How does a rock’n’roll rooster sound? A chilled-out chicken? Perhaps a tranquil turkey? Turkeys and other farm birds apparently can feel quite stressed out by all the clatter heard on a farm. When they feel stressed, they don’t eat enough. Consequently, they don’t put on as much weight as they should. In Britain in 2003, the National Farmers Union released a special album for turkeys to help them to calm down and de-stress. Including recordings of whale calls, forest sounds and Gregorian chants, the album helped to drown out farming noises, and encouraged the birds to regain their confidence.
How is your dog when visitors come over? My two just go ballistic, wanting to sit in everyone’s lap and demanding someone, ANYONE throw a ball. Some dogs can become quite stressed when family or friends are visiting, especially over longer periods like Christmas. During that time, records indicate that the number of dog bites increase by around ten percent. This can be caused by a number of factors including, an increase in active younger children into the household, too many people in too small a space, or strange goings-on that the dog is simply not used to. In fact, dogs may suffer depression more during the Christmas period because their owners no longer have the time to give them the attention they need. The recommendation is to ensure that your pooch is pampered and loved, just as much as it usually is. If necessary, put the dog outside if it appears to be getting stressed, but do not neglect it. After all, Christmas is for family, and your dog is one of your family members who loves you very much.
You’ve heard of the expression “like a pig in mud”? How about the expression “like seagulls in ice”? In Munich in late 2003, firemen were called on to rescue a group of seagulls. As the day grew colder, the birds remained unaware that the lake they were in had begun to freeze over. When they eventually figured it out, it was too late, as the seagulls were stuck fast in the ice. A firefighter said, “They didn't notice it was getting colder and their tails got frozen stuck. We were able to help most wiggle free but one bird was so stuck so we had to cut out the whole chunk of ice and take the whole thing back to the station.” I wonder, if they saw that they had to saw the sore bird out of the ice so that it could soar again?
We’re not going to monkey around today, because we’re going to look at some amazing primates. Lana was the first chimpanzee to learn a computer language. Trained in 1972 at the Yerkes Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, USA, Lana gained a vocabulary of 120 keyboard language words and she could ask for a cuppa coffee in 23 different ways. Then there was Koko the talking gorilla who commenced her training in Ameslan in 1972, which is the American sign language for the deaf. By the year 2000, Koko had a working vocabulary of over 1,000 signs and could understand 2,000 spoken words. But one of my favourite was Tiao, a chimpanzee, who was presented as a political candidate in the Brazilian Banana Party in 1988. What was more amazing was that Tiao took in over 400,000 votes, which may suggest what the people thought about their other political party representatives.
I’ll bet you’ve often thought to yourself, “Gee I wonder how many chickens there are in the world?” According to statistics, there the world chicken population is twice that of the human population which works out to more than 13 billion chickens. And if you’ve also wondered about the cattle population, they outnumber the population of China which is more than 1.3 billion. Now let’s just hope that the cows and chickens don’t realise this. They might form a syndicate and take over the world!
Can you imagine being a bank teller and having an unusual visitor in your bank? How about a cow? Traditionally in the rural areas of Germany, the new bride is supposed to milk a cow at her own wedding, to prove her domestic skills. In February 2004, a Friesian cow that had been the guest of honour at a wedding wandered away from the ceremony and sauntered into the bank. "The cow entered, made an elegant turn and walked right back out," a spokeswoman from the bank said. "It was an extraordinary experience, but it was over very quickly."
The homing pigeon has been amazing people for years with its uncanny ability to find its way home. So how does the pigeon do it? I’ll let you in on a secret - they use maps. No, not the kind you get from RACQ, but maps in their head. For many years, scientists and pigeon enthusiasts thought that the bird took its bearing from the position of the sun, but recent studies have revealed that this while in some cases this is true, most of the time, pigeons actually follow the road system. Apparently research has determined that the pigeon will use the roads below them to find their way home. It’s not unusual to see a pigeon flying dead straight above a highway, and then to turn sharply at a roundabout or traffic lights. The first journey is usually the hardest for the bird, but once the pigeon knows its way home, it continues to use the some roadways and the maps in its mind to get there. "In short it looks like it is mentally easier for a bird to fly down a road,” Professor Tim Guilford said, “They are just making their journey as simple as possible."
In 2004, a postman in England was attacked while he was doing his usual mail round. Alistair Johnson was knocked down and terrorised one Tuesday in March in Lancashire. Later he was airlifted to hospital for treatment. But the poor postman was not attacked by a dog, as you would expect, but rather by a vicious cow! Alan Coates, the animal’s owner said, “She was a heifer who had calved in the night. They always protect their little ones, but this one went loopy." Is that what’s called Mad Cow’s Disease?
A new bill governing the treatment of animals in a central Italian town brought about some interesting changes to the lives of animals, pets and their owners. Fines of up to 500 euros could be charged to naughty people who didn’t obey the requirements which included showing mercy to lobsters in restaurants, and not boiling them alive. The bill requires dog owners to provide comfortable and reasonable size dog houses for their canines, and that canary owners buy a canary friend for their bird, so that it won’t be lonely. The bill has 39 different requirements for the human treatment of pets and animals.
You’ve heard of seeing-eye dogs – but how about seeing-eye horses? In 2004, an experimental program called the Guide Horse Foundation commenced in the US. One of the first participants in the program was Shari Bernsteil who is legally blind. Her guide-horse Tonto, is a specially bred miniature horse standing about 67cm in height. Tonto is house-trained and wears special sneakers on his hooves to keep him from slipping while he’s indoors. "It's one of the coolest new uses for animals for helping people," said Sue McDonnell, an equine behaviour specialist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Although horses cost much more to maintain compared to dogs, they live three times longer than dogs and this means that a visually impaired person does not need to go through the difficulties of losing a dog and readjusting to a new one every ten years or so. Rather, a horse can live for 30 to 40 years.
The Police must get some fairly strange requests at times, but a call to rescue Teddy in Flensburg in Germany in 2004, was certainly one of the more weird. Teddy’s owners called police when Teddy got stuck - inside a computer printer! Teddy was a rather overweight hamster that decided he might like to squeeze inside the printer, but was so fat that he got stuck. The owner didn’t know what to do and was concerned that his pet might come to harm. When he called the police, the officers thought at first that it might have been a practical joke, but eventually they realised that the call was genuine and traipsed off to perform a rotund rodent rescue. Eventually Teddy was saved and suffered only some minor bruising. Can you imagine the police officer going home that night to his wife and saying, “I had an interesting day darling! I rescued an overweight hamster from a printer!”
What do you do with a howling hound, a trembling terrier or a shaking shitzu? You play them music of course. Research in Paris found that certain music affects dogs differently. While heavy-metal music caused them agitation, they barked, but classical music made them feel calm. Animal behaviourists did the studies on 50 dogs in a shelter, and they discovered the dogs are ambivalent about pop music, they don’t like it or dislike it, and the sound of human speech doesn’t affect them much at all either. So next time you’re dog is feeling agitated, perhaps during a thunderstorm, turn on the classical music, and it should make him feel calmer.
Although lobsters are usually red, 1 in 5,000 the north Atlantic are born bright blue.
In Tokyo, they must have a thing about bald dogs, or dogs with bad hair days - you see, they sell toupees for dogs.
The local abattoir near the Bronx Zoo delivers a rather unusual supply there everyday. It delivers blood for the Zoo's collection of the world's largest vampire bats.
The flying snake of Java and Malaysia is able to flatten itself out like a ribbon and sail like a glider from tree to tree.
The male Adelie penguin presents a stone to its mate as a gift. If the female accepts the stone, it becomes the basis of their nest. Then the two penguins stand chest to chest and sing a love song together.
A New Zealand reptile, the tuatara can apparently hold its breath for over an hour.
Polar bears' have an interesting diet. Some of the items found in polar bears' stomachs have included, sailcloth, sticky tape, coffee, tobacco, engine oil and an American flag.
The common puffin is bird which flaps its wings underwater as well as out of the water. This makes it one of the rare creatures that can fly both in the air and in water.
An important finding was made by USA scientists who discovered that 18.67% of pig tails curl counterclockwise, 50% curl clockwise and 31.67% curl in both directions.
At birth, the baby blue whale weighs approximately the same weight as a full grown hippopotamus.
Many people assume that marsupials live only in Australia. Certainly most of them do live here, but the bandicoot also lives in New Guinea and the opossum also lives in the Americas.
Did you know that humans are not the only mammals who dream whilst asleep? In fact most mammals DO dream which can be indicated by the rapid-eye-movement stage. The only mammals which do not display the REM stage are egg-laying monotremes eg duck-billed platypus (check if platypus is an egg-laying monotreme).
North American and arctic terns (which are a birds) fly as far south as Antarctica and back which is a total trip of over 28,968km.
Did you know that kangaroos are excellent swimmers. One was seen swimming more than 1.4km off shore.
The red squirrel is considered to be one of the most attractive animals in the world, well, at least it is to fleas. For some reason, fleas prefer red squirrels to all other animals.
The moth of the silkworm has eleven brains.
There is a fish eating bat from Central Africa that catches fish in an in-belt kind of net. It scoops fish out of the water using a web between its legs.
In West Africa there is a frog that measures more than 76cm long and weighs up to 3.2kg. The name of the frog is the Goliath frog.
A normal woodchuck breathes 2,100 times an hour. But while they are hibernating, a woodchuck breathes only 10 times per hour.
The phrase "busy bee" is very true. To make 450 grams of honey comb, bees must collect nectar from approximately 2 million flowers.
Did you know that the are more different kinds of insects than there are of all kinds of animals added together?
It is fairly easy for us to tell if something has been sweetened. Some people who are very sensitive can even detect sweetness when one part sugar has been diluted in 200 parts of water. But our senses pale in comparison to some butterflies and moths which can taste the sweetness when the ratio is 1 to 300,000.
If a 77kg man were to expend as much energy as the ruby throated hummingbird, he would have to eat 129kg of hamburger just to keep up his weight. The poor man would have to perspire 45kg of sweat in an hour to stop his skin reaching boiling point. The ruby throated hummingbird beats its wings from 50 to 70 times each second. The old saying about someone eating as much as a bird, can’t possibly be true. Each day a bird must eat at least ½ its own weight in food. And baby birds need even more than that. The baby robin could eat an earthworm as long as 4.27m.
A mosquito has 47 teeth.
The Europeans once called a strange animal that they saw for the first time a cameleopard because they thought its parents were a camel and a leopard. That strange animal we now know as the giraffe.
The giraffe's long neck is 3m to 3.7m and its blood pressure is 2 to 3 times that of an average man. Because of its long neck, the giraffe’s heart needs incredible pressure to pump the blood through the artery to its brain. At 11.3kg, the giraffe’s heart is enormous. It is 60cm long and has walls up to 7.6cm thick.
There is a strange type of lizard called the chuckwalla that has a unique way of escaping predators. It crawls into a hole in rocks and inflates its body with air. It becomes so wedged into the crack that it can’t be pulled out. Although man fears wolves, there has never been a recorded wolf attack on a human unless the animal was rabid. "The Star" which I presume was a newspaper in Ontario offered a rewarded for documentation of a wolf attack. But the reward still remains unclaimed.
If an insect grew to the size of a man, with everything in exactly the same proportions as it has in its usual small scale, because of the earth’s gravitational field, it would not be able to walk, fly or even move.
There is a rather unusual frog called the Rhinoderma darwinii or the mouth-breeding frog. After the female lays her eggs, and they are about to hatch, a male frog scoops up several eggs and slips them into a large pouch in his mouth. The tadpoles hatch and stay in their daddy’s pouch until they are fully grown frogs. This is the only frog in the world that breeds this way.
As you are probably aware, silk is made from the silkworm. Its scientific name is bombyx mori. This poor insect has been raised by humans for so long that it is now dependent on us, ie it can’t survive without our help. It has been tamed so much that is can no longer fly.
A peculiar insect of the desert is the honey ant. Some of the ant colony are so stuffed with fluid food or water that their rear ends swell up to the size of a pea. Then when a drought strikes, the honey ant spits out its food or water to feed the rest of their group.
There are many animals that sleep a lot, but did you know that the snail also is known for taking a good long nap. In winter they may hibernate, or if there is a heavy rain or the sun is too hot, they crawl back into their shell for a snooze. The desert snail is said to sleep for up to 4 years.
The poor old turkey is a bit dumb. When they are babies, it's claimed that they have to be shown how to eat or they will starve and die. Grown up turkeys are almost as dumb. Often turkeys look up during a rainstorm with their mouths open, and they drown.
The koala is apparently the world’s fussiest eater of all of the animal species. It prefers leaves of only about ½ of the 500 species of eucalyptus leaves. But then it’s even fussier than that. It seems the koala may even prefer individual trees out of the one species. But then the koala is even fussier still because it will eat only particular leaves. After sorting through up to 9kg of leaves every day, the koala only eats about 0.5kg of these.
A St Bernard by the name of Barry is the most celebrated canine rescuer of all time. During his 12 year career on the Swiss Alps he rescued more than 40 people. During one mission he found a boy who lay half frozen under an avalanche. By spreading himself across the boy’s body, Barry was able to warm him up and he licked the boys face until he woke up. Once the boy awoke, Barry then carried him back to the nearest dwelling.
We may think that fleas are totally unnecessary and a nuisance but there are actually two animals that need fleas to survive. Somehow fleas provide stimulation to the skin, without that stimulation, the animals actually do not survive.
In 1950 a 5 month old kitten from Geneva, Switzerland followed climbers to the summit of the Matterhorn. The kitten climbed 4,478m or 14,691 ft. Then there is Bill and Hilary Clinton’s cat Socks. A neighbour found the stray in 1991 and the Clintons adopted it while they were living at the governor’s house in Little Rock. It seems that Socks developed a bit of a fan club. At one time, he was receiving 75,000 letters and parcels a week.
In 1960 Chester the tortoise escaped from his owners. He was painted with a white streak for identification. Thirty-five years later Chester was found by a neighbour after travelling only 686m. Now either that was a very slow tortoise or he really enjoyed his sightseeing.
The insect with the world’s best defence is the bombardier beetle which I believe can be found in Adelaide, Australia. In a special chamber in its abdomen it stores 2 fairly harmless chemicals. If it feels threatened, the beetle released both of the chemicals into another chamber and mixes in an enzyme. The beetle then squirts the combined chemicals onto the predator. The three chemicals once mixed together cause a violent chemical reaction that causes great heat up to 100degC.
The thylacine also known as the Tasmanian wolf or tiger was once Australia’s largest carnivorous marsupial. Although the last captive specimen died in 1936 in the Hobart Zoo there have been scattered but reliable reports of wild thylacines since that time.
In 1979 a labrador/boxer cross called "Jimpa" arrived at his home in Pimpinio Vic. His owner had taken the dog with him 14 months earlier when he had gone to work on his farm at Nyabing. In that 14 months Jimpa had walked the entire 3,220km to return to his old home.
Spider threads are only about 1/2000th of a centimetre in diameter and are so light that if a spider could spin a single thread around the entire world, it would only weigh about 170g.
A particularly clever spider called the Southeast Asian spider makes dummies of itself. Once it catches a bug it wraps it in silk and continues wrapping it until it is about the same size as itself. Then it places the dummy in a good spot on its web. When birds come looking for a nice juicy spider to eat, they more often than not grab one of the dummies and the spider is safe.
It has been suggested that the mealy bug may have been sent by God to help the Israelites on their flight through the Sinai desert from Egypt. The mealy bug feeds on the evergreen tamarisk in the deserts of the Middle East and produces sticky honeydew through its intestines. The honeydew is eaten by nomadic tribes in the desert and looks like shining scales. There must have been an awful lot of mealybugs to feed all of those Israelites.
Have you ever wondered why German Shepherds dogs are also known as Alsatians? Soldiers returning from the First World War brought back the dogs with them from Germany as they admired the dog’s devotion and courage. Because of anti-German feeling at the times, they renamed the breed to Alsations which is similar to the name of the place where dogs originated.
The Doberman dog is named after a German tax collector by the name of Ludwig Dobermann. In the 1880’s Mr Dobermann bred this fierce dog specially to help him on his rounds as a tax collector.
The Australian caterpillars of the imperial blue butterfly have their own special guard of black ants. As the caterpillars leave their nests each morning to feed on leaves, the ants join them and protect the caterpillars from predators by biting them. The black ants do not do this work for free. They suck the sugary secretion from the caterpillars’ backs. But even when there is no reward, the black ants keep watch over the caterpillars when they are in their pupa stage.
Skuas, gulls, terns and some other seabirds have built-in sunglasses in their eyes. Within the retina of the eye is a tiny droplet of reddish oil. The oil screens out most of the blue light or glare and this helps the birds see better. This is a little like holding a sheet of red translucent plastic in front of your eyes.
The male mole cricket calls out to a mate in hi-fi stereo through home-made speakers. The cricket digs out an underground nest with a twin-tunnel entrance. Then he sits just in front of the two tunnels and rubs his forewings together. His mating song is amplified by the shape of the tunnel and attracts females passing by.
The male frog rarely goes looking for a girlfriend. Instead the boys all sit around in the stream or a pond and croak. Eventually girl frogs come looking for a boyfriend. There are many frogs that call in chorus and it has been suggested that some species have a chorus master who even leads the croaking. Does a boy frog ever get a frog in his throat and sing off key?
The ruby-throated hummingbird defies the laws of physics. It is a tiny bird and weighs only about 3.5g. The hummingbird travels from North America across the Gulf of Mexico to South America every autumn without stopping, which is a distance of 800km. Tests suggest that the bird is just far too small to be able to store enough energy to travel that kind of distance. Nobody knows how it does it, but according to physics, it’s impossible.
The honeybee has a special dance called the waggle dance. When a forager bee finds food, she returns to the other workers and does a little dance on the honeycomb. Using the sun as a reference point, the bee is able to point to the others where the food is. The other bees quickly head off in the direction to which the first bee pointed.
Do you remember seeing those old cartoons where porcupines shoot out their quills at their attackers? Well this is actually a myth. Porcupines can’t shoot their quills because they have no mechanism to launch the quills. The only reason the quills get stuck into the attackers is that they are very loose and sharp enough to get stuck.
Have you ever heard someone make the statement that they sweated like a pig? Well next time you hear it, you’ll know it’s not true because the person is still alive and well. You see, pigs only sweat on their snout and nowhere else on their bodies. Pigs can overheat like us human beings and die too so they keep their cool by wallowing in mud. So if we only sweated on our nose, we would soon overheat and expire.
What is a lagomorph? It is any of various plant-eating mammals having fully furred feet and two pairs of upper incisors and belonging to the order Lagomorpha, which includes rabbits, hares, and pikas. And did you know that rabbits have a 360º field of hearing, as their ears can move in all directions, and can turn independently of each other? Rabbits are also crepuscular, which means, they are most active at dusk and dawn.
Scientists have discovered that animals have complex dreams, just like humans do. The findings suggest that cats and dogs dream about events of the day such as going for a walk or eating. Dr Matthew Wilson who headed a US research project on the dreams of rats, said, "No one knew for certain that animals dreamed the way we do, which can involve replaying events or at least components of events that occurred while we were awake. "Now we know that they are in fact dreaming, and are connected to actual experiences." Apparently rats showed the same brain activity in their sleep as they did when running around a track to gain a food reward. Recently, scientists also discovered that finches "rehearse" songs in their sleep.
A cat by the name of Angel saved a Gold Coast toddler in February 2002 from the jaws of a pit bull terrier. The dog had locked its jaws around the head of a 14 month old infant in a Southport yard when the seven year old cat jumped at the angry pit bull and fought it off. The cat latched onto the dog's head and the dog had to let go of the toddler. Mrs Giles, the toddler's grandmother said that "Angel was hissing and scratching and it wasn't long until the dog took off. I thought things were going to end up very seriously, except Angel came to the rescue." The child was left with scratches, bruising and fang marks needing three stitches. The dog was destroyed. And Angel the moggy I'm sure got lots of pats and hugs for being a superhero.
In February 1996, Ellen Ottenburg checked into a hospital in West Hills, California, to give birth to a baby girl. While both the mother and child were recuperating, the family's three Doberman pinschers mysteriously disappeared from home. Ellen's husband Ed was desperate. He drove around the city for hours looking for the dogs, but had no luck. Late in the evening, Ellen happened to look out of the window of her third-floor hospital room, and was amazed to see the three dogs sitting on the sidewalk. They were perfectly well and no worse for wear after travelling miles across busy city streets and highways. All three dogs were looking patiently up at Ellen's window. Not only had the dogs managed to find the hospital, they knew which room she was in. And once the three runaways saw Ellen in the window and realised that she was ok, they happily went home with Ed. How the dogs got there - and why they thought they had to come - no one was able to say.
Hugh Lennon of Yorkshire, England read a story about a farmer who claimed he had a dog who could hypnotise people. As a professional hypnotist, Hugh felt he just had to have the dog. When Hugh saw Oscar the labrador, he noticed the had the oddest eyes, and he stared really intently at people. Hugh bought him on the spot because not only did he want a pet, but he wanted a companion to take with him. But Hugh hadn't bargained for the fact that Oscar would actually become a real show-stealer. One night Hugh brought Oscar onto the stage with him and the dog began staring at a girl. The girl fell into hypnosis without Hugh doing a thing. Oscar suddenly became "Oscar the HypnoDog". One night Oscar saw an audience member eating potato chips, so he sat right down in front of the man and stared at him while he munched on the chips. Suddenly the man keeled over, completely hypnotised, and of course, Oscar quickly grabbed the tasty potato chips.
A big gray tomcat by the name of Bos’n proved to be a bit of a hero in 1957. Residing in California, Bos’n the cat, noticed Duke, the family’s cocker spaniel, stroll out of the yard. Duke the dog was blind because of cataracts and the cat seemed to sense that the dog was heading for danger. Suddenly Bos’n ran from the house and over to the dog. He nudged and pushed the dog until he turned around, and then the cat guided the dog back to the house. Bos’n the cat had saved Duke the dog from falling over the edge of a very steep hill.
In August 2003, there was an escape attempt at the Bangladesh zoo. A royal Bengal tiger by the name of Bhim (which means powerful), slipped out of his cage after the keeper left the door open. His keeper saw the large cat roaming around and fainted with fear. A city official said that a tiger can be extremely ferocious once they are freed. But this timid tiger became terrified, when it saw the crowds of people outside the zoo. It was possibly the noise and shear number of people that caused Bhim such anxiety, so he turned right around and went back inside the zoo where he could feel safe again.
In animal shelters and pounds, kittens usually race to the front of their cages when people come near and stick their paws through the grilles. Sometimes they climb up the doors and very few cat-lovers can resist those kinds of antics. But there was a kitten in one animal shelter that was a bit different and had a PR stunt all of his own. When people came looking for a kitten to adopt, this little brat of a cat would dip his paw in his drinking water, wait for just the right moment, and then flick water at the people. When that happened, the people would stop and see where the water had come from, then the kitten would open his eyes wide and stick his wet paw through the cage. The kitten quickly found a home, and according to his new owners, he never tried the water trick again. Once he'd found someone to love him, he didn't need any advertising tricks anymore!
Dolphins swim in circles while they sleep with the eye on the outside of the circle open to keep watch for predators. After a certain amount of time, they reverse and swim in the opposite direction with the opposite eye open.
Lacy Jane was a beloved poodle of Theresa, and in Alabama in October 1990, the dog went into her yard for a bit of a play. All of a sudden the little poodle was attacked by an enormous pit bull terrier that had entered the yard. The poor little poodle didn’t stand a chance, until Sparky, the family cat, saw her friend Lacy Jane being attacked. Sparky leapt from the roof onto the vicious pit bull’s head and retaliated, and the pit bull ran away. Sparky the cat, managed to save the life of his friend Lacy Jane, the poodle, and averted a "cat"astrophe.
Thug was a tomcat who received a heroism award in 1968 from the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Los Angeles. Although Thug the tomcat was usually a very quiet cat, he noticed Missy, a Labrador dog being swept away in the water at a jetty near the marina. Thug suddenly began yowling loudly until some humans nearby took notice of the cat’s cries. They then went in and rescued the dog. Thug the tomcat, was a hero!
Locusts and other similar insects have been an ongoing problem for many years in Bangkok, Thailand. The Thai people though have found a unique way of curbing the problem – they eat the insects. The Thai people also enjoy other tasty delicacies including crickets, water bugs, ants and ant eggs, bamboo worms, silkworms and scorpions. They like to fry the bugs until they crackle, then spray with hot pepper and soy sauce. Their desire for such delicacies outweighed demand though and in 2002, prices for locusts and crop-eating insects soared. At the time, the price for a kilogram of locusts, was higher than the price for a kilo of corn.
Mimi was a black and white cat who managed to endanger his owner’s lives in Berlin, Germany, and then save them, all in the event of one night! In the kitchen one evening, Mimi was playing when it accidentally switched on the electric oven. When it heated up, it ignited a stock of paper. The cat then raced in and awoke the family by meowing loudly and nudging heavy objects onto the floor. By raising the alarm so quickly, a major fire was averted and the family was saved.
There once was a pig from Houston Texas called Priscilla. One day Priscilla noticed Anthony Melton swimming in Lake Somerville. Anthony, an eleven year old boy, then began having difficulties in the water and started to drown. So it was Priscilla the Pig to the rescue! She swam out to Anthony, and using her snout, she managed to keep his head above the water until he grabbed hold of her collar. Once he grasped that, Priscilla swam back to shore, and Anthony was saved. Now you might this story is a bit of a porker, but it’s actually a true story. That’s what I call piggy power!
You’ve probably heard the phrase, "happy as a pig in mud", but how about the phrase "happy as a pig with a ball"? In February 2003, British farmers were ordered to put a toy in every pigpen. If they didn’t, they were liable to three months jail or a fine of up to $2,800. The European Union ruled that in order to keep pigs happy and to stop biting each other, the farmers were required to supply a toy or an item that would provide "environmental enrichment", eg footballs or basketballs.
Bruno Cipriano of Tuscany was very glad to be the owner of a special cow by the name of Carletta. One day Bruno was attacked by a boar, but before the nasty creature reached him Carletta the cow, stepped in. She lowered her head and butted the boar with her horns. The boar didn’t hang around too long, and Bruno was saved.
Ian Elliot was lopping trees on his property in Canada when a pine tree fell down on him and broke his back. His faithful Collie Bracken stayed with his owner, and lay across his master to keep his body temperature up. Then later when the collie heard voices in the distance, Bracken dashed off and brought the people back to where his injured master lay.
Can you imagine enjoying a day out surfing near Sydney, when all of a sudden, you’re menaced by a shark? That’s what happened to Adam Maguire. What a frightening experience. Just as it looked like the shark was going to attack, a school of dolphins nearby saved Adam. They thrashed about in the water to try and distract the shark, and then encircled him until his friends could rescue him!
The silk or web from spiders is incredibly strong, and its on-weight basis proves it is stronger than steel. It has been suggested by experts that a strand of spider silk the same thickness as a pencil, could be enough to halt a Boeing 747 plane, while it’s in flight!
During May 2003, a wild animal went on a two day rampage in Evesham, in Worcestershire in Central England, which is a quiet English town. The animal attacked and bit five victims on the arms and legs and chased several Police officers after they tried to catch him. Now you may be thinking to yourself, that it must have been some kind of huge scary creature. Well in fact it was only a very frightened and hungry badger. Badgers are quite powerful animals and someone had been trying to tame the wild animal when it got loose, and then it didn’t know how to fend for itself. Now there’s no need to badger me – there’s more trivia where that came from.
Have you ever owned a parrot? These clever little creatures can have the mental abilities of a five year old human child. They require an enormous commitment from their owners and needs lots of attention, love, touching and mental stimulation. So what happens to a parrot if it doesn’t get the attention it needs? Parrots have been known to go mad. If left in cages for long periods without stimulation, they can develop mental problems and hurt themselves. Unfortunately, once they get to this stage, there is really nothing that can be done to return them to normal. In fact, in England there have been special mental facilities set up for mentally ill parrots. If you have a parrot, or are considering getting one, you must resolve to spend lots of special time with your feathered friend.
There is a tiny owl in America called the elf owl that measures about 15cm in height. One of its favourite foods is scorpions. Now you’d imagine that the poor elf owl would get mighty sick from the poison in the stinger wouldn’t you? The elf owl is quite clever, it snatches up scorpions by the tail and then tears off its stinger, and then it swallows the entire scorpion, head body and pincers, in one gulp.
Some of the world’s most strikingly coloured insects are orchid bees which can be green, gold, red, purple or blue. There are some which resemble bumbles bees with black and yellow or white hairs. Ranging in size from 8 to 30mm in length, orchid bees can sometimes have tongues twice as long as their bodies.
Some soprano singers can reach pretty amazingly high notes, but they are nothing compared to the dolphin which can emit notes 100 times higher than the highest note possible by a human being.
My dog Scout is absolutely obsessed with her ball and playing fetch. Haroldo Renato Mota from Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil had a dog who was similarly obsessed with playing fetch. But his dog, a black and white bitsa called Chumbinho, used to bring his master all manner of gifts. Some of these have included a .22 calibre gun and an old bicycle wheel. But in February in 2002, Chumbinho brought his owner a gift that he neither expected, nor wanted. Chumbinho brought in his gift and dropped it at his master’s feet and smoke began to pour from it. The owner, Mota fled and immediately contacted the local police. Chumbinho had presented his master with a live grenade! Fortunately the police were able to detonate the item and no-one was harmed. After that you’d imagine that the owner might be a little wary of his gift-giving dog, but he was not upset with him at all. Mota told the local news "The only thing he has not brought yet is money."
Russ and Sandy Asbury of Whitewater in Wisconsin discovered that their two cats had some unusual talents in February 2002. Bandit and Boots, 1½ year old cats at the time, astounded their owners when they began to switch off lights and flush the toilet. When it first happened, Russ said, "I couldn't even imagine who or what was flushing the toilet." When Sandy went to check what was going on, she caught Boots preparing the flush the toilet again. "We have to shut the bathroom door when we go to bed. Otherwise, one or the other of the cats are in there flushing away all night," Russ said. I guess you could say, they were "flushed" with their success.
Next time you’re sitting in a car at the lights, just remember that an idling diesel engine has the same frequency as a cat’s purr, which is about 26 cycles per second. Think that’s amazing? Cats have a much broader vocal range than dogs. While dogs have about ten vocal sounds, a cat has about 100! But a dog outdoes a cat or a human when it comes to his hearing. Most people can’t hear anything further than about 23 metres away, but a dog can hear things from around 230 metres distance. But we humans have it over dogs when it comes to our sight. Dogs don’t see as well as people and are believed to be colour blind. And of interest is the fact that dogs usually identify objects first by movement, then second by the brightness of the object, and lastly by its shape. And if you have ever wondered about whether we can tell similar looking animals apart, than science has discovered that we probably can. As no two human beings have the same fingerprints, similarly cats have different nose prints.
Perhaps we humans can learn about desalination from the albatross. The well-known seabird drinks seawater, that it strains out and removes all excess salt.
Geese love for life. They are one of the rare birds that stays with their mate at the end of the breeding season. Even their offspring stay with their parents for up to a year. Then in autumn, each goose family takes off into the sky and joins other families of gees as they migrate. Each family stays together during the migration and on their wintering grounds.
Lulu the Roo was hand-reared by the Richards family after she was saved from her dead mother’s pouch. Lulu was four years old in 2002 when she repaid her human family’s kindness. Leonard Richards, a hobby farmer at Tanjil South, east of Melbourne, was out checking storm damage on his property in September, when he was knocked unconscious by a falling branch. Realising that Leonard had been injured, Lulu the grey kangaroo, began making loud barking noises as she sat by her stricken friend. Mrs Richard’s heard the roo and wondering why the animal was making such a fuss, she went to investigate. She found her husband lying unconscious beneath the branch about 200m from the house, with Lulu by his side. Luke Richards, their 19 year old son, said "It was so lucky. Dad could have been there for hours if it wasn't for her." Leonard was taken to hospital, but returned home the following night. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) requested that Lulu be nominated for its annual national bravery award. "This award is given to animals who do something for humans of an exceptional nature," Hugh Wirth, the national president said. It was Lulu the roo to the rescue.
If you’re a bit of a cat lover, you might like to hear some fascinating facts about your feline friends. A cat has 24 whiskers, ie 4 rows of whiskers on either side. It has 30 vertebrae in its spine (humans only have 25) and 230 bones (while people have 206). Approximately 10% of the total bones in a cat’s body are in its tail. At night, felines can see 6 times better than humans and their usual heart rate averages 195 beats per minute. They can hear up to the level of 65 kilohertz whereas people can only hear to 20 kilohertz. A human’s body temperature is around 37oC while a cat’s is approximately 39oC, and felines breathe between 20 and 40 times per minute. Cats have 60 to 80 million olfactory cells - those are the cells they smell things with, but we human beings only have between 5 and 20 million. What an interesting "cat"alogue of cat facts.
Most people who are not cat lovers, fail to appreciate their good qualities. But moggies can be more than just furry, lap warmers. In 1990 in Montreal, a young tabby by the name of Jack awakened his owner, with his high-pitched yowls. Jack’s owner, a single mother awoke, grabbed her five month old baby, and escaped the raging fire that was engulfing their apartment building. Jack the young cat, had saved his family. Then there was Oscar that cat in California of the same year, who created a big fuss in the baby’s room. The baby’s mother went racing in to see what why the cat was going crazy, and found her baby choking. The mother got there in time to save the child.
Minnie the Maltese dog was no alarmist. In St Paul, Minnesota, one summer evening, the dog knew that something was not quite right. Perhaps it was the strange smell in the air that alarmed her. Minnie began to jump onto her owner’s chest as she was sleeping. Eventually, Minnie woke her Mistress, who quickly escaped the bedroom, which had been filling with deadly gas.
I’ve mentioned before, how ultra-sensitive a dog’s sense of smell is. You’ve probably heard of dogs trained to sniff out drugs, land-mines, plants or to track people down. In Britain in 2003, law enforcement agents began to use specially trained dogs to sniff out money. The dogs were trained in an endeavour to curb money laundering and similar crimes. With the help of the dogs, law enforcement organisations were able to nab more than $1 million a week in various places throughout the country.
Like Australia, Britain has claims that large cats prowl the countryside, although none have ever been caught. The Brits are so convinced that they have exotic cats running around freely, they’ve even set up a club called the British Big Cats Society. There have been claims over the years including a puma in Surrey in the 1960s, and a puma in Durham in the 1990s as well as other large cats in other parts of the country. None of these have been confirmed, except for the Lincolnshire Leopard. In 2003, after a retired couple near Hemingby spotted an oversized cat, larger than a Labrador, sitting on a mattress in an abandoned car, laboratory tests were carried out on hair samples taken from the mattress. The tests on the hair indicated that it was an animal from the leopard family.
Andrew Larkey, an Aussie inventor, created something rather unique for dogs in 2003. Larkey created doggie designer water. Doggie designer water is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill tap water. Oh, no. “It's like a sports drink for dogs,” said Mr Larkey. “Dogs get bored with plain water -- they deserve variety just as much as people.” With flavours like, liver and bacon, beef, or chicken and corn, each 600ml bottle cost under $2, and also contained around half a dog’s daily recommended levels of B1, B3, B5 B6 and C. At the time Mr Larkey was also considering a similar line of flavoured water especially for felines.
In 1962 a guernsey cow from Iowa by the name of Fawn was swept up in a tornado and landed safely in a neighbour’s patch about 800m away. While she was there Fawn became acquainted with a bull and eventually wandered back to her own home pasture. In time, Fawn gave birth to a calf. Five years later in 1967, Fawn was out grazing when another tornado swept her up into the air. Started tourists passing by in a bus saw Fawn flying high up the air and then they saw her land gently back onto her four hooves. After the second incident, the family who owned Fawn decided that in the future, they would put her into the shelter of the barn if there were any more storm warnings. Fawn the guernsey cow from Iowa lived to the ripe old age of 25.
Elm Farm Ollie was a Guernsey cow who was probably the very first cow ever to have been flown in a plane. Elm Farm Ollie was flown over St Louis in Missouri on 18 February 1930 and just for this special occasion, she was milked while still up in the air. Then her milk was placed into sealed paper cartons and floated to the ground with little parachutes.
Are you one of those people who seem to get bitten by mosquitoes more than others? Well, its true that certain people do really attract mozzies more than other people. It seems that mosquitoes are attracted by certain scents and there is even evidence to suggest that mosquitoes prefer certain blood-types over others. Mosquitoes and other biting insects even prefer women because we wear perfume. They also seem to have a preference for moistness and warmth.
What is a lady beetle or lady bug called in other countries? In China, it’s a Flower Lady and a Water Delivery-Man's Daughter in Iraq. Indra's Cowherd is its name in India, Crop Picker in Africa and Good News in Iran. In Israel the lady beetles are called Moses’ Cows and they’re known as a Key-Maid in Sweden. In Germany they named Mary’s Bug, as the Dear Best of the Lord in Holland, and in Switzerland the lady beetle is called Lord God's Little Fatty.
Have you ever heard of gremlins? They were imaginary creatures that were said to create problems in the engines of aeroplanes during the world wars. Well something similar can be found in Frankfurt, Germany, but these creatures are real. Martens are weasel-like creatures with sharp teeth which live in the forest. During the night, the martens scamper out and nibble on cables and things in vehicle engines that they find parked nearby. During 2000, over 16,000 cars broke down due to the damage the Martens caused. Car manufacturers can do nothing to stop the martens from merrily chewing away at the engine cables and could only suggest owners try hanging up some dog hair as a deterrent.
The Wildlife Trust of India introduced reflective markers in Delhi in July 2003 to decrease rear-end accidents from occurring. Now you may be thinking to yourself, “What does the Wildlife Trust in India have to do with traffic accidents and reflective markers?” The Wildlife Trust organised for buttock reflectors for elephants to stop motor vehicles accidentally running into them at night! Many elephants are used at after-hours events including weddings, festivals and for tourism and often have to travel several hours through busy city streets in the dark. Despite their size, elephants are a little difficult to see at night, and there were several nasty accidents. So the Wildlife Trust of India introduced the markers in an attempt to protect the elephants, not the motor car drivers. There were also plans to make the markers available to other cities in India.
