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 12679 – OutHorse Your E-Mail

Visit Iceland recently got a weird idea. They’ve launched an out-of-office email service called “OutHorse Your Email” so you can outsource to a horse.

So, apparently, you can get a horse to write your OOO emails.

This was all brought about by a survey that found that 55% of vacationers check their email at least once and 60% said their bosses expected a response. (Of course, we’re not sure how bosses respond to horse emails, but that’s a survey for the future.)

Check this out:

It seems like a joke, right? Well, there’s a website and all you need to do is select a horse and put in your email information to generate your email.

According to IFL Science:

“The huge typing platform is then placed outside with the stunning backdrop of Iceland to complement the tip-tapping of typing horses writing the OOO emails of lazy humans. You can get your own emails written via the Visit Iceland website where Litla Stjarna Star from Hvítárholt, Hrímnir from Hvammi and Hekla from Þorkellshó are waiting to assist you.”

We’re sure your boss will be pleased. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “In Iceland, Horses Will Write Your “Out Of Office” Emails For You” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12677 – How To Survive A Date With A Spider

In many species of spiders, the last thing males do is mate. After that, they’ve done their job for the evolution of the species and are no longer needed. So females have evolved to simply eat them. They provide nutrients for the babies, after all!

It’s called sexual cannibalism and it’s one of the many facts of nature that we humans may have a hard time wrapping our heads around (or not, depending on your mate).

A few species have evolved to avoid this fate – for example, some may choose to amputate their own legs as a defense strategy in order to distract the females and get away (with the remaining legs, of course). In some sense, this makes sense since the female gets some nutrients and the male gets to hobble away with his life. It just seems a bit drastic from a human perspective.

Other spiders have learned to weave silk around the legs of the females before mating so they can make an easier escape afterward, which seems like a wise move as long as the female survives to produce her young.

The Philoponella prominens have developed a strategy whereby they use their two front legs to propel themselves out of reach of the females, getting away with all of their legs and their lives (if they hit the eject button in time, at least).

Since Philoponella prominens don’t have venom, the males who get cannibalized are in for a rough ride before death. The females produce over 400 feet of silk to “mummify” them, typically winding it so tight that they’re crushed and/or suffocated.

Not only are these spiders interesting for their actions but how they achieve them. Most jumping spiders launch from their back legs, so jumping using the front legs leads to some more interesting questions about the evolution of these creatures, especially since they don’t have muscles in those legs.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the researcher who made this discovery noted that “one male was able to perform the behavior six times over the course of about eight hours, but was finally killed and eaten after his final performance–perhaps being too exhausted to spring himself to safety.”

–  WTF fun fact

Source: “This Male Spider Catapults Itself Into the Air to Avoid Sexual Cannibalism” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12673 – What’s In A (Cat’s) Name?

In unsurprising news, there’s more evidence that cats don’t care about something.

Japanese researchers did a small study (which is really all you can do when cats get involved) and found that cats seem to recognize the names of their feline housemates. However, they still don’t give any indication of recognizing their own. Whether it’s because they just don’t care is something we’ve yet to figure out.

Why should we even care what words cats recognize? Well, IFL Science put it in context the best: “Birds with vocal cords that can imitate our own can learn a variety of human words, and it’s argued some know the meaning, rather than merely mimicking. Apes taught sign language also understand the meaning of words, and more recently dogs have been found to be able to learn up to 12 toys’ names in a week – but what about cats?”

In other words, we do all of this behavioral research on animals and find these fascinating signs that, in some sense, they can organize the world in ways similar to our own. So why not take a look at these abilities in some of the most common pets?

The research was conducted by Saho Takagi, a PhD student at Kyoto University who published the results in the journal Scientific Reports. The research team tried an experiment with domestic cats living in a 3+ cat home as well as residents of Japan’s famous cat cafes.

The study does rely on one important assumption (but if you know anything about science, you know that this is often the case since that’s where we start in order to help prove things). The assumption is that like other animals, cats stare longer than normal when they are surprised by something. In this case, hearing a name they recognize.

So the team spoke to the cats and said the names of their fellow resident cats to see if they would get a reaction. And they did, at least when the cats didn’t just run off in the middle of the experiment (and one did).

But what’s interesting is that this only happened in households, not in cat cafes. And in cat cafes there tends to be a lot of turnover from adoptions (and a lot more names to remember). So it may be that the cats in those cafes never hear a name enough time to have it ring a bell.

Apparently, the cats only reacted to the spoken names. Seeing their feline roomies’ photos on a laptop didn’t have any effect. Also, hearing their own names had no effect.

There were only 19 cats involved in the study, so it’s right to be skeptical. But that’s where we often start in science. The study still showed there was statistical significance to the results, and that’s typically a sign that further research can continue until there’s enough evidence to constitute some kind of “proof.”

In the meantime, just take it as a sign that your cat ignoring its name is not necessarily them blowing you off. They may just not be able to recognize that a name belongs to them. Or they just don’t care.

IFL Science explains this is not Takagi’s first cat study: “Last year she was first author on a paper exploring the feline capacity to map the spatial location of their person or a familiar cat. Takagi and co-authors reported the cats showed surprise when speakers broadcast the voice of the person who feeds them, despite that person’s absence. The same reaction did not apply to recordings of familiar cats’ vocalizations or unrelated sounds. Previously she studied cats’ understanding of the law of physics.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Cats Can Learn Each Other’s Names, Not Just Their Own, Study Claims” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12672 – Beware the “Sharkcano”

Your mother probably warned you not to swim around acidic shark-infested volcanoes, but in case she didn’t, we’re telling you now not to try it!

Only once have scientists been able to explore the Kavachi volcano in the Solomon Islands. It’s a submarine (aka underwater) volcano and it actually erupts almost constantly. But in 2015, it took a break, giving researchers the chance to check it out.

And boy did they find some stuff! It’s no surprise that they found high levels of sulfur (because it is a volcano, after all), but they were surprised to see that despite extremely acidic conditions, some creatures have managed to thrive in the craters.

There are microbial species that are common in sulfuric environments. There are also “gelatinous animals and small fish.” Oh, and a whole bunch of angry sharks.

According to IFL Science, oceanographic researchers said this is “raising new questions about the ecology of active submarine volcanoes and the extreme environments in which large marine animals can exist.”

And while that’s really cool, we’re more interested in the phenomenon they dubbed “sharkcano.” The researchers wrote: “Two species of shark, the scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini and the silky shark Carcharhinus falciformis, approached the baited camera multiple times in an aggressive pattern; in some cases, sharks appeared to be swimming from greater depths inside the crater.”

Now, before you picture thousands of sharks spewing out from the depths of the ocean floor (which is the first thing we pictured), it’s definitely not going to be that wild if this volcano has a major eruption. It will, however, be a really bad time to go swimming in that area.

NASA images showed a plume developing in late May, so we may be in for a sharkcano eruption sometime soon and we’ll be able to see precisely what that entails. –  WTF fun fact

If you want to learn more:

Source: “NASA Warns Acidic “Sharkcano” Is Starting To Erupt” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12655 – Alexander the Great and His Horse

King Alexander the Great spent his entire adult life trying to conquer the world on behalf of Macedonia, and by his side, nearly the entire time was his horse, Bucephalus.

The ancient writer Plutarch wrote much of what we know about the life of Alexander, including the story about how the 12-year-old future king won his noble steed.

A horse dealer tried charging Alexander’s father a very high sum for the horse (to be fair, his father was King Philip II of Macedon). No one had seemed it a good deal since the horse could not be tamed. But young Alexander saw some potential and made a deal with the horse seller – if he could tame it, he could keep it. If not, he would pay the high sum.

Of course, we know where this story goes – Alexander subdued the horse and then rode it into nearly every battle for decades until the horse died during a campaign in India.

As someone who felt he had the right to conquer the world, Alexander left his name all over it, including over 70 cities named Alexandria.

But he loved his horse Bucephalus so much that when it died in 326 BCE, he named a city Bucephala.

The ancient writer Pliny the Elder also wrote about the event:

King Alexander had also a very remarkable horse; it was called Bucephalus, either on account of the fierceness of its aspect, or because it had the figure of a bull’s head marked on its shoulder. It is said, that he was struck with its beauty when he was only a boy, and that it was purchased from the stud of Philonicus, the Pharsalian, for thirteen talents. When it was equipped with the royal trappings, it would suffer no one except Alexander to mount it, although at other times it would allow anyone to do so. A memorable circumstance connected with it in battle is recorded of this horse; it is said that when it was wounded in the attack upon Thebes, it would not allow Alexander to mount any other horse. Many other circumstances, also, of a similar nature, occurred respecting it; so that when it died, the king duly performed its obsequies, and built around its tomb a city, which he named after it” The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2, translation by John Bostock, Henry Thomas Riley.

– WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Bucephalus: The Horse of Alexander the Great” — ThoughtCo.

WTF Fun Fact 12654 – Tinder For Orangutans

Dutch zookeepers staged an experiment they affectionately called “Tinder for orangutans” in order to help the mating process at Apenheul Primate Park in Apeldoornat. Their female orangutan, Samboja, got to choose her mate from photos on a tablet. And researches hope that gauging her reactions to the photos will help them choose a good mate and teach them something about mating choices in general.

But they’ll have to give it a second try because when the 11-year-old’s mother, Sandy (also known as Demolition Woman) got ahold of the tablet, she smashed it up pretty good.

The experiment also has economic consequences for the primate park since Samboja’s mate will come from an international breeding program and may have to be shipped from as far away as Singapore.

Thomas Bionda, a behavioral specialist at the zoo told The Guardian: “Often, animals have to be taken back to the zoo they came from without mating. Things don’t always go well when a male and a female first meet.”

The Guardian explained:

“The research is part of a broader programme looking at the role of emotions in animal relationships, the biologist said. “Emotion is of huge evolutionary importance. If you don’t interpret an emotion correctly in the wild, it can be the end of you.”

Evy van Berlo, an evolutionary psychologist, told local paper Tubantia that earlier tablet tests with bonobos – who, along with chimpanzees, are the closest living relatives to humans – had shown they demonstrated heightened interest in photos containing “positive stimuli”, such as other bonobos mating or grooming one another.” – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Tinder for orangutans’: Dutch zoo to let female choose mate on a tablet” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12651 – The Military Researchers Who Turned a Cat Into a Phone

Have you ever wanted to turn a cat into a telephone? We haven’t either. But in 1929, two Princeton University researchers gave it a go anyway. Apparently, they weren’t cat lovers.

Professor Ernest Glen Wever and his research assistant Charles William Bray performed the experiment that involved a live but unconscious (thankfully!) cat in order to see how the auditory nerve perceives sound.

That’s a fancy way of saying they sedated a cat, opened its skull, accessed its auditory nerve, and attached a telephone wire to it. The other end of the wire was connected to a telephone receiver.

While many of us may turn up our noses at the thought of animal research, it has saved and improved many human lives. Bray and Wever weren’t even interested in making a cat into a telephone for any practical purpose (not that we could even think of one anyway). Instead, they were interested in the research methods used to run the tests, which paved the way for more sophisticated research on human hearing and made contributions to devices called cochlear implants that convert sound vibrations into electrical signals in the brain for deaf people.

Despite not caring much about creating a cat phone, the experiment did work, and Bray was able to speak into the cat’s ears while Wever listened through the receiver 50 feet away in a soundproof room.

Princeton’s Mudd Manuscript Library wrote a blog describing it in more detail. They say:

“The common notion during this time was that the frequency of the response of a sensory nerve is correlated to the intensity of the stimulus. In the case of the auditory nerve, as a sound becomes louder, the frequency or pitch of the sound received by the ear should be higher. When Bray made a sound with a certain frequency, Wever heard the sound from the receiver at the same frequency. As Bray increased the pitch of the sound, the frequency of the sound Wever heard also increased. This experiment proved that the frequency of the response in the auditory nerve is correlated to the frequency of the sound.”

Wever and Bray received the first Howard Crosby Warren Medal of Society by the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1936 for the experiment.

Later, both men entered military research. Bray became the Associate Research Director of the U.S. Air Force Human Resources Research and then served on the civilian psychological research team for the National Defense Research Council and the Navy. Wever became a consultant to the National Research Council on anti-submarine warfare.

And cats worldwide likely rejoiced that they found other things to do. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Cat Telephone” — Mudd Manuscript Library Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12644 – The Parrot Who Saved a Dead Language

German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt embarked on a 5-year exploration of North and South America in 1799. His trip was successful, and when he returned home in 1804, he had an extensive collection of plant and animal specimens

Humboldt also took voluminous notes, including some interesting jottings from a trip through Venezuela in 1800 where he spent some time chatting with a local parrot.

According to Mental Floss:

“According to legend, during his exploration of the Orinoco River, Humboldt met and stayed with a local indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures. The tribe, so the story goes, had a number of tame parrots kept in cages around the village, many of which had been taught to speak—although one, Humboldt noted, sounded noticeably different from the rest. When he asked the locals why this parrot sounded so unusual, he was told that it had belonged to a neighboring tribe, who had been the Caribs’ enemies.”

In other words, the parrot was speaking a different language than the rest. And sadly, the parrot was the only speaker left. The rest of the tribe had been wiped out, and not a single native speaker remained. Just the parrot. It was the last vestige of their linguistic culture.

Being the keen observer and recorder, Humboldt wrote down what the parrot sounded like, transcribing the sounds phonetically and coming out with about 40 words from the parrot’s (and the lost tribe’s) vocabulary.

We’ll never know how accurate the language is, but the notebook holds the last of what we have.

Interestingly, in 1997, an artist taught two more parrots to speak the language based on Humboldt’s notebook.

Some think the parrot’s story is mere legend, but Humboldt recounted his trip down the Orinoco river in his Equinoctial Regions of America in great detail and accurately described the Atures tribe that the parrot spoke the language of. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Parrot That Kept A Language Alive” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Facts12637 – Cow Burps Seen From Space

While it may be kind of funny, it’s really not a good thing that the methane emissions from cow burps can be viewed from space. That methane actually gets trapped in the earth’s atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

These emissions were detected by an environmental data company called GHGSat. Their high-resolution satellites saw the emissions in February, but it took until April to confirm their suspicions.

The burping cattle reside on a feedlot in California’s Joaquin Valley. According to CNN: “If these emissions were sustained for just one year, enough gas would be released ‘to power 15,402 homes,’ the company said.”

Farm cattle contribute to 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity around the world. In California alone, there are 650,000 beef cows.

This marks the first time that scientists have been able to use satellite imagery to pinpoint methane emissions from cattle farming.

CNN explained the process:

“The company has three high-resolution satellites in orbit, which it has previously used to measure emissions from open-pit coal mines. Each satellite is just the size of a microwave oven, says GHGSat. “This is really pushing the envelope of our capabilities,” said Wight. “What’s unique about us is we can really kind of get to the source” of emissions, focusing in on specific feedlots. Each satellite flies over a designated location for just about 20 seconds, taking a quick “snapshot” of emissions, Wight said. Over time, regular monitoring with these satellites could create a “temporal picture” showing the change in emissions over time, allowing farmers to, for instance, test out the impact of different diets on cows’ methane emissions.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Planet-warming emissions from cow burps have been seen from space” — CNN