Fun Animal Fact Game

[CosmicKen]

Tell me a random fact about an animal. Your kin or otherwise. I’ll start...

Chipmunks and other small animals can effectively see in “slow motion” to help them avoid becoming prey.

Slow-motion world for small animals

Smaller animals tend to perceive time as if it is passing in slow motion helping them to escape from larger predators, a study finds.

www.bbc.com

 

[SoothsayerSasha]

If you were to shave a tiger, on their skin stripes would remain!

Likewise for;
spots on cheetah-kin, rosettes on leopard-kin, stripes on zebra-kin

 

[Lepus alleni]

due to how cladistics work, dinosaurs technically didn't go extinct, because avians are therapods, the same branch that included T. rex and velociraptor.

That said, the funnest part of this fact is chicken nuggets are made with 100% real dinosaur!

(...assuming they're half-decent nuggets) ​

 

[SoothsayerSasha]

siphonophore - here spotted by Australian scientists spanning 46 m / 150 feet - may be the longest creature to ever exist.

Siphonophorae (siphon 'tube' + pherein 'to bear') are colonial organisms, composed of many medusoids and polyp zooids.

One member of the siphonophorae order you may have heard of is the Portuguese man o' war, often mistaken for a jellyfish!

This creature is the second known in the world to be capable of emitting red light, and the purpose of this is poorly understood.

 

[CosmicKen]

siphonophore - here spotted by Australian scientists spanning 46 m / 150 feet - may be the longest creature to ever exist.

Siphonophorae (siphon 'tube' + pherein 'to bear') are colonial organisms, composed of many medusoids and polyp zooids.

One member of the siphonophorae order you may have heard of is the Portuguese man o' war, often mistaken for a jellyfish!

This creature is the second known in the world to be capable of emitting red light, and the purpose of this is poorly understood.

I’ve never heard of this wonderful animal! How interesting! This world is so wide and wonderful! Thanks for sharing!

 

[flameglazedhoney]

The two large 'fangs' either side of a centipede's head aren't actually fangs in the traditional sense - they're venomous modified front arms known as toxicognaths! Also, many centipedes' tail has two long 'prongs' meant to resemble the antennae, in the hopes that a predator will grab that end believing it to be the head, allowing the actual head to whip round and attack

 

[Ravenna Freyasdottir]

Some fish, such as the blue tang (Dory) have a spot nearer or on their tail that resembles an eye. This is to trick predators into attacking the wrong end. Many moths and butterflies have this too, such as the owl moth.

 

[SoothsayerSasha]

The prevailing view of a wolf (Canis lupus) pack is that of a group of individuals ever vying for dominance but held in check by the “alpha” pair, the alpha male and alpha female. Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however, has been conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves.

Mech, L. D. 1999. Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs. Canadian Journal of Zoology 77:1196-1203.

As it turns out, this research [from the 1940s] was based on a faulty premise: wolves in the wild, says L. David Mech, founder of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Center, actually live in nuclear families, not randomly assembled units, in which the mother and father are the pack leaders and their offspring's status is based on birth order. [...] the pack's hierarchy does not involve anyone fighting to the top of the group, because just like in a human family, the youngsters naturally follow their parents' lead.

www.wolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/267alphastatus_english.pdf
www.wolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/247Leadership.pdf

 

[2-D]

Owls eyes are locked in their sockets. They cannot move their eyes due to their tube like structure that allows them to better see at night. This is why they can turn their heads 270°.

Also, not all owls hoot. Barn owls scream.

 

[Shezep]

Dire wolves weren't wolves and lived in warm climates.

Dire Wolves Weren't Actually Wolves, DNA Analysis Reveals

Ancient DNA extracted from fossils shows the beast split off from Canis lupus and coyotes nearly 6 million years ago

www.smithsonianmag.com