As already known, the animal kingdom is the biological kingdom for animals or animalia. Animalia refers to the scientific name for the Animal Kingdom.
Usually, animals capture our attention by being cute, but wildlife is just that – wild. In order to succeed in their often incredibly demanding natural environments, many creatures have adapted curious features and quirks, ranging from purple tongues and snowball fights to holding votes and even getting drunk, as funny as it may sound.
1. Hippos Can Run Faster Than Humans
Surprisingly for animals that weigh an average of 3.5 tonnes, hippos can run at speeds of around 19 miles per hour – far beyond the approximately 10 miles per hour that the average human can manage. The full title of ‘hippopotamus‘ comes from the ancient Greek, meaning ‘water horse.’ Hippos spend up to 18 hours a day in water to keep cool and support their massive frames, but they cannot properly swim and instead walk along the bottom while periodically surfacing for air.
2. Pandas Pee While During Handstands
Giant pandas are among the world’s best-known and best-loved under-threat species. In 2017 their conservation status was upgraded from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable,’ but less well-known are their curious toilet habits. Not only do they poo 40 times a day, male pandas also sometimes climb trees backwards with their hind paws to pee in a handstand position. They do this to mark their territory more extensively during their limited mating window.
They urinate while in this position to leave their scent higher up on the tree. The higher up the scent is, the farther it can travel and the more noticeable it is to other pandas.
3. Japanese Macaques (Snow Monkeys) Play With Snowballs
Japanese macaques are nicknamed ‘snow monkeys,’ and those that live in the northern forested regions of Japan have a propensity to warm themselves in hot thermal springs when temperatures drop below zero. The younger macaques like to play in the snow, rolling snowballs along the ground to enlarge them. The games have no obvious survival purpose, but entire troops do it just for fun.
4. Pygmy Goats Speak with an Accent
Young pygmy goats are social beings and like some of their human companions, they like to try and fit in with their equivalents by modifying their accents. Bats and whales are the only other non-human mammals known to adjust their vocal sounds according to their social environments.
5. Bisons Vote On Where To Go
The European bison work by majority rule and ‘cast a vote’ for where they want to go by facing in the relevant direction. Eventually, one bison makes a move and if it’s the herd’s preferred option then the group follows. If it’s a less popular option, few follow and the group may split for a short time before coming back together.
6. Bees Get Drunk
One in every three portions of our food depends on pollinators like bees. However, their hard work can be hindered in hot weather when they sometimes get drunk on fermented nectar – making them wobble and stagger around much like a drunk human.
7. Howler Monkeys Are Nearly As Loud As Jet Engines
Howler monkeys live up to their moniker by being noisy – so noisy that their calls can be heard up to three miles away and reach 140 decibels, according to one estimate. By comparison, a jet engine at takeoff reaches about 150 decibels – enough to damage an eardrum. Howler monkeys make a loud whooping noise or roar to establish their territories, with neighbouring troops howling back and forth to let others know their locations.
8. Cows Have Best Friends
We all get by with a little help from our friends and it turns out cows are no different. According to research that measured their heart rates and cortisol levels, many cows have a preferred partner, or ‘best friend,’ and experience less stress when they’re hanging out together. There may well be additional benefits to being so social. Another study showed that calves raised in pairs perform better in cognitive tasks than calves raised alone.
9. Zebra Stripes Deter Bugs
A 2019 experiment revealed that fewer horseflies landed on zebras and horses wearing black and white-striped coats than landed on regular horses. Scientists said that the stripes confounded the horseflies’ low-resolution vision, making it tricky for them to land.
10. Sloths Have A Sluggish Mode of Digestion
Sloths are among the slowest animals in the world – plus they snooze for about 15 hours a day, and this is reflected in their metabolism. Spending most of their lives hanging upside down, sloths feed mostly on the fibrous leaves, fruits, and sap of certain trees, and their digestion is so slow that, when full, their stomachs can account for 37% of their body mass. They are also ‘picky poopers,’ often making a very slow descent down to the ground to relieve themselves.
11. Elephants Can’t Lift or Jump
Elephants are renowned for their size, which helps them feed from trees with their trunks and deter predators, particularly when standing together in a group. These unique attributes are also the main reason they can’t jump – because they just don’t need to. The bones in an elephant’s knees are pointed downwards, unlike in most animals, and they have relatively weak lower leg muscles and inflexible ankles. They can’t summon the necessary spring to push off the ground even if they want to.
12. Ducks Can Surf
In California, some ducks have been joining the locals and surfing along the beaches of Santa Barbara. Researchers have observed the birds letting the swash of a wave carry them down the beach, where they would stick their beaks in the sand to unearth and eat Pacific sand crabs. Researchers speculated that this behaviour could be “a recent by-product of adaptation to human-dominated landscapes.”
13. Octopuses Have Blue Blood
The octopus is one of the world’s most interesting creatures. Incredibly intelligent, they have a brain-to-body ratio that’s the largest of any invertebrate. They can change colour to communicate with other octopuses, possess an astonishing ability to camouflage, and are capable of using tools. They also have three hearts and blue blood, which contains copper instead of iron like most other animals as it is better at transporting oxygen in cold, low-oxygen conditions under the sea.
14. Budding Kangaroos Are An Inch Long
Kangaroos are part of the macropodidae family, which means ‘big foot’ – a reference to their large back feet. Appropriately, these Australian and Papua New Guinea natives are the world’s largest marsupials. It may come as something of a surprise, therefore, that newborn joeys are just one inch in length when they’re born. They then travel unassisted through their mother’s fur to her pouch, where they largely stay in safety until they’re mature enough to leave at around 10 months.
15. Gorillas Can’t Catch Colds
Gorillas convey 98% of their DNA to humans and, because they are so genetically similar, can easily exchange infections with them. However, respiratory infections that are moderately mild in humans can have ominous consequences in gorillas not to mention other apes and the common cold or flu can be fatal. Studies have shown that a cold can spread rapidly around a troop of gorillas, although fortunately, it didn’t tend to spread between neighbouring groups.
