I LOVE IT WHEN people talk about how humans sit at the top of the food chain. You often hear this proclamation when the subject of vegetarianism or PETA comes up and people feel the need to defend their flesh-eating ways. I LOVE IT WHEN people talk about how humans sit at the top of the food chain. You often hear this proclamation when the subject of vegetarianism or PETA comes up and people feel the need to defend their flesh-eating ways.
“Why shouldn’t we eat meat?” they will say. “After all, we are at the top of the food chain.” Right—we conquered the mighty chicken! How hard is that? They can’t even fly. And cows. Ever seen a cow run? Neither have I.
Go over to Africa and hang out with the lions and hippos for a few weeks, or with the grizzlies up in Alaska, or the great white sharks off the coast of South Africa. Then come back to me and let’s talk about the food chain. Oh, wait, you can’t—you’ll be dead.
FACT 511 
Nile crocodiles, the largest in Africa, can grow up to 20 feet and 1,650 pounds.
FACT 512 Nile crocs are estimated to kill as many as two hundred people every year.
FACT 513 After infant Azaria Chamberlain was allegedly taken from her tent by a dingo near Ayers Rock, Australia, in 1980, her mother, Lindy, was convicted of the child’s murder. Chamberlain served four years in prison before her conviction was overturned after a piece of Azaria’s clothing was found in a dingo den near the site of her disappearance.
FACT 514 In 2001, a nine-year-old boy was attacked and killed by two dingoes on Fraser Island, Australia.
FACT 515 While piranhas aren’t quite the vicious man-eaters of myth, attacks on humans by these fierce fish are increasing in frequency, often resulting in lost fingers or toes.
FACT 516 In September 2011, more than one hundred swimmers at a popular lake in Brazil were attacked by piranhas, many requiring hospital treatment for their injuries.
FACT 517 When an aquarium in Wales went to great lengths to acquire a male and a female piranha (piranhas are illegal to import in most parts of the world, including Britain) in hopes that the two would mate, the female ate her potential suitor. I can’t decide if that’s the ultimate compliment or the ultimate rejection.
FACT 518 The largest brown bear species, the Kodiak, can weigh up to 1,700 pounds and rivals the polar bear as the world’s largest land-based predator.
FACT 519 A type of brown bear, the grizzly is an omnivore that can grow up to eight feet tall and eight hundred pounds.
FACT 520 Brown bear attacks often result in serious injury and, in some cases, death.
FACT 521 Bears kill an average of two people per year in North America. The majority of fatalities result from humans coming between a mother and her cubs.
FACT 522 A brown bear’s physical strength is so great that a single bite or swipe can be deadly. Some human victims’ heads have been completely crushed by a bear bite.
FACT 523 In July 2011, a tourist at Yellowstone Park was killed when he and his wife surprised a mother grizzly bear while hiking. The bear charged as they tried to leave the area, killing the man. His wife played dead and escaped without serious injury.
FACT 524 In 2003, bear activist Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and eaten by grizzly bears in Katmai National Park, Alaska. The two had spent several months in the bush and were scheduled to leave the next day.
FACT 525 The great white shark is the largest predatory fish on earth, averaging fifteen feet in length, though specimens exceeding twenty feet and weighing five thousand pounds have been recorded.
FACT 526 As many as half of the one-hundred-plus annual shark attacks worldwide are attributable to great whites.
FACT 527 The United States has more reported shark attacks than any other country, with a total of 1,049 attacks—49 fatal—from 1670 to 2009.
FACT 528 As of 2009, the International Shark Attack File had recorded a total of 2,251 attacks worldwide since 1580, with more than 20 percent of them resulting in fatalities.
FACT 529 More recorded shark attacks have occurred in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, than anywhere else, earning it the title of “shark bite capital of the world.” I wonder if they put that on a bumper sticker.
FACT 530 When emus began destroying thousands of acres of wheat crops in Western Australia after World War I, the government ordered the military to use machine guns to cull the hungry birds’ massive numbers.
FACT 531 The box jellyfish is equipped with about five thousand stinging cells that pack the most deadly venom in the animal kingdom.
FACT 532 In 1898, a pair of lions known as the Tsavo Man-Eaters killed a reported 135 people working on a railroad in Kenya.
FACT 533 The venomous bite of the brown recluse spider can lead to necrosis (skin tissue death).
FACT 534 Though vampire bats feed primarily on the blood of cattle and horses, they will attack humans.
FACT 535 The Venus flytrap catches its prey in a tenth of a second but takes ten days to fully digest its unfortunate meal.
FACT 536 The largest manta ray ever recorded was more than twenty-five feet wide.
FACT 537 When faced with a predator, the 1,500-pound cape buffalo will charge head-on, leading with its two big, sharp horns.
FACT 538 A master of concealment, the stone fish lives in coastal areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Step on it and you can get a sting from one or more of its venomous spines, which cause excruciating pain and, in some cases, death.
FACT 539 The Inland Taipan in the most venomous land snake in the world, injecting its victims with poison fifty times more toxic than that of a cobra.
FACT 540 The Portuguese Man-of-War is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, a colony of organisms working together. With tentacles up to 165 feet long, the Man-of-War’s sting can kill a human.
FACT 541 At a weight of up to eight thousand pounds, the hippopotamus is the heaviest land mammal after the elephant, but it can gallop at 18 mph.
FACT 542 The hippopotamus is one of Africa’s most dangerous animals. Extremely aggressive, unpredictable and unafraid of humans, hippos will upend boats without provocation and bite occupants with their huge sharp teeth.
FACT 543 The hippopotamus’s canine teeth and incisors grow continuously, with canines reaching twenty inches (fifty-one centimeters) in length.
FACT 544 Most human deaths by hippopotamus occur when the victim gets between the animal and deep water or between a mother and her calf.
FACT 545 Many famous African explorers and hunters, such as Livingstone, Stanley, Burton and more, had boating mishaps with hippos and considered them to be dangerous beasts.
FACT 546 In the early 1970s, while hunting near the shores of Lake Rukwa, Tanzania, a hunter was killed when a bull hippo turned over his canoe and bit off his head and shoulders.
FACT 547 Estaurine crocodiles are the most prolific man-eaters on earth, killing approximately two thousand people a year.
FACT 548 On the night of February 19, 1945, crocodiles were responsible for perhaps the most devastating animal attack on humans in recorded history, reportedly feasting on retreating Japanese troops in a swampy area off the coast of modern-day Burma. Of one thousand soldiers, only twenty were found alive the next morning.
FACT 549 With ten arms and a body that can reach up to sixty feet in length, the giant squid is a carnivorous predator. One notable incident occurred on March 25, 1941, when a survivor of the sunken British ship Britannia was pulled under water and presumably killed by a giant squid.
FACT 550 A male squid will sometimes eat the female after mating.
FACT 551 Squids can fly: they are able to propel themselves out of the water in the same way they swim, by forcing water through their bodies at high velocity.
FACT 552 Squid can propel themselves in flight to distances of up to 164 feet.
FACT 553 The world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon can reach ten feet in length and weigh more than three hundred pounds. It is the top predator on the Indonesian islands where it lives.
FACT 554 The Komodo dragon’s diet normally consists of deer, wild goats and pigs, but the animal will eat anything it can catch, including humans.
FACT 555 Komodo dragons devour their prey completely, including the bones. After a French tourist was killed in 1986 by a Komodo, the only evidence left of him was his bloodstained shoes.
FACT 556 
A cat’s nose pad is as unique as a human fingerprint. No two nose prints are identical. I think I saw this on CCSI (Cat Crime Scene Investigation).
FACT 557 In the animal kingdom, a cat’s intelligence is surpassed only by that of monkeys and chimps. If cats ever figure out how to fling their poop, we’re in big trouble.
FACT 558 A cat’s hearing is much stronger and more sensitive than a human’s or a dog’s. Humans can only hear sounds up to 20 khz, but a cat can hear up to 65 khz.
FACT 559 A cat’s sense of smell is fourteen times stronger than a human’s.
FACT 560 Every year, nearly four million cats are eaten in Asia.
FACT 561 The ancient Egyptians were not the first to domesticate cats. The oldest known pet cat was recently found in a 9,500-year-old grave in Cyprus, predating Egyptian art depicting cats by 4,000 years or more.
FACT 562 Cats were associated with witchcraft in the Middle Ages. On holy days, Europeans would throw the animals from church towers or into bonfires. Sometimes they did it on other days, too, just for fun.
FACT 563 The first cat in space was launched by France in 1963. Felicette (aka “Astrocat”) had electrodes implanted in her brain to send neurological signals back to Earth. She survived the trip.
FACT 564 Approximately forty thousand Americans are bitten by cats every year.
FACT 565 A cat can travel at a top speed of approximately 31 mph (49 km) over a short distance. When spun by the tail and flung.
FACT 566 Black cats are considered good luck in Britain and Australia.
FACT 567 A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single bound.
FACT 568 The largest known litter of cats ever produced was nineteen kittens.
FACT 569 The heaviest cat on record was a forty-seven-pound tabby (flabby?) from Queensland, Australia, that died in 1986 at age ten.
FACT 570 A cat typically can live up to 20 years, which is equivalent to about 96 human years. The oldest cat on record died in 2005 at the age of 38, or 169 in human years.
FACT 571 In 1888, more than three hundred thousand mummified cats were found in an Egyptian cemetery. They were used as fertilizer by farmers in England and the United States.
FACT 572 How do lost cats find their way home? Experts think they either use the angle of the sunlight or have magnetized cells in their brains that act as compasses.
FACT 573 The world’s rarest coffee, Kopi Luwak, is made from the dung of Indonesian wildcats and sells for $500 a pound. Guess what it tastes like?
FACT 574 In just seven years, a single pair of cats and their offspring could produce a whopping 420,000 kittens.
FACT 575 Cats spend nearly a third of their waking hours cleaning themselves.
FACT 576 The earliest ancestor of the modern cat lived about 30 million years ago.
FACT 577 Cats are extremely sensitive to vibrations; some believe they can detect earthquake tremors ten or fifteen minutes before humans. But do they warn us? Of course not. They’re cats, and cats are assholes.
FACT 578 There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world, with around forty recognized breeds.
FACT 579 There are as many as 60 million feral cats in the United States alone.
FACT 580 In the central provinces of India, leopards will enter native huts to find their prey. One, known as the Panawar Man-eater, is believed to have killed four hundred people.
FACT 581 In October 1943, a lone lion was shot in what is now Zambia after it had killed forty people.
FACT 582 Pumas have been known to catch prey seven to eight times their size.
FACT 583 Since 1970 there have been more than forty puma attacks on humans; at least seven of them were fatal.
FACT 584 In 1994, two female joggers in California were killed and eaten by pumas.
FACT 585 In 1992, a group of children playing in a mango plantation in South Africa were attacked by a twenty-foot python, which swallowed one of them whole.
FACT 586 A tigress known as the Champawat Man-eater killed 438 people in Nepal between 1903 and 1911.
FACT 587 A relative of the squid and the octopus, the cuttlefish has ten arms to catch prey and a beak to inject its catch with a fast-acting venom.
FACT 588 The hooded pitohui is a South Pacific songbird whose skin and feathers contain the same poison found on South American dart frogs. The poison can be transferred to humans who handle the birds.
FACT 589 Abundant in the United States, the centipede carries venom that is not fatal to humans, though some large species pose a danger to children.
FACT 590 Some ocean coral are poisonous; the most deadly of these is the Palythoa. Its sting can cause chest pains, breathing difficulty, racing pulse and death within minutes. There is no treatment.
FACT 591 Two species of giant catfish are reported to be man-eaters: the wels in Europe and the goonch in Asia.
FACT 592 Scientists believe male bottlenose dolphins, which live in shallow waters around the world, can be incited to attack young girls because of the strong hormones they release.
FACT 593 The slow loris is an adorable but deadly primate that emits toxins from its elbows, making it one of the only poisonous mammals in the world.
FACT 594 The slow loris takes toxin in its mouth just before it bites. In humans, the bite can cause anaphylactic shock and death.
FACT 595 Giant anteaters will attack when threatened, and have extremely sharp four-inch claws that can kill a human with one swipe.
FACT 596 When its territory is threatened, the giant anteater can fight off the fiercest predators, including pumas and jaguars.
FACT 597 With exceptionally strong jaws and long teeth, leopard seals are top predators in the Antarctic food chain and have been reported to hunt humans.
FACT 598 The stingray’s barbed tail delivers mild venom that typically causes little more than pain in its victims, but a sting can kill if the wound becomes infected or if the barb stabs a vital organ.
FACT 599 TV’s Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin died in 2006 after a stingray’s spine pierced his heart.
FACT 600 The ratel, or honey badger, earns its name by attacking beehives to feast on honey and larva, even as it is stung repeatedly.
FACT 601 The South Africans have a saying: “so taai soos a ratel,” which means, “as tough as a honey badger.”
FACT 602 Known for its fearlessness, the ratel will attack and eat almost anything, including animals many times its size, like buffalo, gnu and waterbuck.
FACT 603 The honey badger will also attack and eat poisonous snakes and insects. Its thick, loose hide protects it from bites and stings.
FACT 604 Honey badgers are aggressive when threatened, and have been known to attack humans and even cars. Nobody said they were smart, just fearless.
FACT 605 Honey badgers, especially wounded ones, will spray a foul-smelling discharge from their anal glands to repel enemies.
FACT 606 Because of its ferocity and thick, tough skin, the ratel has few natural predators.
FACT 607 The honey badger has a reputation for killing animals by attacking the scrotum until the victim bleeds to death.
FACT 608 The honey badger has powerful jaws and sharp teeth that can bite through animal hide, crocodile skin and turtle shells.
FACT 609 The honey badger’s skin is loose enough that the animal can twist itself around to bite an attacker even when it is being held by the back of the neck.
FACT 610 The ratel is a cousin of the equally fierce American wolverine.
FACT 611 Snakes make high-yield meals, and ratels track them relentlessly. Wherever snakes try to hide—in trees, in dense brush or underground—badgers will follow and attack. This includes lethal species like the cobra and puff adder.
FACT 612 In summer, snakes provide more than half the food a honey badger consumes.
FACT 613 Ratels have been observed taking kills away from lions.
FACT 614 In populated areas, honey badgers have been known to attack domestic animals such as sheep and goats, and can become a problem for farmers and ranchers.
FACT 615 A wild honey badger can live up to twenty-four years; one animal in captivity lived over thirty-one years.
FACT 616 An average male ratel can trot at six miles an hour and patrol a home range of two hundred square miles (518 square kilometers) or more.
FACT 617 To protect her cub from predators, a honey badger mother will move to a new den every three to five days, each a mile or more from the last.
FACT 618 Honey badgers find most of their prey underground, thanks to long claws that grow throughout their lives and enable them to dig exceptionally well.
FACT 619 Even if a ratel is bitten by a venomous snake on its head or another vulnerable spot, it can sleep off the effects of the poison with no long-term adverse effects.
FACT 620 Ratels have been known to remove the tongue, eyes and brain of prey.
FACT 621 The pufferfish is the second most poisonous vertebrate in the world and can kill a human.
FACT 622 Pufferfish toxin, which has no cure, paralyzes the diaphragm and causes suffocation.
FACT 623 The cone snail may look harmless, but this Indo-Pacific native uses a harpoon-like tooth to inject venom that paralyzes instantly and can lead to death.
FACT 624 There is no antivenin for cone snail bites.
FACT 625 The geography cone snail (Conus geographus) is the most venomous of five hundred cone snail species.
FACT 626 In some parts of the world, army ants are used as surgical sutures. The ant seizes the edges of the wound in its powerful jaws before its body is removed, leaving the head and jaws in place to close the wound.
FACT 627 Capuchin monkeys have been taught the concept of money. After researchers taught them to trade silver coins for food, the monkeys rejected higher-priced items for larger quantities of lower-priced snacks.
FACT 628 The monkeys were even taught to gamble; some learned to trade coins for sex.
FACT 629 A recent study found that chickens can anticipate future events and that they demonstrate self-control in the present, a trait previously attributed only to humans and other primates.
FACT 630 The finding suggests that domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, are intelligent creatures that might worry.
FACT 631 Elephants are frightened by pig squeals. Ancient combatants, like the Romans, used “war” pigs to scare off enemy elephants.
FACT 632 The invasive northern snakehead fish is a voracious top-level predator with no natural enemies, which can decimate populations of native fish.
FACT 633 Native to Madagascar, the aye-aye is an endangered primate believed by locals to be an omen of bad luck. It is often killed on sight.
FACT 634 Contact with the venomous puss moth caterpillar can result in headaches, nausea, vomiting, severe abdominal distress, shock or respiratory stress. Symptoms can last up to five days.
FACT 635 The gray wolf is the world’s biggest, most powerful dog. Wolves primarily hunt deer, moose and bison, but when wild supplies are tight, domestic cattle and sheep are easy targets—hence the wolf’s uneasy relationship with humans.
FACT 636 Despite its whimsical appearance, the male platypus can be dangerous to man. Hidden ankle spurs can deliver a venomous prick that won’t kill you, but will cause excruciating pain.
FACT 637 Platypus venom also causes hyperalgesia, a condition in which the body becomes more sensitive to pain.
FACT 638 Moose are among the most dangerous regularly encountered animals in the world. Though they typically avoid human contact, a threatened moose will charge aggressively and can cause injury or death.
FACT 639 More people are attacked by moose every year than by bears.
FACT 640 Armed with powerful jaws, sharp claws and a thick hide, the wolverine can take down prey as large as a moose and steal food from bears and wolves.
FACT 641 Elephants are among the most dangerous and aggressive animals in the world, killing hundreds of people each year.
FACT 642 A threatened rhinoceros can charge at speeds of up to 35 mph.
FACT 643 In 2010, a six-ton killer whale at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, grabbed a trainer by the hair and dragged her into the water, killing her.
FACT 644 The whale that attacked its SeaWorld trainer had been involved in two other human deaths prior to that incident.
FACT 645 Male sea horses, not females, get pregnant and give birth.
FACT 646 A scent released from glands in a squirrel’s foot helps it mark its territory.
