People Share Interesting Wildlife Facts That Not A Lot Of People Know, Here Are The 40 Best Ones
On the surface level, we understand that animals, insects and marine wildlife are, physically, quite different from us. But once you start to look more closely at their behavior and biology, there is a whole world of interesting and unusual parts most of us had no idea about.
Someone asked “What’s a fascinating fact about wildlife that most people are unaware of?” and people shared their best examples. From owl-head movements to the particularities of flamingo dining, get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.
This post may include affiliate links.
There are reports of elephants finding humans sleeping under trees and the elephants think they're dead. People have woken up with elephants gently stroking them with their trunk and in some cases they try to cover them with branches and sticks as a "burial"
Elephants are one of the few animals who mourn their dead and have rituals.
"That human under that tree, he dead?" "Not sure, let me see if I can find a pulse using my trunk.,"
Vultures are really important for the ecosystems they live in, but a lot of vulture species are critically endangered due to human activity. Vultures have stomach acid so powerful that it can destroy things like botulism and anthrax, thus cleaning up the environment when they eat rotting meat that contains those things. There is evidence for a correlation between the drastic decline in India's vulture population and the boom in the stray dog population, since less vultures means there is more food for the dogs to scavenge. This has also sadly led to a rise in rabies which kills many people and animals. Many people find vultures scary, but for the most part they are harmless and we really need to have them around. Please consider supporting vulture conservation projects.
Fun fact! Vultures that live in the Everglades National Park have found that they love playing with rubber so much that it's advised to keep a tarp over your car windows or they will rip the rubber rims off. The park provides tarps as well as a rubber playground to keep them occupied. Source: I went there a few years ago, saw the playground, the tarp borrowing bins, and had to chase them off of my car. Honestly, I love knowing they like to play.
Owls bob their heads up and down to help improve their depth of perception.
You can try it out yourself. Focus on an object and bob your head. It doesn't work for us, but you do look like an idiot.
Raccoons have the most soft, velvety, devilish little hands.
Baby raccoons purr and knead like kittens. Did not know this myself until last spring when a wildlife rehabber posted a call to arms for people to help. (Figured I've raised enough neonatal kittens, my experience would be helpful.)
A ban has been lifted in my state and people are poisoning adult raccoons without considering the babies they are orphaning. Last year I raised and released 11. So far this year I've raised and released 27. I've also officially become a wildlife rehabber. One of the females I raised last year showed back up, babies in tow! Wasn't sure how she'd respond after being away for a bit but she let me check her out and treat her battle wounds.
Elephants have a specific warning call that means “human.”.
Manatees control their buoyancy by farting.
You can’t cull coyote populations. Through howling they know how many are in their pack and if the number drops the females will respond by having larger litters. Killing coyotes just creates more coyotes.
I’ve told this one before, but some bar-tailed godwits (a wading bird) fly from Alaska to Australia non-stop in the longest continuous migration of any bird (maybe any creature).
To do this, they shrink their internal organs so they can pack more fat (for energy) into their body. They’re basically balls of fat when they take off. And when they’re in flight, they shut most of their organs down to devote all energy to flying.
And they’re just medium sized nondescript brown birds that peck around in the mud. I love wading birds, man.
Every single whiptail lizards is female. They reproduce by parthenogenesis, a natural form of asexual reproduction.
Crows can mimic human voices similar to parrots. I experienced that first hand while hunting on public land. Heard a little boy calling "MOM" "MOM!!" only to realize that the voice came from a crow flying overhead.
I had my neighbor shot at a crow with a bee bee gun and they all avoid there area for a month, smart birds I love them *edit this neighbor is super redneck and hates anything that makes a sound after 9pm, I’ve been feeding the crows as a sorry * second edit I dint make him do it I didn’t have a say in it, I’m just saying that they where smart to avoid the area
If you put a hamster wheel in the middle of the forest, you'd expect that small creatures would ignore it. They don't. Instead, they absolutely love it! Scientists believe it's because it provides some kind of novel stimulation that hits the core of most animal brains!
There is a type of mouse that behaves like a tiny wolf. Members of this species travel in packs, hunt live prey, and even howl. It is called the Grasshopper Mouse, named for one of its primary food sources.
Also if you get bitten by one and survive then every full moon you turn half grasshopper mouse.
Young goats pick up accents from each other, joining humans, bats, and whales as mammals known to adjust their vocal sounds to fit into a new social group.
Caribou & Reindeer are the same species. Their ankles make a clicking sound when walking. It helps the herd follow each other in snowstorms. My knees make clicking sounds…but that’s just lack of cartilage😕.
There is a difference between Caribou and Reindeer. Reindeer can fly.
My favourite fact ever: penguins have knees. Will never not baffle me. Knees.
All birds have knees. What we think of as their backwards knees are actually their ankles. The knees are just higher up
Flamingos are not naturally pink. They are born grey. But their feathers turn pink because of their diet of shrimp and algae.
IntelligentHippo4245:
To add on to Flamingos, they can lose their color when raising their babies because it’s so intense of an experience.
Most humans also consider raising babies to be an intense experience. Most of them also lose at least some coloring. Luckily, most human babies will provide their parents enough coloring to cover every fridge at Lowe's.
There are coyotes in every major city in the USA. If you’re in the US, you’re likely less than 1mi away from one.
Edit: contiguous USA.
Opossums brains are about 1/5th the size of other mammals their size. And mostly smooth, so precious and so dumb.
Eponarose:
Amazing Opossum Fact 1: It is extremely rare for them to have rabies!
Amazing Opossum Fact 2: They were used in the development of anti-venom!
When a hornet invades a beehive, the bees will swarm it, and raise the heat of their bodies burning the invader to death. This ends with perhaps dozens of the hive's protectors dead, but is seen as worth it to protect the hive and it's inhabitants.
This is a defense against the Japanese super hornets, correct? The invader dies at 39.5C and the bees would die at 40.0C. So they just slowly cook the hornet to death.
An opossum's body temperature is too low for rabies to survive in it. They also kill most ticks that try to latch on.
I'd heard that they were resistant to rabies, but never why. Thanks for that piece of info.
Ants have disinfectant saliva, and some actually treat the wounds of their fellow ants.
Penguins mate for life. The male penguins scour the shores for a beautiful stone and then proposes. If the female accepts, they mate for life. Also, the female goes to hunt after the egg is laid while the male watches/sits on eggs.
Orcas are predators of moose. Moose can swim (and dive quite deep) and orcas have been seen attacking and killing moose in the wild. It's not a common, everyday occurrence. But I think it's metal as f**k.
It occurs often enough that orcas are indeed listed as a natural predator for moose.
Male platypus have venomous spines on their back feet, one on each side. The pain has been described as unbearably excruciating and can last for months on end. Platypus may look very cute, but never ever pick one up unless you are a trained wildlife carer.
One fascinating fact about wildlife that often surprises people is that some species of octopuses are known to use tools. They've been observed collecting coconut shell halves and using them as portable shelters.
A flamingo's head has to be upside down when it eats. This is interesting to know!
Wild wolves are pretty timid around humans and getting attacked by one is so extremely rare.
Tell that to Rockstar games. Damn wolf attacks on Red Dead Redemption are annoying.
Rats have collapsible ribcages - it's why they can fit through such small crevices.
A fun game you can play with your pet rats is to gently loop your forefinger and thumb around their neck and watch them squeeze their entire body through a hole the size of an Australian 20 cent coin. It's amazing. There are claims out there that they can also collapse their skulls, but that's a nonsensical lie.
Scientists studying sperm whales are ignored/shunned if they wear scuba gear. If they use drones, like submersible ones, the whales leave. If they free dive, no gear, holding their breath about 10-15 feet deep, for a few minutes at a time...
Whales approach within feet of the diver. Close enough a full strength hunting "call" would pulp the human. Close enough the energy from a normal "scan" heats up the divers.
Sometimes, the pod will surround the diver, floating vertically, and swap over to their communication mode.
As James Nestor (look him up on Youtube) says - Getting that close to an animal that can kill you with its voice, when there is a chance that specific whale may be old enough to remember being hunted by humans... is pretty sketchy.
Wait a minute, heat up from a sperm whale scan? Oh I'm diving down this rabbit hole. See you tomorrow. Edit: the only information on this is literally only from this man, that I could find. Turns out he's not actually a scientist, just a journalist writing a book. I'm going to wait until I can find actual research to support these claims. Can anybody find it?
The Mayfly's adult lifespan is so short they are born without a mouth.
The mayfly eats during its larval, aquatic stage. The adult form exists only for reproductive purposes.
Some species of birds can sleep while flying, known as "unihemispheric slow-wave sleep," keeping one hemisphere of their brain awake.
Fungi can help build "wood wide webs" connecting surrounding tree roots in the forest. These "webs" are used as warning systems when a tree is in distress from an attacker and these systems also transfer nutrients and other goods to eachother within the system.
I've read that the mycelial network can also stop the flow of nutrients to trees that they're 'mad" at.
Squid brains are donut-shaped and the digestive tract goes through the hole in the middle.
Squid can give themselves brain damage if they try to swallow too large a piece of food.
Deer will eat human remains. It's known that they are very occasional opportunistic carrion consumers, and this has included film of a deer munching on human remains at a body farm. I guess there's no reason to assume that carrion wouldn't include human remains, but it's just sort of a weird thought, we just don't think of deer like that.
Bull Sharks can survive in any kind of water. They swim into rivers to have their young because there are fewer predators, hence you hear news stories about sharks in the Mississippi River.
They are also a******s and will bite with very little provocation. IIRC they cause more "attacks" than Great Whites but they're nowhere near as big so they don't do as much damage. They are still the 3rd most dangerous shark in the world behind Tigers and Great Whites.
Ugh, did my post disappear? Well 1945 uss Indianapolis got sunk in the Pacific. Oceanic white tips snacked on the crew for 4 days before they were rescued. Oceanic white tips are the most aggressive sharks in the open water. Google the incident, it's interesting. Edit: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worst-shark-attack-in-history-25715092/
Buffalo/ American bison only have one lung cavity. They have 2 lungs, but they are together in the same cavity. It's what makes such incredibly powerful dumptrucks of pure muscle so vulnerable to a single gunshot, or bow shot.
I'm guessing a shot to the lungs. I don't think a shot to their haunches would do much.
Sharks can "smell" electricity.
They have pores on their snout that can detect electrical fields, and they use this sixth sense to hunt. They are capable of sensing the electrical currents a brain uses to communicate with muscles, and have even been known to chew on underwater electrical cables. It's possible that they can even tell if a creature is feeling calm or panicked this way.
I mentioned this in a comment higher up. Its not actually 'smelling' electricity. There is a seperate sensory organ called the ampullae of Lorenzini which can detect electricity. They use this to hunt prey. But it is so sensitive, if you stretched a wire from the US to England across the atlantic and attached a 9 volt battery at each end, every shark in the world could sense it. And this is why they will chew on metal, because metal moving through salt water causes electrolysis, which generates an electrical charge.
Whale milk is the same consistency as toothpaste.
That's because it's so rich in fat, allowing baby whales to gain over 100 kilos per day.
Pigeons produce milk.
Note: this post originally had 67 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
I recently learned an animal fact that blew my mind. Basically, we've all been lied to about how sex determination in bees works. They tell you female bees come from fertilized eggs, so have two sets of chromosomes, and males come from unfertilized eggs and have one set. That's the simplified version. How it actually works is that a bee is female if it has two kinds of sex determining alleles, and male if it has one kind. Most animals have only two possible alleles. You're probably most familiar with the x and y in humans. Bees have maybe 19 possible alleles. If a bee, against the odds, inherits two of the same, it turns out male because it only has one type of sex determining alleles, though it is sterile. The hive will kill it as soon as it hatches though, because a sterile male is a useless waste of resources.
I recently learned an animal fact that blew my mind. Basically, we've all been lied to about how sex determination in bees works. They tell you female bees come from fertilized eggs, so have two sets of chromosomes, and males come from unfertilized eggs and have one set. That's the simplified version. How it actually works is that a bee is female if it has two kinds of sex determining alleles, and male if it has one kind. Most animals have only two possible alleles. You're probably most familiar with the x and y in humans. Bees have maybe 19 possible alleles. If a bee, against the odds, inherits two of the same, it turns out male because it only has one type of sex determining alleles, though it is sterile. The hive will kill it as soon as it hatches though, because a sterile male is a useless waste of resources.
