A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby or a cat. A capon is a castrated rooster. A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time. A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body. A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't. A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds. A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime. A father Emperor penguin withstands the Antarctic cold for 60 days or more to protect his eggs, which he keeps on his feet, covered with a feathered flap. During this entire time he doesn't eat a thing. Most father penguins lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch. Afterward, they feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the mother penguins return to care for the young, the fathers go to sea to eat and rest. A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks. A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time. A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots. A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients. A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length. A normal cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum (storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices). A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel. A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872. A rat can last longer without water than a camel can. A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes-sized insects in just one hour. A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second. A zebra is white with black stripes. After mating, the male Surinam Toad affixes the female's eggs to her back, where her spongy flesh will swell and envelope them. When the froglets hatch, they leave behind holes in their mother's flesh that they will remain sheltered in until large enough to fend for themselves. All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives. All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930. An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride. An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while cruising at 25 mph. An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts. An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. Ancient Egyptians believed that "Bast" was the mother of all cats on Earth. They also believed that cats were sacred animals. Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception; the longest is the Asiatic elephant, taking 608 days, or just over 20 months. At the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life", an ultrasonic whistle, audible only to dogs, was recorded by Paul McCartney for his Shetland sheepdog. Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades. Bird eggs come in a wide variety of sizes. The largest egg from a living bird belongs to the ostrich. It is more than 2,000 times larger than the smallest bird egg, which is produced by the hummingbird. Ostrich eggs are about 7.1 inches long, 5.5 inches wide and typically weigh 2.7 pounds. Hummingbird eggs are half an inch long, a third of an inch wide and weigh half a gram, or less than a fifth of an ounce. Brown eggs come from hens with red feathers and red ear lobes; white eggs come from hens with white feathers and white ear lobes. Shell color is determined by the breed of hen and has no effect on its quality, nutrients or flavor. By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks. Camel milk does not curdle. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand. Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike. Cat scratch disease, a benign but sometimes painful disease of short duration, is caused by a bacillus. Despite its name, the disease can be transmitted by many kinds of scratches besides those of cats. Catfish have 100,000 taste buds. Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine. Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed and continue livingChameleons can move their eyes in two different directions at the same time. Chameleons can reel in food from a distance as far away as more than two and a half times their body lengths. Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird's chirp or a dog's yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away. Cojo, the 1st gorilla born in captivity, was born at the Columbus Zoo, in Ohio, in 1956 and weighed 3 1/4 pounds. Despite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet. Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was known before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such small game as hares. Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air. Domesticated turkeys (farm raised) cannot fly. Wild turkeys can fly for short distances at up to 55 miles per hour. Wild turkeys are also fast on the ground, running at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph. During World War II, the very first bomb dropped on Berlin by the Allies killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo. Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks. Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz. Every year, $1.5 billion is spent on pet food. This is four times the amount spent on baby food. Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade. Female chickens, or hens, need about 24 to 26 hours to produce one egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again. In addition to the half-hour rests, some hens rest every three to five days and others rest every 10 days. George Washington's favorite horse was named Lexington. Napoleon's favorite was Marengo. U.S. Grant had three favorite horses: Egypt, Cincinnati, and Jeff Davis. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog. Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream. Hippos have killed more than 400 people in Africa - more than any other wild animal.
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