25 Animal Facts That Might Blow Your Mind, As Shared In This Online Thread

The internet is a treasure trove of information, and every so often, a thread emerges that captivates users with surprising and awe-inspiring animal facts.

#1

Image source: liripipe, Bennet Robin Fabian

Sloth hands work opposite to ours. They have to exert energy to open their “fist” and relax to close it. This is how they can hang from trees while they’re sleeping and not fall off.

#2

Dogs may make social judgements about people based on how those people treat their owners. A study out of Japan had dog owners asking two people for help opening a container. There were three possible outcomes. A person reacting negatively by refusing and turning away, a person remaining neutral and a person helping. The dogs were then offered food from the people the owner had approached for help. Dogs were much much less likely to accept food from the people who had refused to help their owners, and much more likely to accept food from those who had been neutral or who had helped.

Image source: LogicalMess

#3

Image source: Truedeal, Daniel Torobekov

The Greenland shark reaches sexual maturity at 150 years old and lives 300-500 years. Always fascinates me that theres something that can live that long.

#4

Image source: Lord_of_Hedgehogs, Hari Nandakumar

Cheetas are so closely related to each other that you can freely transplant organs between all members of their species without needing immunosuppression.

#5

Image source: Aomory, Pixabay

We all know they have very good problem solving skills, like throwing a nut onto a road and picking the remains when the lights turn red. But they have social structure. They punish crows who have stolen food from younger crows. They avoid areas where a lot of crows have died. They don’t caw during funereals. And when a crow dies, its buddies come examine the corpse to see how it died so they can avoid a similar fate. Yes, crows understand the concept and are afraid of death and try to avoid it at all times.

#6

Some species of burrowing tarantula let tiny frogs live in their burrows. The frogs are kept safe by the big, mean-a*s spider, and in exchange, they keep the burrow free of pests too small for the tarantula to deal with. This is pretty much how cats were domesticated.

Tiny frogs are tarantula cats.

Image source: The_First_Viking

#7

Image source: makesitallup, Helena Lopes

A horse can outrun a bear.

If you see a mountain lion, it has already decided to eat you.

If you’re camping and you hear an animal moving around, it’s probably a skunk or a beaver or a porcupine. Bears, moose, and other large animals are surprisingly snarky.

#8

Image source: soda_cookie, Robert Owen-Wahl

Some stores will only sell gerbils in pairs because they get very lonely

#9

Squirrels are responsible for thousands of new trees every year. They collect and bury their nuts all over the place so they’ll have food to last thru winter, but they forget about most of them.

Image source: southwycke75344

#10

Image source: ninelove9, PhotoMIX Company

Snails can sleep up to three years

#11

Ants breed and domesticate aphids around their colonies, so they can drink their milky secretions. Aphids are ant cows. So ladybugs, then, would be like ant chupacabras.

Image source: Cereborn

#12

Image source: Sebaren, Kevin Grieve

SPIDER FACT: Did you know that spider webs are initially liquid? Upon coming into contact with the air, the web hardens, creating a substance that is 5x stronger than steel. It is believed that, if a spider could produce threads as thick as a pencil, they would be strong enough to stop a plane in flight. However, farming silk from spiders was largely impossible, both due to the quantity of the silk, and due to the fact that the spiders would attack one another. For this reason, scientists have genetically engineered goats with spider DNA that can produce silk through their milk. They are called spider goats, and they are chimeras—a creature with the genetic information of two animals. In this case, the genetic information comes from two different species.

#13

Image source: horch13, Peter Boshra

Some squid have toroid shaped (donut) brains, and their esophagus (throat) passing through it. If they eat something too big they can get brain damage.

#14

Image source: cleancutPunk, Saad Khan

On ostrich farms, some farmers have a hard time with breeding because the ostrich is more attracted to humans than other ostriches. That’s right, somewhere out there an ostrich wants to f**k you.

#15

Image source: smiffypiffy, Richard Bartz

There’s an insect called the scorpiofly that impresses mates by bringing them prey to eat. The bigger the meal, the better. Only, some scorpionflies aren’t that great at catching food. So some of these males will imitate females, and wait for other males to bring them their gifts. Then they take the gift, fly away, and give it to an actual female.

#16

Image source: rkhbusa, Stephen Leonardi

A green sea turtle can swim faster than Usain bolt can sprint. An animal out there with a house for a body can swim at speeds we don’t allow in playground zones 35MPH.

#17

Coral is an animal, related to jellyfish. Many coral species have a symbiotic relationship with a microorganism called zooxanthellae, which lives in their tissue and photosynthesizes like a plant, converting light into organic energy. Corals also deposit calcium carbonate and build huge geological structures, called reefs. The most massive structure ever created by any living organism on planet earth is a coral reef.

Corals are like a cross between animals, plants, and rocks, and they’re incredibly important for the health of our oceans, because reefs serve as a “nursery” for many, many marine species. Save the reefs.

Image source: anon

#18

Image source: BoldlyGone1, David Clode

Fish have been seen using tools – deliberately hitting a clam with a rock to get it to open so they can eat it. Some fish (eels and groupers) form hunting partnerships where they communicate across the species barrier with specific signals to put their individual strengths to work (the eels chase prey out of crevices to where the groupers are waiting in open water). They also get fooled by illusions in the same way we do, meaning that their brains are processing and interpreting their environment in a similar way to us.

That’s technically three facts but I like fish.

#19

There’s a parasite that needs to get inside a warm-blooded animal. Problem is, it lives in fresh water. It waits to get swallowed by a fish, then it attaches itself inside, “takes over” a part of the hosts brain, adjusting it’s behavior so the fish is not longer afraid of shadows. The fish is then more likely to get eaten by a Heron (large bird that stalks fresh water fish). And the parasite gets inside it’s warm-blooded host and does lord knows what

Thanks to Ricky Gervais for that (I think I might have butchered it a bit but it’s roughly along those lines)

Here’s a bonus one. Researchers took a leech, put it in a maze and put food at the other end. Eventually the leech figured out the route. They then liquidised the leech, fed that leech to other leeches, and those leeches were able to complete the maze on the first try. They had “acquired” the other leech’s memory

Image source: anon

#20

Image source: cheechiie, пресс-служба ПАО “Газпром нефть”

A narwhals “horn” is actually an overgrown canine tooth. Also some narwhals can have 2 “horns”!!

#21

Image source: The-Goat-Lord, Sand Crain

Seals will get seasick if you put them on a boat

#22

Image source: StarsandstampS, Pixabay

Ancient penguins could have been up to 7 feet tall.

#23

Image source: quantumguy, limoo

Polar bears are so efficient at storing Vitamin A, consuming polar bear liver can cause death….one polar bear liver contains enough Vitamin A to kill 52 adult humans.

#24

Both animal and plant fact.

Avocados were evolved to be eaten by the giant ground sloth. Imagine a sloth, but so massive it could only live on the ground. The flesh attracted the sloth and the very large seed was “designed” to travel through their intestinal tract for re-seeding or whatever plants do.

Humans killed the sloth but loved the avo. We domesticated the avo to increase the yummy flesh. The pit has gotten smaller but is still very large. Whenever you eat an avo, think of the long extinct giant sloth.

Image source: quokkafarts

#25

Image source: anon, Pixabay

Giraffes have the same number of cervical vertebrae as humans!