Interesting Facts

According to research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, fish can remember faces. (By training archerfish with food pellets as a reward,  with a random sequence of 44 faces, scientists were able to teach them to spit at a particular face, with an average accuracy of between 81 and 86 percent.  A researcher Cait Newport said "Obviously the first takeaway is that they could do it. They were distinguishing something really complicated. This also shows that the fish have surprisingly good memories. It certainly challenges the whole idea of a fish with a 30-second memory." Did she really use the word takeaway?  I hope she hasn't trained her fish to recognise English.) Source

According to a recent study of around 9,000 British pets by pet insurer Animal Friends, the number of  cats diagnosed with diabetes has skyrocketed by  1,161 percent over the past five years. (The fact is people who feed cats human food are shortening their lives. In addition more than half of the cats kept indoors are dangerously overweight. I've never understood the idea of an indoor cat. Spooky and Moose would never have stood for it.) 

I bet they recognise this one! According to a poll commissioned by Wilko, 25% of primary school children cannot identify a robin redbreast or a blackbird. (The survey also revealed that nearly 50% do not recognise a sparrow, with 42% unable to name the common bird from a photo. It's not surprising, when you remember most of kids in the UK think beef comes from McDonald's.) I guess I'd better add blackbird to our list: http://www.learnenglish.de/basics/animals.html

Jack, a Yorkshire Terrier, is the oldest living dog in Britain. (At 117 years old (in dog years), he still looks like a puppy.  He will be the eighth-oldest dog of all time if his age can be proven to Guinness World Records. There are different formulas for calculating dog years. Alot of people multiply by 7, but dogs are mature by the age of 2, so some calculate it by allowing 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after that. According to: http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm, Laika is a mere 57, but according to http://www.pedigree.com/all-things-dog/dog-age-calculator/ she is 70 years old. Guess which one she prefers?) Source

According to a survey by The Wildlife Trusts, 4 in 10 British children have never seen a hedgehog in the wild in the UK. (The same survey found that 71 per cent of British children have never seen a lizard in the wild, while more than half have not seen a flock of starlings in flight (called a mumuration). Mrs Tiggiwinkle will be incensed.)  

Doenertier82  at the  German language Wikipedia Hammocks make hamsters happy. (Yes, forget the hamster wheel, according to studies carried out at Liverpool John Moores University hamsters love nothing more than to chillax in a hammock, and an enriched environment made them more optimistic. How can you tell if a hamster is happy?)

Bees contribute more to the British economy than the Royal family. (According to research carried out at the University of Reading, the overall value of the contribution of our busy bees is £651 million a year, which is £150 million more than the Royal Family brings in through tourism. In fact 85 per cent of the UK’s apple crop and 45 per cent of our strawberry crop relies on bees to grow. These two crops alone brought in £200 million to Britain in 2012. Unfortunately honeybee colonies have slumped in the UK from 250,000 in the 1950s to fewer than 100,000 today. In Germany everyone seems to have their own beehive.)

The robin has been named Britain's national bird. By Lukas Esser (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons (The short list of 10 birds included:- The robin  The barn owl The kingfisher The wren The blue tit The mute swan The blackbird The puffin The red kite The hen harrier It's strange that the starling, the pigeon and the sparrow didn't make the short list.  Ornithologist David Lindo - who launched the campaign - said the robin was "entwined into our national psyche" as a "Christmas card pin-up". I wonder if it ever got centre-fold status.)

According to a study carried out by the WWF (World Wildlife Federation) 25% of Brits believe that the dodo still exists. (The unfortunate flightless bird actually became extinct over 400 years ago, and yet 14 per cent of the respondents believe it is currently under threat from hunters, whilst 12% said it was not even endangered!. % OF RESPONDENTS THAT MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED THE BELOW AS ENDANGERED SPECIES Red Admiral butterfly           38% Red kangaroo                        36% Swan                                       28% Weever fish                            28% Crane fly                                 21% Flamingo         ...

The most popular name for a dog in the UK in 2014 was Max. (The top 20 names were:- Max Buddy Charlie Jack Cooper Rocky Toby Tucker Jake Bear Duke Teddy Oliver Riley Bailey Bentley Milo Buster Cody Dexter IMHO - the best name for a male dog is still Sam.)

According to the Kennel Club, in the UK more than 10,000 dogs a year are poisoned after eating everyday items such as onions, grapes, paracetamol and chocolate. (Between 2010 and 2014 56,000 dogs were treated for poisoning. Painkillers were the most common cause of poisoning, followed by rat and mouse bait, and chocolate. Chewing gum, laundry detergent, sultanas, grapes and raisins along with onions, garlic and leeks all cause health problems that can be fatal to our 4-legged friends.)

Research carried out in the UK has revealed that nature's strongest biological material is to be found in the teeth of a limpet. (The publication, in the Royal Society's journal Interface, says that the teeth are made of a mineral-protein composite, which was found not only to be stronger than spider silk, but the very strongest of man-made materials too: stronger than Kevlar fibres and almost as good as the best high-performance carbon fibre materials. The idiom to stick or cling like a limpet, makes more sense now: it means to refuse to let go of something or someone.)

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?)

New legislation in the UK means that all salmon caught prior to April must be released back into the water unharmed. (The catch and release policy will mean the salmon will be able to spawn (swim upstream to lay their eggs( before being in danger of ending up on people's plates.)

The average dog owner gets more exercise than someone who goes to the gym. (In fact, according to the national dog walking index, compiled by Mountain Warehouse, in the UK most dog owners go for around 433 walkies, and cover on average 548 miles a year, roughly the distance from London to Aberdeen. According to researchers from Michigan State University, nearly half of dog owners exercise an average of 30 minutes a day at least 5 days a week. By comparison, only about a third of those without dogs got that much regular exercise. Of course it doesn't count if you employ a dog walker.)

According to studies carried out by University of San Diego graduate student Whitney Musser and Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute senior research scientist Dr. Ann Bowles, killer whales in captivity can learn to speak dolphin, albeit with an accent. (Scientists already know that killer whales "speak" using a series of clicks, whistles and pulses, and different groups develop their own significantly distinctive "dialects". The Smithsonian reported that in some cases, the difference can be likened to that of the difference between Greek and Roman.  In this particular study they found that killer whales began to sound a lot like the bottle nosed dolphins they were socialized with. Dr. Luke Rendell, a lecturer in biology at the University of St. Andrews said, "It is yet another confirmation that learning is central to how killer whales acquire their vocal repertoire, and further confirms the status of the * cetaceans as one of the few groups of mammals to ha...

The hedgehog got its name because it forages in hedges and undergrowth. (As it moves through the hedges looking for slugs and snails it grunts, like a pig — thus, the name hedgehog.)

Ports in the UK are on alert for the Asian tiger mosquito. (This species of mosquito can transmit up to 23 infections - including West Nile virus and dengue fever. It is not native to the UK, and is believed to have stowed away in used tyres being shipped from the Far East to the UK for retreading. It is slightly bigger than a native mosquito, and has distinctive black and white stripes.  With another report that there are 800,000 illegal immigrants currently living in the UK, I don't think the port authorities will have much luck stopping illegal mosquitoes.)

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.)

According to the American Mosquito Control Association, mosquitoes can only fly at between 1 to 1.5 miles an hour. (Seemingly air is like treacle to them, due to their size. I don't understand.  If they are so slow, how come they are so difficult to swat?)