Animals

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

WTF Fun Fact 13025 – Turkeys Can Blush

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You may be able to tell when a turkey is embarrassed (or sick or scared or otherwise agitated). That’s because their skin can change color. In other words, turkeys can blush.

How do turkeys blush?

According to Live Science (cited below):

“When a turkey becomes frightened, agitated, excited or ill, the exposed skin on its head and neck can change from its usual pale pink or bluish-gray color to red, white, or blue. And during mating season, the male turkey’s wattle turns scarlet to reflect his elevated sex hormone levels. The fleshy flap of skin that hangs over the gobbler’s beak is called a snood and also turns bright red when the bird is excited.”

You’d probably have to pay pretty close attention to notice the difference, but you could always try telling a bawdy joke to the next turkey you see to test it out.

Other cool turkey facts

While many of us only think of turkeys around Thanksgiving, there’s a lot more to them that makes them fascinating creatures. For example:

  • Turkeys have periscopic vision. With eyes on the sides of its head and good neck rotation, a turkey has a 360-degree field of vision and can see things not in its direct line of sight. Of course, that doesn’t always mean they can outrun the threats they encounter.
  • A turkey’s wishbone is not a common creature feature. However, dinosaurs such as the T-rex and velociraptors also had these bones, meaning the turkey could have evolved from dinosaurs.
  • Turkeys swallow stones that stay in one of their two stomachs (in a section called the gizzard). The stones allow food to be ground up in the stomach, which is important since turkeys don’t have teeth!

Did you know any of these fun facts about turkeys? — WTF fun facts

Source: “10 Terrific Turkey Facts” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 13017 – The Dementor Wasp

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The dementor wasp sounds like a character from Harry Potter. But somehow it’s much worse (mostly because it’s real). These wasps can turn their prey into “zombies” before eating them alive. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Dementor wasp tactics

The Ampulex dementor is actually named after the soul-sucking Harry Potter characters, so you know they must have made a big impression.

The wasps have a pretty unconventional and gruesome way of preparing their prey for mealtime. First, they inject venom into their favorite snacks, cockroaches. And while you might not have a lot of sympathy for roaches, they do die in a pretty awful way.

The venom from the dementor wasp leaves them without control over their own bodies. That usually has the effect of forcing them to run right into their tormentor’s nest so that they can be eaten alive. The World Wildlife Fund said it rendered the roaches “passive zombies” in the process.

How do roaches turn into zombies?

According to the Washington Post (cited below), the WWF report states:

“Cockroach wasp venom blocks receptors of the neurotransmitter octopamine, which is involved in the initiation of spontaneous movement. With this blocked, the cockroach is still capable of movement, but is unable to direct its own body. Once the cockroach has lost control, the wasp drags its stupefied prey by the antennae to a safe shelter to devour it.”

Sounds like the stuff of nightmares.

Luckily, the wasps seem confined to just one place in the world – Thailand – and are pretty recognizable with their red and black bodies (not that the venom is enough to turn any of us into a zombie).

What’s in a name?

The Post also described the dementor wasp naming process:

“The Museum für Naturkunde, a natural history museum in Berlin, asked 300 visitors to pick the wasp’s name from among four options: ‘Bicolor,’ after its red-black pattern; ‘Mon,’ after a local ethnic group where the wasp lives; ‘Plagiator,’ since it mimics, or ‘plagiarizes,’ ants; and ‘Dementor,’ described to visitors as ‘magical beings, which can consume a person’s soul, leaving their victims as an empty but functional body without personality and emotions.'”

Frankly, the other options were pretty lame, and we doubt anyone was surprised people chose the Harry Potter-themed name. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Say hello to the dementor wasp. It turns cockroaches into zombies” — Washington Post

WTF Fun Fact 13016 – Petting an Animal Reduces Stress

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You’ve probably heard that petting an animal reduces stress. If you’re lucky, you’ve even experienced it firsthand. And if you have the pleasure of consistently getting some hands-on time with a furry companion (or even a pal’s pet), you may not always notice it, but you probably do have less cortisol in your system.

How does petting an animal reduce stress?

One of the most oft-cited studies about the animals reducing our stress comes from a study in the journal of the American Educational Research Assocation (AERA). It was a rigorous study that controlled for multiple other factors, such as overall health of the subjects. And it found that just 10 minutes of petting a cat or dog (many of which happened to come from a shelter and probably benefitted from some socialization) results in measurably smaller levels of cortisol, the hormone that regulates our flight-or-fight response.

The research was done on college students (who often get stressed out around midterms and finals). And one of the best parts was that even brief animal encounters could help reduce stress levels.

The researchers didn’t find the same effect when students viewed photos of pets or saw them in person – the real benefits came from physical contact.

Details of the study

The researchers collected saliva samples from 249 college students who participated in one of four types of animal encounters. (Cortisol levels can be measured using saliva.)

  • 73 students got to pet the cats and dogs
  • 62 watched other people pet the animals
  • 57 watched a slideshow of images of the same animals
  • 57 remained on the waitlist

Saliva samples were collected first thing in the morning and then two more samples were collected 15 and 25 minutes after the animal encounter.

Students with hands-on animal interactions had the lowest cortisol levels, though it didn’t necessarily last throughout the day. Still, even momentary stress relief can help regulate stress.

The researchers hope the knowledge that petting animals reduces stress will help colleges (and others) help people regulate stress before it causes more serious physical and psychological disorders. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Animal Visitation Program (AVP) Reduces Cortisol Levels of University Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial” — AERA Open

WTF Fun Fact 13009 – Cats Domesticated Themselves

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If you’ve ever been owned by a cat (or have been given the honor of being allowed to live alongside one), you know they will do whatever they want to do. So it may come as no surprise that cats domesticated themselves. They just decided to move in with humans – and not much about them has changed since that day.

How do we know cats domesticated themselves?

If you’re skeptical about this and how we know it (or even what it all means), that’s fair.

Here’s the thing – when humans domesticate animals, we choose certain characteristics that we like about them, and the animals that end up allowing this kind of domestication often have certain kind of characteristics (whether it’s size, a tendency to be docile, etc.). Those characteristics are, to some extent, encoded in their genomes. So if we look at the genomes of those animals over thousands of years, we should see changes that indicate the selection of certain traits.

It’s not much different than modern dog breeding – purebred dogs are specifically bred to have specific genes that make them look or act a certain way. Their environment plays a role too, but we can see a lot of characteristics in their genomes.

Cat genomes? Let’s just say they haven’t changed much at all. And we know that because cats have been cherished and worshipped for thousands of years and therefore buried in ways that allow us to collect even their ancient DNA.

What do cat genomes tell us about domestication?

Of course, we can’t go back in time to check our work, but we can do pretty comprehensive studies on cats from all over the world and from different time periods. And that’s what a group of scientists did. They published their study in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution under the not-very-catchy title “The palaeogenetics of cat dispersal in the ancient world.” It doesn’t sound riveting, but it’s pretty cool (especially if someone summarizes it for you).

Our favorite line comes from National Geographic’s write-up on the work (cited below), noting that “[cats’] genes have changed little from those of wildcats, apart from picking up one recent tweak: the distinctive stripes and dots of the tabby cat.”

But here’s the gist of it: The researchers looked at the DNA of over 200 cats. These cats spanned a timeline of 9,000 years, the ancient cats coming from Rome and Egypt. They found that there were two major cat lineages that came together to make modern housecats. Normally, you’d expect to see A LOT more diversity than that.

Early cats likely spread into Europe from southwest Asia around 4400 BCE and hung out with people in early farming communities. Apparently, cats just decided people were largely ok to be around, and people decided cats were ok because they killed rodents that interfered with crops. If anyone tried to do anything more to domesticate cats, they clearly failed.

It was a mutually beneficial relationship. And maybe cats didn’t even like people but just liked the rodent populations we attracted. We’ll never know. But in any case, we all just grew up alongside each other. Humans “let” cats domesticate themselves. (Frankly, our guess is that cats were in charge the whole time.) — WTF fun facts

Source: “Cats Domesticated Themselves, Ancient DNA Shows” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 13000 – Valentine’s Day Gifts for Pets

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Fun Fact: U.S. consumers spend over $1 billion annually on Valentine’s Day gifts for pets. In 2020, 27% of people said they were planning on buying Valentine’s Day gifts for their pets.

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It makes sense that you’d want to give a gift to the creature that loves you unconditionally on a holiday meant to celebrate love. But since animals don’t know it’s a holiday, it’s still pretty interesting that 27% of Valentine’s shoppers choose to pick up a gift for their furry (or feathered or scaly) friends. This represented a 10% increase over the last decade.

Why do we buy Valentine’s Day gifts for pets?

“Much of the growth in Valentine’s Day spending over the last decade has been fueled by consumers’ interest in celebrating the other important relationships in their lives — friends, co-workers and, increasingly, pets” This is according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that conducts these surveys with and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

According to FOX13 news in early 2022:

In 2020, $103.6 billion was spent on our pets in the U.S., according to National Pet Owners Survey Statistics — and 70 percent of U.S. households own a pet.”

That’s due in part to the COVID pandemic.

“One in five households acquired a cat or dog at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) said in a survey published last year, on May 21, 2021.”

The Valentine’s Day gift survey

The NRF conducted the survey of 7,728 U.S. adult consumers from January 3-11, 2022, and also found that spending for the holiday increased overall, with people in the U.S. expected to spend $23.9 billion in 2022 (up from $21.8 billion in 2021). 

“Shoppers expect to spend an average of $175.41 per person (per human, that is) on Valentine’s Day gifts, which is up from $164.76 in 2021,” the NRF said.

When it comes to human gifts, people are sticking to tradition. “Candy (56 percent), greeting cards (40 percent), and flowers (37 percent) remain the most popular gift items…“

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Valentine’s Day 2022 pet spending: You won’t believe what we’ll shell out for our dogs and cats” — FOX13 News

WTF Fun Fact 12999 – Nikka The Police Dog

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The Vaughn, New Mexico Police Department has quite a recent history – and we just hope 2012 was the low point. That’s when the police chief and only officer were barred from carrying guns due to their criminal past. As a result, the only certified member of the force was Nikka the police dog.

Vaughn, NM goes to the dogs

In September 2012, the attorney for the town of Vaughn announced the resignation of Chief Ernest “Chris” Armijo.

News stories revealed that Armijo had been carrying a fake gun for months because he was not allowed to carry a real one. First, he was convicted of a felony back in Texas for owing tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent child support payments. But perhaps more concerning is that a few months prior he was also accused of illegally selling someone a police rifle and then keeping the cash for himself.

The town did not release the official reason for Armijo’s departure. But we have some good guesses about why the job didn’t work out for him.

There was another officer in Vaughn’s police force at the time. But he had just pled building to domestic violence charges that prevented him from having a gun. At the very least, CBS News (cited below) implied that if he was still part of the force, he was not a certified officer, and that would not only prevent him from carrying a gun but from making arrests as well.

According to records, that left only one certified member of the police force in good standing. Their drug-sniffing dog, Nikka.

Nikka the police dog gets a promotion

According to CBS News at the time: “Officials in the town of 450 people, about 100 miles east of Albuquerque, are considering whether to hire another police chief or keep the department staffed with just one officer...” It was unclear if the town would be able to keep the police dog since it was in Armijo’s care.

Residents said they were largely unconcerned because Vaughn had always been a quiet town with little crime.

It’s unclear how it all played out for the town or Nikka the police dog. Today the town is listed as having just one full-time sworn officer – and we’re going to assume it’s a human. — WTF fun facts

* Thanks to the reader who sent in this gem!

Source: “Nikka the police dog is only cop in N.M. town after chief resigns” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 12991 – Squirrel Front Teeth Never Stop Growing

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Squirrel front teeth never stop growing. Once their teeth grow in, the front four can grow up to five inches a year to keep up with all that gnawing they do on nuts and seeds.

The ever-growing teeth of squirrels

Rodents, including squirrels, have elodents – aka teeth that don’t develop roots and continue to grow long. These teeth can also appear dark yellow or orange because of the extremely thick enamel that covers them.

To be more precise, squirrel incisors have an enamel coating that starts below the gumline. This is what grows constantly up and over the teeth. This enables squirrels to wear down their incisors for their whole lives without losing their teeth.

Squirrels also have molars and premolars with roots, similar to human teeth.

If a squirrel does not have the right diet, it’s teeth will grow too large for its mouth and it can die from starvation. That’s why it’s never a good idea to feed squirrels other types of food.

The development of squirrel teeth

Baby squirrels are born without teeth, and their first teeth don’t erupt until they’re a few weeks old.

Adult squirrels develop 22 teeth (except the Eastern gray squirrel, which has 24) – 4 incisors, 4 premolars, and 12 molars.

The long incisors at the front of their mouths are used for gnawing at food, shredding material to make their nests, and for self-defense. While squirrels are not aggressive creatures, they can bite humans if they feel threatened (and they do carry disease).

In some unfortunate cases, baby squirrels may fall out of trees (this happens because their heads are quite large compared to their bodies). If they fall and break an incisor, it can grow back crooked. When this happens, the teeth rub up against each other and grow into one another. This can lead to life-threatening issues. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Teeth issues in squirrels” — Squirrel Refuge

WTF Fun Fact 12974 – The Sex Lives of Constipated Scorpions

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The Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 10 unusual (or unusually unuseful) scientific research projects each year since 1991. While it’s all in good fun, we couldn’t help but do a double-take this year at one of the winners – a team that published a study on the sex lives of constipated scorpions.

Constipated scorpions have it rough

Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado of the University of São Paulo in Brazil won the 2022 Ig Nobel in biology for trying to discern whether being constipated affects a scorpion’s sex life. (To be fair, we can’t help but think being constipated is kind of a bummer for any creature.)

According to an Associated Press story on the prizes, “Scorpions can detach a body part to escape a predator — a process called autotomy. But when they lose their tails, they also lose the last portion of the digestive tract, which leads to constipation — and, eventually, death, they wrote in the journal Integrated Zoology.”

“The long-term decrease in the locomotor performance of autotomized males may impair mate searching,” they wrote.

Ok, maybe constipated humans don’t have it so bad after all.

Why even study this?

So, this particular study came about in an interesting way. The paper’s lead author Solimary García-Hernández had long been studying the scorpion species Ananteris balzani.

This species has an interesting characteristic – they shed their tails to help them escape a predator.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below): “It was a big surprise in 2015 when she, while working as part of a larger research team, found that Ananteris scorpions are capable of shedding their tails. “Autotomy”—the process of dropping a body part to escape a predator—was until then known to have evolved in only a handful of animal lineages like starfish, spiders and certain lizards.”

Ok, so we totally understand wanting to look more closely into that interesting fact, especially since it turns out that when lizards shed their tails, it can impact their ability to walk but doesn’t kill them. However, scorpions are different.

When Ananteris scorpions shed their tails, their digestive tract backs up with feces, and they get swollen and die within around 8 months.

That’s weird since animals don’t typically adapt in a way that’s fatal to them unless it somehow helps their species. In this case, the extra months likely give them more time to reproduce. And that’s where studying their sex lives comes in.

The sex lives of constipated scorpions

García-Hernández decided to monitor the post-tail life of these scorpions to see how tail loss impacted their ability to reproduce.

“The team then set up a series of matings between stump-tailed and intact scorpions. García-Hernández predicted that autotomized male scorpions would be less successful at mating than their fully endowed counterparts, since the tail plays an important role in their complicated mating ritual.”

Male scorpions use their tails both to show off to mates and during intercourse, so not having a tail should make mating difficult. However, it turns out they just used their stump and were just fine.

It was a different story for females, however.

According to Smithsonian, “when the team explored the reproductive costs paid by stump-tailed females, the story was different. They found that tailless females, while able to mate successfully, went on to have 20 percent fewer offspring than intact females.

The reason for this difference? The five-month scorpion pregnancy provides a lot of time for females to get more and more constipated, says García-Hernández. She hypothesizes that the buildup of feces caused by the loss of the anus is either toxic to the embryos or that the feces simply crowds out the developing scorplings. This latter hypothesis is supported by the fact that a severely constipated scorpion can weigh 30 percent more than it did before it lost its tail. By comparison, that’s equivalent to a 150 pound person gaining 45 pounds of poop weight.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “For Constipated Scorpions, Females Suffer Reproductively. Males, Not So Much.” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12973 – Tokitae the Orca May Finally Be Set Free

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While many of us have fond childhood memories of seeing whales or dolphins perform at theme parks, adulthood brings the knowledge of what really happens behind the scenes. That’s why so many people celebrated in 2022 when it was announced that Tokitae the Orca may finally be set free after a half-century of performing at a marine park. Her mother is still alive, but Tokitae’s return is still in jeopardy.

Tokitae’s story

The orca was captured while swimming with a group of 80 others in a cove on Whidbey Island off Washington state decades ago. According to The Guardian (cited below): “Using boats, explosives, nets, and sticks, they separated young orca calves from their mothers. Locals were haunted by the whales’ human-like cries, according to anaccount of the day.”

The captors took 6 baby orcas from their mothers that day and sold them to marine parks. Nearly all died quickly, and only 1 is still alive today – Tokitae (whose stage name is Lolita).

The female orca has spent her whole life performing for audiences at the Miami Seaquarium “the smallest orca enclosurein North America.” In 2017, it was revealed that her tank didn’t even meet federal minimum guidelines for orca captivity. In 2022, she was allowed to “retire.”

Trying to return Tokitae to the wild

The Guardian notes that “there’s a chance she could finally go home. Activists are fighting to return the whale…to the Pacific north-west to live out her final days and possibly reconnect with her family. Her mother,believed to be in her 90s, still swims the waters of the Salish Sea, leading a pod of southern resident killer whales to find salmon.”

While activists, animal lovers, and philanthropists around the world have rallied behind her cause recent health assessments from the group Friends of Lolita, found that she has a chronic infection that requires antibiotics.

Their last update on the whale was on August 31, 2022:

UPDATE on the health of Tokitae, Miami Seaquarium’s sole Southern Resident orca, captive since 1970. Antibiotic therapy continues for treatment of a persistent infection, but, on a good note, she is active and continues to be engaged with staff. These are promising signs, despite her chronic health concerns.

Many who know Tokitae and have visited her at the “Whale Bowl” always remark on her astounding ability to persevere after everything she’s been through. She has a strong will to survive that is not easy to miss. She’s an inspiring, impressive orca.

Find more information at: https://www.friendsoflolita.org/ or https://www.facebook.com/OrcaRescuesFoundation/

Some have argued that Tokitae is too old to be released back into the wild, so only time will tell what her fate will be. —WTF fun facts

Source: “After half a century in captivity, Tokitae the performing orca could finally go home” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12969 – Manatees Fart to Swim

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Do you know a kid who loves to share fun facts about animals and just won’t stop telling you everything you never wanted to know about lizards or sharks or bugs? Well, it’s time to blow their minds with your superior animal knowledge and show them adults reign supreme in the world of truly fun facts. Manatees fart to swim.

Do manatees really fart to swim?

We’re totally serious. We even looked it up on Snopes because it seemed too good to be true.

While manatees are aquatic animals, they aren’t like fish, which can live underwater but also have something called a “swim bladder” to control their buoyancy. Instead, manatees need to float – and if you live in the water but need to stay atop it, you have three choices – be built to sit upon it (like a duck), tread water like your life depends on it (like a human), or have a mechanism that makes your body buoyant.

And since the animals we lovingly call “sea cows” eat about 100 pounds of vegetation a day, let’s just say staying perched upon a wave isn’t really an option for them. That’s why manatees developed a different mechanism to stay afloat. Farts.

Fart like your life depends on it

At Captain Mike’s Swimming with the Manatees in Crystal, Florida (whose website we’ve cited below), you’ll get a great explanation of how the fart propulsion actually works.

According to the experts who swim with the flatulent sea cows all day, all the vegetation they eat creates the same reaction in their bodies as it does in ours. Farts. Gas. Flatulence. Whatever you want to call it.

“For manatees, there is always enough gas in the body…The gas produced during digestion is stored in intestinal pouches ready for use in swimming,” note the experts.

And how does that lead to the ability to swim?

“The gas produced during digestion is lighter than water. So when the animals hold in a substantial amount of gas in intestinal pouches, they lower their overall density and float in water. On the contrary, releasing the gas from the body makes a manatee relatively denser than water and to be able to readily sink. That is why manatees fart to swim. For they have to continuously hold in enough gas in their bodies to be able to come to the surface to breathe. Then soon after, they have to fart in order to release some gas, become less buoyant, and sink underwater.”

Hold your breath

Manatees can actually hold their breath for up to 20 minutes (don’t try that one at home!). But rather than use the breath trick, they can use farts with a lot less effort.

So next time you’re in the pool, you can see how this works (without the farts – don’t use the farts). Take a big, deep breath, hold it, and then float on your back. Then release the air (from your nose or mouth, please) and notice that you sink a bit.

Then you can tell everyone around you to be grateful that you’re not a manatee. Otherwise, they would have seen a lot of bubbles from your backside. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Do manatees fart to swim?” — Swimming with the Manatees

WTF Fun Fact 12967 – Bats and Tequila

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There’s a little-known but critical relationship between bats and tequila. In fact, without bats, we may not be able to create tequila at all!

How are bats and tequila connected?

If you’re a tequila fan, you probably know the crucial ingredient in the spirit is agave. This spiky plant is native to the desert regions of North and South America (but mostly Mexico). Agave nectar is also harvested to be used as a sweetener.

One of the many interesting things about the agave plant is that it has very few natural pollinators. (And you likely know that in order for plants to produce, they need to be pollinated by things like birds, bees, etc.)

The agave plant’s primary pollinator is bats. No bats, no agave. No agave, no tequila.

Is the tequila supply in danger?

To make matters even more complicated for agave plants, only a few species of bats are pollinators. These bats are being threatened by industrial farming and other threats to their natural habitats.

But while the bats and agave plants are increasingly threatened, our thirst for tequila has only gone up. According to NPR (cited below), the tequila industry has grown by 60% over the last decade. That means we need more agave plants than ever.

You might think that industrial farming would simply increase the amount of agave being grown, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

How do you solve a problem like agave?

NPR interviewed Micaela Jemison of Bat Conservation International, who said that the problem with commercial agave production is that agave stalks are harvested before they can reproduce. “That means no tasty pollen for hungry bats. And instead of plants that reproduce through bats spreading pollen from stem to stem, major tequila companies use cloned agave.”

If you only care about tequila, you might not think this is a big deal, but there are some major unintended consequences of handing a natural process over to a business.

“Growing genetically identical plants is easy and cheap for big companies, but cloned agave is vulnerable to fungus or disease that could wipe out entire crops. Bats can solve this problem by creating genetic diversity. Instead, their ecosystem has been disrupted. Fewer agave plants are allowed to flower and growers use powerful agrochemicals that can hurt the three kind of bats that feed on agave.”

The Mexican long-nosed bat and the lesser long-nosed bat are two of the major agave pollinators listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a third, the Mexican long-tongued bat, is a species of concern.

To help spread appreciation for the relationship between bats and tequila, the Tequila Interchange Project (which is made up of bartenders, scientists, industry consultants, and plain old tequila fans) is trying to promote Bat Friendly Tequila and Mezcal™. These approved brands give some of their proceeds to agave farmers who welcome the bats and help maintain their populations.

Bat-friendly tequila

The coalition notes that “Given that Tequila is a two billion USD a year industry, and that the economy of 40,000 families is linked to blue agaves (and to bats and other pollinators), it is in the best interest of all stakeholders, from producers to the government to the individual consumer and everyone in-between, to protect the future of tequila and mezcal agaves by adopting sustainable practices and protecting pollinators and genetic resources.”

According to the website, some of the bat-friendly brands include:
– Tequila 8
– Tequila Tapatio
– Tesoro de Don Felipe
– Siembra Valles Ancestral
– 7 Leguas
– Siembra Metl Cupreata
– TOCUZ Alto
– Don Mateo de la Sierra Cupreata
– Mezcal Vago Pechuga

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Bats And Tequila: A Once Boo-tiful Relationship Cursed By Growing Demands” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12931 – Killed by elephants in India

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If you live in certain parts of India and encroach on the increasingly small amount of land where wildlife still rules, you could be one of the 100+ unlucky people to be killed by an elephant each year. In fact, a woman in India was killed by an elephant in January 2022 and witnesses say it returned to her funeral and trampled her corpse.

Typically, elephants are empathetic creatures, but as their land is increasingly encroached upon, they can be dangerous.

Killed by an elephant in India

Elephants typically keep to themselves. But as building and other types of habitat destruction increase, some small farmers are forced farther into elephant territory to find land to grow food. There, they can have their crops trampled or be killed by a single elephant or group of elephants that feel threatened.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (cited below), over 100 people are killed by elephants each year in India “over 200 people have been killed in Kenya over the last 7 years.”

The WWF notes that “Elephants are often killed in retaliation. Wildlife authorities in Kenya shoot between 50 and 120 problem elephants each year and dozens of elephants are poisoned each year in oil palm plantations in Indonesia.”

Rare incidents involving elephants

Perhaps one of the most popular (albeit unconfirmed by official sources) incidents involving an elephant in India happened in January of 2022.

According to Mashable:

“On June 10, 2022, the woman named Maya Murmu, who hailed from Raipal village in the district of Odisha Mayurbhanj, was brutally attacked by an elephant in a nearby forest while collecting water.

According tonews reports, she was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead very quickly after.

After bringing her body home, her family proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for her funeral, but it was all for nought as on the day of her funeral, the very same elephant returned to the village in an extremely foul mood.”

In Odisha, elephant attacks are slightly more common due to their proximity to the creatures. But this is very atypical behavior. While some people insist the woman was assisting poachers in threatening baby elephants or throwing stones at the creatures, there’s no legitimate evidence of that.

However, there are multiple reports that “the elephant then proceeded to attack the funeral and targeted Maya’s corpse, trampling it furiously before letting out a roar that signalled other elephants from its herd to wreck the rest of the village. The same elephant also somehow managed to identify Maya’s home, and went on smash it, killing the goats living there.

By the end, nearly the entire village had been wrecked, and many of the inhabitants had lost their homes (although thankfully, no one else was hurt).”

Indian newspapers have reported it, but local authorities have yet to directly confirm the specifics.

It’s hard to know what to believe in these cases, but it’s clear that elephants are capable of getting pretty angry under certain circumstances. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Battles over ever decreasing land” — WWF

WTF Fun Fact 12930 – Koala Bears Sleep 22 Hours a Day

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Koalas bears might be cute, but they’re some of the least energetic animals on Earth. In fact, koala bears sleep 22 hours a day (or at least from 18-22 hours). The rest of the time they spend wanding around looking for food or mates.

Koala bear facts

The koala is a marsupial (not a bear) native to Australia. They live in the eucalyptus forests in south and east Australia, which is where they find their food – it’s like sleeping at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Considering how brutal competition can be among the world’s creatures, it’s a wonder that koalas still exist. They only eat one thing (eucalyptus), that thing is toxic, and it doesn’t reall have many nutrients. Nevertheless, they eat about 1 pound of eucalyptus a day, which is also where they get most of their water.

Their little bodies can break down the toxins in ways other animals can’t, however, while they manage to extract enough nutrients to stay alive, their diet doesn’t really provide them with any extra energy. Hence all the sleeping.

Koala bears sleep most of their lives

Beacuse eucalyptus doesn’t provide them with enough nutrients for a high-energy diet, koala bears sleep for the vast majority of the day – from 18-22 hours. During this time, their bodies need much of the energy they take in to break down the eucalyptus.

The rest of their time is dedicated to survival – eating and mating to be exact.

Koala bear survival

Between poaching and habitat destruction, koala populations have plummeted. According to National Geographic (cited below): “Land clearing, logging, and bushfires—especially the devastating 2019-2020 season—have destroyed much of the forest they live in. Koalas need a lot of space—about a hundred trees per animal—a pressing problem as Australia’s woodlands continue to shrink.”

Koalas are now on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of the 10 most vulnerable animals to climate change. And NatGeo notes that “Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is decreasing the nutritional quality of eucalyptus leaves (which is already quite low) and causing longer, more intense droughts and wildfires.”

Droughts also force koalas to go in search for water, which means they have to leave their eucalyptus trees “spending precious energy and putting them at a higher risk of predation. Predators include dingoes and large owls. They’re also at risk of getting hit by cars and attacked by dogs.”

Chlamydia is also very common among pockets of koala bear populations and causes many of the animals to be blind and infertile.

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Koalas 101” – National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12923 – Grief After Pet Loss is Profound

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If you have a beloved pet, chances are you will suffer the grief of losing them someday. While it’s hard to think about, it’s important to know that studies have shown the grief from pet loss is much like our grief after human death, but the support systems that help us get through it aren’t always there. It’s crucial to our mental health to grieve pet loss properly.

Grieving the loss of unconditional love

We often have and receive feelings of unconditional love from our pets, and that’s something that’s very rare in the human world (and perhaps it should be since it’s important for people to have boundaries). It helps explain why losing a pet is so devastating and why a pet that has passed on is so irreplaceable.

It’s normal to feel guilt over just about every part of the process, and a lost pet that never returns means pet owners don’t even get the closure the rest of us do.

No matter how you lose your pet, the enormous grief you may feel is common and shouldn’t be treated as silly or inappropriate. Studies show that when we bury our grief, it can have effects on our mental and physical health. People have even been diagnosed with “broken heart syndrome” (which mimics the symptoms of a heart attack) after losing a pet.

Support is crucial to grief after pet loss

According to Scientific American (cited below), a support system can be a crucial part of healing, especially when a person feels otherwise alone in their grief. Feeling alone may be common even if many family members were part of a pet’s life because each individual person has their own relationship with an animal.

Without support, “we are not only robbed of invaluable support systems when our pet dies, but our own perceptions of our emotional responses are likely to add an extra layer of distress. We may feel embarrassed and even ashamed about the severity of the heartbreak we feel and, consequently, hesitate to disclose our feelings to our loved ones. That additional shame complicates the process of recovery by making it more lengthy and complex than it should be.”

Losing a pet disrupts the rhythms of our daily lives, makes our homes feel quiet and lonely and robs us of the healing effects of interacting with an animal. Requests for us to replace our pet too early feel cruel and don’t do any favors to a new “replacement” animal either (since there’s no way they can act exactly like our old pet).

The truth is, we have to feel and process our grief in order to get better, and to do that we need to feel some sense of support around us. That’s why there are now in-person and online support groups for people experiencing pet loss. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Why We Need to Take Pet Loss Seriously” — Scientific American

WTF Fun Fact 12922 – The Canary Islands Are Named for Dogs

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The Canary Islands usually make us think of the little yellow bird. But Canary doesn’t come from the bird’s name, rather, it comes from the Latin word Canaria (as in canine). The ancient Romans called the islands Insula Canaria, or “Island of the Dogs.”

The Canary Islands

The Canary Islands is a Spanish autonomous region near Morocco composed of 7 large islands and many more smaller islands. You may have heard of the second largest island – Tenerife – which is home to early 1 million people.

There is volcanic activity on some of the islands, which also house the world’s third largest volcano – Mount Teide on Tenerife.

While there is a dog breed popular on the Canary Islands – the Presa Canario – they are not native to the islands and were introduced by the Spanish. They are a type of mastiff used for guarding and herding. They were also used in dogfighting until it was outlawed by Spain in the 20th century.

How are the Canary Islands related to dogs?

Just look at the coat of arms of the Canary Islands, and you’ll see dogs instead of birds.

According to World Atlas (cited below): “The archipelago’s Spanish name Islas Canarias is derived from the Latin phrase Canariae Insulae which means the “island of dogs.” King Juba II of Mauretania, an ancient Kingdom in the Maghreb, is thought to have named the island of Grand Canaria named the island Canaria due to the presence of many large dogs on the island. Eventually, the entire archipelago became referred to as the Canary Islands.”

However, some believe the Roman name comes not from the presence of dogs but the worship of the creatures on the island. The original inhabitants of the islands were the Guanches, who mummified dogs (perhaps related to the Egyptian practice and the dog-headed god Anubis). It’s unknown how dog worship may have worked or if the animals were just considered holy creatures.

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Did You Know That The Canary Islands Are Named After Dogs?” — World Atlas

WTF Fun Fact 12909 – The Land Animal That Lived The Longest

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This is something that will make you appreciate how our modern world is still so, so young. The longest-lived creatures are older than any of us, and most were or are older than our desire or ability to record their age for posterity. That said, we do have records of the land animal that lived the longest that we can properly verify. Other animals may have lived longer, but we don’t have reliable ways to prove it.

The radiated tortoise – one of the longest-lived animals

When it comes to sea creatures, we’re even more clueless as to age, and we endanger them by trying to find out. But it’s a bit easier with land animals, especially tortoises since they don’t move very fast.

As far as things we can verify are concerned, a radiated tortoise from Madagascar named Tu’i Malila is the longest-lived land animal. And here’s another fun fact – all its life, Tu’i Malila was thought to be a male. Upon her death, a proper examination was conducted, and it was determined she was female. (Some tortoises obviously don’t have obvious sex characteristics.)

The story of Tu’i Malila

Tu’i Malila means “King” Malila in the Tongan language and records show that Captain James Cook gave her to the royal family of Tonga shortly after her birth in 1777. She stayed in the royal family’s care her whole life until her death in 1965.

The radiated tortoise (a classification that has nothing to do with radiation but rather the pattern on their shells) is now preserved and on display at the Tongan National Center on the island of Tongatapu.

Other “oldest” animals

However, there is some disagreement over what counts as the oldest living animal. Some argue that an Aldabra giant tortoise from India named Adwaita lived to be around 255.

This year (in January 2022) the keepers of a giant tortoise named Jonathan have convinced the Guinness Book of World Records that the animal from St. Helena turned 190.

—WTF fun facts

Source: “The King of Tonga” — The Good Turtle Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12908 – Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s Swearing Parrots

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Five African grey parrots at the UK’s Lincolnshire Wildlife Park got separated by staff because they were perceived as having a “bad influence” on one another. Someone taught the parrots to swear. And there’s a reason they call repeating things “parroting.”

While no guests complained, the zoo took the proactive step of separating them in case any visiting children ever decided to parrot the parrots.

Parrots and profanity

According to The Guardian (cited below), “The parrots – named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade and Tyson – joined Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s colony of 200 grey parrots in August. But soon after, they started encouraging each other to swear.”

“We saw it very quickly – we are quite used to parrots swearing but we’ve never had five at the same time,” Steve Nichols, CEO of the wildlife park reportedly said. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”

No one got rid of the parrots – they were simply “distributed to different areas of the park so they do not ‘set each other off.'”

Naughts parrots

Guests weren’t put off at all by the parrots. In fact, as you might expect, they drew people into the facility. “People have come to us but they think it’s highly amusing, we haven’t had one complaint,” Nichols said, according to The Guardian. “When a parrot tells you to fuck off, it amuses people very highly. It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.”

We know some humans who offer that service for free as well, but someone it just seems less rude coming from a parrot.

The paper also noted that “The park is also home to parrot Chico, who made headlines in September after learning to sing a range of pop songs, including Beyoncé’s If I Were a Boy.”

It sounds like quite an interesting place! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Swearing parrots separated after telling folk where to go” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12905 – Monkey Blamed for Fake 911 Calls

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It’s illegal to make fake 911 calls, so the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office tried to track down the culprit of a recent dial-in. They also wanted to make sure no one need their help on the end of the suddenly disconnected call. The tracked the phone down to the “Zoo To You” near Paso Robles and deduced that it was likely a Capuchin monkey that made the call.

Finding the source of the call

Dispatchers tried to call and text back when the call first came in. Then they sent in the police, only to find that no human on the premesis had any idea what they were talking about.

The call came from a cell phone that was left in a golf cart used on the property.

They finally deduced that a Capuchin monkey named Route had apparently picked up the zoo’s cellphone, which was in a golf cart used to move about the property.

In a Facebook post, they recounted the story:

“Our Deputies have seen their fair share of “monkey business” in the County. But nothing quite like this.
It all started Saturday night when we received a 911 call that had disconnected. Dispatchers tried to call and text back but they received no response. So Deputies were sent to investigate.
The address took them to the offices of Zoo to You near Paso Robles. No one there had placed the call.
Was someone trying to make us look like a monkey’s uncle?
Then they all realized… it must have been Route the Capuchin monkey.
Apparently, Route had picked up the zoo’s cell phone… which was in the zoo’s golf cart… which is used to travel around the zoo’s 40 acre site.
We’re told Capuchin monkeys are very inquisitive and will grab anything and everything and just start pushing buttons.
And that’s what Route did… just so happened it was in the right combination of numbers to call us.
As you can tell from these photos, Route is a little embarrassed by the whole thing. But you can’t really blame her, after all monkey see, monkey do.”

Emergency monkey dial

You’ve no doubt heard of the infinite monkey theroem that posits that a monkey sitting at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time would eventually get around to typing out a full line of Shakespeare.

Abstract statistical metaphors aside, it turns out the a Capuchin with a cell phone and nothing else to do will eventually press 9-1-1-send. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Capuchin Monkey Accused Of Calling 911 From California Zoo” — HuffPost