EnigmA Amiga Run 1995 November/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 02 (1995)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1995-11][Skylink CD].iso/earcd/docs/aniinfo.lha/AnimalInfo.txt

Text File | 1995-01-08 | 29KB | 1,294 lines

                             ANIMALS





     How do we know what animals think or feel?  I say be kind to

animals just in case it matters to them.  The poet William Blake

said, "How do you know but that every bird that cleaves the aerial

way is not an immense world of delight closed to your senses five?"



                       Lifespans of Animals



                      Horse...............30

                      Rabbit...............5

                      Dog.................15

                      cat.................13

                      rat..................2

                      mouse......less than 1

                      Elephant...........100

                      Crocodile..........300

                      Cow.................25

                      Pigeon..............20

                      Eagle..............100

                      Whale..............100

                      clam...............150

                      Tortoise...........350

                      Lion................40

                      Pig.................25

                      Crow...............100



                          Dogs and Cats



     In one large city a telephone operator traced the source of

an emergency phone call because the caller would not speak.  The

phone only emitted unusual noises.  When the ambulance crew

arrived at the scene, they found a basset hound who had dialed 911

in the process of chewing up the phone.



     In 1978, New York City passed a law that made the residents

clean up after their dogs.  Until that time, people had to walk

around 54 tons of dog poop deposited daily.



     There was a dog (part collie) who liked to take baths and

learned how to turn the water on and off and adjust the faucets to

get the right temperature.



     Dogs see only black, white and gray.  They can hear much

better than humans, though.  They can hear sounds ten times

farther away than we can.



     The original reason for the haircuts that poodles get was to

make swimming easier for them.



     The only things that are taxed in Ile de Sein, France, are

dogs.



     An average dog costs its owner about $500 per year.  In ten

years, $5,000!



     "In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance,

everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that

will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce



     It costs about $30 per month to feed a horse.  It costs about

$15 per month to feed a cat.



     Americans spend almost 3 billion dollars a year on food for

their kitty-cats, yet, for comparison, America spends only 700

million dollars on drug prevention and treatment programs.



     And speaking of cat food, a mouse can have 8 babies.  Assuming

four of them are female, and knowing that a mouse can give birth

60 days after being born itself, after 18 months, a pair of mice

can become 4.5 million.



     If you have to introduce a second cat into your house, your

first kitty cat may have trouble getting used to the new intruder.

If you put a little perfume on both cats, so that they will smell

the same as each other, they will trust each other more.



     A man named Sir Henry Wyat was sentenced to the Tower of

London, at a time when prisoners generally starved to death.  Sir

Henry's kitty-cat seemed to understand the situation because she

snuck into the Tower bringing him a freshly-killed pigeon every

day.  When the king heard of this, he must have felt sad for the

kitty, because he immediately set Sir Henry free.



     Cats will not walk on aluminum foil.  This is good to know

when you are trying to protect something that your cat would tend

to walk on such as a part-done jigsaw puzzle.



     Cats' whiskers have a function similar to those curb feelers

which were so common on cars in the 1950's.  When a cat looks into

a small tunnel or opening in the bushes, the whiskers are used to

gauge the dimensions.  If the opening doesn't rub the whiskers,

the cat's body will fit through.



     Why are cats so meticulous about keeping clean?  They lick off

all blood and odor-causing matter to prevent attracting flies and

bigger predators that would be interested in the odor of blood.



     The world's fattest cat was "Tiger" a part-Persian who

weighed over 42 pounds.



     If your kitty-cat scratches up valuable furniture, tape

balloons to it.  The cat will never scratch there again.



     It is often reported that cats cannot taste sweet flavors.

Actually, they can sense sweetness, but do not have much interest

in sugary things.  What is particularly interesting about their

sense of taste, is that they have a special taste for the flavor

of water, which we humans cannot taste.



     ;qooooooo.,,,xkiiiiiii:

     This is what happens when a kitty cat walks across the

computer keyboard while you are trying to write a book.



     If you need to give liquid medicine to a cat, don't try to

feed it to the cat.  This would only result in a battle.  Instead,

spill the medicine on the kitty's fur.  The cat will lick it off in

the process of cleaning.



     When a cat turns around and around before laying down, this

is an instinct left over from the days when they slept in tall

grass.  The turning action pushed the grass down into a nest.





                              Birds



     Chicks that have just hatched will follow the first moving

thing they see and think that moving thing is their mommy.  I

wonder what happens when the first thing they see is a cat?



     Mynah birds can be trained to say "hello" to people.  There is

one mynah that even says "hello" to photographs of people.  He

recognizes them even if they are wearing sunglasses.



     Some vultures have learned that for dinner they can crack

other bird's eggs by throwing stones at them.



     When the subject of a national bird came up, Benjamin

Franklin suggested a turkey, but an eagle was selected.



     In 1876, when constructing the 550-foot tall Washington

Monument, (when it was 153 feet tall), workers had to get a rope

to the top, but they did not have any sort of scaffolding.  They

tied a thread to the leg of a pigeon, put him inside the

unfinished tower and made a sudden noise.  The scared bird flew up

to the top, and out.  A string was attached to the thread and

pulled to the top, and then a rope was pulled to the top with the

string.



     There is a species of bird called European Grosbeak.  It's

official scientific name is Coccothraustes coccothraustes

coccothraustes.



     A human heart beats at about 50 to 100 beats per minute.  A

hummingbird's heart beats between 36 and 1200 beats per minute.

When at rest, the bird's heart beats at 480.  Our body temperature

is always close to 98.6.  Theirs is between 55 and 110 degrees.



     Some people in China use live quail in the winter as hand

warmers.



     If you give an oystercatcher a choice between one of her own

eggs, or a fake egg made of wood, she will sit on the wooden one.



     There were a flock of ducks that lived on the roof of a hotel

in Memphis, Tennessee who used to take the elevator to the ground

floor when they wished to go anywhere.



     There was a research project that involved having a scientist

yell at chickens - then measure their health compared to other

chickens that were treated nicely.  As it turns out, the chickens

treated nicely are more resistant to infection.



     The largest chicken egg ever laid weighed over one pound.



     The passenger pigeon, which became extinct in 1914, numbered

over two billion just thirty-five years earlier.  They used to fly

in such large flocks that it would seem like night in the middle

of the day.  Farmers used to shoot at them and would sometimes hit

two or three with one shot.



     There is a bird in Antarctica that repels threatening animals

in unique ways.  The bird throws up in the enemy's face.  If that

doesn't work, it blows snot at them with enough force to bowl a

human over.



     When a gas pipeline crossing the California desert springs a

leak it would normally be hard to find the break.  To find the

leak easily, the gas companies put a chemical into the gas that

arouses the mating instinct in buzzards.  They congregate around

the area of a leak, making it easy to spot.



     A 300-pound ostrich has 45 feet of intestine.  Their eggs

have a shell so hard that a 250-pound man can stand on one without

breaking it.



                              Brains



     The cerebellum is the rear part of the brain which is most

convoluted.  It has long been considered the center for balance

and muscular coordination.  (In birds it is much larger than the

same organ in other animals - because they need it for flying).

Recently it has been discovered that there are direct circuits

between the cerebellum and emotional responses.



     Scientists raised three groups of monkeys.  Some were raised

by their mother.  Some were raised by a stationary Chlorox bottle

covered with fur.  The last group were raised by a Chlorox bottle

that was remotely controlled and acted somewhat like a real

mother.  The monkeys with the movable bottle mother grew up nearly

as normal as those raised with a real mother, but those with a

stationary mother, grew up schizophrenic.



     A fish's brain weighs about the same amount as its spinal

cord.  In humans, the brain weighs 55 times more than the spinal

cord.



     The brain of an elephant is four times bigger than a human

brain.



     The animal with the largest brain compared to the size of its

body is an ant.



     Human brains weigh about 44 to 50 ounces.  The biggest brain

in any class of apes is only about 16 ounces.



     Dolphins have brains that are 40 percent larger and more

wrinkled than humans.  Are we really the most intelligent animal on

earth?  The answer is probably yes.  Much of the dolphin's brain is

taken up with their sense of sonar.  Scientists are now assuming

that they can not only "see" their surroundings and other dolphins

with their sense of sonar, but that they can actually see into

their friends.  They would not have to ask another dolphin if it

is feeling ok, they can see their friend's innards for themselves.



     Have you ever tried to sell something big to someone, who

tells you, "I'll have to sleep on it." There is validity to this

technique.  A person can enhance their decision making power while

sleeping.  This is done through dreams.  It seems that while

dreaming we are practicing our thinking skills, and more

specifically, reprocessing our thoughts and activities of the

previous day.  We are able to see issues more clearly the next

day, and therefore make better decisions, because we have new

power.  We have let our brain develop the issue overnight.  This

is an essential trait to survival.

     For proof, we look at the spiny anteater, a simple mammal who

does not have periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep.

This indicates that the little guy does not dream.  The spiny

anteater has another oddity.  He has the biggest prefrontal cortex

(the thinking part) in relation to the rest of his brain of all

animals except humans.  Yet he is stupid, and we are not.  Why?  He

has to process all his thoughts in actual time, as they are

happening, because he cannot work things out while dreaming.  This

must be a bigger job than you would think.  His offspring could not

evolve much farther in intelligence because their brains would

have to become prohibitively large.  Instead, they evolved

dreaming.  We humans dream, so our large brains can be used for

more intelligent pursuits.  This dreaming business is very

essential to the formation of permanent memories.





                            Dinosaurs



     Some dinosaurs had two brains!  Since nerve signals move from

one part of the body to another relatively slowly (It takes 1/50

second to notice a pain in your foot.) and since these beasts were

so large, a second brain was located at the base of the tail to

maintain control the back of the creatures.  Interestingly, the

rear brain was bigger than the one in their heads.



     The Largest dinosaur, Brachiosaurus weighed as much as a town

of 800 people, was taller than a four story hotel, and was as long

as two of the longest school buses.



     Who says all dinosaurs have died?  There is a species of

lizard called Komodo monitor that can grow to over ten feet long

and weigh 365 pounds.  Komodo Dragons can eat a pig whole.



     Actually, most scientists are now saying that dinosaurs were

very unlike lizards.  Their legs generally were directly under

their bodies, not sticking out from their sides like lizards.

Their bone structure was more like that of warm-blooded mammals.

Tracks have been found made by of groups of dinosaurs moving

together in herds with a spacing and depth of impression

indicating sustained high speed, again more a mammalian trait than

reptilian.  One theory regarding the extinction of dinosaurs which

is gaining some acceptance is that because they were warm-blooded

creatures with a high metabolism, they were more susceptible to

viruses or bacterial infections than their cold-blooded

predecessors.  According to one scientist, they might have all

died of diarrhea.  Can you imagine the mess?



     Everyone knows that there are places underground that have

fossils 70 million years old.  What most people don't realize is

that these things didn't all die.  Scientists recently bored a hole

850 feet down into the era of dinosaurs and found 3500 living,

undiscovered species of fungi, protozoa and bacteria.  The scien-

tists do not know whether these are the same as those who lived in

prehistory or whether they have mutated.





                          Invertebrates



     The horseshoe crab is an animal that has not evolved.  It is

the same as it was 300 million years ago.



     If you took all the earthworms that are under a typical

football field and lined them up, the line would be 94 miles long.

They will move ten tons of dirt in a year.



     Giant earthworms have been found as long as 11 feet.  Yuk!



     Some fleas freeze solid every night, then thaw out to resume

their lives in the daytime.



     Mosquitoes can drink 150 percent as much blood as they weigh.



     A reason to avoid blue jeans:  Mosquitoes are twice as

interested in blue as any other color.



     There is a water beetle that has four eyes.  Two are mounted

high on its head for seeing through air, and two are lower, for

looking into the water.



     The mayfly has a two-hour long lifespan.  It has no mouth,

because it will not have time to digest a meal.



     The largest moths in the world have a 14 inch wingspan.  These

"Hercules" moths live only 2 weeks and never eat.  Would you be

scared if one landed on your head?



     Insects are nearsighted.  They cannot see farther than 9

feet.



     How is it that insects get stuck to a spider's web, yet the

spider does not?  The spider's feet secrete a bit of oil.  If a

spider slips or falls, it can get trapped in its own web.



     Bees have to fly a total of 72,000 miles to gather enough

honey for one jar.



     Ants sleep about three hours, then stretch and appear to

yawn, just like people do when waking.



     If you could jump as high as a grasshopper, relative to its

size, you could jump more than 1/2 mile straight up.



     There is a species of bug that can fly up to 818 miles per

hour, faster than the speed of sound.



     If you could weigh all the bugs in the world, and weigh all

the people in the world, your pile of bugs would weigh twelve

times as much as the people.



     How do spiders make their silk?  They excrete a polymer and

then stretch it so quickly that this stretching creates aligned,

crystalized solid molecules.



     Spiders inject their victims with a chemical that dissolves

them.  Then the spiders drink their lunch with their mouths which

are soda straw-like.  A tarantula can totally liquify a mouse.



     The crosshairs that you see in a surveyor's transit have to

be very thin.  Some transit makers use the silk of a black widow's

web.



     If a drop of liquor gets on a scorpion, it will immediately

commit suicide with its own stinger.



     Some male moths can locate a single female moth by her odor

up to one mile away.



     If you cut the head off a cockroach, it will continue to live

for up to many more weeks.



     Scientists have found out that termites are affected by

music.  They will eat up your house twice as fast if you play rock

music.



     The ears of some bugs are located in unusual places.  Crickets

listen to sounds with their knees while cicadas hear with their

stomachs.



     The giant squid has the largest eye of any living animal at

up to nine inches in diameter.  (fifteen inches according to

another source) These squid live so deep in the ocean that live

ones have seldom been seen.  Dead ones have been found that are up

to 55 feet long.



     Jellyfish are animals who are composed of mostly water - 95

percent.



     A sponge is a unique character.  If you cut him into several

small pieces or squeeze him through a screen, his parts will

eventually reform the original shape without any harm done.



     Octopi have three hearts.



     If a lobster loses an eye, it will grow a new one.



     Starfish have a gross and unusual manner of eating.  They

regurgitate their stomach through their mouth onto their food, and

absorb it directly.  Then they suck their stomach back in.





                        Lower Vertebrates



  Some anglerfish, who live in the ocean at depths of over a

mile, have unusual lives.  To see where they are going in that

depth, or perhaps to attract food, the females have a chemically

operated lamp that hangs on a stalk in front of their mouths.  The

male doesn't need to see because early in his life, he bites into

the belly of the female and stays there forever.  After a while

the female grows skin over the connection, and the male

degenerates, losing his teeth, his fins, and any manner of life

beyond being a small appendage hanging off the female.



     Some catfish have taste buds over their entire body.



     When Pacific salmon get to a certain age, their pituitary

glands suddenly secrete poison to kill them.



     A fisherman in England hooked three pike at once.  While

pulling in the first, it was eaten by a second who had been eaten

by the third.



     While fishing at a pond in New York State, a man lost the

glass part of his lantern.  Five years later, once again fishing in

the same spot, he caught a fish that was wearing that same glass

lantern chimney, stuck around it's body.



     One species of shark is so competitive that the babies fight

each other within their mother, until only one is left to be born.



     Sharks never get sick.



     Sharks almost never get cancer.  Scientists are studying them

to find out why and whether their protection is adaptable to

humans.



     Sharks will eat anything.  The only exception, is that they

will not eat anything in the vicinity of where they give birth.

This is because they are so stupid, this is the only way nature

protects them from accidentally eating their own babies.



     The people of the world eat over 200 million frogs per year.

So many people around the world enjoy eating frog legs that there

is likely to be an eco-system problem in Asia, where most frogs

for food come from.  They eat zillions of insects, keeping the

wildlife balance in check.  Perhaps people would stop eating frogs

if they realized that the frog's legs are usually cut off while

the frogs are still alive.



    When horned toads are threatened, they shoot jets of blood

from their eyes.



     Crocs eat rocks.  The first meal of a baby crocodile consists

of several stones.  Scientists think these are for ballast, to

help the croc keep upright while swimming and/or to grind up food

during digestion.



     If alligator eggs are kept above 86 degrees, all the babies

will be males.  If incubated at below 86 degrees, all females will

result.  Another theory about the extinction of dinosaurs is that

with a global change in temperature, only one sex would have been

born.



     A seven-inch chameleon can stretch its tongue up to ten

inches to eat bugs that are passing by.



     Scientists have discovered that a chameleon will still

imitate the colors of its surroundings, even if blinded.



     There is a species of lizard that has three eyes.  Two of its

eyes are located in the normal place, the third one is on the top

of its head.



     There is a species of snake that is awake for two hours per

day, and sleeps the other 22 hours.



     There have been snakes born with two heads.  They usually

coexist alright until one tries to eat the other.



     When researchers in Louisiana placed rubber snakes and

turtles on highways and observed the behavior of 22,000 motorists,

they discovered that 87% of the drivers purposely avoided hitting

the creatures, but 6% of drivers went out of their way to "kill"

the rubber animals with their tires.



     Warm blooded animals versus cold blooded animals:  The

warm-blooded animals are always ready to move or react to their

environment, while the cold-blooded animals must be careful not to

be caught at the wrong temperature, when they cannot react quickly

to an emergency.  On the other hand, warm-blooded animals must

spend much of their time eating to supply their energy

requirements.  If people were reptiles instead of mammals, we would

have to eat only once per week.



                             Mammals



     Rabbits sleep 16 times per day.



     The blood of mammals has exactly the same dilution of salt as

ocean water.



     We all know that whales are big, but few of us realize just

how big.  The biggest species is the Blue Whale.  This animal is

bigger than any dinosaur that ever lived.  The biggest dino

(brachiosaurus) was only 50 tons and 80 feet long.  One blue whale

is as big as 25 of the largest elephants.  (150 tons, 100 feet

long) Think of 75 Volkswagen vans.  They are that big!  And they

grow fast.  Youngsters gain weight at the rate of ten pounds per

hour.  A blue whale's tongue is about the same weight as three

Chevy station wagons.  Their heart is about the same size as a

Toyota.  This monster organ beats about nine times per minute.  (at

the other end of the spectrum is the hummingbird with up to 1200

beats per minute, or 133 beats for every time the whale's heart

beats.



     The life of a domestic elephant in Thailand:  School begins at

age three.  The elephant is introduced to two boys who will learn

with them.  The boys are called mahouts.  For the next six years

they learn all about working with each other to get wood out of

the jungle.  For the next fifty years, the elephant and the

mahouts are employed by the timber industry.  The reason there are

two men for one elephant, is that should something happen to one

of the men, the other will be able to continue working with the

elephant.  Then, at age 59, the elephant is retired, and gets to

graze freely in the forest for the next forty years or so.  The

mahouts, if still alive, still visit the elephant in the forest

every few days.



     An elephant can eat a quarter-ton of grass in one day.



     The skin of a hippopotamus is an one and a half inches thick

and nearly bullet-proof.



     When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.



     The stomach of a hippopotamus is ten feet long.



     You can convince a cow to go up stairs, but it is nearly

impossible to get one to come down.



     The record for milk production from one cow is 11,756 gallons

in one year.



     Sometimes a moose will approach a car, thinking it is another

moose.  They are very nearsighted animal.



     Aren't you glad you are not a koala?  Koala bears have a diet

that consists of only one thing, eucalyptus leaves.  Interestingly,

their appendix is up to 8 feet long.



     Teddy bears were named after U.S.  President Theodore

Roosevelt.  He enjoyed a koala bear that was given to him, and toy

manufacturers started making a toy bear, named after the

President.



     A man named Marinus was so mad when a bear killed his mule,

that he captured the bear and taught him how to plow his fields.



     A horse cannot focus its eyes in the way humans do.  They

have to change the angle of their heads if they want to see close

objects clearly.



     A man in France who had been hunting on his pony had a

problem.  The pony was injured.  So, he carried the pony more than a

mile to a veterinarian.  The pony weighed almost a quarter-ton.



     Brand-new baby giraffes are six feet tall and weigh almost

200 pounds.



     Kangaroos push off the ground with their tails when they

jump.



     Squirrels forget where they hid about half of their nuts.



     The word Hamster is from a German word that means "to hoard."



     Breathing liquid is possible.  Mice have been held under the

surface in a beaker of liquid that is saturated with oxygen for

several hours.  This could allow divers to rise or sink rapidly

without getting the bends.  The only problem is the first breath -

overcoming the instinctual fear of drowning.  Pre-mature babies

have already been forced to breathe liquid when their lungs are

too underdeveloped to breathe air.



     The technical name for the black rat is rattus rattus.



     A rat must never stop gnawing.  This action grinds down their

ever-growing incisors.  If they were not provided with anything to

gnaw, their lower teeth would eventually grow through their skull

and into their brain.



     A scientist, W.  Donner Denckla, at the National Institute of

Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (of all places), removed the

pituitary glands of rats and injected the necessary hormones for

survival.  These rats lived much longer and showed less signs of

aging than ordinary rats.  At 24 months of age, only 2 out of 125

control rats were still alive.  This is a typical lifespan for

rats.  Of the 95 rats without the pituitaries, even though

handicapped, at age 34 months, 20 were still alive.  This is

equivalent to humans at age 95, where only 1 percent of us are

still alive.



     Humans have been a very successful species in terms of the

number of individuals living on the earth at this time.  We are the

first animal that can exchange information outside of DNA.  Other

animals must rely upon what is built into their system, primarily

instincts, for their information about how to deal with their

environment.  People can talk to each other about their

environment.  For example, I can tell you not to eat the leaves of

a cherry tree, because they are poisonous, thereby saving your

life.



     Some old male monkeys become bald, just like some humans.



     Many scientists believe it is possible, through artificial

insemination or perhaps more natural techniques, to cross-breed

humans and gorillas.  There is really nothing to stop someone from

doing this.  Think of the ethical questions that the baby would

bring up.  Would you raise the child as a human?



     In 1914, France's first lady was kidnapped by an orangutan

who had escaped from the zoo in Paris.  He carried her up into a

tree and kept her for hours.  She was so embarrassed by this

incident that the government kept it a secret for forty years.



     It is possible that a single pig caused the War of 1812.  This

pig was always getting into the neighbor's garden and eating up

the nice things he found there.  Finally the neighbor got mad and

attacked and killed the pig with a pitchfork.  The pig's killer

was a congressional candidate who lost the election by one vote.

This was the vote cast against him by the late pig's owner

presumably because he was upset about the loss of his pig.  When

the matter of deciding about the war was voted upon, the issue

passed by one vote.  This was the vote of the candidate who had won

the election by one vote.



     The world's most outrageous musical instrument was made in

France during 1450.  Connected to a keyboard was a long row of

spikes.  Under each spike was a pig, arranged according to the

pitch of its oink.