Almanac chapter 3: Animals
Chapter 3
ANIMALS
How do we know what animals think or feel? I say be kind to
animals just in case it matters to them. The poet William Blake
said, "How do you know but that every bird that cleaves the aerial
way is not an immense world of delight closed to your senses
five?"
Lifespans of Animals
Horse...............30
Rabbit...............5
Dog.................15
cat.................13
rat..................2
mouse......less than 1
Elephant...........100
Crocodile..........300
Cow.................25
Pigeon..............20
Eagle..............100
Whale..............100
clam...............150
Tortoise...........350
Lion................40
Pig.................25
Crow...............100
Dogs and Cats
In one large city a telephone operator traced the source of
an emergency phone call because the caller would not speak. The
phone only emitted unusual noises. When the ambulance crew
arrived at the scene, they found a basset hound who had dialed 911
in the process of chewing up the phone.
In 1978, New York City passed a law that made the residents
clean up after their dogs. Until that time, people had to walk
around 54 tons of dog poop deposited daily.
There was a dog (part collie) who liked to take baths and
learned how to turn the water on and off and adjust the faucets to
get the right temperature.
Dogs see only black, white and gray. They can hear much
better than humans, though. They can hear sounds ten times
farther away than we can.
The original reason for the haircuts that poodles get was to
make swimming easier for them.
The only things that are taxed in Ile de Sein, France, are
dogs.
An average dog costs its owner about $500 per year. In ten
years, $5,000!
"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance,
everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that
will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce
It costs about $30 per month to feed a horse. It costs about
$15 per month to feed a cat.
Americans spend almost 3 billion dollars a year on food for
their kitty-cats, yet, for comparison, America spends only 700
million dollars on drug prevention and treatment programs.
And speaking of cat food, a mouse can have 8 babies. Assuming
four of them are female, and knowing that a mouse can give birth
60 days after being born itself, after 18 months, a pair of mice
can become 4.5 million.
If you have to introduce a second cat into your house, your
first kitty cat may have trouble getting used to the new intruder.
If you put a little perfume on both cats, so that they will smell
the same as each other, they will trust each other more.
A man named Sir Henry Wyat was sentenced to the Tower of
London, at a time when prisoners generally starved to death. Sir
Henry's kitty-cat seemed to understand the situation because she
snuck into the Tower bringing him a freshly-killed pigeon every
day. When the king heard of this, he must have felt sad for the
kitty, because he immediately set Sir Henry free.
Cats will not walk on aluminum foil. This is good to know
when you are trying to protect something that your cat would tend
to walk on such as a part-done jigsaw puzzle.
Cats' whiskers have a function similar to those curb feelers
which were so common on cars in the 1950's. When a cat looks into
a small tunnel or opening in the bushes, the whiskers are used to
gauge the dimensions. If the opening doesn't rub the whiskers,
the cat's body will fit through.
Why are cats so meticulous about keeping clean? They lick off
all blood and odor-causing matter to prevent attracting flies and
bigger predators that would be interested in the odor of blood.
The world's fattest cat was "Tiger" a part-Persian who
weighed over 42 pounds.
If your kitty-cat scratches up valuable furniture, tape
balloons to it. The cat will never scratch there again.
It is often reported that cats cannot taste sweet flavors.
Actually, they can sense sweetness, but do not have much interest
in sugary things. What is particularly interesting about their
sense of taste, is that they have a special taste for the flavor
of water, which we humans cannot taste.
;qooooooo.,,,xkiiiiiii:
This is what happens when a kitty cat walks across the
computer keyboard while you are trying to write a book.
If you need to give liquid medicine to a cat, don't try to
feed it to the cat. This would only result in a battle. Instead,
spill the medicine on the kitty's fur. The cat will lick it off in
the process of cleaning.
When a cat turns around and around before laying down, this
is an instinct left over from the days when they slept in tall
grass. The turning action pushed the grass down into a nest.
Birds
Chicks that have just hatched will follow the first moving
thing they see and think that moving thing is their mommy. I
wonder what happens when the first thing they see is a cat?
Mynah birds can be trained to say "hello" to people. There is
one mynah that even says "hello" to photographs of people. He
recognizes them even if they are wearing sunglasses.
Some vultures have learned that for dinner they can crack
other bird's eggs by throwing stones at them.
When the subject of a national bird came up, Benjamin
Franklin suggested a turkey, but an eagle was selected.
In 1876, when constructing the 550-foot tall Washington
Monument, (when it was 153 feet tall), workers had to get a rope
to the top, but they did not have any sort of scaffolding. They
tied a thread to the leg of a pigeon, put him inside the
unfinished tower and made a sudden noise. The scared bird flew up
to the top, and out. A string was attached to the thread and
pulled to the top, and then a rope was pulled to the top with the
string.
There is a species of bird called European Grosbeak. It's
official scientific name is Coccothraustes coccothraustes
coccothraustes.
A human heart beats at about 50 to 100 beats per minute. A
hummingbird's heart beats between 36 and 1200 beats per minute.
When at rest, the bird's heart beats at 480. Our body temperature
is always close to 98.6. Theirs is between 55 and 110 degrees.
Some people in China use live quail in the winter as hand
warmers.
If you give an oystercatcher a choice between one of her own
eggs, or a fake egg made of wood, she will sit on the wooden one.
There were a flock of ducks that lived on the roof of a hotel
in Memphis, Tennessee who used to take the elevator to the ground
floor when they wished to go anywhere.
There was a research project that involved having a scientist
yell at chickens - then measure their health compared to other
chickens that were treated nicely. As it turns out, the chickens
treated nicely are more resistant to infection.
The largest chicken egg ever laid weighed over one pound.
The passenger pigeon, which became extinct in 1914, numbered
over two billion just thirty-five years earlier. They used to fly
in such large flocks that it would seem like night in the middle
of the day. Farmers used to shoot at them and would sometimes hit
two or three with one shot.
There is a bird in Antarctica that repels threatening animals
in unique ways. The bird throws up in the enemy's face. If that
doesn't work, it blows snot at them with enough force to bowl a
human over.
When a gas pipeline crossing the California desert springs a
leak it would normally be hard to find the break. To find the
leak easily, the gas companies put a chemical into the gas that
arouses the mating instinct in buzzards. They congregate around
the area of a leak, making it easy to spot.
A 300-pound ostrich has 45 feet of intestine. Their eggs
have a shell so hard that a 250-pound man can stand on one without
breaking it.
Brains
The cerebellum is the rear part of the brain which is most
convoluted. It has long been considered the center for balance
and muscular coordination. (In birds it is much larger than the
same organ in other animals - because they need it for flying).
Recently it has been discovered that there are direct circuits
between the cerebellum and emotional responses.
Scientists raised three groups of monkeys. Some were raised
by their mother. Some were raised by a stationary Chlorox bottle
covered with fur. The last group were raised by a Chlorox bottle
that was remotely controlled and acted somewhat like a real
mother. The monkeys with the movable bottle mother grew up nearly
as normal as those raised with a real mother, but those with a
stationary mother, grew up schizophrenic.
A fish's brain weighs about the same amount as its spinal
cord. In humans, the brain weighs 55 times more than the spinal
cord.
The brain of an elephant is four times bigger than a human
brain.
The animal with the largest brain compared to the size of its
body is an ant.
Human brains weigh about 44 to 50 ounces. The biggest brain
in any class of apes is only about 16 ounces.
Dolphins have brains that are 40 percent larger and more
wrinkled than humans. Are we really the most intelligent animal on
earth? The answer is probably yes. Much of the dolphin's brain is
taken up with their sense of sonar. Scientists are now assuming
that they can not only "see" their surroundings and other dolphins
with their sense of sonar, but that they can actually see into
their friends. They would not have to ask another dolphin if it
is feeling ok, they can see their friend's innards for themselves.
Have you ever tried to sell something big to someone, who
tells you, "I'll have to sleep on it." There is validity to this
technique. A person can enhance their decision making power while
sleeping. This is done through dreams. It seems that while
dreaming we are practicing our thinking skills, and more
specifically, reprocessing our thoughts and activities of the
previous day. We are able to see issues more clearly the next
day, and therefore make better decisions, because we have new
power. We have let our brain develop the issue overnight. This
is an essential trait to survival.
For proof, we look at the spiny anteater, a simple mammal who
does not have periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep.
This indicates that the little guy does not dream. The spiny
anteater has another oddity. He has the biggest prefrontal cortex
(the thinking part) in relation to the rest of his brain of all
animals except humans. Yet he is stupid, and we are not. Why? He
has to process all his thoughts in actual time, as they are
happening, because he cannot work things out while dreaming. This
must be a bigger job than you would think. His offspring could not
evolve much farther in intelligence because their brains would
have to become prohibitively large. Instead, they evolved
dreaming. We humans dream, so our large brains can be used for
more intelligent pursuits. This dreaming business is very
essential to the formation of permanent memories.
Dinosaurs
Some dinosaurs had two brains! Since nerve signals move from
one part of the body to another relatively slowly (It takes 1/50
second to notice a pain in your foot.) and since these beasts were
so large, a second brain was located at the base of the tail to
maintain control the back of the creatures. Interestingly, the
rear brain was bigger than the one in their heads.
The Largest dinosaur, Brachiosaurus weighed as much as a town
of 800 people, was taller than a four story hotel, and was as long
as two of the longest school buses.
Who says all dinosaurs have died? There is a species of
lizard called Komodo monitor that can grow to over ten feet long
and weigh 365 pounds. Komodo Dragons can eat a pig whole.
Actually, most scientists are now saying that dinosaurs were
very unlike lizards. Their legs generally were directly under
their bodies, not sticking out from their sides like lizards.
Their bone structure was more like that of warm-blooded mammals.
Tracks have been found made by of groups of dinosaurs moving
together in herds with a spacing and depth of impression
indicating sustained high speed, again more a mammalian trait than
reptilian. One theory regarding the extinction of dinosaurs which
is gaining some acceptance is that because they were warm-blooded
creatures with a high metabolism, they were more susceptible to
viruses or bacterial infections than their cold-blooded
predecessors. According to one scientist, they might have all
died of diarrhea. Can you imagine the mess?
Everyone knows that there are places underground that have
fossils 70 million years old. What most people don't realize is
that these things didn't all die. Scientists recently bored a hole
850 feet down into the era of dinosaurs and found 3500 living,
undiscovered species of fungi, protozoa and bacteria. The scien-
tists do not know whether these are the same as those who lived in
prehistory or whether they have mutated.
Invertebrates
The horseshoe crab is an animal that has not evolved. It is
the same as it was 300 million years ago.
If you took all the earthworms that are under a typical
football field and lined them up, the line would be 94 miles long.
They will move ten tons of dirt in a year.
Giant earthworms have been found as long as 11 feet. Yuk!
Some fleas freeze solid every night, then thaw out to resume
their lives in the daytime.
Mosquitoes can drink 150 percent as much blood as they weigh.
A reason to avoid blue jeans: Mosquitoes are twice as
interested in blue as any other color.
There is a water beetle that has four eyes. Two are mounted
high on its head for seeing through air, and two are lower, for
looking into the water.
The mayfly has a two-hour long lifespan. It has no mouth,
because it will not have time to digest a meal.
The largest moths in the world have a 14 inch wingspan. These
"Hercules" moths live only 2 weeks and never eat. Would you be
scared if one landed on your head?
Insects are nearsighted. They cannot see farther than 9
feet.
How is it that insects get stuck to a spider's web, yet the
spider does not? The spider's feet secrete a bit of oil. If a
spider slips or falls, it can get trapped in its own web.
Bees have to fly a total of 72,000 miles to gather enough
honey for one jar.
Ants sleep about three hours, then stretch and appear to
yawn, just like people do when waking.
If you could jump as high as a grasshopper, relative to its
size, you could jump more than 1/2 mile straight up.
There is a species of bug that can fly up to 818 miles per
hour, faster than the speed of sound.
If you could weigh all the bugs in the world, and weigh all
the people in the world, your pile of bugs would weigh twelve
times as much as the people.
How do spiders make their silk? They excrete a polymer and
then stretch it so quickly that this stretching creates aligned,
crystalized solid molecules.
Spiders inject their victims with a chemical that dissolves
them. Then the spiders drink their lunch with their mouths which
are soda straw-like. A tarantula can totally liquify a mouse.
The crosshairs that you see in a surveyor's transit have to
be very thin. Some transit makers use the silk of a black widow's
web.
If a drop of liquor gets on a scorpion, it will immediately
commit suicide with its own stinger.
Some male moths can locate a single female moth by her odor
up to one mile away.
If you cut the head off a cockroach, it will continue to live
for up to many more weeks.
Scientists have found out that termites are affected by
music. They will eat up your house twice as fast if you play rock
music.
The ears of some bugs are located in unusual places. Crickets
listen to sounds with their knees while cicadas hear with their
stomachs.
The giant squid has the largest eye of any living animal at
up to nine inches in diameter. (fifteen inches according to
another source) These squid live so deep in the ocean that live
ones have seldom been seen. Dead ones have been found that are up
to 55 feet long.
Jellyfish are animals who are composed of mostly water - 95
percent.
A sponge is a unique character. If you cut him into several
small pieces or squeeze him through a screen, his parts will
eventually reform the original shape without any harm done.
Octopi have three hearts.
If a lobster loses an eye, it will grow a new one.
Starfish have a gross and unusual manner of eating. They
regurgitate their stomach through their mouth onto their food, and
absorb it directly. Then they suck their stomach back in.
Lower Vertebrates
Some anglerfish, who live in the ocean at depths of over one
mile, have unusual lives. To see where they are going in that
depth, or perhaps to attract food, the females have a chemically
operated lamp that hangs on a stalk in front of their mouths. The
male doesn't need to see because early in his life, he bites into
the belly of the female and stays there forever. After a while
the female grows skin over the connection, and the male
degenerates, losing his teeth, his fins, and any manner of life
beyond being a small appendage hanging off the female.
Some catfish have taste buds over their entire body.
When Pacific salmon get to a certain age, their pituitary
glands suddenly secret poison to kill them.
A fisherman in England hooked three pike at once. While
pulling in the first, it was eaten by a second who had been eaten
by the third.
While fishing at a pond in New York State, a man lost the
glass part of his lantern. Five years later, once again fishing in
the same spot, he caught a fish that was wearing that same glass
lantern chimney, stuck around it's body.
One species of shark is so competitive that the babies fight
each other within their mother, until only one is left to be born.
Sharks never get sick.
Sharks almost never get cancer. Scientists are studying them
to find out why and whether their protection is adaptable to
humans.
Sharks will eat anything. The only exception, is that they
will not eat anything in the vicinity of where they give birth.
This is because they are so stupid, this is the only way nature
protects them from accidentally eating their own babies.
The people of the world eat over 200 million frogs per year.
So many people around the world enjoy eating frog legs that there
is likely to be an eco-system problem in Asia, where most frogs
for food come from. They eat zillions of insects, keeping the
wildlife balance in check. Perhaps people would stop eating frogs
if they realized that the frog's legs are usually cut off while
the frogs are still alive.
When horned toads are threatened, they shoot jets of blood
from their eyes.
Crocs eat rocks. The first meal of a baby crocodile consists
of several stones. Scientists think these are for ballast, to
help the croc keep upright while swimming and/or to grind up food
during digestion.
If alligator eggs are kept above 86 degrees, all the babies
will be males. If incubated at below 86 degrees, all females will
result. Another theory about the extinction of dinosaurs is that
with a global change in temperature, only one sex would have been
born.
A seven-inch chameleon can stretch its tongue up to ten
inches to eat bugs that are passing by.
Scientists have discovered that a chameleon will still
imitate the colors of its surroundings, even if blinded.
There is a species of lizard that has three eyes. Two of its
eyes are located in the normal place, the third one is on the top
of its head.
There is a species of snake that is awake for two hours per
day, and sleeps the other 22 hours.
There have been snakes born with two heads. They usually
coexist alright until one tries to eat the other.
When researchers in Louisiana placed rubber snakes and
turtles on highways and observed the behavior of 22,000 motorists,
they discovered that 87% of the drivers purposely avoided hitting
the creatures, but 6% of drivers went out of their way to "kill"
the rubber animals with their tires.
Warm blooded animals versus cold blooded animals: The
warm-blooded animals are always ready to move or react to their
environment, while the cold-blooded animals must be careful not to
be caught at the wrong temperature, when they cannot react quickly
to an emergency. On the other hand, warm-blooded animals must
spend much of their time eating to supply their energy
requirements. If people were reptiles instead of mammals, we would
have to eat only once per week.
Mammals
Rabbits sleep 16 times per day.
The blood of mammals has exactly the same dilution of salt as
ocean water.
We all know that whales are big, but few of us realize just
how big. The biggest species is the Blue Whale. This animal is
bigger than any dinosaur that ever lived. The biggest dino
(brachiosaurus) was only 50 tons and 80 feet long. One blue whale
is as big as 25 of the largest elephants. (150 tons, 100 feet
long) Think of 75 Volkswagen vans. They are that big! And they
grow fast. Youngsters gain weight at the rate of ten pounds per
hour. A blue whale's tongue is about the same weight as three
Chevy station wagons. Their heart is about the same size as a
Toyota. This monster organ beats about nine times per minute. (at
the other end of the spectrum is the hummingbird with up to 1200
beats per minute, or 133 beats for every time the whale's heart
beats.
The life of a domestic elephant in Thailand: School begins at
age three. The elephant is introduced to two boys who will learn
with them. The boys are called mahouts. For the next six years
they learn all about working with each other to get wood out of
the jungle. For the next fifty years, the elephant and the
mahouts are employed by the timber industry. The reason there are
two men for one elephant, is that should something happen to one
of the men, the other will be able to continue working with the
elephant. Then, at age 59, the elephant is retired, and gets to
graze freely in the forest for the next forty years or so. The
mahouts, if still alive, still visit the elephant in the forest
every few days.
An elephant can eat a quarter-ton of grass in one day.
The skin of a hippopotamus is an one and a half inches thick
and nearly bullet-proof.
When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.
The stomach of a hippopotamus is ten feet long.
You can convince a cow to go up stairs, but it is nearly
impossible to get one to come down.
The record for milk production from one cow is 11,756 gallons
in one year.
Sometimes a moose will approach a car, thinking it is another
moose. They are very nearsighted animal.
Aren't you glad you are not a koala? Koala bears have a diet
that consists of only one thing, eucalyptus leaves. Interestingly,
their appendix is up to 8 feet long.
Teddy bears were named after U.S. President Theodore
Roosevelt. He enjoyed a koala bear that was given to him, and toy
manufacturers started making a toy bear, named after the
President.
A man named Marinus was so mad when a bear killed his mule,
that he captured the bear and taught him how to plow his fields.
A horse cannot focus its eyes in the way humans do. They
have to change the angle of their heads if they want to see close
objects clearly.
A man in France who had been hunting on his pony had a
problem. The pony was injured. So, he carried the pony more than a
mile to a veterinarian. The pony weighed almost a quarter-ton.
Brand-new baby giraffes are six feet tall and weigh almost
200 pounds.
Kangaroos push off the ground with their tails when they
jump.
Squirrels forget where they hid about half of their nuts.
The word Hamster is from a German word that means "to hoard."
Breathing liquid is possible. Mice have been held under the
surface in a beaker of liquid that is saturated with oxygen for
several hours. This could allow divers to rise or sink rapidly
without getting the bends. The only problem is the first breath -
overcoming the instinctual fear of drowning. Pre-mature babies
have already been forced to breathe liquid when their lungs are
too underdeveloped to breathe air.
The technical name for the black rat is rattus rattus.
A rat must never stop gnawing. This action grinds down their
ever-growing incisors. If they were not provided with anything to
gnaw, their lower teeth would eventually grow through their skull
and into their brain.
A scientist, W. Donner Denckla, at the National Institute of
Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (of all places), removed the
pituitary glands of rats and injected the necessary hormones for
survival. These rats lived much longer and showed less signs of
aging than ordinary rats. At 24 months of age, only 2 out of 125
control rats were still alive. This is a typical lifespan for
rats. Of the 95 rats without the pituitaries, even though
handicapped, at age 34 months, 20 were still alive. This is
equivalent to humans at age 95, where only 1 percent of us are
still alive.
Humans have been a very successful species in terms of the
number of individuals living on the earth at this time. We are the
first animal that can exchange information outside of DNA. Other
animals must rely upon what is built into their system, primarily
instincts, for their information about how to deal with their
environment. People can talk to each other about their
environment. For example, I can tell you not to eat the leaves of
a cherry tree, because they are poisonous, thereby saving your
life.
Some old male monkeys become bald, just like some humans.
Many scientists believe it is possible, through artificial
insemination or perhaps more natural techniques, to cross-breed
humans and gorillas. There is really nothing to stop someone from
doing this. Think of the ethical questions that the baby would
bring up. Would you raise the child as a human?
In 1914, France's first lady was kidnapped by an orangutan
who had escaped from the zoo in Paris. He carried her up into a
tree and kept her for hours. She was so embarrassed by this
incident that the government kept it a secret for forty years.
It is possible that a single pig caused the War of 1812. This
pig was always getting into the neighbor's garden and eating up
the nice things he found there. Finally the neighbor got mad and
attacked and killed the pig with a pitchfork. The pig's killer
was a congressional candidate who lost the election by one vote.
This was the vote cast against him by the late pig's owner
presumably because he was upset about the loss of his pig. When
the matter of deciding about the war was voted upon, the issue
passed by one vote. This was the vote of the candidate who had won
the election by one vote.
The world's most outrageous musical instrument was made in
France during 1450. Connected to a keyboard was a long row of
spikes. Under each spike was a pig, arranged according to the
pitch of its oink.
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