What are your favorite fun facts about animals?
-Elephants can't jump.
-Starfish don't brains.
-Cheetahs are almost literally giant housecats: they purr, they meow, they don't attack humans and are surprisingly easy to tame.
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Cheetah’s went through a genetic bottleneck somewhere between ten and twelve thousand years ago. There may have been less than ten left at one point. Dating the Cheetah Genetic Bottleneck
My totally silly theory is that humans in fact where adopting kits at that time and help saved the species, and that’s why they’re so almost domesticated.
There is almost no genetic diversity among them. You can skin graft or transplant organs between any two cheetahs without fear of rejection.
Wouldnt that also result in inbreeding or is there enough diversity to this being of no concern?
Yes it has. But species survival is more important.
Could have been the egyptians lol https://egyptfuntours.com/blog/cheetah-in-ancient-egypt/
I never knew for ages they’re part of the house cat branch of the feline family rather than the big cat branch with the lions and tigers, so that explains why they’re just floppy doofuses.
Or how it happens with african tribes; aggressive lions get killed by the whole tribe. And at some point there were almost no cheetah...
Wobats poop cubes.
are their assholes square?
They have weird butt muscles and use the poop as trail markers if I remember rightly.
Asking the important questions.
They also have an armored butt
Always seeing cubist shits in the bush.
Better that than the surrealist ones.
And their primary defence is crushing the skulls of their enemies against the roof of their burrow. Using their butt.
Pigs can't look up. Sharks are older than trees. The duck billed platypus has no nipples; milk just oozes from the skin. All mammals have the same number of cervical vertebrae.
Sharks are as old as fire.
They evolved around 450 million years ago, which is also the time oxygen levels in the atmosphere first got high enough to sustain fire, and land plants appeared that could catch fire.
That is an even cooler extension to the sharks are older than trees fact which I enjoy.
It should be just platypus. And ducks are really platypus billed ducks. The platypus had it's bill first way before ducks came along
At some point a horny platypus fucked a chicken, and invented the duck.
pigs can very obviously look up
Wild bees (often solo) will sometimes "bed down" in cactus flowers. The flowers close in the evening providing protection for the sleeping bee.
Starfish don’t brains?
I like that cats know their own names, understand why we’re saying them, yet choose to ignore us on purpose.
We had five cats, and they all knew each other's names.
No, starfish just.
Opossums are essentially immune to rabies and eat ticks.
Venom too... They hunt snakes
Dogs are cool.
You can see a good portion of the back of many owls' eyes if you look in their ears.
Earwigs can fly....
I think I would have been a lot happier if I'd never learned that.
What the fuck?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PNtn6ly9wU
I had to check that out
What the fuck, indeed!
amazing
The octopus has 9 brains, one central brain (donut shaped, around the esophagus), and one in each of the 8 arms.
And one arm is used especially for octopus sexy time. (hectocotylus)
All that hentai led me to believe otherwise
That's why that's just fantasy 😄
A centipede's 'fangs' are actually weird legs that can inject venom, and they're called toxicognaths (which is one of my favourite words)!
"Bartender! I'll have a toxicognath, thanks".
Penguins have a gland above their eye that converts saltwater into freshwater
Female spotted hyenas have pseudo-penises and no vaginal opening. They instead dock and give birth through their dicks
the sounding community seems to leak again...
It's a retractable pseudo penis tho, they shrink it so it's easier for the male to penetrate her even if her vagina isn't very conventional.
Some scorpions can drop their tail if in danger. But afterwards they can't poop anymore and die of constipation months later.
Link
There are 25-million ants for every person on this planet.
I don't want mine.
Ant-Man summoning all the ants would be way scarier than Spider-Man summoning all the spiders.
Where do I go to claim them?
Elephants think humans are cute
We probably look like little Minions, running about.
Sadly, it's an internet myth 😭
I thought there was a study done or something
Humans can throw objects in excess of 100 mph (40 m/s), and hit a target from over 60 feet (20 m) away
But they still can’t take criticism.
You've just made an enemy for life!
Meerkat mobs are led by a dominant female. She's identifiable by looking for the biggest butt.
Meerkat got back.
Dat ass
Meerkass
So what do I do? I now have some meerkats following me home.
Grooming them for parasites is probably a good start.
Cheetahs sound fun until I consider how many cords my cats have chewed, furniture they've scratched, and litter boxes they've populated.
Then suddenly a giant tame housecat seems less appealing.
Cheetah are extremely anxious animals, most other felines are very "lazy" animals but cheetah are active. Their hunting strategy is an outlier in felines, they don't stalk and surprise, they outrun their prey.
Another issue is that even tho they're more tame than other cats including the Serval they still can pretty much kill you. Tamed cheetah don't usually harm their owners but there have been catastrophic incidents with kids.
Orb weaver spiders use their webs as giant, super-effective external eardrums.
https://youtu.be/D1LJ3uBxRhE (@ about 26:45)
Spider web microphones. Or antennas. Someone should build one. Someone competent in the area. :)
As a platypus lays eggs and produces milk, it's the only mammal that can make its own custard (plus the enchidna which can also do the same)
Dolphins don't dream. Their cortex is large enough to not need to
Sharks are older than the star polaris
Echidnas?
Thank you. TIL
I was thinking enchiladas, but echidnas make way more sense. Even if less tasty. I'm probably just hungry
Platypuses are one of the few venomous mammals. Males have a spur on their hind legs, which can inject a venom that can make a human sick for several weeks.
Yeah Dr. Doofenshmirtz is just trying to catch a wild animal called Perry the platypus
I learned a NSFW animal fact the other day. There are some fish that care for their young by holding them in their mouth, it's called mouthbrooding. That's not the new or NSFW part though.
::: spoiler The NSFW part is the fact that
for some fish, the fertilization occurs in the mouth. The female lays her eggs and scoops them up into her mouth. Then the male fertilizes the eggs directly in her mouth. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. A male fish cums into a female fish's mouth, and that's how they normally reproduce.
:::
Ahh, nature. So beautiful. So like us.
Elephants have a prehensile penis that they sometimes use for a fifth leg.
That's their nose buttmaster
And also their penis!
Barnacles have the longest penis relative to body size out of all animals.
After Prince, obviously.
Most giraffe sex happens between two males.
Humpback whales are able to navigate exceptionally well and I don't think science knows how.
Humpback whales travel by picking a direction and traveling in that direction. They can maintain a true course to within a degree of accuracy for hundreds of miles regardless of location on the planet, ocean currents, magnetic variation, day or night, though open empty ocean.
I know how to do that, but I need stuff the whales don't have like visual reference to a solid surface, accurate charts, radio-based navaids, winds aloft forecasts, and/or gyroscopic instruments. Most of the time, most creatures either navigate by landmarks, some are able to navigate magnetically, some can home, ie they can sense a destination and point their noses at it and go that way, as forces such as winds, ocean currents, Coriolis force etc. push them off course they steer to keep the destination dead ahead, tracing a half-teardrop course.
But humpbacks can pick a direction and go perfectly straight. Somehow.
Cats offer us mice because we are incompetent at hunting ourselves.
Sharks have existed on earth longer than trees and grass.
Chimps will gang up and murder tyrannical leaders, we could learn so much from them. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119677-chimps-beat-up-murder-and-then-cannibalise-their-former-tyrant/
Starfish are all head and no limbs. Genetically speaking. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/starfish-are-heads-just-heads/
I'ma shock you.
Creatures don't need brains. I mean, we have ample human evidence. But like, nervous systems can create thought (or whatever it is animals do) and reaction to stimuli without a central processing organ.
Only female ducks can quack.
Wasps and bees are closely related to ants, ants really go crazy for honey.
uhh i've seen a cheetah attack a lady some years ago, tbf it was a pissed off one, on a leash, that she wanted to pet or pose with for a photo