by Kim Doner
Greetings, critter-loving readers!
I’m here to supply you with more
than a few facts to ensure your triumphant win of my favorite game — I Wish I Didn’t Know.
This is for real. What’s hysterical is that the makers claim the game is for adults, but people who can correctly answer the questions need to summon their inner adolescents.
Keep reading. You’ll get what I mean.
Facts You Never Knew
As an added bonus, I’m throwing in the collective term for each animal discussed, just to amuse any and all inner nerds or perhaps spice up an otherwise dull conversation.
Ready, set, go!
A LOUNGE OF LIZARDS I’ve been tickled to recently read that horny toads are making a comeback, then discovered they aren’t toads at all. Those pretenders are actually lizards! Part of the reason they are such survivors
in dry climates is that they have channels running from backs and ears into their mouths to funnel any gathered moisture for hydration. So when they say, “Drinks are on me,” you can take that literally.
A WISDOM OF WOMBATS These guys boast a superefficient digestive system that gets every possible nutrient out of the grasses they eat. Inside their large intestines are lengths that are either quite stiff or quite flexible. As smooth muscles contract in a staggered way the bare-nosed wombats poop in distinctive cubes.
Manufacturers are interested in this for processing possibilities because wombats apparently defy the square-peg-and-roundhole belief system.
A COLONY OF BEAVERS Inside the anus of a beaver is a gland that makes a raspberry flavor — an ingredient no longer used because of the expense. (Who on earth discovered this one?)
Well, it turns out that beaver bottoms smell pretty good because of their diets. The compound comes from the castor sac, the product is castoreum, and it’s part of how beavers mark their territory. (I still want to know who came up with this.)
For the adventuresome, castoreum is available via a Swedish schnapps called bäverhojt.
You first.
A PASSEL OF POSSUMS America’s marsupials have 13 nipples, arranged in a circle of 12 with one in the middle inside Mama’s pouch. She can give birth to as many as 25 babies, so the “first come, first served” rule applies for the original 13 who latch on and stay sealed to Mama for about eight weeks.
At some point, their teeth start to emerge; possums have 50, the most of all mammals.
A HERD OF ELEPHANTS Adult elephants are the only mammal that can’t jump. They never have all four feet off the ground, and their legs are too slender to push their weight upward to accomplish any lift.
Jumping is considered a survival ability for eluding predators, but grown elephants don’t worry much on that score. (Info credit: the Smithsonian. I believe it.)
A FLAMBOYANCE OF FLAMINGOS
Flamingos have to turn their heads upside down to eat. They dip their bills and use their tongues to pump water through conelike plates at the edges of their bills to sieve their food.
Comparing Notes
And now! A few comparisons:
A PACK OF DOGS A coalition of cheetahs…. A cackle of hyenas…. Although cheetahs can sprint as fast as 70 miles per hour for half a minute, greyhounds will quickly outstrip them by running 35 mph for 12 minutes. Hyenas, on the other hand, can run as fast as 40 mph. They are quite comfy at a gait of six or seven miles per hour, which they can maintain for several hours because of their powerful, back-sloping structure.
A CONVOCATION OF EAGLES A parliament of owls…. A cast of crabs…. Amazingly strong grips are found in birds, mammals, reptiles, and crustaceans — and no human can compare. The harpy eagle and great horned owl have recorded grips of more than 530 pounds per square inch, and coconut crabs measure 750 psi. (The average human grip, for a male, is 72 psi and for a female 44 psi.)
This is probably one reason these animals don’t shake hands.
Another is that they don’t have hands.
Miscellaneous Meanings
What’s black and white and red all over?
AN EMBARRASSMENT OF PANDAS
Pandas urinate as high as possible to mark territory and fake how tall they are. They achieve that by doing handstands against a tree. Then they climb the tree.
This hardly qualifies as efficient to me, but it does add weight to the term “embarrassment.”
AN INFESTATION OF LICE (IMHO, the one who decided on that term had little imagination)…. A school of fish…. If you think YOU feel lousy, don’t complain to a red snapper.
There is an aquatic bug out there called Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse. It enters a fish’s body through the gills, hooks into the tongue, and severs the blood vessels. The tongue dies and falls off, while the parasitic louse sets up shop as a new tongue until the fish dies — although it could actually still have a normal life span.
Photos of this phenomenon give new meaning to the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words, especially considering how hard it would be to talk with a lousy tongue.
BTW: A lawsuit against a supermarket chain in Puerto Rico claimed poisoning resulted from having ingested a louse from inside a snapper. The suit was dropped when it was proved that louses aren’t poisonous and are consumed in some cultures.
A FLOCK OF CHICKENS A rare breed of Indonesian chicken called the Ayam Cemani possesses a hyperpigmentation gene causing fibromelanosis. The feathers, beaks, internal organs, and bone and muscle tissue are all black. Many people call them goth chickens.
Interesting note: I have no clue what color the meat becomes when cooked, but these chickens lay cream-colored eggs and have red blood. Go figure.
A CONFUSION OF GIRAFFES A clowder of cats…. Giraffes have black tongues with a sticky saliva that’s an antiseptic. Giraffes chew acacia leaves (and therefore the thorns that the tree is known for), so they probably developed the antiseptic for protection from bacterial infections.
Cats have a substance much like detergents, which probably helps keep their fur clean — but they have a wide variety of very toxic bacteria too, which can kill other animals if it dries on their feathers or fur and they groom.
A CHARM OF HUMMINGBIRDS These guys are so cool, I’m going to fire off several fun facts about them.
They eat three times their weight daily (I wanna be a hummingbird).
They are the only bird that can fly backward.
They have a big brain-to-body ratio and are believed to be quite intelligent. Their brain makes up more than 4 percent of their body weight. (Human brains make up only 2 percent — some even less, if you ask me.)
They can remember every flower and feeder ever visited, as well as when to return for more nectar.
They go into torpor to sleep fully, which helps when the temperature drops because it saves energy. It’s also a near-death level, and it takes as long as an hour for them to fully wake.
A CARAVAN OF CAMELS Built to last, camels can live as long as 50 years when cared for. They are desert-proof because their humps store fat to cover several days’ worth of survival. They have two sets of eyelashes and a third lid and the ability to seal their nostrils, all of which protects them in a sandstorm. These ungulates can drink more than 50 gallons of water in three minutes, leading me to theorize that they are reincarnated fraternity dudes.
The term “camel” is Arabic for beauty (insert juvenile snicker). I’m betting, though, that this animal is life-saving in dire circumstances, lending cause for such flattery.
Wanna Live Forever?
A SMACK OF JELLYFISH When facing stress, such as starvation or injury, the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can reverse maturity and become a baby version of itself — like a butterfly sneaking back
into its old cocoon, becoming a caterpillar again. In theory, one could live forever.
This sounds like a genie’s curse when you make your first wish for immortality. The big blue guy snaps his fingers, and poof! — you’re a brainless blob.
Eternally!
And Even More?
You might have guessed that I too summoned my inner adolescent to write this — and it was such a hoot, I think I’ll bug the magazine to let me do a Part II.
There’s only so much fun to be had these days, and I’m more than game to have it.
Or better yet — collect it!
