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 13127 – Group of Ferrets

Have you ever asked yourself “what is a group of ferrets called”? No doubt you’ve asked yourself this deep and probing question multiple times in the past. Or maybe not, since it’s pretty rare to run into a whole group of ferrets?

What is a group of ferrets called?

Well, in case you’re NOW wondering what the name is for a group of these furry little guys, it’s a “business.” Yes, a business of ferrets.

They may also be called a fesnyng, which isn’t nearly as catchy.

For some reason, these creatures have all sorts of names we didn’t know about. According to the website A-Z Animals (cited below), non-neutered males are called hobs, and unspayed females are called jills. For fixed ferrets, males are called gibs, and females are called sprites. Their babies are referred to as kits.

What’s this business about?

Still stuck on the fact that a group of ferrets is called a business? A-Z Animals explains (sort of):

Ferrets are known for their mischief, ability to get into things they shouldn’t, escape tactics, and energetic natures. Would it make more sense if we told you that, in the past, they were referred to as a busyness? People saw ferrets and went, ‘Wow, those are some busy critters!’”

We’ll be honest, we’ve never spent time observing ferrets, so we can’t say how busy they are.

There are some other interesting fun facts about ferrets, however. For example, it’s considered cruel to own just one since they are such social creatures. While you don’t have to get a whole business of ferrets, you should get your cuddly pal a companion. Otherwise, they can get depressed. Even if you give your pet lots of stimulation, you can’t play with them the way they need to be played with (for example, you really shouldn’t bite them, but nipping is something they enjoy doing while play-fighting either each other). They have very thick skin, so the biting doesn’t hurt them – instead, it’s something they do to communicate!— WTF fun facts

Source: “What’s a Group of Ferrets Called?” — A to Z Animals

WTF Fun Fact 13124 – Signalman Jack

Signalmen play integral roles in the rail industry, installing, repairing, and maintaining the signal systems used to direct trains. It’s a hard job, but in the 1880s, a signalman named James Edwin Wide taught a chacma baboon from South Africa to assist him. The baboon became known as Signalman Jack.

Training Signalman Jack

Wide had lost both legs in a work accident and needed an assistant to help him get to his job at the railroad. And apparently, he saw a baboon driving an oxcart one day on a trip to South Africa and decided he’d made a fine sidekick.

Wide named the baboon Jack and first taught him to push a small trolly to get him to his job each day a half-mile from his home. The baboon even helped with chores around the house, including sweeping and taking out the trash.

But it was when Jack followed Wide to work that he seemed to find his calling. The baboon learned to recognize the train whistles used to indicate the vehicle was about to change tracks. After watching Wide operate the signals to indicate which tracks they should take, Signalman Jack was eager to start pulling the levers himself.

Wide had no qualms about letting a baboon do his job.

Kicking back

Wide was eventually able to train Signalman Jack so well that he could sit back and pursue some hobbies while at work.

According to Mental Floss, “As the story goes, one day a posh train passenger staring out the window saw that a baboon, and not a human, was manning the gears and complained to railway authorities. Rather than fire Wide, the railway managers decided to resolve the complaint by testing the baboon’s abilities. They came away astounded.”

Eventually, the railway superintendent decided to formally hire the talented baboon. Signalman Jack was given his own employment number. He even got a salary of 20 cents a day (plus half a bottle of beer per week).

Signalman Jack worked in his job for 9 years without ever making a single error. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis in 1890. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Signalman Jack: The Baboon Who Worked for the Railroad—and Never Made a Mistake” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 13120 – The Rise in Canine Influenza Cases

You may have heard that the 2022 flu season has been particularly bad for humans. But there has also been a rise in cases of canine influenza. Did you know your dog could get the flu?

What is canine influenza?

Don’t worry – YOU can’t give the flu to your dog. Only zoonotic diseases can be passed between species, and the type of seasonal influenza we get isn’t one of them. (However, there are zoonotic influenzas that animals can give to humans).

While you’re not responsible for infecting your dog, there are a lot of commonalities between humane and canine flu. For example, both cause symptoms like cough, fever, and a runny nose.

Dog flu is also airborne and highly contagious. Dogs get it from other dogs through nasal droplets that are spread when they cough, sneeze, or bark. It’s common in kennels, but it can be spread at the dog park, doggy daycare, or even veterinarian’s office.

Why the rise in dog flu?

Dog flu can spread year-round, but the current strain called H3N2 appears to be a result of people loosening their COVID restrictions and heading out and about with their pups. It’s the same reason we catch the flu.

Dogs with the flu experience lethargy and respiratory symptoms and should be checked by a veterinarian (which you may be able to do through telemedicine if you’re concerned about exposure).

Cases are so plentiful this year that some shelters have stopped adopting out dogs until they’re well again and doggy daycare centers in some cities have had to shut down to avoid spreading it.

Dogs can experience fever and loss of appetite if their case is bad enough, and it can turn fatal if they develop pneumonia, so the symptoms are nothing to ignore! Dogs have had to be hospitalized and given oxygen just to keep them breathing.

If you’re concerned, the best bet is to give your vet a call. They may offer a flu vaccine for your pup. However, just like human flu vaccines, these aren’t 100% effective in preventing the flu. But they can help lessen symptoms if your dog gets sick.

If your dog shows any signs of the flu, you should isolate them immediately to prevent them from spreading it to other people’s pups. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Dogs Are Impacted by an Intense Flu Season, Too” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13118 – Oldest Known Pet Cat

We know cats date back millennia and they even domesticated themselves. But we’re willing to be that most people assume the oldest known pet cat comes from Egypt. However, archaeological evidence suggests that the oldest known pet cats may come from the island of Cyprus.

Cyprus’ cats

In Egypt, cats were worshipped as idols as well as cherished as pets and pest control specialists. For centuries, we’ve assumed that Egyptians were the first to keep cats as pets. But a team of French archaeologists working in the island country of Cyprus has turned the feline companion timeline on its head.

What’s the evidence? Well, the best proof we have that cats were kept as pets rather than simply furry, mouse-hunting neighbors are cat burial sites. People bury their pets – they don’t bury wildlife.

The oldest pet grave we now have is a 9,500-year-old site on Cyprus in the Neolithic village of Shillourokambos. The presumably beloved kitty was buried with seashells, polished stones, and other decorative items.

According to National Geographic (cited below), this “predates early Egyptian art depicting cats by 4,000 years or more.”

The oldest known pet cat

The details of the grave suggest that the feline resting inside is the world’s oldest known pet cat. Of course, there could be gravesites elsewhere in the world that will rewrite the timeline again.

According to Melinder Zeder, a curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and president of the International Council for Archaeozoology, “The process and timing of cat domestication has been terrifically difficult to document.”

“In the absence of a collar around its neck, the deliberate interment of this animal with a human makes a strong case that cats had a special place in the daily lives, and in the afterlives, of residents of Shillourokambos,” Zeder told NatGeo.

The rest of our earliest evidence for cat domestication comes from ancient Egypt, but the oldest cat mummies date back a “mere” 4000 years.

Researchers have long been confident that felines domesticated themselves much earlier, but the Cyprus site is the first solid proof. We already knew cats were present on the island (and therefore valued in some way since someone had to bring them there) because archaeologists found bones. But a grave site suggests something quite different and more significant in terms of what cats meant to people.

“The first discovery of cat bones on Cyprus showed that human beings brought cats from the mainland to the islands. But we couldn’t decide if these cats were wild or tame,” said a study author. “With this discovery, we can now decide that cats were linked with humans.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Oldest Known Pet Cat? 9,500-Year-Old Burial Found on Cyprus” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 13116 – Pigeons Can Tell the Difference Between Monet and Picasso

If you try hard enough, anything is possible. But it turns out training pigeons to discriminate between a Picasso and a Monet isn’t actually all that hard. Pigeons can tell the difference between the two artists with relatively little effort (at least relative to what we would have imagined).

Pigeons and Picasso and Monet

In 1995, researchers Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita published a paper called “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. In it, they showed:

“Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Following this training, they discriminated novel paintings by Monet and Picasso that had never been presented during the discrimination training. Furthermore, they showed generalization from Monet’s to Cezanne’s and Renoir’s paintings or from Picasso’s to Braque’s and Matisse’s paintings. These results suggest that pigeons’ behavior can be controlled by complex visual stimuli in ways that suggest categorization. Upside-down images of Monet’s paintings disrupted the discrimination, whereas inverted images of Picasso’s did not. This result may indicate that the pigeons’ behavior was controlled by objects depicted in impressionists’ paintings but was not controlled by objects in cubists’ paintings.”

Birds and bees

Later on, in 2013, behavioral scientists showed that honeybees could also discriminate between paintings by the two artists.

Perhaps more hilariously, a 2010 article in the journal Animal Cognition showed that “Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children.” Imagine a pigeon letting your child know their art is “bad.”

Wonder how it was done? In the words of the researcher:

“In this study, I investigated whether pigeons could be trained to discriminate between paintings that had been judged by humans as either ‘bad’ or ‘good’. To do this, adult human observers first classified several children’s paintings as either ‘good’ (beautiful) or ‘bad’ (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at ‘good’ paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ children’s paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories. The results showed that pigeons could discriminate novel ‘good’ and ‘bad’ paintings.”

Who knew nature had such art critics?! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” — Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

WTF Fun Fact 13111 – The Most Common Wild Bird

You may see sparrows, cardinals, and pigeons non-stop. But the most common wild bird in the world actually lives in Africa. Now, it won’t be common for all of us to see, but it’s the most abundant wild bird, meaning there are more of these birds than any other birds.

What is the most common wild bird?

The most common wild bird in the world, in terms of its sheer abundance, is the Red-billed Quelea.

These birds live in sub-Saharan Africa (south of the Sarahan Desert). And they don’t just fly in flocks, they fly in massive hordes. In fact, if you see a group of these birds, you’re probably looking at 2 million or more in one flock.

According to the Audobon Society (cited below): “They fly in such tightly synchronized masses they can be mistaken at a distance for clouds of smoke.”

How many Red-billed Quelea are there?

It’s estimated that there are around 1.5 billion Red-billed Quelea out there. That makes them the most abundant wild bird in the world. Of course, they’re not common in North America, but if you took all the birds in the world and put them together, the number of Red-billed Quelea would dwarf the populations of most other wild birds.

The Red-billed Quelea is the size of a sparrow and is brown for the most part. Like most birds, the males are more colorful. They often have red and black feathers on their heads.

These birds eat seeds, which they crack open with their beaks. But unfortunately for farmers, they are drawn to crops like millet. And as you can imagine, having 2 million birds descend on your field for a meal can easily strip you of your income.

At times, “Single colonies can cover hundreds of acres, totaling tens of millions of birds,” according to Audobon.

Unfortunately, their tastes include cultivated crops, like millet. But the enormous growth of cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa has likely led to the birds’ proliferation. — WTF fun facts

Source: “What Is the Most Abundant Wild Bird in the World?” — Audobon Society

WTF Fun Fact 13110 – Jonathan the Tortoise’s Birthday

Jonathan the Tortoise has seen some things. More than any of us. And that’s because the big guy just celebrated his 190th birthday!

Jonathan the Tortoise’s birthday

A while back we told you about Jonathan, and at that time, no one really seemed to know precisely how old he was since he was brought to – a sanctuary in Saint Helena, a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Angola and Namibia – at an unverifiable age.

Take a look:

WTF Fun Fact 12819 – Jonathan the Tortoise

Since then, it looks like it’s been decided that Jonathan is 190 as of this year. We can’t begrudge the guy a party, so we’ll go with it.

Jonathan’s party

CBS News reports that Jonathan the tortoise’s birthday party was quite a bash when it was held in early December 2022.

“The island held an official birthday bash over the weekend, celebrating the longest-living chelonian at the island’s governor’s residence. Along with hosting broadcasts about Jonathan’s significance, the island also held a ‘main event’ in his honor on Sunday [the 4th], where people could get Jonathan stamps and other Jonathan-themed souvenirs.”

Throughout the weekend, the world’s oldest land creature was hailed as a “national treasure” and indulged in a cake made of his favorite vegetables.

According to CBS News (cited below) “Jonathan’s long life has earned him two Guinness World Records – one in 2019 for becoming the world’s oldest land animal and another this January for becoming the oldest living chelonian, a term encompassing turtles, terrapins and tortoises.”

While the sanctuary where he lives lists his birth year as 1832, Guinness believes he could be older. That’s because he wasn’t discovered until 1882, when he was already fully mature. Clearly, some significant years had already passed. We just don’t know how many.

Regardless, Jonathan has survived two World Wars and was even alive when the first telephone call was made in 1876. We feel wiser just looking at him. — WTF fun facts

Source: “World’s oldest land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, celebrates 190th birthday” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 13104 – Pandemic Influences on Animals

While the pandemic was a catastrophe for humans, many wild animal populations flourished without us around. Of course, this wasn’t always ideal for their ecosystems, but scientists are still trying to understand that. Nearly all researchers who were in the middle of field research on animal populations (or even those displayed in zoos and aquariums) are in the process of studying the precise nature of pandemic influences on animals.

The “anthropause”

Scientists have suggested that the period at the height of the pandemic be called the “anthropause.” That’s because at the height of the pandemic, humans weren’t around in many places to disturb animal populations.

Researchers are interested in studying this moment in time to see how wildlife adapted to our absence. The COVID pandemic provided a unique opportunity to see how the absence of things like noise, pollution from traffic, and tourism affect animal populations.

What were some pandemic influences on animals?

We don’t yet know the full effects of the pandemic and its “anthropause” on animals, since the world is only recently revving up again. But researchers can look at data from tracking devices, cameras, and sensors to see how things were different in 2020 and 2021.

Accoring to Science Magazing (cited below): “The International Bio-Logging Society, for example, is coordinating a large effort to assess how reduced vehicle, ship, and aircraft traffic is affecting animal behavior. More than 300 researchers have indicated they have relevant animal tracking data from 180 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and sharks across almost 300 study populations from all continents and oceans.”

It’s data that one researcher called “a gold mine.”

But other scientists that had to halt their research during the pandemic need to completely rethink their approaches. The pandemic pause needs to be factored into any historical data that included the pandemic years.

What did wildlife do during the pandemic?

As for the data collected during the pandemic, scientists are seeing some interesting things. More animals wandered around in the daytime. Some are now less active than they were before the pandemic. Cities saw some rare animals wander into their limits.

It all leaves more questions than answers.

But some new studies have popped up in response to the lack of humans around wildlife. For example, animal experts are looking at the effects of a lack of tourism on the diet and health of animals that were once fed by human visitors.

In the end, it may help us figure out how to regulate tourism in order to best help vulnerable species. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The pandemic stilled human activity. What did this ‘anthropause’ mean for wildlife?” — Science

WTF Fun Fact 13097 – Cats Can Become “Tuna Junkies”

According to Pam Johnson-Bennett of Cat Behavior Associates (cited below):

“Tuna as a treat now and then is harmless but as a steady diet can lead to malnutrition. Tuna doesn’t have adequate amounts of vitamin E and this may lead to a condition called steatitis (also known as yellow fat disease). Tuna has a very strong taste and smell so many cats can become addicted to it. Veterinarians refer to them as “tuna junkies.” The problem can be serious because these tuna junkies may refuse to eat anything else. The other problem with a steady diet of tuna is that there’s a risk of mercury poisoning. If you incorporate tuna into your cat’s diet, do it in a controlled way.”

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Ten common mistakes when feeding cats” — Cat Behavior Associates