Interesting Facts

Researchers from World Animal Protection have discovered how to tell if a cow is in a bad mood – by measuring the temperature of its nose. (They carried out the study by stroking the animals to put them in a calm and relaxed state before they took their temperature. How do they know the cows weren't just annoyed, and wanted to get back to the field?)

The Honorary PDSA Dickin Medal, has been posthumously awarded to famous war horse Warrior, dubbed "the horse the Germans could not kill". (Warrior arrived on the Western Front on August 11 1914 and stayed there throughout the war.  He was injured several times, but survived to eventually return home to the Isle of Wight in 1918 where he lived until his death aged 33. The Dickin Medal, also know as the Animal VC, is the highest award an animal can achieve while serving in military conflict. 65 of these medals have been awarded - to 29 dogs, 32 Second World War messenger pigeons, four horses, and a cat.)

Due to health and safety issues at a church putting on a nativity play in Neath, south Wales, has  meant that the child playing Mary will have to wear a hard hat when she saddles up for the donkey ride to Bethlehem. (Luckily she will be able to hide the head gear under her shawl. My favourite headline for this story, comes from the Metro - Yule never believe it!)

Houseflies are notoriously difficult to swat, and now scientists have discovered why: It's because they have superpowers. (According to a publication in the journal Animal Behaviour, they can actually see you coming in slow motion. They process more visual information than we can, for example, your average housefly can see a light flickering at a rate nearly seven times faster than we can.  So what we perceive as fast is in slow motion for them. One of the researchers, Dr McNally compared it to the famous bullet-time scene in the Matrix where the bullets were moving at an incredibly slow rate as far as Keanu Reeves was concerned.) Source

Why would anyone in their right mind put ferrets and poodles in the same post? Well, because seemingly it is very difficult to tell them apart. Dog-lovers at a market in Argentina paid out hundreds of pounds for supposedly fashionable "toy-poodles", only to discover that they were fluffed-up ferrets on steroids. (I've invented a new tongue twister! Say it 3 times - Fluffed up ferrets souped up on steroids.)

Chromodoris reticulata, a species of sea slug which is found in the Pacific Ocean, is able to detach, re-grow and then re-use its penis. (They are not the only creatures known to lose their male organs after sex; orb weaving spiders do it, as does a sea creature called the periwinkle and land slugs belonging to the genus Ariolimax. However the researchers believe that Chromodoris reticulata is the first creature known that can re-grow its appendage, and it is this ability that has surprised scientists. Surprised! There's an understatement.) Source

Fossils unearthed at two sites in China reveal that fleas, up to 10 times as large as modern fleas, drank the blood of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. (These Jurassic fleas are believed to be 165 million years old. They had claws on each of their six legs, with tiny teeth on the claws that helped the insects cling to hair shafts, and feathers. I do hope no-one gets the idea of cloning these wee beasties.) Source and icky picture.

Edinburgh Zoo's newest residents, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, are the first giant pandas to live in the UK for 17 years. ("H uān yíng Tian Tian  he Yang Guang." (Chinese (I hope) for - Welcome  Tian Tian and Y ang Guang.))

According to research at the California Institute of Technology, parts of the human brain are hard-wired to respond to other creatures. (The study indicates that the brain's right hemisphere evolved to deal with unexpected and biologically relevant stimuli and that covers a positive reaction to animals like fluffy kittens, as well as a negative response to creepy crawlies. Brain activity was stronger when the people studied looked at cats or snakes versus buildings or people. Maybe that is why more people view my animal vocabulary page , than my building vocabulary page .) Source

A team of researchers from Brock University, Canada, and Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil, have concluded that the toucan uses its enormous beak to stay cool. (Charles Darwin thought it might be used to attract mates, other research claimed it was for peeling fruit, nest predation and a visual warning, but the recent research used infra-red thermal imaging technology to show that the bill effectively acts as a heat sink to draw heat away from the bird's body, allowing it to stay cool. I could use one of them on my laptop.)

Scientists in Dubai say they have cloned a camel. (Injaz, a female one-humped camel, was born on 8 April, after more than five years of work. She joins the world's first mammal to be cloned, Dolly the Sheep, along with several cloned mice, cows, pigs and dogs. Personally I can't see the point. Cloning is extremely complicated and expensive, and sex is much more enjoyable.)

According to the NABU (Naturschutzbund Deutschland), up to 8,000 boars live in the German capital Berlin. (In 2007 there was a huge surge in the wild boar population of 320% and this has probably meant more boar getting bored with country life and moving into the suburbs. I've just been researching a potential trip to Berlin, and I think I'll be taking a spear or two with me.)

All locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts. (The locust is the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. These grasshoppers usually spend their life as harmless hermits, who avoid their fellows like the plague, but these cute green guys turn into a swarming plague of biblical locusts when the brain chemical serotonin kicks in. The molecule serotonin is best known in humans as a target of anti-depressant drugs. I always thought they were two different species. One nice little green one who never did anyone any harm, and the other a rapacious beasty to be stomped on, but seemingly prior to swarming, the grasshoppers undergo a series of dramatic physical changes - their body colour darkens and their muscles grow stronger for flying. The daft thing is that the change takes place when food becomes short, and they slowly start to cluster together and before you know it there's a real food shortage. Isn't nature weird?)

Australian researchers have mapped the kangaroo genome and discovered that Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans. (Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago and the kangaroo first evolved in China. I guess this explains a lot about Skippy.)

In Switzerland it is an offence to keep a single goldfish, guinea pig or budgerigar. (Switzerland has adopted new animal protection legislation which specifies in great detail how fish and animals are to be treated — including how to dispose of unwanted goldfish, it is no longer legal to flush a goldfish down the loo — they must be knocked out and killed first. Which I'm sure is a great relief to them. From guinea-pigs to budgerigars, any animal classified as a "social species" will be a victim of abuse if it does not cohabit, or at least have contact, with others of its own kind. In addition, aquariums for pet fish should not be transparent on all sides and owners must make sure that the natural cycle of day and night is maintained in terms of light. Anglers also have to take lessons in compassion, catch-and-release fishing and the use of live fish bait is banned. Additionally, dog owners will require a qualification, they must take classes on how to prope...

According to the Daily Mail squirrels can peel bananas. (Well let's face it, if you can shell nuts a banana is not that much of a problem.)

Cats can catch bird flu. (Poor Spooky has to be kept in now. As do all cats in Germany.)

A "lost world" exists in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of hitherto unknown animal and plant species. (I vote that we leave it alone, now.)

What do you find when you shave the striped fur off of a tiger? Striped skin. (First catch your tiger. Not that I have tried this personally.)

Female bottlenose dolphins are taught by their mothers to use marine sponges to look for food. (They break marine sponges off the seafloor and wear them over their snouts to probe into the seafloor for fish. Does this make them spongers?)