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ANIMALS
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1991-08-29
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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company
ANIMALS
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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."
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So far, the biggest whale ever weighed (by calculations) was
170 tons, equal to more than 4 fully-loaded tractor-trailers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If dogs were criminals, you could keep track of them by
taking their noseprints, which are as unique as human
fingerprints.
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Note: Looking for something specific? Press the [S] key to
search this chapter.
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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.
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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.
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Smokey The Bear was originally named Hot Foot Teddy.
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I'll bet most of you reading this don't know what the word
ichthyology means. I'll tell you shortly.
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Frogs can get athlete's foot just like people do.
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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.
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When a dolphin gives birth, a midwife dolphin attends.
Often the midwife helps push the baby to the surface for its
first breath.
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What does ungulate mean? The answer is coming up shortly.
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Americans spend four times more money on dog food than on
baby food.
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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.
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Ichthyology is the study of fish.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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An ungulate is a goat or a horse, or a cow, any animal with
hoofs.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Elephants will date for weeks before mating.
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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.
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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.
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A farmer in Australia taught his pet monkey to drive a
tractor.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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One type of prehistoric bird, Dinornis maximus, was 13 feet
tall, taller than a house.
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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.
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The largest octopi are 32 feet across.
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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.
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There is one cat for approximately every 5 people in America.
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Geese have been known to fly higher than 5 miles up in the
air.
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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.
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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.
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Scientists have determined that human babies are less
intelligent that chimpanzee babies.
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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.
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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.
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In general a rat can make a good pet, but they have one
disconcerting problem. The rat's average lifespan is only
two years.
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Owls, known for their wisdom, are actually very stupid as
birds go.
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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.
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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.