25 Wildlife Facts to Chew On

Animals are amazing, but some truths about them are a bit too obscure.

By Toonacious

Published 2 years ago in Wow

Animals are amazing, but some truths about them are a bit too obscure.

Thanks to Reddit, we've collected some of the wildest, most uncommon animal facts the internet had to offer.

1
"Army Ants will create "balls" during high water floods. The ball will roll allowing every ant to get a breath." - H010CR0N

2
"There is a genus of frog called "Mini". There are only three frogs in the genus, and their scientific names are all puns: Mini mum, Mini ature and Mini scule." - SwimmingOnMars

3
"The chemical compound which is used to make fake banana flavour is the same compound honey bees use as an alarm pheromone. So never eat banana sweets near a beehive, and if you suddenly smell banana near a beehive, run!" - generic-volume
4
"The duck-billed platypus has no nipples to feed their offspring. Instead, milk oozes from the skin." - ChimpyChompies

5
"Rabbits don't have pads on their paws. Only fur. So if you see a cartoon rabbit with pads on its paw, completely wrong." - FOTBWN
6
"Vultures urinate on their legs and feet to cool off on hot days, a process called urohydrosis. Their urine also helps kill any bacteria or parasites they’ve picked up from walking through carcasses or perching on dead animals." - Iron_Chic
7
"Kangaroos cannot jump backwards." - bsquirlz

8
"The vast majority of Greenland sharks are blind thanks to a special parasite that eats their eyes and replaces them. It is thought that this might actually be helpful because a) their eyesight was shit anyway, b) the parasites wave like lures and may have an anglerfish-like effect, and c) the sharks are super slow so that might be one of the few ways for them to catch live prey. Imagine something eating your eyeballs and it being an upgrade." - Fabled_Webs
9
"Penguins have a gland above their eye that converts saltwater into freshwater." - Yeeteth_thy_baby
10
"Cats have tiny whiskers on their ankles to help them hunt and be sneaky."

11
"Butterflies will drink blood given the option." - Semicolon7645
12
"Sloths are literally too lazy to go looking for a mate, so a female sloth will often sit in a tree and scream until a male hears her and decides to mate with her." - amishsheepherder
13
"Roosters deafen themselves temporarily every time they crow, so that they don’t damage their own hearing." - Soulfighter56

14
"A kangaroo will mate again one to three days after giving birth. The newborn will latch onto a teat in the pouch and as long as it thrives, the kangaroo can put its newly fertilized embryo in a state of dormancy and have a back up baby ready to go.

If the newborn grows out of the pouch or dies, the kangaroos hormones will send signals to start the development of the egg. So they can have an adolescent Joey, a nursing one, and one in stasis all at the same time." - themoonhasgone
15
"Turkey vultures projectile vomit as a means of defense!" - yourscottygirl
16
"Bees have 5 eyes. 2 complex like a fly's and 3 simple eyes like a spider." - imachiknsamich

17
"Axolotls are real life Frankenstein's monsters. Not only do they have the ability to regenerate tissue if it gets damaged much like a starfish can grow a limb, but if you cut off their arm and (oh I don't know) ATTACH IT TO IT'S BACK, their cells will form and fix between the back and the dismembered limb.

After some time, the arm is completely attached and useful while attached to the back like some disgusting Mr Potato Head. Some people did a test where they completely severed the head of an Axolotl and just pasted it next to the head of another one to see if a head could do the same thing. It worked. The brain started thinking again, ate food after their esophagus attached, and became a fully functioning 2 headed axolotl." - WillyMcHilly489
18
"Woodpecker tongues wrap around the back of their brains. This helps the brain stay protected during high speed pecking." - powderabuser
19
"Only sheep, whales, and humans go through menopause" - FinishTheThing

20
"There are no male Mourning geckos. The entire species is female." - Moctor_Drignall
21
"The Western Lowland Gorilla's scientific name is "gorilla gorilla gorilla." - CorporalCrash
22
"Snakes don't have eyelids. If you see a snake blink, that's a legless lizard." - CirothUngol

23
"The Inland Taipan (snake) has the strongest/potent venom on the planet, capable of killing around 290 humans with a single bite. Scaled to mice, a single bite could kill 250,000 mice. That said, bites from the Inland Taipan to humans have been pretty rare as they usually stay underground and are not overly aggressive unless you jump all over their burrow. They also have a good number of predators who prey on them." - Flat-Cold
24
"They feed cows magnets so when cows eat nails/barbed wire/metal it stays in one stomach otherwise they'd get hardware disease and die." - Steffany_w0525
25
"Chickens will come say goodbye to each other when one is dying and they do soft clicks and will then leave and that chicken will normally die alone. Some chickens also will kill another chicken because they sense something’s wrong with the chicken a disease for example. Hope u enjoyed these facts I found them in a book called How To Speak Chicken." - WalterDaSquirrel1259