- Amazing Facts
- A zebra is white with black stripes.
- All the planets in our solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
- Hummingbirds are the only animal that can also fly backwards.
- Insects do not make noises with their voices. The noise of bees, mosquitoes and other buzzing insects is caused by rapidly moving their wings.
- The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs covering a meter a second.
- The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent".
- The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.
- A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
- India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
- The whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.
- A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.
- India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.
- 'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.
- Didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school.
- Phobatrivaphobia is a fear of trivia about phobias !!
- It is impossible to lick your elbow. ( We know you gonna try this !!! )
- A snail can sleep for 3 years. ( wow, lucky chap eh ? )
- The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start
- In 1883 the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa put so much dust into the earth's atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.
- "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
- Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
- Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.
- Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Say no evil ).
- 55 per cent of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn. Reading about yawning makes most people yawn. hello, zzzzz zzzz ?
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- Crocodiles Swallow Stones for Swimming
- The stomach of a crocodile is a rocky place to be, for more than one reason. To begin with, a croc's digestive system encounters everything from turtles, fish and birds to giraffes, buffaloes, lions and even (when defending territory) other crocodiles. In addition to that bellyful-o'-ecosystem, rocks show up too. The reptiles swallow large stones that stay permanently in their bellies. It's been suggested these are used for ballast in diving.
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- Whale Milk Not On Low-Fat Diets
- Nursing a newborn is no "small" feat for the whale, whose calf emerges, after 10 to 12 months in the womb, about a third the mother's length (that's a 30-foot baby for the Blue whale). The mother squirts milk into the newborn's mouth using muscles around the mammary gland while the baby holds tight to a nipple (yes, whales have them). At nearly 50 percent fat, whale milk has around 10 times the fat content of human milk, which helps calves achieve some serious growth spurtseas much as 200 pounds per day.
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- Birds Use Landmarks to Navigate Long Journeys
- Can you imagine a road trip vacation without missed exits, stubborn drivers or map-folding disasters? Of course noteyou're not a bird. Pigeons can fly thousands of miles to find the same roosting spot with no navigational difficulties. Some species of birds, like the Arctic tern, make a 25,000 mile round-trip journey every year. Many species use built-in ferromagnets to detect their orientation with respect to the Earth's magnetic field. A November 2006 study published in Animal Behaviour suggests that pigeons also use familiar land
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- For Beavers, Days Get Longer in Winter
- Beavers become near shut-ins during winter, living off of previously stored food or the deposits of fat in their distinctive tails. They conserve energy by avoiding the cold outdoors, opting instead to remain in dark lodgings inside their pile of wood and mud. As a result these rodents, which normally emerge at sunset and turn in at sunrise, have no light cues to entrain their sleep cycle. The beaver's biological sense of time shifts, and she develops a "free running circadian rhythm" of 29-hour days.
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- Mole-Rats aren't Blind
- With their puny eyes and underground lifestyle, African mole-rats have long been considered the Mr. Magoos of rodents, detecting little light and, it has been suggested, using their eyes more for sensing changes in air currents than for actual vision. But findings of the past few years have shown that African mole-rats have a keen, if limited, sense of sight. And they don't like what they see, according to a report in the November 2006 Animal Behaviour. Light may suggest that a predator has broken into a tunnel, which could explain why subterranean diggers developed sight in the first place.
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- Baby Chicks and Brotherhood
- It's a mistake to think of evolution as producing selfish animals concerned only with their own survival. Altruism abounds in cases where a helping hand will encourage the survival of genetic material similar to one's own. Baby chicks practice this "kin selection" by making a special chirp while feeding. This call announces the food find to nearby chicks, who are probably close relations and so share many of the chick's genes. The key to natural selection isn't survival of the fittest animal. It's survival of the fittest genetic material, and so brotherly behavior that favors close relations will thrive.
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- Many Fish Swap Sex Organs
- With so many land creatures to wonder at, it's easy to forget that some of the weirdest activities take place deep in the ocean. The strange practice of hermaphroditism is more common among species of fish than within any other group of vertebrates. Some fish change sex in response to hormonal cycle or environmental changes. Others simultaneously possess both male and female sex organs.
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- Giraffes Compensate for Height with Unique Blood Flow
- The stately giraffe, whose head sits some 16 feet up atop an unlikely pedestal, adapted his long neck to compete for foliage with other grazers. While the advantage of reach is obvious, some difficulties arise at such a height. The heart must pump twice as hard as a cow's to get blood up to the brain, and a complex blood vessel system is needed to ensure that blood doesn't rush to the head when bent over. Six feet below the heart, the skin of the legs must then be extremely tight to prevent blood from pooling at the hooves.
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- Elephants Do Forget, but They're Not Dumb
- Elephants have the largest brainenearly 11 pounds on averageeof any mammal that ever walked the earth. Do they use that gray matter to the fullest? Intelligence is hard to quantify in humans or animals, but the encephalization quotient (EQ), a ratio of an animal's observed brain size to the expected brain size given the animal's mass, correlates well with an ability to navigate novel challenges and obstacles. The average elephant EQ is 1.88. (Humans range from 7.33 to 7.69, chimpanzees average 2.45, pigs 0.27.) Intelligence and memory are thought to go hand in hand, suggesting that elephant memories, while not infallible, are quite good.
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- Parrot Talk More than Just Squawking
- Parrot speech is commonly regarded as the brainless squawking of a feathered voice recorder. But studies over the past 30 years continually show that parrots engage in much more than mere mimicry. Our avian friends can solve certain linguistic processing tasks as deftly as 4-6 year-old children. Parrots appear to grasp concepts like "same" and "different", "bigger" and "smaller", "none" and numbers. Perhaps most interestingly, they can combine labels and phrases in novel ways. A January 2007 study in Language Sciences suggests using patterns of parrot speech learning to develop artificial speech skills in robots.
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- The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
- Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
- Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!
- What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
- "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
- "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
- In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
- A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!
- Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
- You can't kill yourself by holding your breath
- There is a city called Rome on every continent.
- It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland!
- Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
- Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
- The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
- Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
- Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
- The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump!
- One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
- Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different!
- The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
- Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
- Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
- The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
- Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
- Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
- Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
- Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
- Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
- On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute.
- More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
- The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
- More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.
- Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
- The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
- The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
- Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
- It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
- You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
- Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food!
- Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
- It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
- The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
- The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
- Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
- Slugs have 4 noses.
- Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
- A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
- A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
- The average person laughs 10 times a day!
- An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain