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Random animal facts you know

154 replies

NewDayNewLife · 17/03/2022 22:15

There is a South American bird called the paradise tanager, Latin name Tangara chilensis. It's found in quite a few countries in South America... but not Chile.

OP posts:
iklboo · 18/03/2022 19:53
bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 19:59

Oh god! The pressure! Most have already been mentioned on this thread tbh.

Lemme think...

There is an animal called a Bintruong (my husband truly believed I made this up until the wonders of the internet) that smells of popcorn and have only rarely been witnessed mating. On my first day I caught two at it so I'm probably famous or something Grin

Lions fur is very coarse and greasy. They don't mind being in small enclosures as the only reason they move about in the wild is to hunt so when food is given to them they are happy to stay in a small environment. Cooked meat can make them seriously ill (we caught visitors throwing cooked meat over the fence).

Chimps are highly dangerous, a gorilla would probably ignore you if it felt no threat. A chimp has the strength of ten men (approx) and would rip your limbs off for fun.

bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 20:05

Oh, and when a llama is about to spin, it tilts its head back and makes a weird yakking sound. Their spit is like yoghurt and not very pleasant so when I was cleaning them out once and one started doing this, I legged it. Japanese tourists filmed it. I am still waiting for it to appear on some random YouTube video Grin

bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 20:05

Spit, not spin!

SweetPetrichor · 18/03/2022 20:09

While most tarantulas are solitary creatures who only come together to reproduce, there is one truly communal species called Monocentropus balfouri - or the Socotra Island Blue Baboon tarantula. You can keep these in communal set ups and they not only coexist but also interact. It’s fascinating. There are other species that can be kept communally but not with such high levels of success.

extractorfactor · 18/03/2022 20:14

Re the wombats, is that where the phrase 'shitting a brick' comes from?!

The blood of horseshoe crabs is 'milked' and used in vaccines Sad many of the crabs don't survive, and their numbers have plummeted Angry. Although researchers are working hard to make a synthetic bloodSmile fingers crossed it happens soon.
They are also more closely related to arachnids 🕷 than crustaceans 🦀
Bloody love horseshoe crabs

iklboo · 18/03/2022 20:17

I think one of the most terrifying sights I saw was footage of a band of chimps charging something, armed with long sticks. You'd be very, very dead if they caught you. And probably in a lot of pieces.

There was a nice (probably not true) statement:

Give a chimp a camera it will smash it to pieces
Give a gorilla a camera it will carefully take it to pieces
Give an orangutan a camera it will carefully take it to pieces, put it back together again and take your photo ☺️.

bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 20:22

And people wonder why Michael Jackson gave Bubbles up Grin

bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 20:27

The head primate keeper once came into the staff room absolutely white. Part of the chimp's enclosure was heavy steel. I'm finding it hard to describe but think chicken wire times a thousand. A chimp had managed to grab his arm through the fencing and he managed to get free of its grip. But he knew that he could have been as good as diced if the chimp pulled hard enough.

He was in massive shock. No idea how it managed it as the metal didn't (and shouldn't have been) big enough for it to get its hand through. But it did.

bottleofbeer · 18/03/2022 20:28

Didn't look*

sashh · 19/03/2022 04:48

@Soubriquet

I read that about koalas yesterday. They are incredibly dumb animals.

If you were to put their favourite eucalyptus leaves in front of them, they wouldn’t eat them because they wouldn’t recognise them as food without being attached to the branch and being up right

They are also not native to all of Australia, the only ones in WA are in zoos / animal parks.

They regularly have to be rescued from telephone poles and the like, and there was a great photo last year of one in someone's Xmas tree.

WA has Quokkers which are the cutest little guys ever, it was thought they only inhabited Rottnest Island until a colony was found on the mainland.

If a Quokka is ill and taken off Rottnest then it can never return to protect the other Quokkers.

catinboots123 · 19/03/2022 05:00

Oh I see a couple of other posters have said it but surprisingly Koalas are one of the dumbest species in earth. There is a legendary Reddit post about it - hang on I'll try and find it....

SewingBees · 19/03/2022 05:08

Penguins have long necks and legs. Google images of penguin skeletons.

SewingBees · 19/03/2022 11:52

Oh, and for those asking about how a wombat poos cubes, it's been researched www.utas.edu.au/research-admin/research-news/scientists-get-to-the-bottom-of-wombat-cubed-poo-mystery2

Somanymistakes · 19/03/2022 13:45

@SleepingStandingUp

"I mean after a night with a four headed penis, I guess making him custard is the least you can do Ms Echidna"

If I had a night with a four headed penis, I'd be making him a sponge pudding to go with that custard!Grin

catinboots123 · 19/03/2022 16:58

It's long I'm sorry. But credit to Reddit

Koalas are terrible animals

Koalas are fucking horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're fucking terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
Tldr; Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute. If you ignore the terrifying snake eyes and terrifying feet.

Soubriquet · 19/03/2022 17:17

That was an amazing read.

Koala really are a dumb animal

ALongHardWinter · 19/03/2022 18:20

Horses are unable to vomit.
Avocados are poisonous to guinea pigs.

HirplesWithHaggis · 19/03/2022 18:36

I now view koalas in an entirely different light.

QuebecBagnet · 19/03/2022 18:36

Mushrooms are also poisonous to guinea pigs. I found that out at a sad cost to DD’s piggies.

Ratched · 19/03/2022 18:41

I have nothing to add other than this is one of the best threads ever!

Thank you!

FlosCampi · 19/03/2022 19:11

Dolphins and whales were once land animals.

Twospaniels · 19/03/2022 19:28

Donkeys coats aren’t waterproof so you need to rug them up in wet weather

thenewduchessoflapland · 19/03/2022 19:52

Two dogs mating is a risky and bizarre business.

Once the male has mounted the female from behind he'll thus and ejaculate however after ejaculation the male will lift one leg over the females arse and stand arse to arse as a gland on the penis becomes so enlarged the two dogs become "tied".It ends when the gland returns to normal size.

The mating process can take up to an hour and if the two dogs tried to separate or are forced to separate prematurely it can cause damage to both of their reproductive systems.

Susu49 · 20/03/2022 00:41

@FlosCampi

Dolphins and whales were once land animals.
Are you pulling my fin??