Animal Triva

Animal Trivia

This is the first part of a mini-series on the fascinating world of animals. Learn incredible facts about these amazing creatures, and impress your friends, relatives and colleagues. Guaranteed results.

Insects shiver when they’re cold.

A queen bee lays about 1,500 eggs on an average day.

Police dogs were first used in 1816 in Scotland.

At birth, a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about 120 grams.

It’s been estimated that humans have been riding horses for over 3,000 years.

Hippopotamuses actually sweat blood.

A chimpanzee can learn to recognise itself in a mirror, but monkeys can’t.

The Chow is the only dog that has a black tongue. The rest have pink ones.

A baby frog is a tadpole and a young frog is a polliwog.

A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a (human) baby or a cat.

There are more sheep in Australia than people.

An elephant’s trunk can hold up to 8 litres of liquid.

At birth, a baby kangaroo is just 3 cm long.

In 1872, twenty five percent of the horses in the US died of a virus epidemic.

A rat can go without water for longer than a camel.

A honey bee travels an estimated 60,000 km to get half a kilo of honey.

The giraffe is the only animal born with horns. More people are injured by cats, dogs, and pigs each year than by Great White sharks.

Badgers and coyotes hunt ground squirrels together. The badger digs into the squirrel’s tunnel, and the coyote catches it when it tries to escape. Now that’s teamwork for you!

A recent study found that the dogs responsible for the greatest number of attacks in the US were Rottweilers and Pit Bulls.

A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time. Incidentally, a chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.

The most dedicated fathers in the world are male Emperor penguins. They stand in the Antarctic cold for 60 days or more to protect their eggs. During this entire time they don’t eat anything, and as a result most father penguins lose about 10 kilos during this period as they wait for the eggs to hatch. Afterwards, they feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the mother penguins return to care for the young, the fathers go out on the town with their mates, drink a few pints and go for a curry.

A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim’s skin and fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood. Afterwards, it won’t feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain “bad blood” from patients.

Amazon ants (red ants found in the western US) steal the larvae of other ants and keep these ants as slaves. The Amazon ants spend their day fighting, and use the slave ants to build homes and collect food. The Amazon ants depend completely on their slaves for survival.

All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.

G L O S S A R Y

to shiver vb when you are very cold, you “shiver” and your body moves with little movements that you cannot control to lay eggs exp if a creature “lays eggs”, eggs come out of its body an average day n a normal day to sweat vb when liquid comes out of your body because you are very hot a trunk n the long nose of an elephant to go without something exp to survive or live without something a horn n the two hard objects on an animal’s head. Bulls, cows and goats have them to dig vb to make a hole in the ground that’s teamwork for you! exp “that is a perfect example of teamwork”. “Teamwork” is the action of working together in a group to hatch vb if an egg “hatches”, the egg breaks and an animal comes out to feed vb to give food to someone or something to go out on the town exp to go out at night to have a good time a mate n inform a friend a pint n a glass of liquid (usually beer), which is about half a litre to pierce vb to cut; to make a hole in something larvae n insects that have developed from eggs. This is the stage before they become adults wild adj a “wild” animal is one that lives in the country and not in a house or a zoo a litter n a group of baby animals with the same mother