250 Fun Facts
250 Interesting Facts: Animals, Human Body, Space, Food & History
The world is full of surprises. Octopuses have three hearts, wombats make cube-shaped poop, and there is a shark swimming in the Arctic that may be older than the United States. The more you learn, the stranger and more wonderful everything becomes.
This collection brings together 250 interesting facts about almost everything, from animals and the human body to space, food and history. Every fact has been written by the WebFunFacts team and checked against trusted sources, so you can share them with confidence. When you've finished, there are plenty more facts waiting in the next part of our series.
Animal Facts
Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood. Their blood uses a copper-based molecule to carry oxygen, which gives it its blue colour.
A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance."
Camels don't store water in their humps. The humps are actually full of fat, which the camel can use for energy when food is scarce.
Sloths can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes by slowing their heart rate.
Koalas sleep for up to 18 hours a day or more. Their eucalyptus diet gives them very little energy.
Ants don't have lungs. They breathe through tiny holes in their bodies called spiracles.
Some parrots can live for more than 80 years, often outliving their owners.
Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
Sea otters often hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift away from each other.
Tardigrades can survive in outer space
These tiny animals, also called water bears, are less than a millimetre long. In 2007, scientists sent them into orbit and exposed them to the vacuum of space, and some survived and later reproduced. They can also endure extreme heat, cold and radiation by drying out and going into a deathlike state.
Cats sleep around 12 to 16 hours a day.
Giraffes have the same number of neck bones as humans: seven. Theirs are just much longer.
A shrimp's heart is located in its head region.
Starfish, also called sea stars, have no brain and no blood.
Owls can't move their eyes, so they turn their heads instead, rotating them up to 270 degrees.
Butterflies taste with their feet. Sensors on their legs tell them whether a leaf is good for laying eggs.
A cheetah can reach speeds of around 100 km/h in about three seconds.
Honeybees share the location of flowers with each other by performing a "waggle dance."
Dolphins sleep with one half of their brain at a time, so they can keep breathing and watch for danger.
The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived
Blue whales can grow to around 30 metres long, larger than any dinosaur discovered so far. Their hearts alone can weigh about as much as a small motorbike, and their calls are among the loudest sounds made by any animal.
Male gentoo penguins search for the smoothest pebble they can find and offer it to a female as a gift.
Crows can recognise individual human faces and remember people who have treated them badly for years.
Polar bears have black skin under their fur, and the fur itself isn't really white; each hair is clear and hollow.
Kangaroos find it almost impossible to walk backwards because of their large tails and powerful back legs.
A group of owls is called a "parliament."
Axolotls can regrow lost limbs, and even parts of their heart and brain.
An elephant's trunk contains around 40,000 muscles.
Rats make ultrasonic laughing sounds when they are tickled.
A woodpecker's tongue wraps around the back of its skull, helping to cushion its brain while it pecks.
The Arctic tern makes the longest migration of any animal
Every year, Arctic terns fly from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to Antarctica and back again, a round trip of around 70,000 kilometres. Over a lifetime of about 30 years, that adds up to roughly the distance to the Moon and back three times.
Male seahorses carry the eggs in a pouch and give birth to the babies.
Jellyfish have existed for more than 500 million years, long before the dinosaurs.
Wombats produce cube-shaped poop, which stops it from rolling away when they use it to mark their territory.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Snails have thousands of tiny teeth arranged in rows on a ribbon-like tongue.
Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight.
Every dog's nose print is unique, much like a human fingerprint.
Hippos produce a reddish oily liquid on their skin that works like a natural sunscreen.
The wood frog can freeze almost solid in winter, with its heart stopping, and then thaw back to life in spring.
Bees may visit around 2 million flowers to make one jar of honey
To produce about 450 grams of honey, worker bees need to collect nectar from roughly 2 million flowers and fly a combined distance of tens of thousands of kilometres. A single worker bee makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire life.
No two zebras have exactly the same stripe pattern.
A hummingbird's heart can beat more than 1,200 times per minute.
Goldfish don't have a three-second memory. Studies show they can remember things for months.
A group of crows is called a "murder."
Female sea turtles often return to the same beach where they hatched to lay their own eggs.
Squirrels help plant new trees by burying nuts and forgetting where they put some of them.
Elephants can recognise themselves in a mirror, a sign of self-awareness shared by only a few animals.
The mantis shrimp has one of the fastest punches in the animal kingdom, strong enough to crack aquarium glass.
The platypus is a mammal that lays eggs, and males have venomous spurs on their back legs.
The Greenland shark may be the longest-living vertebrate on Earth
A 2016 study estimated that one Greenland shark was somewhere between 272 and 512 years old, most likely around 400. These sharks grow only about one centimetre a year and don't reach adulthood until they are roughly 150 years old.
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