The Best Interesting Random Facts
How Fast Can a Housefly Fly and how quickly can a flea flee? So many questions, so little time. When you’re trying to catch a housefly, it seems like they are really fast and agile like a ninja. Seriously though, you could easily outrun a housefly, even when walking. Although its wings can flap 200 […]
Fleas are the best jumpers in the insect world. They can jump eight to ten inches high, many times their own height. The tiny flea is a parasitic insect, one that lives on other animals. It is best known for living on dogs and cats, but fleas also live on other animals, such as rats, […]
The eggplant is neither oval in shape nor white, and certainly bears no relation to the egg in taste or in usage. “Eggplant,” then, is a misnomer? Well, almost. The first eggplants to reach Europe during the Middle Ages were actually a rare white species, with oval fruits that closely resemble a hen’s egg. The […]
Toto in the movie The Wizard of Oz was a Cairn terrier. Snoopy was beagle which often battled the Red Baron. There’s no denying the strong bond between human and canine. Mark Twain once said, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” What […]
Domesticated sheep have descended from wild sheep native to Asia. Sheep are an important part of the global agricultural economy, but they have been replaced in most part by other livestock species, such as the cow, chicken, and pig. A sheep’s wool is the most widely used of any animal, and is usually harvested by […]
Actually, very few snakes have poison, or venom, with which to kill prey or attackers. Of the 3,000 different kinds of land snakes known to scientists, only about 250 of these have venom. This means that only about one snake in 12 is Poisonous. Of the snakes that are poisonous, many are either very rare, […]
The White Rhinoceros, also known as the Square-lipped rhinoceros, is one of the five species of rhinoceros that still exist and is one of the few megafaunal species left on earth. Found on the African continent, it is the most social of all rhino species, and has a wide mouth that is used for grazing. […]
The peacock’s feathers it displays to impress potential mates are not its tail feathers. The long colorful feathers that stand up are actually part of his wing feather system. Tiny muscles at the base of the quills pull each feather up and make them shake. The feathers bang against one another and create the vibrating […]
Chewing a cud is a process by which some animals, called ruminants (camels, goats, sheep, deer, and cattle), thoroughly digest their food. The cow, for example, has a stomach organized into sections to take care of hard-to-digest food. When the cow first takes in food, it chews it just enough to moisten it. Once swallowed, […]
Dogs, like all mammals, have belly buttons. After giving birth, the mother breaks the umbilical cord by chewing it, and then eats the placenta. The placenta is believed to give her nutrients and helps stimulate milk production. The umbilical cord dries up and falls off over a couple of days, but sometime it is eaten […]
A donkey and an ass aren’t quite the same thing. An ass is a smaller relative of the horse, with longer ears and a shorter mane. A donkey is a domesticated ass. So all donkeys are asses, but not all asses are donkeys. The word “ass” is much older than the word “donkey.” The Latin […]
Most birds of prey have eyes on the sides of their heads, but owls have large forward-facing stereoscopic eyes that enable depth perception necessary for low-light hunting. The large eyes of an owl are for acute night vision, and they are also like pair of sunglasses. Being nocturnal, much of their hunting is done at […]
Water moves continuously through the ocean in huge rivers called currents. Currents may flow on the surface of the ocean, where they are shallow, or they may flow far below the surface, where they are deeper. Ocean currents are set in motion by the wind. The rotation of the earth moves them clockwise in the […]
It is possible to cross a llama with a camel, but not easily. First, the basics. Camel sex is difficult, as far as these things go. The male can’t do the do unless he is all the way into the she-camel’s cervix, not just the outside. The female has to be totally receptive to sex, […]
Lobsters have blood that is colorless unless exposed to oxygen, when it develops a bluish tint. Lobsters are mostly gray, green, or brown when alive, but never red. Boiling them breaks down the pigments that color their shells. The most durable heat-resistant pigments are the carotin-based reds, and they are last to break down during […]
Many people use llamas for packing, and they are perfect for long backpacking trips. Because of the llama’s easy-going nature, many people are enjoying wilderness treks that they would not be able to with other pack animals. Most places don’t allow you to rent one of their animals without a guide and a specific trek […]
The lynx is a medium-sized wild cat with long ear tufts and a short tail with a black tip. It has large paws that help it walk in deep snow and has thick fur that make it appear larger than it really is. Lynx are usually solitary, but small groups of lynx may occasionally hunt […]
Tigers are pretty easy going about breeding in captivity and in the wild for that matter. Mating of tigers can occur all year round, but it is usually more common between the months of November and April. Enough tiger kittens are born in captivity that live captures are no longer necessary to keep zoos and […]
You would think Fruit Smack would have been a better name for Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins and his wife Kitty in Hastings, Nebraska, United States. Perkins wanted to do what Jell-O had done, so he kept concocting until he came up with a powdered concentrate for his fruit-flavored drink. He named it […]
If you have a sweet tooth, you should have been in Baltimore, Maryland, during the 1976 celebration of America’s Bicentennial. In honor of the event, bakers put together a cake that weighed more than 70,000 pounds. The huge dessert, the largest cake ever baked, contained some 120,000 eggs and more than 20,000 pounds of sugar! […]
There are two types of hippopotamus, the common hippopotamus and the pygmy hippopotamus. The common hippopotamus is about five feet high and fourteen feet long, and the pygmy hippo is about a yard tall and four and a half feet long. The pygmy hippo weighs only about 400 or 500 pounds, as opposed to the […]
Where owls make their nests depends on the owl. Some like trees, others like rafters in barns and attics, and still others make their nests in the ground. Burrowing owls, which live throughout the U.S., from Canada to Florida, usually recycle old, empty animal burrows instead of making their own. They’ve been known to inhabit […]
Ones of the most prominent features of the walrus is its long tusks, which are elongated canine teeth. The tusks of a walrus are present in both males and females and can reach a length of over 3 feet and weigh up to 12 pounds. Male walruses have slightly longer and thicker tusks, and use […]
The frisky little otter, who lives on the banks of lakes and streams, is not much of a worker, but is a great player. While its neighbor on land, the beaver, is busy building dams, the otter builds slides on snowy slopes for its favorite game – bellywhopping. The otter has a smooth stomach which […]
Braying is the characteristic sound made by donkeys and most mules. Donkeys use braying to communicate with other donkeys and they will bray more frequently when a new donkey is encountered. Braying usually lasts for twenty seconds, and may be written onomatapoeically as “eeyore”. Eeyore is also the name of the donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh. Braying […]
Frogs legs taste like chicken with a tad of fishiness thrown in for good measure. Think of it as “chicken of the swamp” with a texture most similar to chicken wings. Frogs legs are one of delicacies of French and Cantonese cuisine, and are also eaten in other regions, such as the Caribbean, Greece, Italy, […]
The peanut, also known as the groundnut, is a species in the legume “bean” family native to India, Africa, Mexico, South and Central America. The scientific name “Arachis Hypogaea” means “under the earth.” The name Peanut came from its appearance and is not an accurate label as the Peanut is not a nut but classified […]
A radiometer (also known as a light mill, light windmill, or roentgenometer) is generally supposed to illustrate that light has pressure. But they don’t. If a machine could be a con artist, this gadget would take the cake. You’ve seen them. They look like a light bulb on a stand. Inside the bulb, which has […]
The chop is English, in the sense of “chipped” or “cut,” but the suey is Chinese sui, “bits.” Like the term itself, the concoction or comestible is of mixed origin. As explained to us, forty years ago, it was first devised by a Chinese operating a restaurant in Brooklyn, who composed it of bits of […]
The Bald Eagle selects old-growth coniferous or hardwood trees for its nest, and these trees must have good visibility, an open structure, and be close to prey. It is also important that the area has large trees surrounding a body of water. Bald Eagles build the largest nests of any North American bird, and they […]