• The ant always falls over to its right side when intoxicated.
• Starfish don’t have brains.
• Turtles can breathe through their bottoms.
• Fish have no eyelids, as their eyes do not close.
• Seahorses are the only fish in which the head forms a right angle with the body.
• The pheasant originated in China.
• The arctic fox often follows the polar bear, feeding on the abandoned carcass of its kill.
• The stomach of a giraffe has four chambers.
• Baby squirrels are called kittens.
• A racoon appears to wash its food before eating it.
• The jaguar is the largest of the American big cats.
• The roadrunner is a member of the cuckoo family.
• The elephant is the only mammal able to kneel on all fours.
• The nesting site of penguins is called a rookery.
• Desert-living gerbils never need to drink, as they obtain all the moisture they need from the overnight dew on their food.
• The elephant is the only mammal able to kneel on all fours.
• The feet of the puffin are red in summer and yellow in winter.
• Coyotes mate for life.
• A female walrus is called a cow.
• A male guinea pig is called a boar.
• The Falabella is the world’s smallest breed of horse.
• Turkish van cats have a natural liking for water.
• A female mouse is called a doe.
• The dingo is the only carnivore native to Australia.
• In China the hedgehog is considered sacred.
• The Chinese crested dog is hairless.
• Dolphins are the only species, barring humans, which have sex for pleasure.
• The anal glands of the African civet cat secrete a strong-smelling substance used in perfume manufacture.
• The part of a snail’s body that remains inside the shell is called a mantle.
• The wolverine is sometimes known as the Glutton due to its enormous appetite.
• Lobsters are blue when alive and red when cooked.
• In ancient Canadian legend, the turtle was the oldest and wisest creature on earth before man came to the Americas.
• Monkeys fling faeces at each other when agitated.
• Ravens can learn to open a box to get a treat, and then teach others to do the same.
• Cockroaches can find their way in a dark room by dragging one antenna against the wall.
• A Brazilian MP has drawn up a new law to ban people from giving their pets ‘human’ names.
• Finches practise songs in their sleep.
• Crickets hear through their knees.
• A Chinese man has trained his pet dog to walk on its hind legs for up to five miles.
• The heart of a blue whale only beats nine times a minute.
• Baboons and chimps dig for clean water when the surface water is polluted. Chimps even use sticks as digging tools.
• A weddell seal can hold its breath for seven hours.
• Conservation workers introduced an exercise regime for giant pandas in Chinese zoos because they were too fat to mate.
• Turkeys were first brought to Britain in 1526 by Yorkshireman William Strickland, who sold six, acquired from American Indians, for sixpence each, in Bristol.
• The Basenji, an African dog, is the only dog that does not bark.
• One in three dog owners say they have talked to their pets on the phone.
• A Belgian company is producing ice cream specifically for dogs.
• A course teaching people how to perform the kiss of life on dogs has been launched in Chile.
• A church in Connecticut is giving Holy Communion to pets and offering them special worship services.
• Chimps live in groups that each has its own culture.
• The average American dog will cost its owner £9,000 in its lifetime.
• Only male turkeys gobble. Females make a clicking sound.
• The average pregnancy of an Indian elephant lasts 650 days.
• A geriatric dwarf mouse that lived at a university in Michigan became the world’s oldest after celebrating his fourth birthday.
• A Swiss woman is offering lessons on how to talk with animals for £360 a time.
• Cows drink anywhere from 25 to 50 gallons of water each day.
• The red kangaroo can produce two different types of milk at the same time from adjacent teats to feed both younger and older offspring.
• Firefighters in Florida are carrying oxygen masks for cats, dogs and even hamsters to help save pets suffering from smoke inhalation.
• A German basset hound with the longest dog ears in the world has had them insured for £30,000.
• Hard rock music makes termites chew through wood at twice their usual speed.
• Red squirrels are being given rope bridges to help them cross busy roads in Formby, Merseyside.
• A Michigan woman who runs a boutique for pets is stocking a special range of Halloween costumes for dogs.
• Domestic turkeys cannot fly because of their size and breeding but, in the wild, they can fly at up to 50mph over short distances and run at 20mph.
• The Giant African cricket enjoys eating human hair.
• Ninety-five per cent of the creatures on earth are smaller than a chicken egg.
• The first known ‘zeedonks’ were the result of an accidental mating between a male Chapman’s zebra and a female black ass (donkey) at Colchester Zoo in 1983.
• Ziggy, the largest and oldest elephant ever in captivity, was taught to play ‘Yes, Sir, that’s my baby’ on the harmonica.
• The Antarctic notothenia fish has a protein in its blood that acts like antifreeze and stops the fish freezing in icy sea.
• Goat’s eyes have rectangular pupils.
• The megalodon shark became extinct about 1.6 million years ago. Marine biologists have estimated the megalodon shark was double the size and weight of today’s great white shark.
• Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers.
• Sheep can detect other sheep faces in the way that humans do. Researchers claim they can remember up to 50 sheep faces.
• Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of
any mammal.
• When mating, a hummingbird’s wings beat 200 times a second.
• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
• The average American bald eagle weighs about 9lb.
• Robins eat three miles of earthworms in a year.
• The beautiful Cone Shell Molluscs are just 2in long but have a deadly poison-filled harpoon-like tooth that spears their prey, injecting it with lethal toxins.
• A study has concluded that if a woodchuck could chuck wood it could chuck about 700lb.
• Baby elephants can drink over 80 litres of milk a day.
• An experiment in Canada determined that chickens lay most eggs when pop music is played.
• A cow has four stomachs.
• Two dogs were hanged for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.
• All polar bears are left-handed.
• A mother shark can give birth to as many as 70 baby sharks per litter.
• The top speed of a pigeon in flight is 90mph.
• An adult crocodile can go two years without eating.
• Emus cannot walk backwards.
• The oldest bird on record was Cocky, a cockatoo, who died in London Zoo at the age of 82.
• A chicken’s top speed is 9mph.
• Both gorillas and housecats purr.
• Ostriches can run faster than horses and the males can roar like lions.
• Squirrels cannot see the colour red.
• If birds could sweat, they wouldn’t be able to fly.
• The decapitated jaws of a snapping turtle can keep snapping for about a day.
• Jackrabbits got their name because their ears look like a donkey’s (Jackass).
• Sheep can survive up to two weeks buried in snowdrifts.
• The last animal in the dictionary is the zyzzyva, a tropical American weevil.
• The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
• Armadillos can catch malaria.
• Baboons cannot throw overhand.
• Lions are the only cats that live in packs.
• To get a gallon of milk, it takes about 345 squirts from a cow’s udder.
• A warthog has only four warts, all of which are on its head.
• The penalty for stealing a rabbit in 19th century England was seven years in prison.
• Even bloodhounds cannot smell the difference between identical twins.
• Cows and cats both get hairballs.
• Camels are born without humps.
• Anteaters can flick their tongues 160 times a minute.
• Chimpanzees will hunt ducks if given the opportunity.
• Black sheep have a better sense of smell than white sheep.
• Whales and buffalos both stampede.
• A hibernating bear can go as long as six months without a toilet break.
• A bat can eat up to 1,000 insects per hour.
• Turkeys can reproduce without having sex. It’s called parthenogenesis.
• Snakes have two sex organs.
• Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.
• The English sparrow is not a sparrow and it comes from Africa, not England.
• One humped camels run faster than two humped camels.
• A blue whale’s testicles are the size of a family car.
• Skunks can accurately spray their fluid up to 10ft.
• Sheep snore.
• To maintain a chimpanzee in captivity for 60 years it would cost an estimated £200,000.
• An ant can detect movement through 5cm of earth.
• Lobsters like to eat lobster.
• The only time a turkey whistles is when it is panicking.
• A group of jellyfish is called a ‘smack’.
• Camel hairbrushes are made from squirrel hair.
• Sloths sneeze slowly. They also give birth upside down slowly.
• A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4ft child inside.
• A parrot that shouts ‘Show us your t*ts’ at women on board a Royal Navy ship is always taken ashore during royal visits.
• The Andrex puppy has met a waxwork copy of itself at Madame Tussauds in London.
• A dog just over 7in long and weighing 27oz has been officially confirmed as the world’s smallest living dog.
• Deer urine can turn blue when they become dehydrated in the winter.
• Cash-strapped bosses at Moscow Zoo are renting out animals for the day in a bid to boost funds.
• The London Zoo employs an ‘entertainment director’ for the animals.
• A German pot-bellied pig called Berta has passed an audition to star in an opera.
• A lonely and confused male flamingo has caused a stir at a Gloucestershire nature reserve by trying to incubate a pebble.
• Hook-tip moth caterpillars defend their territories by drumming out warnings.
• Chinese scientists are appealing to the Guinness Book of Records to recognize a 900kg pig which died earlier this month as the biggest ever porker.
• Fish are much brainier than previously thought – and can learn quicker than dogs.
• A Chilean doctor is using alternative medicines to treat pets and their owners for mental conditions including depression.
• A Brazilian vet is offering plastic surgery and botox injections for pampered pets.
• Two polar bears have turned green at Singapore Zoo as a result of algae growing in their hair.
• The world’s first restaurant for cats is about to open in New York.
• Moscow Zoo keepers are to fit televisions in the cages of their gorillas in a bid to make them ‘think more’.
• Rescuers did a microchip scan on a stray cat that was wandering the streets of Oxford and found it had been registered in the USA.
• Scientists say they want to send 15 mice into space to help prepare for possible human missions to Mars.
• A chicken farm in Germany is claiming a new world record after a hen laid a giant egg weighing 6oz.
• Conveners of an Australian agricultural show are so concerned at the rise of cosmetic surgery among cattle breeders that they have issued new rules forbidding it.
• A German businessman who trained his dog to do the Hitler salute was given 13 months’ probation.
• Croat farmers staged a beauty contest for goats in a bid to publicize the fact that traditional goat farming is dying out.
• A Catholic priest has started holding masses for pets in the German city of Cologne.
• A German zoo has scrapped plans to break up homosexual penguin couples following protests from gay-rights groups.
• A Brazilian seaside town has built two toilets for dogs to try to stop pets fouling the beach.
• If an entire family is overweight, it is likely that the dog will be too.
• Homing pigeons are becoming increasingly lost because of mobile-phone masts, say racing enthusiasts.
• A Japanese researcher claims dogs can sense earthquakes before they happen.
• A Brazilian man who bought a 6ft boa constrictor online faces charges after it was posted to him in a paper box.
• Ptarmigans help their chicks go out into the world by teaching them which plants are more nutritious.
• A goldfish believed to be the world’s oldest in captivity is still swimming strongly – 44 years after it was won at a fairground.
• A marathon runner became the first human to win a horse-against-man race in the event’s 25-year history.
• A Brazilian company is launching a chewing gum for dogs.
• The Amazon River is home to the world’s only nut-and seed-eating fish.
• An elderly elephant in Thailand has been given a new lease of life after being fitted with custom-made dentures.
• New Zealand has abandoned plans for a flatulence tax on animals in the face of fierce opposition from farmers.
• A sea-hare can lay 40,000 eggs in one minute.
• A three-year-old boxer is being dubbed the most allergic dog in the UK after being found to suffer severe allergies to grass, flowers, cotton, lamb, soya, white fish and most materials used in bedding.
• China has built a biscuit factory to cater exclusively for the nutritional needs of its captive giant pandas.
• British dog owners spend an average of £981 a year on their animals while cat owners shell out £476, researchers have concluded.
• A gozzard is a person who owns geese.
• A zoo in Russia is claiming a world record after a hippopotamus named Mary gave birth for the 24th time at the age of 47.
• The UK’s first canine classroom assistant has been appointed to a school in Derbyshire.
• Armadillos get an average of 18.5 hours of sleep per day.
• After giving postmen training in dog psychology, the German Post Office claims attacks on them have been cut by 80 per cent.
• A gym exclusively for dogs has opened in Santiago, Chile.
• When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
• A zoo in India is serving brandy to bears to keep them warm in winter.
• Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces are enough to kill a small dog.
• A flock of swallows have delayed more than 100 flights after taking over a runway at Beijing International Airport.
• A Canadian scientist claims to have proven that the world’s most expensive coffee really does taste better because the beans it is produced from have been eaten and defecated by a wild cat.
• Former First Division footballer, ex-Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough defender Craig Harrison says he had dozens of dogs on a waiting list after opening a hydrotherapy pool for overweight hounds.
• The UK faces an invasion of parakeets, with the wild population likely to exceed 100,000 in a decade, experts are warning.
• Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.
• An Essex man believes he has the biggest cockerel in Britain – a 2ft monster called Melvin.
• Farm animals have been banned from council flats in Kiev after a survey found residents were keeping more than 3,000 pigs, 500 cows and 1,000 goats.
• Mosquitoes have teeth.
• Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
• Scottish scientists have become the first in the world to breed a golden eagle chick from frozen sperm.
• A snake measuring more than 19ft long and weighing almost 16 stone was found inside a factory in Brazil.
• Polar bears’ fur is not white, it’s clear. Polar bear skin is actually black. Their hair is hollow and acts like fibre optics, directing sunlight to warm their skin.
• Italy has put border collies, corgis and St Bernards on a dangerous-dogs list that bans children and criminals from owning them.
• A Japanese department store cashed in on a pet boom by offering a special £145 New Year meal for dogs.
• Princess Tamara Borbon and her five-year-old Yorkshire terrier Bugsy were top of the bill at a canine fashion show at Harrods.
• Thailand’s prime minister has banned vagrant elephants from the streets of Bangkok in an effort to ease traffic chaos.
• Canada’s entry in the world’s most prestigious international art exhibition featured a video filmed by a Jack Russell puppy called Stanley.
• Trained hawks employed to keep pigeons from making a mess on visitors in a Manhattan park were grounded in August 2003 because one of the birds mistook a Chihuahua for its lunch.
• A British homing pigeon has become a star in the US after completing a 3,321-mile journey across the Atlantic.
• Giant rats have been trained to sniff out landmines in Tanzania.
• Most marine fish can survive in a tank filled with human blood.
• Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
• Poodles, dachshunds and Chihuahuas have strutted down the catwalk at a fashion show organized by a Tokyo department store.
• Some dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure, and even protect the child from injury. They’re not trained to do this, but simply learn to respond after observing at least one attack.
• Rats destroy an estimated third of the world’s food supply each year.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• International animal-rights groups are urged Thailand to ban orang-utan kickboxing fights being staged at a Bangkok safari park.
• A chain of gyms in the US has started offering yoga classes for dogs.
• Armadillos breed in July, but get pregnant in November after delaying implantation. This allows the young to be born during the spring when there is an abundance of food.
• The world’s smallest winged insect is the Tanzanian parasitic wasp. It’s smaller than the eye of a housefly.
• The world’s only robotic swimming shark is moving into an aquarium with four live sharks. The 2m-long creature called Roboshark2 will spend up to three years alongside sand tiger sharks at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth.
• In Tokyo, they sell wigs for dogs.
• Tarantulas can go up to two years without eating or drinking. Sea turtles can go up to 35 years without eating or drinking.
• Manatees possess vocal chords that give them the ability to speak like humans, but they don’t do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
• Homing pigeons use roads where possible to help find their way home.
• Authorities in New Delhi are planning to export cow dung and urine to the United States. The dung will be processed into compost while the urine will be converted into a biopesticide.
• Engineers in the East Midlands are fitting rubber boots to the top of pylons to save squirrels from electrocution and keep the power flowing.