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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company ANIMALS _____________________________________________________________ Whales have the worst bad breath imaginable. According to Herman Melville, who researched whales thoroughly for his novel, Moby Dick, "The breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell as to bring on a disorder of the brain." _____________________________________________________________ So far, the biggest whale ever weighed (by calculations) was 170 tons, equal to more than 4 fully-loaded tractor-trailers. _____________________________________________________________ A baby blue whale gains 200 pounds per day while drinking 50 gallons of milk. Her mom eats 4 tons of plankton and other junk food out of the water every day. _____________________________________________________________ Many dolphins and some whales have an easy time of catching their fish dinners. Evidently, they stun the small fish with ultrasonic sound waves before snapping them up. _____________________________________________________________ If it had not been for the Civil War, the United States Cavalry might have been riding camels. Shortly before the war, Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis imported 81 camels for testing in Texas. There were some problems. Ordinary horses were terrified of the camels, and so were many of the soldiers. On the other hand, in some ways they were excellent. They could go for several days without water, they could carry a half-ton and walk 40 miles a day. The military was generally impressed and were ready to start switching to camels in large numbers, but then the war developed and there was no time to deal with camel importation. _____________________________________________________________ There is a one-celled animal called Chaos Chaos which is different than any other creature. Being amorphous, but with three nuclei, it will often try to go in more than one direction at a time stretching itself to great lengths before pulling back into "shape" and going in only one direction. When it reproduces, it becomes three smaller creatures, not two. Perhaps this is what life is mostly like on other planets, where there are very rare creatures that have only one nucleus and divide in two. _____________________________________________________________ All the information in this database is reliably calculated from or based on what others have written. However, you may wish to conduct your own research to make absolutely sure of the facts. _____________________________________________________________ As you have probably heard, some chimpanzees have been taught sign language. Now some of them have taught the language to other chimps and they have conversations among themselves. _____________________________________________________________ The flounder, a weird, flat fish, has both eyes on one side of its body. _____________________________________________________________ A person can carry a weight approximately equal to themselves. An ant can carry a weight 100 times heavier than themselves. Ants are the creatures with the biggest brains relative to their body size. If an ant were as big as we are, they could carry 10 automobiles on their backs and probably solve calculus problems simultaneously. _____________________________________________________________ Kittens are born with their eyes closed. Only after they have lived several days, do their eyes open for the first time. Scientists discovered that if they put blindfolds on the kittens for the first three days their eyes are open, they will be blind for life. Evidently this time is important in the training of their brains' sight interpretation capability. The blindfolded kittens' eyes work fine, but their brains don't know what to do with the pictures! Newborn kittens who lived in white boxes painted with horizontal black stripes could never learn to see vertical things during their entire lives. And, of course those raised among vertical stripes could not see horizontal things. Cats' eyes are specially developed to see horizontal things much better. In ordinary lighting their irises open as vertical slits, allowing lots of light to come in, but because the slits are narrow, focus on the horizontal plane is easy to maintain, but their ability to focus on objects vertically is reduced due to the relatively large opening vertically. Their retinas, like human retinas, analyze the picture before it is sent to the brain. The brain doesn't just get a dot by dot representation, but rather an interpreted story from the retina. One rather obvious fact relating to this interpretation is that a cat will see movement much more clearly than the detail of a still scene. For instance, if your cat is not paying attention to you, wave your hand a little bit, and the cat will instantly look your way. All this makes sense for a cat's survival. Their food moves in the grass and they have to see it right away. But the motionless grass and the rocks are of no significance. Most of a cat's food moves across the ground - horizontally. This is why a cat can easily chase a ball of paper fastened to the end of a string as long as you move it along the floor, but when you move it into the air, they lose it. Watch a cat stalk a bird. They get closer, and closer, then suddenly the bird flies up into the air. Often the cat doesn't even look up. To the cat, the bird simply vanished. _____________________________________________________________ Cats have been rated as the most intelligent animals under primates. Cats brains weigh about 1 percent of their total body weight. Human brains weight 2 percent of our total weight. _____________________________________________________________ You would think that animals have no sense of disgust if you watch a cat who will sniff practically anything. But they can be disgusted. To prove it, peel an orange a few feet away from your kitty-cat and you'll see what I mean. The cat will wrinkle its nose and leave the area, possibly even displaying even more obvious signs of disgust in the process. _____________________________________________________________ If dogs were criminals, you could keep track of them by taking their noseprints, which are as unique as human fingerprints. _____________________________________________________________ Note: Looking for something specific? Press the [S] key to search this chapter. _____________________________________________________________ In parts of Florida is a species of toad that is poisonous. Dogs like to catch these toads, but this upsets the toads, resulting in poisoned dogs. The dogs don't die - usually, but the symptoms are disturbing. Their skeletal muscles stiffen and the dogs are stiff as popsicles for several hours. _____________________________________________________________ Octopi are not stupid creatures. Scientists have actually trained them to perform simple tasks. They have been observed pulling the stoppers out of bottles to get at the stuff inside, and even unscrewing jar lids. Some of the very largest octopi live not in some remote deep part on the Indian Ocean, but in Puget Sound in the State of Washington. _____________________________________________________________ Puppies have lungs. Goldfish have gills. Many species of shrimp breathe with their legs. Snapping turtles have two ways of getting their oxygen. They have lungs and they can absorb oxygen from water with their rectums. _____________________________________________________________ Lets say you are snorkling off the coast of Florida. And along comes a 12 foot long slimy thing weighing about as much as a station wagon, with a quizzical expression in it's wide set eyes. What would you do? The proper answer is to pet it. Manatees, oceanic mammals are so huge that they have no natural enemies, and so they aren't going to be afraid of you. They just come up to figure you out and see if you would like to pet them. Three-quarters of all manatees have scars on their backs from boat propellers. _____________________________________________________________ Smokey The Bear was originally named Hot Foot Teddy. _____________________________________________________________ I'll bet most of you reading this don't know what the word ichthyology means. I'll tell you shortly. _____________________________________________________________ Frogs can get athlete's foot just like people do. _____________________________________________________________ One use that satellites are being put to: Several sea turtles have been fitted with radio transmitters which bounce signals from the ocean, off satellites and back to earth so us humans can figure out where they go. _____________________________________________________________ When a dolphin gives birth, a midwife dolphin attends. Often the midwife helps push the baby to the surface for its first breath. _____________________________________________________________ What does ungulate mean? The answer is coming up shortly. _____________________________________________________________ Americans spend four times more money on dog food than on baby food. _____________________________________________________________ In research where horses were taught to work light switches, they consistently demonstrated that they don't like darkness by turning the lights on at night. _____________________________________________________________ Ichthyology is the study of fish. _____________________________________________________________ There is little bug called the bean aphid, that gives birth to live young if there is more than 14 hours and 55 minutes of daylight per day, but lays eggs if there is less daylight. _____________________________________________________________ Experimenters at the University of Chicago have almost recreated life. With a mixture of the 'primordial' gases, and a bolt of artificial lightning, they caused the spontaneous formation of amino acids, which it is believed, in the right combinations, will turn into lifeforms. _____________________________________________________________ There is a mysterious many-tentacled animal who lives in the ocean called the Atlantic giant squid. These squid are big - some are longer than a city bus. _____________________________________________________________ An ungulate is a goat or a horse, or a cow, any animal with hoofs. _____________________________________________________________ Note: You can change the colors with the keys [F3] - [F10]. _____________________________________________________________ Experiments have suggested that a dog's sense of smell may be 1 million times more sensitive or accurate than a human's. _____________________________________________________________ Even though a female butterfly can secrete only about 1/4 millionth of an ounce of her perfume into the air, a male butterfly can smell it and track her down from seven miles away. _____________________________________________________________ There is bird, called a "dipper," that flies under water. Using its wings as fins, It can go down to 20 feet and stay there up to 30 seconds. _____________________________________________________________ If there is time, a skunk will warn you before spraying. The warning has two phases. First the skunk pats his front feet on the ground several times. Then he shakes his head from side to side. If you aren't gone by then, too bad! _____________________________________________________________ The hagfish has terrible table manners. It starts its meal by biting into the gill of another fish. Then it eats its way into the fish's throat. Finally, it crawls totally inside the victim and kills and eats the fish from the inside out. _____________________________________________________________ Some snails inject each other with a stimulant before mating so that their once in a lifetime session can last for several hours. _____________________________________________________________ Elephants will date for weeks before mating. _____________________________________________________________ Experimentation has shown the a dolphin's sonar is so well developed that they can discern a one-inch difference between two objects located 10 feet away. _____________________________________________________________ A fish's spinal cord weighs about the same as the fish's brain. In a human the brain weighs about 55 times as much as the spinal cord. Various species of monkeys range from 8 to 18 to one. Cats are 4 to 1. _____________________________________________________________ A farmer in Australia taught his pet monkey to drive a tractor. _____________________________________________________________ In Africa are societies of army ants so vicious that if you leave a horse tied up near them, they will entirely eat the horse within a few days. _____________________________________________________________ Lemmings, little hamster-like creatures, do in fact perish by falling over cliffs. An evolutionary population control development causes them to overbreed, and by systematically running over cliffs, the size of the population is limited. _____________________________________________________________ In the 1800's there was Interest in an idea to train and harness 10 eagles to take a man into the sky, the way people of that era used horses to pull a carriage. The idea never got off the ground. _____________________________________________________________ One type of prehistoric bird, Dinornis maximus, was 13 feet tall, taller than a house. _____________________________________________________________ If a salamander is injured it can repair the damage much better than a human. If part of the salamander's heart, eye or brain is removed, a replacement part regrows in its place. If they lose a leg, a new one is grown. Comparing this phenomenon to a frog, closely related to a salamander, but not able to regenerate new parts, a remarkable discovery was made. When a frog or a salamander is first injured, positive electrical voltage can be measured at the injury. With the salamander, the electricity soon switches to a strong negative voltage, but with the frog, the voltage stays positive. _____________________________________________________________ The largest octopi are 32 feet across. _____________________________________________________________ When you see your rambunctious cat tear across the living room, fly through the dining room, then skid across the kitchen linoleum and smash into the fridge, you worry about her. But she gets up and walks away without pain! How is this possible? If you smashed into kitchen appliances like that, you'd be jumping and yelling. Camels, who are often hit hard by their drivers, seem to feel no pain. Researchers have discovered that their brain chemistry is different. They actually feel less pain than humans. Perhaps this is why dogs can walk barefoot on the gravelliest driveways without hopping and wincing. _____________________________________________________________ There is one cat for approximately every 5 people in America. _____________________________________________________________ Geese have been known to fly higher than 5 miles up in the air. _____________________________________________________________ A study revealed that after a year 28% of severe coronary-care patients who did not own pets died, but only 5.6% of those who did own pets died. It seemed to make no difference whether their pets were horses, birds, dogs or cats. _____________________________________________________________ Some advantages of owning a dog for elderly people: 1) The well-trained large dog gives a sense of security or safety. 2) The dog can be a reason to get regular exercise - going for walks. 3) Touching your pet reduces tension and blood pressure. _____________________________________________________________ A chimpanzee has been shown by a scientist how to make a stone knife by chipping flint rocks. Then the chimp was shown how to cut open a box of chimpanzee treats. Now the chimp can do the whole operation without help. The use of tools is one of the measures of humanness. _____________________________________________________________ Scientists have determined that human babies are less intelligent that chimpanzee babies. _____________________________________________________________ Humans are an acquired taste - for vampire bats. Being bitten by one is rare, but if you are bitten, chances are, the same bat will try to bite you again after learning that you taste good. _____________________________________________________________ In England, pit bulls, the breed of dogs which are bred to be vicious, may be outlawed, meaning all 10,000 or so of them in that country may be sentenced to death. _____________________________________________________________ In general a rat can make a good pet, but they have one disconcerting problem. The rat's average lifespan is only two years. _____________________________________________________________ Owls, known for their wisdom, are actually very stupid as birds go. _____________________________________________________________ Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite. If a hungry female mosquito were the size of an average human female, she could drink 240 pounds of blood in one sitting and still fly away. _____________________________________________________________ Many breeds of dogs are the result of human intervention. By selective breeding, the dogs have changed to be cuter. Very little dogs and pug-nosed dogs may have been bred too far into their specialty. The problem is with their teeth. It seems that their teeth have not decreased in size as much as their mouths, and when these teeth grow in, the come in all crooked. These crooked teeth trap food particles and eventually cause extreme decay and periodontal disease. You can actually brush a dog's teeth, and should, to help spare them the pain of mouth problems. To do it, start when the dog is quite young, and put your finger in their mouths and rub their teeth while playing with them. They will get used to this, and you can eventually substitute a toothbrush for your fingers. Don't use human toothpaste, which is designed to be spit out. Use a small amount of baking soda. Also starting at a young age, make sure your dog or cat gets crunchy food in their diet everyday to help reduce plaque buildup. _____________________________________________________________ All the species living on earth today number 1 percent of the creatures and plants that have lived in the past and are now extinct. _____________________________________________________________ chapter end. ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Please feel free to copy and distribute as long as all files remain intact & unchanged.