The animal kingdom is packed with behaviors, adaptations, and survival strategies that can seem almost unbelievable at first glance. From iron-armored snails and beer-drinking shrews to voting buffalo and seaweed-wrapping otters, these fascinating animal facts reveal just how extraordinary life on Earth can be.
Deep Sea Iron Armor
1. The Iron Snail inhabits the Indian Ocean at depths greater than 2,500 meters. It is the only known gastropod to possess a suit of scale-like armor. Its scales and shell are mineralized with iron sulfide, effectively creating an iron skeleton. No other animal is known to do this.
2. In 1926 a raccoon named Rebecca was sent to the White House to be served for Thanksgiving dinner, but the Coolidge family kept her as a pet instead.
3. Grape-Kun was a Humboldt penguin living in a zoo in Japan who became so attached to a cardboard cutout of an anime girl that he lived with it as his ‘waifu’ until his death.
4. The Bush Baby is named for its distinctive call, which sounds like a wailing child. That call inspired a myth about a creature that would kidnap children who wandered outside at night.
5. Female wallabies have been observed ‘throwing’ their joeys from the pouch when they are being pursued or feel threatened. This is a defense mechanism intended to ensure the mother’s own survival by sacrificing a joey.
6. A kinkajou, which is related to raccoons, can turn its feet backward so it can run easily up or down trunks.
7. Considered one of the most venomous animals on earth, the cone snail uses specialized teeth that function like a hypodermic needle and harpoon to skewer and can even pierce a wetsuit; scientists are researching its venom to produce a painkiller 1000 times more powerful than morphine and less addictive.
8. A chinchilla’s fur is so thick and soft that fleas attempting to live there will suffocate.
9. Trichoplax is an animal made of only a few thousand cells; it can regenerate from a very small group of cells, and if the cells are split apart they can find each other and join back together.
10. A panda’s gut is not well suited to digesting bamboo and can only digest 17% of the bamboo it eats; instead it is better suited to eating meat, like other species of bears.
Tiny Joeys First Climb
11. A joey is born extremely underdeveloped at about 2 cm long and weighing under one gram. Immediately after birth it climbs up the mother’s body into the pouch. The baby fastens its mouth to one of the mother’s four teats, which then enlarges to hold the young in place.
12. An elephant called Osama Bin Laden caused at least 27 deaths. After rampaging for two years the elephant was eventually shot, though some people doubted whether the correct animal had been killed.
13. African buffalo herds exhibit “voting behavior” to indicate their travel preferences by standing up, staring in a single direction, and then lying back down. Only adult females take part in this voting.
14. Some winter animal facts: hibernating woodchucks breathe only about 10 times an hour. Owls store frozen voles and sit on them to thaw and eat. Arctic foxes are thermoneutral down to -112ºF. Polar bears have hollow hair that channels the sun’s heat to their black skin. Black bears lose 40% of their pre-dormancy weight.
15. Baby otters cannot swim at first, but their buoyancy allows the mother to wrap the pup in seaweeds so it does not drift away when she needs to hunt.
16. Animals with four legs, such as horses and dogs, do not have knees that point backward. The joints that look backward are their ankles, and they bend in the same direction as human ankles.
17. The Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew survives almost entirely on the fermented nectar of bertam flower buds, effectively making its diet nearly 100% beer. This nectar can have alcohol levels up to 3.8%, but the shrews do not appear to become intoxicated.
18. Giraffes require only five to thirty minutes of sleep within a 24-hour day.
19. A camel is capable of drinking 53 gallons of water in three minutes.
20. Okapis possess 14-inch-long prehensile tongues that can reach and clean their own eyes and ears.
Rabbits Are Extremely Fragile Pets
21. Rabbits are such fragile animals that they can die from fright alone. Children under 12 should not have rabbits as pets.
22. After being struck by a car, a pit bull mix named Dosha was shot in the head by a police officer to end the dog’s suffering. At the animal control center, her body was placed in a freezer. Two hours later she was discovered alive. Dosha was taken into surgery and survived the ordeal.
23. Tigers are the only predators known to regularly prey on adult bears.
24. Because octopuses are highly intelligent, the United Kingdom has considered them honorary vertebrates for the purposes of animal cruelty laws.
25. Guard llamas do exist and they can tear an animal apart with their teeth and sharp nails. They are used to protect farm animals from coyotes and foxes. Most llamas also have an innate dislike for canines and will chase and attack such intruders with “extreme prejudice”.
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