Thursday, June 22, 2006

Fascinating!

Ostriches are often not taken seriously. They can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions. (Wha? Are you frickin serious - you know that I have to test the latter of these two factoids...really. How do I get the ostrich to roar?)
Sloths take two weeks to digest their food. (That is more than likely why they are so damn slow - low blood sugar. Wouldn't it be funny to hop one up full of an energy drink?)
Guinea pigs and rabbits can't sweat.
The pet food company Ralston Purina recently introduced, from its subsidiary Purina Philippines, power chicken feed designed to help roosters build muscles for cockfighting, which is popular in many areas of the world. (This isn't a very nice thing - I don't really think I'm such a fan of purina so much anymore...)
According to the Wall Street Journal, the cockfighting market is huge: The Philippines has five million roosters used for exactly that.
Sharks and rays are the only animals known to man that don't get cancer. Scientists believe this has something to do with the fact that they don't have bones, but cartilage.
The porpoise is second to man as the most intelligent animal on the planet.
Young beavers stay with their parents for the first two years of their lives before going out on their own.
Skunks can accurately spray their smelly fluid as far as ten feet. (Good to know in case we go camping!)
Deer can't eat hay. (Humph. Who knew?)
Gopher snakes in Arizona are not poisonous, but when frightened they may hiss and shake their tails like rattlesnakes.
On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.
The duckbill platypus can store as many as six hundred worms in the pouches of its cheeks. (Ew. The male also has a venom spurting spur behind it's back legs. True.)
The lifespan of a squirrel is about nine years.
North American oysters do not make pearls of any value.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.(kind of wrong that we know this - isn't it?)
Many sharks lay eggs, but hammerheads give birth to live babies that look like very small duplicates of their parents. Young hammerheads are usually born headfirst, with the tip of their hammer-shaped head folded backward to make them more streamlined for birth. (That's creepy)
Gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day. (The way it should be)
A biological reserve has been made for golden toads because they are so rare. (ARE THEY REAL GOLD?!)
There are more than fifty different kinds of kangaroos.
Jellyfish like salt water. A rainy season often reduces the jellyfish population by putting more fresh water into normally salty waters where they live.
The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.
The odds of seeing three albino deer at once are one in seventy-nine billion, yet one man in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, took a picture of three albino deer in the woods.
A group of twelve or more cows is called a flink. (For some reason I knew this... isn't that messed up?)
Cats often rub up against people and furniture to lay their scent and mark their territory. They do it this way, as opposed to the way dogs do it, because they have scent glands in their faces.
Cats sleep up to eighteen hours a day, but never quite as deep as humans. Instead, they fall asleep quickly and wake up intermittently to check to see if their environment is still safe.
Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is an herb with nepetalactone in it. Many think that when cats inhale nepetalactone, it affects hormones that arouse sexual feelings, or at least alter their brain functioning to make them feel "high." Catnip was originally made, using nepetalactone as a natural bug repellant, but roaming cats would rip up the plants before they could be put to their intended task.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans ages the equivalent of five human years for every day they live, so they usually die after about fourteen days. When stressed, though, the worm goes into a comatose state that can last for two or more months. The human equivalent would be to sleep for about two hundred years.
You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36. (Um - or you could just peek between their legs. Might be faster...)

PS - check out the add at the top - Garlic? What in here ANYWHERE would bring that up? Weeeeeiiiirrrrd.

2 comments:

Kat said...

re cancer: some cancer patients take cartilage suppliments in order to try and fight their cancer.

re cats: and when they drag their ass across the floor due to itching or excess poop, it's called scooting.

re albino deer: so where's the photo????

re lions: and male lions will eat the litter of other prides to increase the chances that his genes will be passed on.

re ostriches: they also regurgitate a putrid black bile in their own drinking water.

re the porpoise: I think that would depend on the man.

re cows: and here I always thought a group of cattle was a herd. Why isn't this word in the dictionary??

re worm: nematoda what????? Where do you find this stuff?!lol

Anonymous said...

I'm going to second Kat's comment on porpoises being smarter than some men.

And I'm a man, fer crissakes!

As for the actual meaning of the sentence...porpoises don't wage war against each other or their environment. Makes them tons smarter than mankind already!