All Fun and Games

An elephant can achieve a speed of twenty miles an hour, and sustain it for half a day. (source)

Riftia pachyptila.
Image credit: NOAA/Monika Bright.

Biologists divide the animal kingdom into as many as thirty-one different divisions, called phyla (singular phylum). One animal is so unique that it has its own phylum. In hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor lives a reddish worm, Riftia pachyptila, that creates a long, tough tube to live in. It ranges up to 25 feet long and ingests food, but has neither a mouth nor intestines. These worms are apparently nourished by bacteria that live inside their cells.

There is a species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, called the "immortal jellyfish", that can theoretically live forever. Unlike other species of jellyfish that die after reaching maturity, the immortal jellyfish is able to revert to an immature polyp state and begin maturing again. It can in theory repeat the process indefinitely. (source)

The largest recorded specimen of the blue whale is 33 meters (110 feet) long—about the height of an 11-story building. (source)

Flatfish (halibut, flounder, turbot, and sole) hatch like any other "normal" fish. As they grow, they turn sideways and one eye moves around so they have two eyes on the side that faces up. (source)

The Romans were so fond of eating dormice that the upper classes raised them domestically. The rodents were kept in specially designed cages and fed a mixture of nuts.

Three pairs of common English rabbits were let loose in Australia in the middle of the nineteenth century. Within a decade, the six rabbits had multiplied into millions, menacing the country's agriculture.

India has a bill of rights for cows.

A rat can go without water longer that a camel can.

The only mammal with a poisonous bite is the short-tailed shrew.

The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, around 12,000 years ago.

Oysters in their natural habitat open their shells at high tide and close them at low tide. Oysters moved from Long Island Sound to tanks in Evanston Illinois, U.S.A. (near Lake Michigan) at first opened up at the time of high tide on Long Island Sound. By a few weeks later, though, the rhythm of opening and closing had shifted until the oysters were in tune with a non-existent tide, but one that would exist if Illinois were covered by the ocean.

When the Spanish conquistadors first reached Peru, centre of the Inca empire, the Peruvian Indians felt the Spanish horses to be ferocious and deadly monsters, there being no horses native to the Americas. Through an interpreter, they asked the Spanish cavalrymen what these animals ate. In response, the Spaniards, pointing to the gold jewellery and ornaments of the Peruvians, said, "They eat those things of yellow metal. They are hungry now but do not wish to be seen eating. Leave the food in front of them and go away." The Indians gathered some gold objects for the horses. After they had left, the Spanish pocketed the gold, and then, calling back the Indians, told them that the horses were still hungry and needed more food. (source)

Over the past 2,000 years, humanity has helped to cause the extinction of about 2% of the known species of the world's mammals. (source)

To make a one-pound comb of honey, bees must collect nectar from about two million flowers.

The word "jumbo" comes from the name of Jumbo the circus elephant. Jumbo was killed on September 15, 1885, after being hit by a locomotive in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. In 1985, a life-size (3.35 metres tall) plaster statue of Jumbo was unveiled in St. Thomas. It was sculpted in New Brunswick and, ironically, was transported to St. Thomas entirely by truck. (source)

Welwitschia mirabilis, from the deserts of Namibia, can live for over 2,000 years, yet its central trunk never grows more that 3ft in height. Instead the energy is transmitted into its two huge leaves which never fall and continue growing throughout the plant's life. The leaves can be as long as 20ft.

Perhaps the most strange annual culinary affair was hosted by Clodius, a rich Roman actor who had one hundred birds given voice lessons at a cost of approximately $250 per bird. He then had these birds made into a pie for his guests. He then offered a drink which contained a dissolved pearl worth about one-half million dollars.

The wandering albatross has the largest wing-span of any bird and can glide for six days without ever beating its wings. It can also sleep in mid-air.

The heath hen was quite commonplace in New England in the 1600s. During breeding season, it nested on the ground and would stay there, guarding its nest, even when threatened. That made them easy targets for the Puritan inhabitants of New England, who grew so tired of the bird that the disk was relegated to servants. So, by 1880, the heath hen could only be found in Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. By 1932 the bird was extinct. (source)

The only bird that can fly backwards is the hummingbird, which achieves this feat by beating its wings up and down at a very fast speed; some species reach 80 beats per second.

The first successful corneal transplant was performed as early as 1835 by a British army surgeon in India whose pet antelope, who had only one eye, had a badly scarred cornea. He removed a cornea from a recently killed antelope and transplanted it into his pet's eye. The operation was a success, and the pet was able to see. (source)

King Christina of Sweden (all Swedish monarchs were given the title of King regardless of gender; only the spouse of a monarch would be called Queen) was so terrified of fleas that she ordered the construction of a tiny 10 centimetre long cannon so that she could fire miniature cannonballs at the fleas that infested the royal bedchamber. It is not known whether she ever managed to hit any. (source)

In the early 1980's, due to the risk of swine fever, all of the native Haitian pigs, which were descended from mediaeval European pigs brought to Haiti during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, were eradicated by Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. French scientists later "re-created" the extinct Haitian pig by crossing Chinese pigs with Caribbean and mediaeval Gascon breeds. When the Duvalier regime fell, the French sent their creation to Haiti.

The animal with the scientific name Puffinus puffinus is a Manx shearwater, not a puffin. (source)

The koala is a marsupial, not a bear.

The brain of a Stegosaurus probably weighed about 2½ ounces, which would have represented 0.004% of its body weight. In comparison, the brain of a human represents about 1.88% of its body weight. (source)

In De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"), the first-century B.C. Roman poet Lucretius wrote about how living organisms are constantly changing. He was aware of fossilized animals like none that currently exist and wrote that "Nothing remains forever what it was. Everything is on the move. Everything is transformed by nature and forced into new paths. One thing, withered by time, decays and dwindles. Another emerges from ignominy, and waxes strong." He also noted that many species must have died out in the past. (source)

The kiwi is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its beak. Whereas other birds hunt by sight or hearing, the national bird of New Zealand uses its beaky nostrils to sniff out food at night. Although the kiwi is roughly the same size as a chicken, it lays an egg which is ten times larger than a hen's.

The zebra is a black animal with white stripes, not a white animal with black stripes. The colouration cells in a zebra's skin are programmed to produce a black colour, and only when a genetic switch is thrown "off" that stripes without pigmentation (i.e. white bands) appear. (source)

Schenectady, New York police called to the home of 64-year-old Iva Fletcher in 1979 came across an ankle-deep swarm of cockroaches stretching from the door to the street and into the trees. The officers estimated the cockroaches numbered in the hundreds of thousands, although an exterminator later estimated the number to be in the millions. The ambulance that took Fletcher to the hospital, an animal shelter van, and four police cars all had to be fumigated after the incident. (source)