250 Surprising Facts: Animals, Science, Space, History & Everyday Life

Bald eagles usually stay with one partner for life and often return to the same nest year after year, adding to it each season.

Lobsters have blue blood. It carries oxygen using a copper-based protein called haemocyanin instead of the iron-based haemoglobin in our blood.

Elephants are pregnant for about 22 months, the longest pregnancy of any mammal.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

Dolphins can sleep with one half of their brain at a time, keeping the other half alert so they can surface to breathe and watch for danger.

Bottlenose dolphins invent their own signature whistles, which work much like names that other dolphins recognise.

All clownfish hatch as males. If the dominant female in a group dies, the largest male changes sex and takes her place.

Octopuses have three hearts: two pump blood through the gills and one pumps it around the rest of the body.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Sea otters hold hands while they sleep

Sea otters spend most of their lives floating in the ocean, and they sleep on their backs on the surface of the water. To avoid drifting away from each other, they often hold paws in groups called rafts. Some also wrap themselves in strands of kelp, which acts like a natural anchor while they rest.

A baby kangaroo is called a joey, and so is the baby of almost every other marsupial, including koalas and wombats.

A group of hyenas is called a cackle.

Baby hedgehogs are called hoglets.

Bats are the only mammals capable of true powered flight. "Flying" squirrels can only glide.

Snakes smell with their tongues. Each flick collects scent particles and carries them to a special sensing organ in the roof of the mouth.

Pet cats sleep around 12 to 16 hours a day.

Lions can rest for up to 20 hours a day, saving their energy for short, intense hunts.

Cats cannot taste sweetness because they lack a working gene for sweet taste receptors.

Around 80% of orange or ginger cats are male, because the gene for orange fur is carried on the X chromosome.

Platypuses "sweat" milk

The platypus is one of the strangest mammals on Earth. It lays eggs, and males have venomous spurs on their back legs. Mother platypuses have no nipples, so milk oozes out through patches of skin on their belly, where the babies lap it up. It looks a lot like the mother is sweating milk.

Chihuahuas are the smallest dog breed in the world, and many weigh less than 3 kilograms.

Dogs sweat mainly through the pads of their paws. Most of their cooling comes from panting.

Butterflies taste with their feet. Sensors on their legs tell them whether a leaf is the right place to lay eggs.

Flamingos are born grey or white. They turn pink from natural pigments in the algae and shrimp they eat.

A shrimp's heart is located in its head region.

Ants have no lungs. Air enters their bodies through tiny holes along their sides called spiracles.

Scientists have named more than 1 million insect species, and millions more are thought to be undiscovered.

A giraffe's tongue can be about 45 to 50 centimetres long, and its dark colour may help protect it from sunburn.

A blue whale's tongue alone can weigh as much as an elephant.

Jonathan the tortoise has been alive since the 1830s

Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise living on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, is believed to have hatched around 1832. That makes him the oldest known living land animal. He arrived on the island as a fully grown tortoise in 1882, and he has lived through dozens of world leaders, two world wars and the invention of the light bulb, the car and the internet.

Animals can be allergic to humans. In rare cases, cats and dogs react to human skin flakes, just as some people react to pet dander.

Male deer grow and shed a new set of antlers every year, and antlers are among the fastest-growing tissues in the animal world.

Horses can doze standing up by locking their legs with a special system of tendons and ligaments, but they must lie down for deep sleep.

In most frog and toad species, only the males call out loudly, to attract mates.

An American white pelican's pouch can hold about 11 litres of water, much more than its stomach can.

Queen Alexandra's birdwing from Papua New Guinea is the world's largest butterfly, with wings that can span about 28 centimetres.

The oldest cat on record, Creme Puff from Texas, lived for 38 years and 3 days.

Cheetahs are the fastest land animals and can sprint at about 100 kilometres per hour in short bursts.

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal of all, diving at more than 300 kilometres per hour.

Bumblebees can fly higher than Mount Everest

In a 2014 experiment, scientists placed wild bumblebees in a chamber and slowly lowered the air pressure to copy higher and higher altitudes. Many bees kept flying in air as thin as that found more than 9,000 metres up, higher than the summit of Mount Everest. They managed it by making bigger sweeps with their wings rather than flapping faster.

In 1945, a chicken in Colorado named Mike lived for about 18 months after his head was cut off, because his brain stem was left mostly intact.

Dolly the sheep, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Fruit flies were the first animals sent into space. They flew on a rocket in 1947 and returned to Earth alive.

Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.

New Zealand has more than four sheep for every person.

US President Theodore Roosevelt's family kept a menagerie of pets, including a hyena named Bill.

In Switzerland, it is illegal to keep just one guinea pig, because they are social animals that need company.

Most furry mammals get goosebumps. Their hair stands up to trap warmth or to make them look bigger to a threat.

Micropachycephalosaurus has one of the longest dinosaur names, at 23 letters. It means "tiny thick-headed lizard".

Cuvier's beaked whales are the champion breath-holders

Cuvier's beaked whales are the deepest-diving mammals known. They regularly plunge more than 1,000 metres below the surface to hunt squid. In 2020, scientists recorded one whale staying underwater for 222 minutes, or more than three and a half hours, on a single breath. That is the longest dive ever measured for any mammal.