Funny Facts and Fun Trivia about Animals 05
Infant beavers are called kittens.
Insects shiver when they're cold.
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.
It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
Korea's poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime menus, despite out-cry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve women's complexions.
India has a Bill of Rights for cows.
It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
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.
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.
Lions are the only truly social cat species, and usually every female in a pride, ranging from 5 to 30 individuals, is closely related.
Macaroni, Gentoo, Chinstrap and Emperor are types of penguins.
Male Lions may mate 50 times a day.
Marie Antoinette's dog was a spaniel named Thisbe.
Mockingbirds can imitate any sound from a squeaking door to a cat meowing.
Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day
Mosquitoes are the common vector for malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever and dengue fever.
Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet
Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.
Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or three years.
No two spider webs are the same.
Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.
Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they cannot move their eyes.
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.
The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.
The cat was domesticated over 4,000 years ago. Today's house cats are descended from wildcats in Africa and Europe.
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.
The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
The elephant, as a symbol of the US Republican Party, was originated by cartoonist Thomas Nast and first presented in 1874.