Fun Animal Facts

Our random animal facts are a both fun and a little bit weird but they will keep you entertained for days!

WTF Fun Fact 12590 – The Spider That Eats Its Mother

It may sound like just another day at the office for some mothers used to giving their all to their children, but some spider moms really do make the ultimate sacrifice for their young.

It’s called matriphagy, the act of eating one’s mother, and it’s rare. But it happens in a spider species called Stegodyphus lineatus.

These spiders only have one group of babies throughout their lives. And when these spider babies are born, they are entirely dependent on their mothers to regurgitate food and feed it to them so they can grow up.

And what does she get in return?

Well, to be fair, the moms don’t put up a fight. After about two weeks of motherhood, they allow their children to consume them, leaving behind only an exoskeleton.

The spiders are native to Israel, and research into matriphagy in this species showed another interesting thing. Females that had given birth actually started to digest their own tissues before their gruesome deaths. Now, that might be a sign that the species just wasn’t designed to survive motherhood. However, Dr. Mor Salomon, a postdoctoral fellow in entomology at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food & Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also found that the ovaries and the heart were the last organs to degenerate.

It also seems that spider mothers know their time is limited because they stop maintaining their web after their babies begin to grow.

Please don’t assume that females who don’t give birth have it any easier. They also tend to sacrifice themselves when a member of the colony has babies. Researchers are still looking into whether this is conditioned behavior or part of the species’ biology. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Arachnid Matriphagy: These Spider Mothers Literally Die for Their Young” — Entomology Today

WTF Fun Facts 12584 – Largo di Torre Argentina

Largo di Torre Argentina is a popular Roman tourist destination. It holds a great deal of ancient history, but that’s not why everyone goes. Many people come to see the cats. There are dozens of them climbing and napping on the ancient ruins, and while no one is supposed to feed them, you can always find cans of cat food nearby.

The location is crumbling at an alarming rate, so Rome has recently made some renovations. After all, it does hold the site of Julius Caesar’s murder by members of the Roman Senate.

Luxury fashion house Bvlgari will pay around $1.1 million to clean the ruins and build walkways through the site. Before this, people could only look down into the ruins from the street. We’re not sure how the cats feel about all this, but we will guess “cranky.” Many are not fond of people.

You might wonder how such an important historical location ended up in such disrepair in the first place, but that’s the price of expanding a city. The site was largely lost until Italian dictator Benito Mussolini set out to unearth ancient Rome and tie his dictatorship into the lore of the Roman Empire as part of a propaganda effort. They found four temples and part of the Theater of Pompey, the site of the Roman senate.

During World War II, the Largo di Torre Argentina became neglected once again, and Rome lacked the funding to restore it until recently.

And don’t worry about the cats – the feline colony is protected by the laws of the State and the Municipality. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Site Where Julius Caesar Was Stabbed Will Finally Open to the Public” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12580 – African Elephant Poop

Elephants are the largest land mammals in the world. So it’s logical to believe that they would do everything in a big way. We just didn’t realize HOW big.

Looking at the facts, it makes sense that an adult African elephant could produce over 300 pounds of poop per day. Males can grow up to 13 feet high and weigh 7 tons (that’s 14,000 pounds!). Females weigh about half of that.

It’s no surprise that they produce so much poop, considering how much they eat and how their digestive systems work. African elephants eat about 4-7% of their body weight in grasses, herbs, fruit, plants, and trees each day. And that vegetarian diet must be doing something right because they can live to be around 70 years old.

Of course, that same diet is also hard to process, so most of it comes out in their waste products. The rest is absorbed for nutrients while they sleep.

And sometimes, those elephants need those calories when they’re on the move – they can walk up to 120 miles a day (but their average is closer to 15 miles). If necessary, they can also use that energy to run. In fact, an elephant can run much faster than a human, reaching speeds of 40mph!

But back to the fact at hand. Elephants produce about 300 pounds of dung per day. So much that 1) we’re glad we don’t have to clean it up, and 2) some animals (such as dung beetles and specific monkey species) have evolved to eat this feces. The latter makes sense since much of the food is not digested and would still contain some nutrients.

 – WTF fun facts

Source: “African Elephant Facts” — Elephants for Africa

WTF Fun Fact 12578 – Mike the Headless Chicken

It’s hard – and gross – to think about, but the phrase “like a chicken with its head cut off” originates in a biological oddity of chickens.

You see, you can decapitate a chicken and it will continue to run. They aren’t zombies (because they’re not actually dead yet), it’s just that the animal’s spinal cord circuits still hold residual oxygen. It’s kind of a sick biological joke that the most decapitated animal has this odd feature if you think about it.

The circuits that still have oxygen to operate no longer have a brain to control them, so the spinal cord’s signals go to the legs, causing the chicken to run (typically for just a few seconds).

This is pretty rare since chickens are typically laying down when this happens, but it has certainly happened.

Now, Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken (as he was dubbed by Life Magazine in the 1940s) is a different story. Poor Mike’s owner left a tiny part of his brain stem intact with a messy chop.

On September 10, 1945, Lloyd Olsen was beheading chickens on his farm, and got a runner, but was surprised to see that he didn’t keel over immediately.

Olsen’s great-grandson, Troy Waters, told the BBC years later that his grandparents put the chicken on the screen porch for the night and were shocked to wake up and see “The damn thing was still alive,” according to Waters.

But this isn’t some sketchy legend. Headless Mike toured the country, drawing slack-jawed audiences at carnivals. It was photographed and recorded by the news in various towns and in Life Magazine.

The family had their share of interlopers who insisted on coming to see Mike but also got plenty of hate mail for not just putting him out of his (or perhaps just their) misery. – WTF fun facts

Source: How Mike the Chicken Survived Without a Head — Encyclopedia Brittanica

WTF Fun Fact 12577 – Catgut strings

While it may sound like many cats were harmed in the making of music, strings were once may from the entrails of animals (just probably not cats). The practice goes all the way back to Greek mythology (but later, was anything but a myth).

The Greek god Hermes was said to have strung his lyre with cow entrails. And in mythological fashion, he stole those cows from his brother Apollo who he then lulled into blissful acquiescence with his playing (to the point that Apollo gave him his entire herd).

Meanwhile (or, probably, prior), in Egypt, instruments strings were being strung with a material called catgut. The Egyptians loved their cats so much it’s unlikely they used cats (and that catgut is more than a bad translation), but the name stuck. And so did using animal intestines for string, especially later on for violins. Much later, a similar method of creating string from intestines was used for tennis rackets.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “catgut is tough cord made from the intestines of certain animals, particularly sheep, and used for surgical ligatures and sutures, for the strings of violins and related instruments, and for the strings of tennis rackets and archery bows.”

They continue with a little history lesson:

“The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians and the later Greeks and Romans used the intestines of herbivorous animals for much the same purposes. The origin of the term catgut is obscure; it is not known if the intestines of cats were ever put to such uses.”

Then some gruesome detail that animal lovers should probably skip:

“The intestinal tubes (called runners) of sheep are washed, cut in ribbons, and scraped free of mucous membrane and circular muscle tissue. The ribbons are placed in an alkaline bath for several hours and then stretched on frames. While still moist they are removed, sorted by size, and twisted into cords of varying thickness. A smoothing and polishing operation completes the process.“

Professional string players can still buy catgut strings and they have a lot of influence over sound quality. But the pros can “go vegan” with their strings, using ones with a synthetic core that sounds much like catgut strings and are also longer-lasting. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Are Violin Strings Really Made of Cat Guts?” — SHAR Music

WTF Fun Fact 12454 – Insomnia is Universal

Sometimes pets and bugs are the reason WE can’t sleep, but did you know animals and other critters can suffer from insomnia as well?

Our knowledge on the topic started when National Geographic replied to a Facebook question from a fan: Do Bugs Sleep?

“Yes—with an asterisk,” replied biologist Barrett Klein from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. He studies sleep in honeybees.

He continued:

“Paper wasps, cockroaches, praying mantises, and fruit flies are among insects that doze. Fruit fly sleep is even similar to mammal sleep, since the flies respond to sleep-inducing chemicals and caffeine, just like people.

Still, measuring sleep in insects is tricky—it’s not always easy, for instance, to differentiate between sleep and sleep-like states.”

According to Klein: Signs of true bug sleep are not moving, “drooping in the direction of gravity,” and more relaxed muscles.

Bugs are in charge of putting themselves to bed, but sometimes they experience a state of arousal (awakeness, not the sexy kind) that prevents them from getting quality sleep, it seems. And we can relate!

“Experiments in fruit flies also show that they experience ‘sleep rebound.’ That means that a fruit fly deprived of sleep will subsequently need it more—something most of us busy people can understand,” Klein told National Geographic.

As for honeybees, Klein’s specialty, when they get sleepy they get sloppy with their work.

Now, when it comes to more pet-like animals (and we know plenty of people keep bees!), the issue is pretty much the same as it is in older humans. Cats and dogs can have trouble regulating sleep as they age or when they have medical issues. The result can be lethargy during the day.

Since cats sleep so much – and hardly ever at night – it can be a bit hard to tell when they change their schedule. But as their hearing and sight grow weaker with age, they wake up at different times feeling more confused and even yowling to express it.  – WTF fun facts

Source: “Do Bugs Sleep? Why They’re Surprisingly Similar to People” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12449 – Sly Stallone’s Dog

We heard this one straight from the legendary actor’s mouth (or Instagram page, which in 2022 is roughly the same thing).

It’s a pretty sad fact, actually. Having to sell your dog for food because you’re both starving must be heart-wrenching. And making the journey to repurchase him, paying out some of the first money you’ve laid eyes on in years sounds like it comes straight from a movie.

But here’s the skinny from Sly himself, which he posted alongside a photo of him and Butkus as a pup from 1971:

“1971… Since we’re on the subject of ” man’s best friend” this is myself and Butkus as a puppy, we were both, thin, hungry and living in a flophouse above a subway stop, I used to say this apartment had ” … Hot and cold running roaches” anyway there was not much to do except spend time with each other and that’s where I started to learn the craft of screenwriting. Since I never went out, I relied on his companionship, And actually it was his idea to write Rocky, but don’t tell anyone…. Years later when things got even worse I had to sell him for $40 in front of a 7-Eleven store, because I couldn’t afford food, then like A modern day miracle, the screenplay for Rocky sold, and I could buy and buy him back, but the new owner knew I was desperate, and charged me $15,000 … He was worth every penny! #NewYorkCity #HellsKitchen#BullMastiff#It‘sADogsWorld. #MoreToCome#inspiration#ThunderingYourHeart#GoingThedistance“

Now, to be completely honest, we were most surprised that Stallone was a screenplay writer and that he wrote the screenplay for Rocky. In fact, he wrote it in 3-and-a-half days, right after watching the championship match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner on March 24, 1975.

If you’re confused by the dates, only the photo itself is from 1971; the story is from 1975.

– WTF fun facts

Source: Sylvester Stallone @officlaslystallone — Instagram

WTF Fun Fact 12447 – The Tongue of a Woodpecker

We never really thought about it up until now, but it makes sense that woodpeckers would have to have some kind of mechanism to protect their brains from getting tossed around in their skulls while they hammer away. But in 2010, a team of Chinese scientists figured it out – and it’s fascinating.

To be honest, we didn’t even realize woodpeckers have such long tongues. But doing all that pecking is a way to chip into beetle grub nests, and their long tongues allow them to get in there without having to bash a big old hole in the tree like the Kool-Aid Man.

A woodpecker’s head strikes with around 1,000 times the force of gravity, about ten times more than what would definitely kill a human.

Their sharp beaks help them out a lot, as do their strong neck muscles, but up until relatively recently, no one knew how their heads could absorb the shock of that motion.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches” — Birdwatching Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12444 – Roosevelt’s Pet Hyena

There’s an official Presidential Pet Museum dedicated to all the furry and feathered friends that have roamed the White House halls (and lawns).

Theodore Roosevelt has quite a few pets, and he and his family were animal lovers. However, he wasn’t terribly fond of hyenas. And that turned out to be a bit of a problem at first when Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia gifted him a male hyena in 1904.

It was reported by the captain of the ship that brought him to America that the hyena, plainly named “Bill,” “laughed all the time.” Apparently, this grew on Roosevelt, who became fond of the creature. In fact, he even let it into the White House and gave it scraps from the dinner table!

It has always been common for world leaders to give exotic pets as animals, but a hyena seems like a bit of an odd choice. Then again, what do you get the man who has everything?

Roosevelt reportedly was able to teach Bill a few tricks before he was sent along with his White House pal Joe the Lion to the National Zoo to live out his life. After all, Roosevelt was a busy man. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Theodore Roosevelt’s Hyena” — The Presidential Pet Museum