The Best Interesting Random Facts
The true dolphin is a mammal, any one of about thirty-three species of cetacean mammals in the family Delphinidae, characterized by a pronounced beak-shaped mouth. The dolphin on restaurant menus, Coryphaena hippurus, is a fish with gills, iridescent colors and firm flesh. It is called mahi-mahi in Hawaii and dorado in South America. The dolphin […]
Some sheep farmers keep female milking goats on hand to “nanny” lambs when sheep mothers either die or reject their babies. But the name nanny goat didn’t come from this common practice. In English, Nanny is a derivative of the common name Anne. Like jack and jenny mules, there are billy, short for William, and […]
Up until 1765, diners were offered only what innkeepers chose to serve. But then, a Paris chef named Boulanger began offering a choice of nourishing soups to passersby and on a board hanging over the door he painted the word “Restaurant,” meaning “to restore.” Boulanger was so successful that throughout the world dining rooms still […]
The word zoo is short for zoological garden, and is a facility in which animals are displayed to the public in enclosures, and often bred. Since ancient history, it was common for rulers to have collections of exotic animals in their castles, but that wasn’t exactly a zoo. Same thing for the gladiator fights of […]
We’re not sure if you really want to know why female dogs keep cleaning her puppies all the time. Puppies are completely helpless at birth, even more so than human babies. They’re not able to hear for two to three weeks because their ear canals remain sealed. They don’t even open their eyes for at […]
The kiwi fruit is not called kiwi because it has to go through a kiwi bird’s digestive system to sprout. The kiwi fruit isn’t even a native of New Zealand like the bird. The fruit really comes from southeastern China. It was called the Chinese gooseberry until it was transplanted to tropical places around the […]
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 […]
Mastodons were large tusked mammal species which inhabited much of the earth from the Oligocene through the Pleistocene era about 11,000 years ago. Mastodons first appeared on earth almost 40 million years ago, and the oldest fossil was found in the Republic of the Congo. While mastodons looked similar to elephants and mammoths, they were […]
New York is called the Empire State not because of the Empire State Building, the state had its nickname long before 1931, when that famous skyscraper was built. No one knows for sure how New York got the nickname, but some historians think the name can be traced to George Washington, who once said the […]
In 1972, the Blue Ribbon Shoe Company turned to the art department of nearby Portland State University for a student who could design a distinctive logo. Carolyn Davidson was chosen, and she set about the first real job of her career. Company founder Phil Knight asked for something both functional and stylish. He wanted what […]
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 […]
Have you ever taken a bite of a nice, shiny, juicy red apple, only to discover that you were not alone in enjoying your snack? Hopefully, what you saw was a whole worm, because you know what it would mean if you found only half! The worm nesting inside that apple did not have to […]
The koala is a small mammal that looks something like a cute little teddy bear. It lives only in Australia, and even if a few of these animals were brought to America, they wouldn’t live very long. The koala can eat only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, which grows almost entirely in Australia. The […]
Most of Australia’s 140 Species of Native Snakes are Poisonous. Of the world’s top twenty-five most poisonous snakes, twenty-one of them are in Australia, including sea snakes that are two to ten times more poisonous than cobras. Sea snakes are venomous snakes that have evolved from terrestrial ancestors, and live in marine environments for most […]
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, […]
Only 45 of today’s nations were independent before the 20th century. And only one nation can trace its independence back to before the time of Christ. Ethiopia, the East African nation formerly known as Abyssinia, has been an independent nation since at least the eleventh century B.C. The rulers of Ethiopia have claimed descent from […]
Bookworms must have had a hard time back in the days of clay tablets and scrolls. We can imagine them sitting impatiently on empty shelves, waiting for centuries, and finally cheering in the fourth century A.D. when somebody got the bright idea of sewing sheets of parchment together, creating the direct ancestor of the modern […]
The annoying housefly “bugs” people living in all states, except Alaska. Because of Alaska’s cold climate, flies cannot breed there. However, some houseflies have been known to visit Alaska, coming in on planes and ships, but they live only a short time and cannot reproduce because of the cold.
No one knows for certain where the game of chess was first played. Most likely, the game began in ancient India, where it was called chaturanga. This word refers to the four members of an Indian army: the foot soldier, the elephant, the chariot, and the horse. During the 6th or 7th century, the game […]
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 […]
To refresh your memory, Babe was a 1995 film that tells the story of a pig that wants to be a sheep dog. The film is based on the book The Sheep-Pig and filmed in Robertson, New South Wales, Australia. Babe was also a box office success, was very warmly received. All forty-eight piglets used […]
As you suspect, the noise probably has less to do with foraging, as the familiar fat-cheeked eastern chipmunk (Tamias stratus) can easily collect and store a life-time supply of food in a single season, than with protecting territory and warning off interlopers. Chipmunks have a variety of vocal sounds, not all of them translated by […]
A minute usually refers to a unit for measurement of time, but also refers to a unit of angle in astronomy. Around 2400 BC, the ancient Sumerians, who used six as their mathematical base, divided a circle into 360 degrees, with each degree subdivided into another 60 parts, and so on. The Romans called these […]
The tiger is a member of the Felidae family and the largest and possibly most dangerous of the four “big cats”. Tigers can be found in eastern and southern Asia, and is a predator and carnivore, reaching up to 11 feet in length, and weighing up to 660 pounds. One of the most recognizable features […]
Traditionally, sailors on a ship considered seeing an albatross to be a sign of good luck. Probably this came from early days of navigation, when sailors mistakenly thought the bird sighting meant that land was near. Little did they know that an albatross can live for years on the sea without setting foot on land. […]
Skunk spray or musk is not dangerous or poisonous to humans or animals such as dogs. However, to animals who depend on their sense of smell to hunt food, find and attract mates, or avoid predators, being sprayed makes them unable to pick up scents of any kind, leaving them vulnerable. There are 10 species […]
Although lemon enhances the taste of fish, that isn’t the original reason the two were served together. Six hundred years ago, lemon was introduced with fish as a safety precaution. People believed that if someone swallowed a bone, a mouthful of lemon juice would dissolve it. We now know that this isn’t the case, but […]
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 […]
The wolverine, also known as glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or its scientific name Gulo gulo, is the largest species of the weasel family. It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, and looks more like a small bear than other mustelids. Wolverines are aggressive, badger-like animals that can kill prey many times their size, and can […]
The Kodiak bear, also known by its scientific name Ursus arctos middendorffi, is also called the Alaskan grizzly bear. The Kodiak bear is the biggest brown bear species in the world. The grizzly bear is the second biggest living bear in the world. The mighty grizzly looks mighty puny when compared to the Kodiak bear, […]