0
The number of times giraffes kneel (i.e. they never do).
0.0000000000002
You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only 0.0000000000002 grams of its spray.
0.15
The percentage of the African elephant’s weight taken up by its brain (that weighs 7.5 kilograms).
1
Hamsters blink one eye at a time.
1
Cheetahs make a chirping sound that can be heard one mile away.
1
A newborn kangaroo weighs less than one gram and is small enough to fit in a teaspoon.
1
The number of animals – apart from man – that can catch leprosy (the armadillo).
The number of animals – apart from man – that can stand on their heads (the elephant).
1
The number of kicks it would take a giraffe to kill a lion.
1
The number of breeds of bear with blue tongues (the Black Bear).
1
Ferrets have just one type of blood group – unlike other mammals, which have several different types.
1
The number of cats that can’t retract their claws (the cheetah).
1.82
When a giraffe is born, it has to fall some 1.82 metres to the ground.
2
The number of weeks for which sheep can survive buried in snow drifts.
2
The number of years for which a baby beaver stays with its parents.
2
The antler of a male moose measures about two metres across.
2
The number of mammals that lay eggs (the platypus and the echidna: the mothers nurse their babies through pores in their skin).
2
The number of hours, on average, elephants sleep each day.
2
The number of years for which the African elephant is pregnant.
2
The number of weeks for which the hamster is pregnant.
2
The number of dogs that survived the sinking of the Titanic.
2
Lions can’t roar until they reach the age of two.
3
The number of eyelids a camel has (necessary to protect themselves from blowing sand).
3
The number of days for which rats can tread water.
3
The greater dwarf lemur – as found in Madagascar – always gives birth to three babies (i.e. triplets).
3
The number of strides it takes greyhounds to reach their top speed of 45 miles per hour.
In India, the term ‘man-eating’ is only applied to tigers that have killed three or more people. Man-eating tigers are usually those that are too old to capture wild animals.
3
The baby caribou can outrun its mother when it’s just three days old.
3.8
The thickness in centimetres of a hippopotamus’s skin – almost bulletproof.
4
The number of knees an elephant has (the only animal thus endowed).
4
The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at one time.
4
The number of babies an armadillo has at a time (always all of the same sex).
4
A dairy cow produces four times its weight in manure each year.
4
The number of cat species that can roar (and they don’t purr): lions, leopards, tigers and jaguars.
The number of metres a jackrabbit can travel in one bound.
5
Skunks can withstand five times the snake venom that would kill a rabbit.
5
The woolly mammoth, extinct since the Ice Age, had tusks almost five metres high.
5
An adult lion’s roar is so loud, it can be heard up to five miles away.
6
The number of days a sloth takes to digest its food.
6
The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.
6
The distance in miles a cow can smell odours.
6
The number of distinctive sounds horses use to communicate.
7
A horse eats about seven times its own weight a year.
7.5
The speed in miles per hour a pig can run when travelling at top speed.
The distance in metres an Australian red kangaroo can jump in one bound.
9
The number of litres of water an elephant’s trunk can hold.
10
The duration in seconds of the average bout of intercourse between chimpanzees.
10
There are ten times more horses than people in Mongolia.
12
All the pet hamsters in the world are descended from one female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
13
Some dinosaurs had tails up to 13 metres.
18
The distance in feet pumas can leap.
18
The number of naps a rabbit takes a day.
18.5
The average number of hours sleep armadillos get a day.
19
The number of kittens in the largest cat litter ever recorded (although four were still-born).
20
The number of miles from which a polar bear can smell a human being.
20
The number of hours a day a lion sleeps.
20
The number of minutes a day a giraffe sleeps.
20
A lion in the wild usually makes no more than 20 kills a year.
20
The number of years a squirrel could live for in captivity. However, their life span in the wild is only about one year as they fall prey to disease, predators, malnutrition, cars and humans.
22
The number of hours a day a koala sleeps.
23
The amount of dung an average elephant produces a day in kilograms.
24
A farmer introduced 24 wild rabbits into Australia in 1859. There are now an estimated 300 million rabbits there.
25
The percentage of all the horses in the US that died in an epidemic in 1872.
26
Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.
28
The number of years on average naked mole rats live – longer than any other rodent; seven times longer than mice of the same size.
29
The oldest dog that ever lived was 29 years old.
30
Both elephants and chimps have around 30 different sorts of sounds to communicate different things to one another.
32
The number of muscles a cat has in each ear.
32
The common little brown bat of North America is, for its size, the world’s longest lived mammal with life-spans of up to 32 years.
34
The oldest age a cat has ever reached.
38
The length in centimetres of a bread knife swallowed by a 45-centimetre Collie/Staffordshire terrier crossbreed dog named Kylie. She swallowed the knife with the sharp end in her stomach and the blunt end sticking out of her mouth and lived to tell the tale.
38
The maximum number of kilograms of bamboo a day eaten by a giant panda.
40
You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36.
42
The number of teeth a bear has.
45
The number of minutes for which beavers can hold their breath.
45
The fastest animal on four legs is the cheetah, which can accelerate to 45 miles per hour in two seconds.
45
The weight in kilograms of an elephant’s ear.
46
The highest in inches a rabbit has ever jumped.
47
The speed in miles per hour rabbits have been known to reach.
The length in centimetres of a giraffe’s tongue, which it uses to clean its ears.
50
The number of sheep faces a sheep can remember.
50
The number of hours it takes for a snake to digest a frog.
61
The maximum speed (mph) a pronghorn antelope can run at.
62
The oldest horse in the world – Billy, a barge horse – lived to be 62 years. Horses generally live on average between 20 and 25 years.
67
The number of African elephants that would equal the weight of a Boeing 747.
70
The percentage of an elephant that is water.
75
The length of tunnel in metres a mole can dig in a single night.
The percentage of its own weight that a bat can eat in a single evening.
80
The percentage of their vocalizations that hippopotamuses do underwater.
90
The percentage of the hunting that the female – rather than the male – lion does.
90
The approximate weight in kilograms of a giraffe when born.
95
The percentage of the world’s laboratory mice that are descended from mice born in the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.
98
The percentage of DNA that chimpanzees and humans have in common.
99.9
The percentage of all the animal species that have ever lived on Earth that were extinct before the coming of man.
100
The number of vocal sounds cats have in excess of (dogs only have about ten).
100
The number of babies one mouse can give birth to in a year.
100
Approximately, the amount of blood in gallons an elephant has.
The number of endangered mammals in Indonesia – more than any other country (followed by India, China and Brazil).
150
There are more than 150 breeds of horses in the world. With some 11 million horses within its borders, China has more horses than any other country.
160
The number of times per minute anteaters can stick out their tongues.
190
The rate at which a hedgehog’s heart beats per minute. This drops to 20 beats per minute during hibernation.
200
The amount of food in kilos an African elephant can eat per day. Their diet consists of twigs, leaves, grasses and fruit.
200
The number of trees a beaver can chop down in a year.
205
The number of bones in a horse.
225
The number of bones in a mouse.
258
The range of genetic diseases cats can suffer from.
The breaths per second a dormouse breathes before going into its winter hibernation.
273
The number of hedgehogs killed on British roads on an average day. This may explain why hedgehog numbers have declined by about a third in the past decade.
300
The number of people injured in an average year in half a million car accidents involving animals – killing 30,000 of them in the process – most of them are deer.
345
The number of squirts it takes on average to yield a gallon of milk from a cow’s udder.
500
The amount in litres of methane gas a cow produces a day.
500
The individual hair of a chinchilla is so fine that 500 of them equal the thickness of a single human hair.
500
The ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the cat.
500
The approximate number of spines on a hedgehog.
The number of bugs per hour a bat eats through the night every night.
650
The number of times a minute the heart of a mouse beats.
1,000
Koko, a gorilla born at San Francisco Zoo in 1971, mastered up to 1,000 words in sign language.
1,000
There are fewer than 1,000 Bactrian camels left in the wild.
1,700
Represents rodents as the largest order of mammals. Bats are second with about 950 species.
2,080
The number of warren exits found in a single colony housing 407 rabbits – sociable creatures often found living in large groups in underground burrows.
4,000
The number of years since the last new animal was domesticated.
7,000
By the age of six months, a baby pig will have increased its birth weight 7,000 times.
10,000
The number of insects a single toad can eat in the course of a summer.
Two rats can become the progenitors of 15,000 rats in less than a year.
30,000
The approximate number of ants the South American giant anteater eats per day.
30,000
The approximate number of quills on the average porcupine.
35,000
The estimated number of stray dogs in Moscow (some of which live in its underground stations).
40,000
The number of muscles in an elephant’s trunk (there are no bones).
110,000
The number of venom extractions from the coral snake it would take to fill a one-litre container.
200,000
The number of glasses of milk a cow gives in her lifetime.
400,000
The number of farmed foxes in Finland – which is the world’s leading producer of fox pelts.
The number of years for which the first dinosaur – the Staurikosaurus – survived.
6,000,000
The number of cats in the UK. The most popular breeds in the UK are Persian long hair, Siamese and British short hair.
16,000,000
The number of animals that assisted the armed forces during World War I.
34,000,000
The number of kangaroos in Australia – some twice as many as the human population.
150,000,000
The number of years dinosaurs lived on Earth (that’s about 75 times longer than humans have lived on Earth).
