The Best Interesting Random Facts
Llamas are not too picky about their food and will eat hay, grass, and grain. Domesticated Llamas are usually fed a mixture of bromgrass hay, alfalfa hay and corn silage, and a llama owner has a wide variety of commercial and farm based food products to choose from. Young llamas, which are still growing, require […]
There are many legends about the invention of soccer, but most people agree that the game began in England. According to one legend, English workers during the 11th century were digging on the site of an early battle against Danish invaders, when they found the skull of a slain Danish soldier. The workers began kicking […]
Aspirin is the most successful pharmaceutical drug ever produced. Its main ingredient is found in the bark of the willow tree and was known as a pain reliever in 1500 B.C. In 1828, the ingredient salicin was isolated. In 1897 chemist Felix Hoffman developed a synthetic form, known as acetylsalicylic acid, at the Bayer factory […]
You probably have noticed that in every deck of playing cards, the ace of spades is different from the other aces. The central spade symbol on the ace of spades is bigger than any other symbol in the deck. And there’s a reason for it. In past centuries, governments in Europe always put a heavy […]
In the 1850s, when Levi Strauss ran out of tent canvas for the pants he was selling to California gold miners, he imported a tough material from Nimes in France called “serge de Nim”. Americanized, “de Nim” became “denim.” The word “jeans” comes from the French phrase “bleu de Gênes”, which literally means “the blue […]
Squirrels do indeed have a homing instinct. It is not well understood by science, but they will often return several miles. For example, an informal experiment was conducted at the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment in Prospect Park, which conducts extensive environmental education programs for school children and adults. Some years ago, a classroom […]
The phoenix never existed. It was a large bird, much like an eagle, written about in Greek mythology and based on ancient Egyptian legends. Only one phoenix was said to have lived at a time. This gold and red bird, always a male, lived in Arabia. Each phoenix lived for exactly 500 years, and when […]
We don’t know what the local aborigines thought when they first saw what they called a tambreet, or boonaburra in the Mallangong language. Although an aboriginal myth about how the platypus evolved has to do with a teenage duck disobeying her father by going ashore and getting raped by a water rat. The name “platypus” […]
There are at least two stories about the origin of the word of the word blimp. One is that a British naval officer coined the term while trying to duplicate the sound the giant airbag made when he flicked his fingernail against it. The other story is that the early airships were marked AIRSHIP MODEL […]
Thousands of years ago, vast empires rose and fell in Egypt, Greece, Italy, the Middle East, northern Africa, China, and India. Bold explorers from these civilizations, such as Pytheas and Hanno, ventured into unknown lands and seas. Most of them searched for new trade routes or places to settle. Today, scholars have limited knowledge of […]
The lowly, destructive termite has very little regard for royalty, and in termite colonies the king and queen are held prisoner. In most termite colonies, there are three classes, or castes, of insects. Scientists are not really certain how some termites develop into these three castes, but the millions of termites in each colony are […]
The hippopotamus, or hippo for short, got its name from the ancient Greek words ἵππος (hippos), which means “horse”, and ποταμός, (potamos), for “river”, and put together meaning “horse of the river”. The plural for hippopotamus in English is hippopotamuses, but hippopotami is also acceptable. A male hippopotamus is known as a bull, a female […]
Hippos spend the day in the water to keep their body temperature down, and to keep their skin from drying out. Each night, under the cover of darkness, hippos wade out of their pools and march as far as six miles in search of food. Hippos spend four to five hours grazing and can consume […]
Sharks are a fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly efficient streamlined body. The earliest sharks that we know of evolved from more than 420 million years ago, before dinosaurs even existed. Sharks have several sets of replaceable teeth, and popular species such as the Great White Shark are predators at the top […]
Blood is a bodily fluid that transports important nutrients and oxygen to the body’s cells, and transports waste products away from those same cells. In vertebrates or mammals, it contains blood cells suspended in a liquid called blood plasma. Plasma contains dissolved proteins, glucose, hormones, carbon dioxide, and blood cells themselves. The most abundant cells […]
A larger amount of gas can dissolve in a liquid when it is cold than when it is hot. Or as a chemist would say, the solubility of a gas in a liquid increases with decreasing temperature. But that’s how chemists talk. In practical terms, why does the carbon dioxide choose to leave the beer […]
The Ladybug’s name seems to be a case of insect sexism, either that or it was named by a drunk man. The alternative names in English are also feminine, ladybirds, lady beetles, and even, for some reason, lady clocks. However, merely claiming sexism isn’t that simple. During the Middle Ages, the insect-killing beetles were regarded […]
In 1923, South Dakota’s tourism board got the idea to carve western heroes Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and John Colter into a mountain to attract out-of-state tourists. They approached John Gutzon Borglum, who had just accepted a commission to carve Robert E. Lee on the side of Georgia’s Stone Mountain. Borglum hated the idea of […]
High up in the air above the treetops, the two Bald Eagle lovers look deep into each others eyes. They then suddenly twist around, locking their talons together and holding onto each other for dear life as they plummet to Earth, spinning, turning, and diving with wild abandon. At the last minute, right before the […]
Piggy banks are storage devices traditionally used for coins and are generally used by children of all ages. Piggy banks are usually made of ceramic or porcelain, and serve to teach children the value of money by encouraging them to save money. Money is inserted through a hole in the top and traditional Piggy Banks […]
For hundreds of years, wooden shoes, called klompen, were worn by most Dutch people for very practical purposes. Because much of Holland lies below sea level, there are a great many areas that are marshy and damp. It is from these areas that Holland, or its real name The Netherlands, meaning “low lands,” got its […]
On February 2nd each year, Groundhog Day is celebrated in the U.S. and Canada. The holiday originated as a Pennsylvania German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has its roots in ancient European weather lore, where a badger or sacred bear is observed as a predictor instead of […]
Toadstools that force their way up through asphalt are probably ink-cap mushrooms (Coprinus) growing on buried plant debris. They are pushing upwards because their stalks function as vertical hydraulic jacks. The upward pressure comes from the turgor pressure of the individual cells making up the wall of the hollow stalk of the mushroom. Each individual […]
No, people didn’t always sleep on what we would call a bed, and many people today still have never slept on a bed! Perhaps half of the world sleep on piles of rugs, or on mats or cushions. The beds used by the ancient Egyptians looked very much like couches, and were used during the […]
It’s sad but true, but the poor Hippopotamus is bearing the brunt of the effort to save the elephant. Currently, hippos are still threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat and ivory canine teeth. Since the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species officially imposed a ban on ivory trading in […]
Camels are very territorial, and if they feel threatened, they do spit, mostly at each other over food, but sometimes at humans if angry or hurt. Fair warning, if you do get caught in the crossfire, it can be pretty smelly, as camel spit consists of bile from its stomach mixed with saliva. Contrary to […]
Alligators, like many other reptiles, don’t have sex chromosomes. As a result, alligator gender isn’t determined by the interaction of the parents’ genes. Instead, it is completely decided by temperature. When it’s egg-laying time, the female finds a nice large area on the bank of her swamp and digs a large hole, up to six […]
The meerkat, also known by its scientific name Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal, and a member of the mongoose family. Native to South Africa, meerkats live about 12 to 14 years. The word “meerkat” means “lake cat” in Dutch, but the meerkat is not in the cat family and the name is a mis-identification. […]
Not all cats play with prey, most felines are fairly quick about killing so they can get proceed with eating it. A cat’s typical method of catching a big animal is to hold on with its claws while clamping its jaws around the prey’s neck to quickly break its spinal cord or suffocate it, smaller […]
Zebras and Horses can indeed mate and produce offspring, and they do this regularly. And Zebras can mate not just with horses, but with donkeys as well. Zebras and horses are crossbred, usually a zebra stallion with a horse mare, not just for curiosity’s sake but because they also make good pack animals. They’re usually […]