A beaver’s teeth never stop growing.

It also helps that the teeth never stop growing. In fact, if they didn't wear theirteeth down on trees, their front choppers would get too huge for the beaver to eat properly! Beavers use trees as food and to build a lodge - this is the name for a beaver's house. Beavers block up streams with the trees they chew down.

How do lions mate?

The Lion Lamb explains that lions mate by growling, pawing and biting first. Once the female is in the mood to mate, she lies down and waits for the male to mount her. After copulation, which takes six to 10 seconds, the male lion gently bites the female’s neck.

The Lion Lamb details that after mating, the female turns to the male and bares her teeth. This comprises the mating cycle, which repeats itself almost every 20 minutes. Lions are capable of mating up to 40 times daily. A female lion sometimes mates with multiple partners during her estrus. This results in cubs with different fathers. Female lions also have the ability to breed synchronously, particularly when a new set of males has taken over a pride and killed the cubs. In this situation, the females come into heat simultaneously, thereby shortening the reproductive cycle for the first generation of new cubs.

The Lion Alert states that lions do not have a specific breeding season, and they often breed synchronously. Male lions typically become ready for mating at 26 months old, although they are not likely to breed before 4 or 5 years old. Reproduction generally starts to decline at 11 years, but female lions are capable of breeding until they are 15 years old.

Horses can’t vomit?

The vets agree with you: horses cannot throw up. That's what they are taught in veterinary school; that's what the books say. Horses have a band of muscle around the esophagus as it enters the stomach. This band operates in horses much as in humans: as a one-way valve. Food freely passes down the esophagus into the stomach as the valve relaxes but the valve squeezes down the opening and cuts off the passage for food going back up.

Horses, however, differ from us because their valve really works. Humans can vomit. Horses almost physically can't because of the power of the cut-off valve muscle. Also, the esophagus meets the stomach at an angle which enhances the cut-off function when the horse's stomach is bloated with food or gas. Then the stomach wall pushes against the valve, closing the esophagus even more completely from the stomach. Normally, the mechanics are such that the horse's stomach ruptures before the valve yields.

If material does pass from stomach out the esophagus, the horse is dead or nearly so. That's why horses can't vomit. But, sometimes they do. Rarely, to be sure.

Brent Kelley, veterinarian for a valuable mare during a difficult delivery, tells of one incident. After the mare delivered her foal, she laid there as if dead — not even responding to her baby's nickers. Worse: she threw up and stopped moving. Brent thought she was gone.

"But then the old girl rolled up on her sternum and called to her foal," says Kelley.

The mare lived another six years, had four more foals, and died well into her 20s.

Crocodiles Eat Stones to Affect Their Buoyancy?

It seems that crocodiles intentionally will eat stones or rocks before diving in the water. It has been thought that one reason is to help with digestion. Rocks that have been in the digestive system of an animal are called gastroliths, which literally means "stomach stones." Rocks in a crocodile's stomach might help crush and grind food especially for crocodiles who eat whole prey, particularly animals with shells and tough bones. A gastrolith can remain inside the stomach for years. Some scientists think they swallow the stones to increase their weight and to feel fuller. 

For years, it was hypothesized that eating stones might also help a crocodile stay under the water longer and to dive deeper. Many crocodilians like to float in the water with just their eyes and nostrils showing so they can ambush their prey. It was thought that a stomach full of rocks might help the crocodile keep their bodies under the water and out of sight.

New research shows that this hypothesis might be wrong! Recent research by a paleontologist named Don Henderson has shown that for the rocks to help stabilize the buoyancy of the crocodile's body, the rocks would have to account for at least 6% of the body mass of the crocodile.  They have now measured it, and the rocks only account for about 2% of body mass. Below 6%, the filling and emptying of the lungs has a much greater effect on the buoyancy of the crocodile than the stones. However, a low number of rocks might keep the crocodile from rolling from side to side. Also, with fewer rocks, they might not have helped grind up their food either. It is surprising what we are finding out today!

This shows us that even a hypothesis that seems obvious needs to be tested! It seems that the scientific method we all learned in elementary school would have some merit here! #crocodiles #crocodileseatingstones

Suriphobia is the fear of mice?

Fear of mice and rats is one of the most common specific phobias. It is sometimes referred to as musophobia (from Greek μῦς "mouse") or murophobia (a coinage from the taxonomic adjective "murine" for the family Muridae that encompasses mice and rats), or as suriphobia, from French souris, "mouse".

The phobia, as an unreasonable and disproportionate fear, is distinct from reasonable concern about rats and mice contaminating food supplies, which may potentially be universal to all times, places, and cultures where stored grain attracts rodents, which then consume or contaminate the food supply.

Snakes can't blink?

Snakes don't blink because they do not have eyelids. Each eye is covered with a single clear eye scale. These eye scales protect eyes from injury and prevent the eyes from drying out.

That is the reason snakes are unable to blink their eyes and sleep with open eyes. Most of snakes have very bad eye sight due to shed its eye scale and can only track the presence of animals by their heat and when they move.

A snake’s eye scales are part of its skin. This means when a snake sheds its skin, it must also shed its eye scales. Prior to shedding, a snake’s skin becomes dull and the eye scales become cloudy or opaque. This is because snakes secrete a milky fluid between the old skin and the new skin before they shed.

When they’re ready to shed, snakes rub their snouts against something until their skin splits. They then work to peel the skin back from their lips to their tails, turning it inside out like a stocking as they do so. Snakes tend to shed their entire skin in one piece and the eye scales are very obvious on a shed skin. Eyelids are not the only feature snakes lack. Snakes use their tongues to "smell," as they do not have nose also. The tongue constantly flicks in and out of its mouth, collecting particles from the air and identify that what is moving around by bringing them into contact with specialized organs in the mouth that examine them and tell the snake what they belong to. Even Snakes also not having ears, So they using an incredible sensitivity to vibrations in the ground to determine what is moving on around them and how far it is.

Fireflies are also known as lightning bugs?

The Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.

Polar bears are the world’s largest land predators?

Polar bears are the world's largest land predators. They top the food chain in the Arctic, where they spend most of their time on the pack ice or in the water, hunting down their favorite food - seals.

A single polar bear can consume 100 pounds / 45 kilos of meat at one feeding, and needs about one seal per week, or 50 to 75 seals per year, to survive. The bears eat as much as they can during the winter to get fat. They then live off the fat in their bodies during the summer when the ice melts and it is harder to catch seals.

The polar bear's white coat provides camouflage in the ice and snow, not for protection, but to make them almost invisible as they stalk their prey.
The fur is not actually white. Each hair shaft is pigment-free and transparent with a hollow core. It looks white because the hollow core scatters and reflects visible light, much like ice and snow does.
Beneath their "white" fur, polar bears have black skin, which absorbs more heat than pale skin, and under that skin is a blubber layer that can measure up to 4.5 inches / 7.2 cm thick. This, combined with the fur, makes the bears so well-insulated that they experience almost no heat loss.

But on bitterly cold days with fierce winds - and I mean REALLY cold - polar bears just dig out a shelter in the snow and curl up in a tight ball to wait out the storm.

A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night?

Moles are small cylindrical mammals adapted to a subterranean lifestyle. They have velvety fur; tiny or invisible ears and eyes reduced hindlimbs; and short, powerful forelimbs with large paws oriented for digging. The term is especially and most properly used for the true moles, those of the Talpidae family in the order Soricomorpha found in most parts of North America, Asia, and Europe although may refer to other completely unrelated mammals of Australia and southern Africa which have also evolved the mole body plan; it is not commonly used for some talpids, such as desmans and shrew-moles, which do not quite fit the common definition of “mole”.

A butterfly has 12,000 eyes?

A butterfly sees you through its 12,000 eyes. Butterflies are one of the most beautiful creatures in the world with more than 15,000 species. One such species of these creatures, the Monarch Butterfliesare popularly known for their astounding facts and that they see us through their 12,000 eyes!

Sharks Can Detect a Single Drop of Blood in the Ocean?

Sharks are often portrayed as having an almost supernatural sense of smell. However, reports that sharks can smell a single drop of blood in a vast ocean are greatly exaggerated. While some sharks can detect blood at one part per million, that hardly qualifies as the entire ocean. Sharks do, however, have an acute sense of smell and a sensitive olfactory system--much more so than humans. Sharks' nostrils are located on the underside of the snout, and unlike human nostrils, are used solely for smelling and not for breathing. They are lined with specialized cells that comprise the olfactory epithelium. Water flows into the nostrils and dissolved chemicals come into contact with tissue, exciting receptors in the cells. These signals are then transmitted to the brain and are interpreted as smells.

Because of the extreme sensitivity of these cells, as well as the fact that the olfactory bulb of the brain is enlarged, sharks can detect miniscule amounts of certain chemicals. This varies, of course, among different species of sharks and the chemical in question. The lemon shark can detect tuna oil at one part per 25 million--that's equivalent to about 10 drops in an average-sized home swimming pool. Other types of sharks can detect their prey at one part per 10 billion; that's one drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool! Some sharks can detect these low concentrations of chemicals at prodigious distances--up to several hundred meters (the length of several football fields)—depending on a number of factors, particularly the speed and direction of the water current.

A bat can eat up to 1,000 insects per hour?

An ordinary brown bat can eat up to 100 percent of their body weight each night, which is about 1/2 ounce. They consume approximately 1,200 insects per hour. Insects including moths, gnats, crickets, beetles, locusts, mosquitoes, fruit flies and other bugs are frequently eaten by bats.

Deer can’t eat hay?

Apparently, deer can starve with full stomachs of hay. ... When people feed hay or grain, winter deer tend to pseudo-gorge themselves on the new food source. This is a shock to their digestive system, and, as the reader says, they don't have the living bacteria to digest it.

A moth has no stomach

 Butterflies and moths, among others, have a very long, flexible strawlike mouth part, the proboscis, which they unfold to sip nectar from the base of flowers. Most moths do not eat at all even tough they are famed for eating clothing.

Hippos can run faster than humans?

Despite their considerable bulk, hippopotamuses are graceful underwater swimmers and can run faster than humans on land, at an estimated 18-30 miles per hour. The hippopotamus is one of the few mammals to give birth underwater.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear?

Thirty-two individual muscles in each ear allow for a manner of directional hearing; a cat can move each earindependently of the other. Because of this mobility, a cat can move its body in one direction and point its ears in another direction. Most cats have straight ears pointing upward.

Do ants sleep?

YES, THEY DO - but not in the sense we understand sleep. Research conducted by James and Cottell into sleep patterns of insects (1983) showed that ants have a cyclical pattern of resting periods which each nest as a group observes, lasting around eight minutes in any 12-hour period. Although this means two such rest periods in any 24-hour period, only one of the rest periods bears any resemblance to what we would call sleep. 

Mandible and antennae activity is at a much lower level (usually up to 65 per cent lower) than during the other rest period in one 24-hour period, indicating a much deeper "resting" phase. Basing and McCluskey in 1986 used brain activity recorders on black, red, and soldier ants to determine whether the deeper resting period constituted actual "sleep". A steep decline in brain wave fluctuations supported the "sleep" hypothesis in black and red ants, but surprisingly showed a higher level of brain activity in soldier ants in a deep resting phase.

How far can a grasshopper jump?

An adult grasshopper is capable of leaping 10 times its length straight into the air and 20 times its length horizontally. If a man had the same abilities, he could jump over a five-story building and clear a football field in three leaps
.
Small grasshoppers are just as good at jumping as the larger species; sze does not play a role in how far grasshoppers can jump. In fact, smaller grasshoppers have longer legs, which makes up for the size difference. Juveniles in particular are skilled jumpers, as they cannot fly and rely on their acrobatic skills to avoid predators.

Do All Houseflies Hum in Key?

A cloud of houseflies swarming through your home may not sound like music to your ears, but listen closer. The airborne pests are actually giving you an a capella show—always in the key of F. 

Because they lack vocal cords, insects generally make sounds by rubbing their legs together (e.g. crickets), using a vibrating membrane (e.g. cicadas), or moving their wings. The common housefly flaps its wings about 190 times per second, and the human ear interprets that frequency as a pitch along the F major scale (which includes pitches F, G, A, B♭, C, D, and E). While not every housefly is the same size and flaps at the same speed, the measurements are always proportional, insuring the creatures consistently hit the same notes.

Domestic flies are not the only insect with those buzz skills. Despite the fact that Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's famous "Flight of the Bumble Bee" is written in a different key, both bumblebees and honey bees “hum” on the same scale as houseflies, according to The Journal of Social Science. It’s no wonder that Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony,” inspired by his love of the outdoors, is written in the key of F. The F major scale is thought to be one of the most prevailing keys of nature.

A GROUP OF CATS IS CALLED A ‘CLOWDER?

that the correct term for referring to a group of cats is ‘clowder’.  Interestingly, there are also two other valid ways to refer to a group of cats, other than just saying “group of cats” or “cats”.  Those other two terms are ‘clutter’ and ‘glaring’.

In addition to this, if one wants to refer to a group of wild cats, the correct terms are ‘dowt’ and ‘destruction’.   A male cat, when neutered, is called a “gib”, when not, is called a “tom”.  Female cats are known as “molly”.

The word “cat” itself derives from the Old English “catt”.  Catt has its source in the Late Latin “catus”, meaning: “domestic cat”.  This Late Latin word probably derives from an Afro-Asiatic word: “kaddîska”, meaning “wild cat”.

THE WORLD’S STRONGEST ANIMAL IS THE COPEPOD?

Relative to their size, typically about 1mm long, copepods are also the world’s fastest animal, being able to jump at a rate of about a half a meter per second.  Their incredible strength, relative to their size, makes them over ten times stronger than any other known species on the planet and even stronger than any mechanical motor produced to date.

In order to achieve these great jumps, used to evade predators, the copepod uses two propulsion mechanisms and a very fast nervous system, which is very rare for invertebrates; they also have uniquely designed neural pathways with neurons surrounded by myelin, which increase the conduction speed.  When they detect a predator, a signal is rapidly sent to their legs and set of antennae, which together causes them to jump with a ridiculous amount of force, relative to their size.

For perspective on just how much thrust power these little guys have, if you were able to jump with similar power behind your thrust or more aptly, scaled up the size vs distance/time unit traveled, you would be able to jump about half a mile in one second flat in water.  In air, which has significantly less drag, you’d jump much further than that.

All this would of course depend greatly on the density of the water, drag, velocity, density of the base from which you were jumping from, etc., so it’s not simply a 1-1 correspondence that you can scale up like that.  However,  just for a fun ballpark estimate, assuming similar aerodynamics to the copepod, a relatively solid base to thrust from, and water density of around 1000kg/m^3 (typical salt water) vs air density of around 1.275 kg/m^3 (typical sea level), in air, you’d be jumping about 6-12 miles per second, if you had that kind of strength in proportion to your size that the copepod has.

Common household chemicals are being found in polar bear brains?

Again, thanks to humans, perFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFASs), Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) and their precursors, which are resistant to thermal, biological and chemical degradation are bioaccumulating in polar bears. PCBs were banned in the United States in 1979 due in large part to their role in cancer and as a neurotoxin, but  prior to that they were widely used as coolants and plastizers in household items such as paint and cement and as a stabilizing agent for countless other products. PFASs are found in coatings for textiles, paper products, carpets, upholstery as well as food packaging that are water, oil and soil repellent. These nasty chemcials are also found in pharmaceuticals, cleaning products and fire-fighting foams. The problem with PFSAs is that many of them are known or suspected neurotoxins and/or carcinogens. The good news is PFASs have not been produced in the western world since 2002 but the bad news is, China loves them and despite their ban in the west, scientists have measured a ten-fold increase in production and use since 2002.

Even though the United States listed polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008, and Canada and Russia listed them as a species of special concern, all of this listing will be for naught is climate change is not halted. Sadly, there may be a day in the future where the only bears to celebrate on February 27th will be the ones in the zoo.

Of course, it does not have to be this way. The threat to polar bears is human-caused and thus the solution is human-based. Maybe it is time for polar-bear friendly labeling, just as there is dolphin-friendly labeling. Maybe, international pressure needs to mount on China with regards to PFAS. Maybe, U.S. citizens must sue to the EPA for not addressing climate change and thus not upholding the Endangered Species Act. We have the power to alter the course of the polar bear and ensure it this iconic species of the arctic has a happy ending. But the question is will we?