• A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.
• A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
• A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.
• A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.
• Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception.
• Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.• It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
• Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.
• 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."
• The fastest-moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed of 0.0313 m.p.h..
• The pygmy shrew—a relative of the mole—is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce.
• There are around 2,600 different species of frogs. They live on every continent except Antarctica.
• Dragonflies have as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye. If you don't believe me, count them yourself.
• Insects with the fastest wing beat frequency are the no-see-ums, or very tiny midges, which beat their hairy wings 1,046 times per second. Male mosquitoes beat their wings 450 to 600 times per second.
• The fastest insect runners are cockroaches, which can move almost a foot per second. However this only translates to a little over 1 m.p.h..
• The loudest insects are male cicadas, which can be heard about a quarter of a mile away.
No comments:
Post a Comment