A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times its own weight each year.
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A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby or a cat.
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A cat sees about six times better than a human at night because of the tapetum lucidum , a layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.
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A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as feelers or antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any passage.
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A cat will clean itself with paw and tongue after a dangerous experience or when it has fought with another cat. This is believed to be an attempt by the animal to soothe its nerves by doing something natural and instinctive.
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A cat’s arching back is part of a complex body language system, usually associated with feeling threatened. The arch is able to get so high because the cat’s spine contains nearly 60 vertebrae which fit loosely together. Humans have only 34 vertebrae.
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A cat’s jaws cannot move sideways.
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A cat’s tongue consists of small “hooks,” which come in handy when tearing up food.
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A capon is a castrated rooster.
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A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.
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A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can’t.
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A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.
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A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
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A father Emperor penguin withstands the Antarctic cold for 60 days or more to protect his eggs, which he keeps on his feet, covered with a feathered flap. During this entire time he doesn’t eat a thing. Most father penguins lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch. Afterward, they feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the mother penguins return to care for the young, the fathers go to sea to eat and rest.
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A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.
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A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
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A Holstein’s spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.
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A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length
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A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.
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A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
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A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.
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A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
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A zebra is white with black stripes.
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According to ancient Greek literature, when Odysseus arrived home after an absence of 20 years, disguised as a beggar, the only one to recognize him was his aged dog Argos, who wagged his tail at his master, and then died.
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Adult cats with no health problems are in deep sleep 15 percent of their lives. They are in light sleep 50 percent of the time.
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All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
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All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
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An adult lion’s roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.
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An American Animal Hospital Association poll showed that 33 percent of dog owners admit that they talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on an answering machine while away.
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Ancient Egyptians believed that “Bast” was the mother of all cats on Earth. They also believed that cats were sacred animals.
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Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception; the longest is the Asiatic elephant, taking 608 days, or just over 20 months.
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Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals.
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Ants don’t sleep.
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Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
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At 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound produced by any animal.
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Australian termites have been known to build mounds twenty feet high and at least 100 feet wide.
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Barbara Bush’s book about her English Springer Spaniel, Millie’s book, was on the bestseller list for 29 weeks. Millie was the most popular “First Dog” in history.
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Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.
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Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.
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By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks.
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Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
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Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
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Cat scratch disease, a benign but sometimes painful disease of short duration, is caused by a bacillus. Despite its name, the disease can be transmitted by many kinds of scratches besides those of cats.
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Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.
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Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female’s urine.
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Cats are the only domestic animals that walk directly on their claws, not on their paws. This method of walking is called “digitigrade.”
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When cats scratch furniture, it isn’t an act of malice. They are actually tearing off the ragged edges of the sheaths of their talons to expose the new sharp ones beneath. Cats have a third eyelid called a haw and you will probably only see it when kitty isn’t feeling well.
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Cats have amazing hearing ability. A cat’s ear has 30 muscles that control the outer ear (by comparison, human ears only have six muscles). These muscles rotate 180 degrees, so the cat can hear in all directions without moving its head. A cat has four rows of whiskers.
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Cats have better memories than dogs. Tests conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that while a dogs memory lasts no more than 5 minutes, a cat’s can last as long as 16 hours - exceeding even that of monkeys and orangutans.
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Cats have more than one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
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Cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.
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Cats step with both left legs, then both right legs when they walk or run. The only other animals to do this are the giraffe and the camel.
Cat’s urine glows under a black light.
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Cats, not dogs, are the most common pets in America. There are approximately 66 million cats to 58 million dogs, with Parakeets a distant third at 14 million.
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Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed and continue living.
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Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird’s chirp or a dog’s yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away.
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Cojo, the 1st gorilla born in captivity, was born at the Columbus Zoo, in Ohio, in 1956 and weighed 3 1/4 pounds.
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Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating. They sweat through the pads of their feet.
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Dachshunds are the smallest breed of dog used for hunting. They are low to the ground, which allows them to enter and maneuver through tunnels easily.
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Despite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.
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Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was known before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such small game as hares.
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Dogs are mentioned 14 times in the Bible.
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Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.
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Each day in the US, animal shelters are forced to destroy 30,000 dogs and cats.
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Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth’s food crop.
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Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz.
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Every known dog except the chow has a pink tongue - the chow’s tongue is jet black.
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Every year, $1.5 billion is spent on pet food. This is four times the amount spent on baby food.
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Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.
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For Stephen King’s “Cujo” (1983), five St. Bernards were used, one mechanical head, and an actor in a dog costume to play the title character.
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French poodles did not originate in France. Poodles were originally used as hunting dogs in Europe. The dogs’ thick coats were a hindrance in water and thick brush, so hunters sheared the hindquarters, with cuffs left around the ankles and hips to protect against rheumatism. Each hunter marked his dogs’ heads with a ribbon of his own color, allowing groups of hunters to tell their dogs apart.
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George Washington’s favorite horse was named Lexington. Napoleon’s favorite was Marengo. U.S. Grant had three favorite horses: Egypt, Cincinnati, and Jeff Davis.
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German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
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Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.
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Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.
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Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
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In 1888, an estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and shipped to England to be ground up and used for fertilizer.
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In ancient Egypt, entire families would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when the family cat died.
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In cats, the calico and tortoiseshell coats are sex-linked traits. All cats displaying these coats are female… or occasionally sterile males.
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In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
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Infant beavers are called kittens.
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It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.
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It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
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Korea’s poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime menus, despite outcry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve women’s complexions.
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It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
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Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
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Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main “actor” was named Pal.
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Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled Lassie Come-Home written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight’s real life collie, Toots.
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Lions are the only truly social cat species, and usually every female in a pride, ranging from 5 to 30 individuals, is closely related.
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Macaroni, Gentoo, Chinstrap and Emperor are types of penguins.
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Marie Antoinette’s dog was a spaniel named Thisbe.
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Mockingbirds can imitate any sound from a squeaking door to a cat meowing.
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Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.
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Mosquitoes are the common vector for malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever and dengue fever.
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Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.
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Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.
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Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or three years.
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No two spider webs are the same.
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Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.
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Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they cannot move their eyes.
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Parrots, most famous of all talking birds, rarely acquire a vocabulary of more than twenty words, however Tymhoney Greys and African Greys have been know to carry vocabularies in excess of 100 words.
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Pekingese dogs were sacred to the emperors of China for more than 2,000 years. They are one of the oldest breeds of dogs in the world.
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Pet parrots can eat virtually any common “people-food” except for chocolate and avocados. Both of these are highly toxic to the parrot and can be fatal.
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Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.
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Prairie dogs are not dogs. A prairie dog is a kind of rodent.
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Purring is part of every cat’s repertoire of social communication, apparently created by the movement of air in spasms through contractions of the diaphragm. Interestingly, purring is sometimes heard in cats who are severely ill or anxious, perhaps as a self-comforting vocalization. But, more typically, it is a sign of contentment, first heard in kittens as they suckle milk from their mother.
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Rats are omnivorous, eating nearly any type of food, including dead and dying members of their own species.
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Rats can’t throw-up.
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Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
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Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.
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Snakes are immune to their own poison.
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Swans are the only birds with penises.
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Some baby giraffes are more than six feet tall at birth.
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Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.
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The “caduceus” the classical medical symbol of two serpents wrapped around a staff - comes from an ancient Greek legend in which snakes revealed the practice of medicine to human beings.
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The 1st buffalo ever born in captivity was born at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo in 1884.
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The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was formed in 1866.
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The anaconda, one of the world’s largest snakes, gives birth to its young instead of laying eggs.
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The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito.
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The average adult male ostrich, the world’s largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.
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The biggest member of the cat family is the male lion, which weighs 528 pounds (240 kilograms).
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The biggest pig in recorded history was Big Boy of Black Mountain, North Carolina, who was weighed at 1,904 pounds in 1939.
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The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of lobsters is blue.
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The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in an American court.
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The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.
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The calories burned daily by the sled dogs running in Alaska’s annual Iditarod race average 10,000. The 1,149-mile race commemorates the 1925 “Race for Life” when 20 volunteer mushers relayed medicine from Anchorage to Nome to battle a children’s diphtheria epidemic.
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The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - “Island of Dogs.”
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The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.
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The cat was domesticated over 4,000 years ago. Today’s house cats are descended from wildcats in Africa and Europe.
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The catgut formerly used as strings in tennis rackets and musical instruments does not come from cats. Catgut actually comes from sheep, hogs, and horses.
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The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can’t retract its claws.
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The Chinese, during the reign of Kublai Khan, used lions on hunting expeditions. They trained the big cats to pursue and drag down massive animals - from wild bulls to bears - and to stay with the kill until the hunter arrived.
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The color of the points in Siamese cats is heat related. Cool areas are darker. In fact, Siamese kittens are born white because of the heat inside the mother’s uterus before birth. This heat keeps the kittens hair from darkening on the points.
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The dachshund is one of the oldest dog breeds in history (dating back to ancient Egypt.) The name comes from one of its earliest uses - hunting badgers. In German, Dachs means “badger,” Hund is “hound.”
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The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery called an onychectomy, in which the entire claw and end bone of each toe of the animal are amputated.
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The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between their legs while walking.
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The elephant, as a symbol of the US Republican Party, was originated by cartoonist Thomas Nast and first presented in 1874.
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The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was so devastated upon the death of his beloved Newfoundland, whose name was Boatswain, that he had inscribed upon the dog’s gravestone the following: “Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices.”
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The fastest bird is the Spine-tailed swift, clocked at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour.
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The expression “three dog night” originated with the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm.
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The fastest -moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed of 0.0313 mph.
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The first house rats recorded in America appeared in Boston in 1775.
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The first seeing-eye dog was presented to a blind person on April 25, 1938.
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The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone. It weighs up to 2.5 tons and grows up to 55 feet long. Each eye is a foot or more in diameter.
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The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined.
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The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.
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The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.
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The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can’t fly. It lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind, and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 70 million years.
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The largest animal ever seen alive was a 113.5 foot, 170-ton female blue whale.
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The largest cockroach on record is one measured at 3.81 inches in length.
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The last member of the famous Bonaparte family, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, died in 1945, of injuries sustained from tripping over his dog’s leash.
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The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.
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The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.
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The name of the dog from “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is Max.
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The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.
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The normal temperature of a cat is 101.5 degrees.
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The only dog to ever appear in a Shakespearean play was Crab in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
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The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
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The Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years, its entire life-span.
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The penalty for killing a cat, 4,000 years ago in Egypt, was death.
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The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained “cats and dogs” and led to the current expression.
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The pigmy shrew - a relative of the mole - is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce - less than a dime.
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The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.
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The poisonous copperhead snake smells like fresh cut cucumbers.
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The smallest of the recognized dog breeds, the Chihuahua, is also the one that usually lives the longest. Named for the region of Mexico where they were first discovered in the mid-19th century, the Chihuahua can live anywhere between 11-18 years.
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The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world’s largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the worlds only museum devoted solely to mollusks.
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The theobromine in chocolate that stimulates the cardiac and nervous systems is too much for dogs, especially smaller pups. A chocolate bar is poisonous to dogs and can even be lethal.
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The term “dog days” has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or “days of the dog.”
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The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.
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The turkey was named for what was wrongly thought to be its country of origin.
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The underside of a horse’s hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.
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The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake.
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The world record frog jump is 33 feet 5.5 inches over the course of 3 consecutive leaps, achieved in May 1977 by a South African sharp-nosed frog called Santjie.
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The world’s largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 5 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
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The world’s largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.
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The world’s smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.
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There are 701 types of pure breed dogs.
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There are around 2,600 different species of frogs. They live on every continent except Antarctica.
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There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
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There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in the United States. Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.
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There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
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There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
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Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than man.
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Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
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Walt Disney’s family dog was named Lady. She was a poodle.
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When a domestic cat goes after mice, about one pounce in three results in a catch.
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When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.
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When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.
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When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.
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When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
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Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
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You’re more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.
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