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Animal facts 4: Interesting facts you never knew
- The koala is the world’s fussiest eater and feeds uniquely on eucalyptus leaves.
- An elephant's tooth can weigh as much as 12 pounds.
- In Alaska, it is legal to shoot a bear - but you'll break the law if you wake up a bear to take its photograph.
- Americans own 55 million dogs, and 60 million cats.
- Adult fleas can live for up to 2 years during which time the female can lay up to 1,200 eggs.
- Elephant seals are air-breathing mammals, but they can hold their breath for up to two hours while diving.
- Apart from humans the only land animal that cries is the elephant.
- The longest snake is the reticulated python, which can reach over 33 ft.
- In Lousiana, you can be jailed for ten years for stealing an alligator.
- Dragonflies have the largest eyes and sharpest eyesight of any insect. Each eye is made up of more than 30,000 separate rod-like units.
- Desert rats can copulate 122 times an hour.
- One of the many Tarzans, Karmuala Searlel, was mauled to death on the set by a raging elephant.
- A scientist at Michigan State University has calculated that the production of a single hens egg regquires about 120 gallons of water, a loaf of bread requires 300 gallons, and a pound of beef 3,500 gallons.
- Great Whites can swim at up to 25 mph. They must swim continually or they would sink, as they don't have a swim bladder to keep them afloat like a bony fish.
- The collective name for a group of frogs is an "army of frog"; in the case of their warty cousins, it’s a "knot of toads".
- Strands of spider web are stronger than steel wire of the same thickness.
- The collective name for a group of frogs is an “army of frogs”; in the case of their warty cousins, it’s a “knot of toads”.
- Dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that get pleasure out of sex. They are also the only other animals that have sex for reasons other than reproduction.
- Contrary to popular belief, biblical Jonah was swallowed by a Great White Shark, not a whale. It is thought that a shark may have been landed with a man's body inside, prompting the myth to arise.
- Not all polar bears hibernate; only pregnant females polar bears do.
- Most scientists agree that Great White Shark attacks on humans often stem from territorial aggression because of a perceived invasion of their space, and are usually non-predatory in nature.
- Naked mole rats are the only hairless mammals.
- One 15 foot great white was found with 200 plus crabs in its stomach.
- An armadillo can walk under water.
- House mice are able to drop vertically down 12 feet without injury.
- Goldfish history can be traced back over 1500 years to Ancient China.
- Only 2% of male red deer are seriously injured in their antler-rattling contests.
- 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.
- Frogs may be hypnotised by placing them on their back and gently stroking their stomach.
- The African driver ant Dorylus lives in colonies of up to twenty-two million workers. Their combined mass is more than fifty kilograms, and they feed off and protect a territory of a massive fifty thousand square metres.
- Twenty-eight species of anemone fishes are known, along with 10 species of anemones that act as hosts.
- The average body temperature of a sparrow is 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Sheep's milk is used to produce Roquefort cheese.
- A female donkey's milk is closest to human milk.
- Stone-aged people tamed dogs to help them track game.
- A seagull can drink salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.
- The difference in weight between a 'newborn' caterpillar and the fully grown larva is typically 1000-fold or even more.
- Snake venom is ninety percent protein.
- The hippopotamus has the world's shortest sperm.
- A rabbit's teeth never stops growing. They are kept worn down by gnawing on food.
- Scientists estimate that there are currently 1.4 million animal species known to science; with possibly as many as 30 million on the planet.
- The only two mammals to lay eggs are the platypus and the echidna. The mothers nurse their babies through pores in their skin.
- Kittens can clock an amazing 31 miles per hour at full speed, and can cover about three times their body length per leap.
- The tuatara lizard's metabolism is so slow they only have to breathe once an hour.
- Male bees will try to attract sex partners with orchid fragrance.
- The giant cricket of Africa enjoys eating human hair.
- The octopus's testicles are located in its head.
- The tuatara lizard of New Zealand has three eyes - two in the center of its head and one on top.
- It takes the deep-sea clam 100 years to grow to a length of one-third inch.
- The Venus flytrap can eat a whole cheeseburger.
- The porcupine's love for salt often leads the animal to roadways or walkways where salt has been sprinkled to melt the ice.
- Hamsters love to eat crickets.
- Dinosaurs lived on Earth for around 165 million years before they became extinct.
- The rare Hawaiian monk seal has been known to dive to about 1,650 feet.
- The female green turtle sheds tears as she lays her eggs on the beach. This washes sand particles out of her eyes and rids her body of excess salt.
- Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
- The color a head louse will be as an adult can depend on the color of the person's hair in which it lives.
- The kangaroo and the emu are the two animals found on the Australian coat of arms.
- Elephants and short-tailed shrews get by on only two hours of sleep a day.
- Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
- One way to tell seals and sea lions apart is that, sea lions have external ears and testicles.
- Sharks can go up to at least 6 weeks without feeding. The record for a shark fasting was observed in an aquarium with the Swell Shark, which did not eat for 15 months.
- The shell of an egg constitutes 12% of its weight.
- In ancient Egypt, entire families would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when the family cat died.
- The Sanskrit word for 'war' means 'desire for more cows'.
- Using its web-like skin between its arms, an octopus can carry up to a dozen crabs back to its den.
- Electric Eels can reach up to 2 metres in length and larger specimens can generate 500 volts of electricity.
- The zorilla is the smelliest animal on the planet. Its anal glands can be smelled from a half mile away.
- Sheep can survive for up to two weeks buried in snow drifts.
- Bats can eat from one-half to three quarters their weight per evening.
- It takes 24 hours for a tiny newborn swan to peck its way out of its shell.
- Certain fireflies emit a light so penetrating that it can pass through flesh and wood.
- The porcupine's love for salt often leads the animal to roadways or walkways where salt has been sprinkled to melt the ice. They will lick and gnaw on anything containing salt, such as saddles, canoe paddles and axe handles.
- There are more species of fish than mammals, reptiles and birds combined.
- When angered, the Tazmanian devil turns pinkish red.
- Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
- When cornered, the horned toad shoots blood from its eyes.
- The walking catfish of Florida can stay out of water for a full 80 days.
- The Australian Brown Snake's venom is so powerful that only 1/14,000th of on ounce is needed to kill a human being.
- The tuatara's metabolism is so slow they only have to breathe once an hour.
- According to scientific studies, a rat's performance in a maze can be improved by playing music written by Mozart.
- A group of goats is called a trip.
- A baby platypus remains blind after birth for 11 weeks.
- Sharks can generate about six and a half tons per square inch of biting force.
- Sharks can live up to 100 years.
- Dogfish sharks are named for their tendency to attack their prey as a pack of wild dogs would.
- Found in Argentina, the ornate horned frog can eat an entire mouse with one swallow.
- The average Polar Bear stands about 8ft tall.
- Lions cannot roar until they reach the age of two.
- A blue whale's tongue is so large that fifty people could stand on it.
- The temperature of the saltwater crocodile's egg will determine the sex of the newborn crocodile.
- Tuna swim at a steady rate of nine miles per hour for an indefinite period of time - and they never stop moving. Estimates indicate that a 15 year old tuna travels one million miles in its lifetime.
- The dodo, extinct less than 100 years after being discovered by the Dutch in 1598, was not a prolific species. The female laid just one egg a year.
- Using their swiveling ears like radar dishes, experiments have shown that dogs can locate the source of a sound in 6/100ths of a second.
- It takes 11 truckloads of wood to make a proper funeral pyre for a full-size elephant.
- More than a third of the field mice in the Kesterton National wildlife refuge near Los Banos, California have both male and female reproductive organs.
- In Central America, a scientist caught over 500 different species of insects by sweeping a net through the air fewer than 2000 times.
- Tiny woolly bats, in West Africa, live in the large webs of colonial spiders.
- In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
- A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.
- The female knot-tying weaverbird will refuse to mate with a male who has built a shoddy nest. If spurned, the male must take the nest apart and completely rebuild it in order to win the affactions of the female.
- A species of Australian dragonfly has been clocked at 36 mph.
- Native Americans never actually ate turkey: killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.
- Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.
- In Michigan, USA, it is illegal to chain an alligator to a fire hydrant.
- Sea sponges are used in drugs for treating asthma and cancer.
- Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.
- A full grown giraffe's neck can weigh as much as 500 pounds.
- Ninety-five percent of tropical fish sold in North America originate from Florida.
- The Weddell seal can travel under water for seven miles without surfacing for air.
- Due to a retinal adaptation that reflects light back to the retina, the night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.
- An adult giraffe's kick is so powerful that it can decapitate a lion.
- The flounder swims sideways.
- A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.
- Sharks can be dangerous even before they are born. Scientist Stewart Springer was bitten by a sand tiger shark embryo while he was examining its pregnant mother.
- In the US, it is reported that the 5 most popular dog tricks are - Sit, Paw, Roll Over, Speak and Lie Down.
- Dolphins jump out of the water to conserve energy. It's easier to move through the air than through the water.
- It takes a sloth two weeks to digest the food it eats.
- Almost every known dog except the Chow and the Shar Pei has a pink tongue.
- Anteaters prefer termites to ants.
- Tunas will suffocate if they ever stop swimming. They need a continual flow of water across their gills to breathe, even while they rest.
- Unlike most female animals, the female rice rat is the one that searches for and pursues a mate.
- 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.
- Desert plants, like cactus, developed pointy spines as protection from animals.
- Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
- The Hirudo leech lays its babies within a cocoon; the Amazon leech carries its babies on its stomach - sometimes as many as 300.
- 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.
- Platypuses aren't the only egg-laying mammals on earth. Echidnas, which resemble a cross between a Hedgehog and Anteater, also lay eggs and produces milk for its young.
- A mole can dig a tunnel three hundred feet long in a single night.
- A baby beaver stays with its parents for a period of two years.
- The longest recorded life span of a camel was 35 years, five months.
- An average city dog lives approximately three years longer than an average country dog.
- A starfish can turn its stomach inside out.
- Desert snails can stay in their shell for up to three years.
- The male fox will mate for life and, if the female dies, he remains single for the rest of his life. However, if the male dies, the female will hook up with a new mate.
- Flamingos can live up to 80 years.
- Sharks sometimes eat other sharks. For example, a tiger shark might eat a bull shark, a bull shark might eat a blacktip shark and a blacktip shark might eat a dogfish shark.
- The common mousetrap was invented by the same guy who invented the machine gun — Hiram Maxim.
- There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
- A rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's back. That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized cars around on his back.
- The optimum depth of water in a birdbath is two and a half inches. Less water makes it difficult for birds to take a bath; more makes them afraid.
- Squirrels can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground.
- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
- During the 1982 Falklands war British pilots reported that penguins toppled over backward while gazing at the planes. British navy pilots were then banned from flying low over penguin colonies. It led to a UK government study of the penguin-toppling effect. For seventeen days two helicopters were flown from varying directions and heights over the penguins. The result? Penguins do not topple over while gazing at aeroplanes.
- Dairy cows can produce 20 to 35 gallons of saliva a day.
- The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
- Police detectives have used snapping turtles to help them locate dead bodies.
- No pearls of value are ever found in North Amercian Oysters.
- Mountain goats are not really goats at al. They are small antelopes.
- Only 4% of the lost cats that enter U.S. animal shelters are returned to their caregivers.
- 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.
- Racehorses have been known to wear out new shoes in just one race.
- A cuckoo has four toes on each foot.
- Mice will nurse babies that are not their own.
- 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."
- Mongooses were brought to Hawaii to kill rats. This plan failed because rats are nocturnal while the mongoose hunts during the day.
- Unlike other four legged mammals, kangaroos cannot walk backwards.
- 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.
- Just like people, mother chimpanzees often develop lifelong relationships with their offspring.
- According to one study, plant and animal species are becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.
- The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.
- Orange and lemon rinds are offensive to cats. A light rubbing of orange peel on furniture will discourage your cat from using it as a scratching post.
- The largest pig on record was a Poland-China hog named Big Bill, who weighed 2,552 lbs.
- Cats have more than one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
- The biggest member of the cat family is the male lion, which weighs 528 pounds (240 kilograms).
- The mating call of a male toadfish, who are underwater, is so loud that it can be heard by humans above water.
- 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.
- 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.
- Platypuses can consume their own body weight in food in a 24 hour period.
- The Kinkajou's tail is twice as long as its body. Every night it wraps itself in its tail and uses it as a pillow.
- As a general rule in the animal kingdom, the more complex or relatively big the eye in relation to the body, then the smaller the rest of the brain.
- If a male cat is both orange and black it is (besides being extremely rare) sterile. To have both the orange and the black coat colors, the male cat must have all or part of both female X chromosomes. This unusual sex chromosome combination will render the male cat sterile.
- Kangaroo rats never drink water. Like their relative the pocket mouse, they carry their own water source within them, producing fluids from the food they eat and the air they breathe.
- If you fill a standard 750ml wine bottle with live hornets, their angry buzzing will resonate at precisely the right frequency to shatter the glass.
- The giant cricket of Africa enjoys eating human hair.
- Nationwide, grandparents annually spend an average of $195.24 on their companion animals and $178.68 on their grandchildren.
- Fido, a name often given to pet dogs, means faithful in Latin.
- The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.
- Dogs that do not tolerate small children well are the St. Bernard, the Old English sheep dog, the Alaskan malamute, the bull terrier, and the toy poodle.
- If a cricket were the size of Mount Rushmore, it could jump to the moon.
- The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.
- It would require an average of 18 hummingbirds to weigh in at one ounce.
- The female blue crab can lay up to one million eggs in a day.
- 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."
- Most parrots are left-handed.
- A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.
- The grizzly bear is capable of running as fast as the average horse.
- In the past 60 years, the groundhog has only predicted the weather correctly 28 percent of the time. The rushing back and forth from burrows is believed to indicate sexual activity, not shadow seeking.
- Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.
- Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
- When subjected to an electric current of at least 50 volts, a cat's tail always points toward the north.
- Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.
- 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.
- Snakes do not urinate. They secrete and excrete uric acid, which is a solid, chalky, usually white substance.
- The fruit flys dna sequence is 180 million bases long, whilst a humans is three billion.
- Centipedes always have an uneven pairs of walking legs.
- Rattlesnakes gather in groups to sleep through the winter. Sometimes up to 1,000 of them will coil up together to keep warm.
- A mother dingo regurgitates food for her puppies.
- A mature male gorilla is called a Silverback. This refers to the silver-colored hair covering his back, which occurs when he’s about 10-12 years old.
- There are 701 types of pure breed dogs.
- A 20 inch jack rabbit adult can leap 20 feet in a single bound.
- A baby grey whale drinks enough milk to fill more than 2,000 bottles a day.
- The distance between an alligator's eyes, in inches, is directly proportional to the length of the alligator, in feet.
- The female pigeon cannot lay eggs if she is alone. In order for her ovaries to function, she must be able to see another pigeon. If no pigeon is available, her own reflection in a mirror will suffice.
- All dinosaurs walked on their toes.
- The honey badger can withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill any other animal.
- In their lifetime, house cats spend approximately 10,950 hours purring.
- A chicken with red earlobes will produce brown eggs, and a chicken with white earlobes will produce white eggs.
- The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.
- Julius Caeser, Henri II, Charles XI and Napoleon all had ailurophobia, a fear of cats.
- The number of human ova necessary to repopulate the world could fit into a chicken egg.
- Cats are attracted to automobile antifreeze because of its sweet taste.
- Ireland has only about half the number of animal species that Britain has, including no snakes or toads (although there are some frogs).
- There are 15 puppies and 45 kittens born for every human in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
- The Saw-Scaled Viper is thought to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually in Africa and Asia. They don't have the most lethal snake venom but they are numerous and aggressive.
- A squirrel has no color vision. It seesonly in black and white. Every part of its field of vision, however, is in perfect focus, not just straight ahead, as with man.
- An elephant may consume 500 pounds of hay and 60 gallons of water in a single day.
- When a hippopotamus exerts itself, gets angry, or stays out of the water for too long, it exudes red sweatlike mucus through its skin.
- Cats have a third eyelid, called a haw, that is rarely visible. If it can be seen, it could be an indication of ill health.
- Camel's hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr Camel.
- In 1740 a cow was found guilty of sorcery in France and publicly hanged.
- A newborn Chinese water deer is so small that it can almost be held in the palm of the hand.
- A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.
- A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater than 86 degrees to be able to fly.
- The tsetse fly infests 36 African countries and a total of 9-10 million square kilometres of land.
- 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.
- Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
- About 600 species of plants are carnivorous. Most eat insects but also on the menu are frogs, birds and even small monkeys.
- The 1st buffalo ever born in captivity was born at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo in 1884.
- Squirrels are immune to rabies.
- Unlike a frog, a toad cannot jump.
- All racehorses in the U.S. celebrate their birthday on January 1st.
- The candlefish is so oily that it was once burned for fuel.
- The snow leopard protects itself from extreme cold when it sleeps by wrapping its 3-foot-long tail around its nose.
- Despite man's fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-rabid wolf ever attacked a human.
- The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake.
- 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.
- All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
- A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.
- Octopus and squid are thought to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
- During warm weather hippopotamus's secrete sweat that is pink. This substance not only cools them down but also helps fight infections of the skin.
- By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks.
- A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.
- The female dairy goat is a doe; the male, a buck; the young, kids; and a castrated male, a wether. Their life span is eight to twelve years.
- 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.
- The anaconda, one of the world's largest snakes, gives birth to its young instead of laying eggs.
- In the 1800's cats were used to deliver mail. In 1879, in Belgium 37 cats were used to deliver mail to villages, however they found that the cats were not disciplined enough to do this.
- In a day, an elephant can drink 80 gallons of water.
- The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.
- There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
- Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
- More than 99.9% of all the animal species that have ever lived on earth were extinct before the coming of man.
- Asian tree frogs build nests in trees over water. When their tadpoles hatch, they drop directly into the water.
- It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in the course of a summer.
- In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
- The world's oldest known captive goldfish, Tish, died peacefully at home in his tank at the age of at least 43 in 1999.
- It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
- Despite man's fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-rabid wolf ever attacked a human.
- Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.
- On June 20th, 1782, the United States Congress made the "American Eagle" the national emblem of the United States.
- You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
- The 'Silverback' gorilla is 30 per cent taller and almost twice as heavy as the females in the group he dominates.
- The pom-pom cut was originally developed to increase the Poodle's swimming abilities as a retriever. The haircut allowed for faster swimming but the pom-poms were left to keep the joints warm.
- 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.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- The biggest pig in recorded history was Big Boy of Black Mountain, North Carolina, who was weighed at 1,904 pounds in 1939.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere, and no one knows why.
- Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating. They sweat through the pads of their feet.
- The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.
- Lewis and Clark traveled with a 150-pound Newfoundland named "Seaman." This pooch was a respected member of the expedition team and his antics were included in the extensive diaries of the famous explorers.
- 'Zorro' means 'fox' in Spanish.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Venus flytrap takes less than half a second to slam shut on an insect.
- Brazil has the most species of mammals (524), fresh water fish, insects and parrots of anywhere.
- Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostate glands.
- 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.
- A 7-year study, which concluded in the summer of 2000, found that 33 U.S. deaths were caused by rottweilers, pit bulls were responsible for 27 deaths.
- The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.
- German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
- Swans are the only birds with penises.
- 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.
- 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.
