Interesting Facts

According to The Canal & River Trust  in the UK, every year, Britons throw 6 million loaves of bread into the waterways, rivers and canals of the UK. (The reason?  We love feeding the ducks and swans.   Apart from the waste, there are other problems: Firstly it's not their natural diet, and secondly the bread is damaging Britain's waterways, casing algae, disease and encouraging pests. The trust is asking people to feed the birds with grapes and peas instead. I wonder what the birds will make of that.)

According to the Vegetarian Calculator page on Facebook the average human, who lives to 80, will have eaten 7,000 animals in their lifetime. (They will have eaten 11 cows, 27 pigs, an amazing 2,400 chickens, 4,500 fish, 80 turkeys, 30 sheep, and if rabbits, ducks, geese, goats, prawns and squid are included, the total of animals eaten rises to around 7,500. It reminds me of a joke: Q: What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?  A: Anyone can roast beef. Sorry.)

Ducks have three eyelids. (Actually this isn't particularly amazing, because all birds have three eyelids, and so do dogs and cats. In ducks the upper and lower eyelids have small bristle feathers that resemble eyelashes. They only close their eyelids during sleep, and use the third eyelid alone for blinking. The third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, lies beneath the eyelids on the side of eye closest to the nostril. It darts across the eye about 30-35 times per minute in the domestic fowl, and also moves across the eye if an object approaches the eye suddenly or if something touches the head. The third eyelid becomes scooplike and sweeps excess fluid in to the corner of the eye where it drains. In most birds, the nictitating membrane is transparent, so vision is not impaired when the eyelid blinks, which is important since so many birds are prey animals. It helps to be able to see when blinking! It is suspected that some birds may fly with the third eyelid covering the cornea ...

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. (Please don't rush out and do any ducknapping, Mythbusters (the TV show) debunked this. Using a bunch of expensive studio equipment, they found that yes, it does echo, but the quack so closely resembles the echo it envelopes it.)