hunters.
- In the past 60 years, the groundhog has only predicted the weather correctly 28% of the time.
- It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels.
- It is physically impossible for pigs to look up in the sky.
- It takes a sloth two weeks to digest the food it eats.
- Jackals have one more pair of chromosomes than dogs or wolves.
- Jackrabbits can reach a speed of 50 miles per hour and can leap as high as five feet.
- Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
- Mexican free-tailed bats sometimes fly up to two miles high to feed or to catch tail-winds that carry them over long distances at speeds of more than 60 miles per hour.
- Mice will nurse babies that are not their own.
- Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes and man all have seven neck vertebra.
- Mongooses were brought to Hawaii to kill rats. This plan failed because rats are nocturnal while the mongoose hunts during the day.
- Next to man, the porpoise is the most intelligent creature on earth.
- One species of antelope, the Sitatunga, can sleep underwater.
- Porcupines are excellent swimmers, because their quills are hollow.
- Rat's can't vomit.
- Reindeer like to eat bananas.
- Rhinos are in the same family as horses, and are thought to have inspired the myth of the unicorn.
- Sea otters have 2 coats of fur.
- Seals must teach their young how to swim.
- Six bulls are killed in a formal bullfight.
- The average porcupine has more than 30,000 quills.
- The Blesbok, a South African antelope, is the only purple animal.
- The cells which make up the antlers of a moose are the fastest growing animal cells in nature.
- The cheetah can reach a speed of up to 45 miles per hour in only 2 seconds.
- The dolphins that live in the Amazon river are pink.
- The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump.
- The female ferret is referred to as a jill.
- The hippopotamus is the hogs largest living relative.
- The honey badger can withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill any other animal.
- The Kansas City Railroad use to stop their trains, in 1868, to allow the passengers to shoot at passing buffalo.
- The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.
- The lifespan of a squirrel is about nine years.
- The longest recorded life spam of a camel was 35 years, 5 months.
- The only female animal that has antlers is the caribou.
- The typical laboratory mouse runs 5 miles per night on its treadmill.
- The Weddell seal can travel underwater for seven miles without surfacing for air.
- The woolly mammoth had tusks almost 16 feet long.
- There is no record of a non-rabid wolf attack on a human.
- Tigers have stripped skin, not just stripped fur.
- To keep from being separated while sleeping, sea otter tie themselves together with kelp, often drifting miles out to sea during the night.
- When angered, the Tazmanian devil turns pinkish-red.
- Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth, and giraffe tails have all been used as money.
- Worldwide, bats are the most important natural enemies of night-flying insects.
