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Index
Cover
Title
Contents
Introduction
Beastly basics
Animals must move, breathe and possess a head
Animals must have sex to reproduce
Two different species cannot interbreed
Complex animals have more genes
Fish were the first animals to leave the oceans
The first animal to leave the Earth was a dog
We’ve got animals well catalogued
Humans didn’t invent it
A muddle of mammals
All mammals are warm-blooded
Bulls are enraged by the colour red
Camels store water in their humps
Bats are blind
Lemmings commit suicide by leaping from cliffs
Humans evolved from chimps
Elephants use their trunks like straws
The lion is King of the Jungle
You’re always within 6ft of a rat
Porcupines can shoot their quills
Marsupials are found only in Australia
Curious diets
Pets’ corner
Dogs see only in black and white
One dog year is equivalent to seven human years
Dogs say woof
Rabbits should be fed carrots
A cat can survive any fall
Goldfish have seven-second memories
Feathered fallacies
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand
Penguins hang out with polar bears
A duck’s quack does not make an echo
Owls can turn their heads through 360 degrees
Turkeys come from Turkey
Magpies love to steal shiny objects
Touching a baby bird will cause the parents to abandon it
Pigeons are just flying rats
Bread is bad for birds
London’s parakeets were released by Jimi Hendrix
Just how wrong are the movies?
Reptiles and amphibians
You can get warts from toads
Chameleons change colour purely for camouflage
Boa constrictors suffocate their prey
T-Rex was the largest upright dinosaur, and other dodgy dino myths
Life aquatic
All sharks are merciless killing machines
Watch out for piranhas! They kill
The blue whale is the world’s largest living species
Whales and dolphins are fish
Octopi have eight tentacles
All eels are born in the Sargasso Sea
The horseshoe crab is a living fossil
Don’t mix them up
Creepy crawlies and minibeasts
Daddy longlegs are the most poisonous spiders
Earwigs burrow into human ears
Centipedes have 100 legs
Bees always die after a sting
All spiders have eight eyes
A praying mantis female will always eat the male following sex
An earthworm cut in two becomes two new worms
Other myths and misnomers
Are you pronouncing it wrong?
Let’s start a new wave of fake facts
Index
Acknowledgments
Copyright
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