Amazing facts website


Amazing Facts archive


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dolphin
  • Dolphins sleep with one eye open
  • A dolphin has no jaw muscles for chewing
  • A tablespoon of water in a dolphins lung could kill it (Catton, Chris. 1995. Dolphins. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press)
  • The dolphin brain has more folds than a human brain
  • Dolphins do not have a sense of smell, but they can distinguish different tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty

owls
  • Owls are one of the only birds who can see the color blue
  • The burrowing owl will use the abandoned burrows of other animals
  • The eyes of an owl are one of their best features and make up almost 5% of their body weight
  • The Great Horned Owl has no sense of smell
  • Certain species of owls have special feather that allows them to fly silently
  • Their eyes are held in place by bony structures in the called Sclerotic rings. Because of this, they cannot or move their eyes. In order to look sideways, they need to turn their neck instead. Amazingly, they can turn their neck to extreme degrees - even upside down.

squid
  • A giant squid has eyes that can grow up to 20 inches in diameter. (That’s as big as your computer screen)Thanx Beth
  • A squid can grow from a single cell to 50 pounds in under 1 year
  • Squids can eat 10% of the own body weight every day
  • The collosal squid has claws on its arms that are as big as tiger claws and can rotate 180 degrees
  • Some squids can attack at speeds of up to 20 mph
  • Some male squids can “cross dress” to look like a female in order to get close enough to mate with one

ostrich
  • An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain
  • Ostriches stick their heads into the sand to find underground drinking water
  • Ostriches can only kick forward
  • The Ostrich people in Africa are a group of people who have only 2 toes due to inbreeding (From Ripley’s believe it or not)
  • In a study of over 200,000 ostriches over 80 years, noone has ever seen an ostrich bury its head in the sand

donkey
  • The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times
  • A female donkey is called a Jennet or Jenny

cicadas
  • Cicadas have their hearing organs in their stomachs, at the base of the abdomen
  • A cicada has 5 eyes. 2 big red ones and 3 smaller ones to detect light
  • Cicadas can spend up to 17 years underground eating tree roots
  • Male cicadas make the loudest noise in the insect world, the exact opposite of that in the human world
  • The African cicada clicks at up to 106 dB, louder than a chainsaw at 100 dB

colour blindness
  • Colour blind people are used to detect camouflaged units in previous war-fare
  • Everyone is colourblind at birth

bees
  • Bees can see ultraviolet light
  • Most honey bees die after they sting people as our skin is elastic, unsuitable for their stingers which are meant for harder inelastic skin. Their venom glands are also torn out in the process. (So removing the stinger by piching the tip is well, in one word, dumb.jk)Thanx Mr Tuvai
  • A bee can travel 4 million miles (6.5 million km) at 7 mph (11 km/h) on the energy it would obtain from 1 gallon (3.785 liters) of nectar, or it could just sit down on and enjoy that honey properly
  • Honeybees have a type of hair on their eyes
  • Some honeybees have been trained to ’smell’ out TNT in landmines instead of pollen

babies
  • Most caucasian babies are born with dark blue eyes, although it normally changes colour after child birth
  • Human babies are born 2 months premature for their size and lifespan. This is to accomodate for the fact that we have large brains during birth. (Got this off my lecture)
  • Babies crawl an average of 200m a day
  • Babies are born without knee caps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age
  • August has the highest percentage of births