The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham

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The Mega Book of Useless Information - Noel Botham


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and red when cooked.

      • In ancient Canadian legend, the turtle was the oldest and wisest creature on earth before man came to the Americas.

      • Monkeys fling faeces at each other when agitated.

      • Ravens can learn to open a box to get a treat, and then teach others to do the same.

      • Cockroaches can find their way in a dark room by dragging one antenna against the wall.

      • A Brazilian MP has drawn up a new law to ban people from giving their pets ‘human’ names.

      • Finches practise songs in their sleep.

      • Crickets hear through their knees.

      • A Chinese man has trained his pet dog to walk on its hind legs for up to five miles.

      • The heart of a blue whale only beats nine times a minute.

      • Baboons and chimps dig for clean water when the surface water is polluted. Chimps even use sticks as digging tools.

      • A weddell seal can hold its breath for seven hours.

      • Conservation workers introduced an exercise regime for giant pandas in Chinese zoos because they were too fat to mate.

      • Turkeys were first brought to Britain in 1526 by Yorkshireman William Strickland, who sold six, acquired from American Indians, for sixpence each, in Bristol.

      • The Basenji, an African dog, is the only dog that does not bark.

      • One in three dog owners say they have talked to their pets on the phone.

      • A Belgian company is producing ice cream specifically for dogs.

      • A course teaching people how to perform the kiss of life on dogs has been launched in Chile.

      • A church in Connecticut is giving Holy Communion to pets and offering them special worship services.

      • Chimps live in groups that each has its own culture.

      • The average American dog will cost its owner £9,000 in its lifetime.

      • Only male turkeys gobble. Females make a clicking sound.

      • The average pregnancy of an Indian elephant lasts 650 days.

      • A geriatric dwarf mouse that lived at a university in Michigan became the world’s oldest after celebrating his fourth birthday.

      • A Swiss woman is offering lessons on how to talk with animals for £360 a time.

      • Cows drink anywhere from 25 to 50 gallons of water each day.

      • The red kangaroo can produce two different types of milk at the same time from adjacent teats to feed both younger and older offspring.

      • Firefighters in Florida are carrying oxygen masks for cats, dogs and even hamsters to help save pets suffering from smoke inhalation.

      • A German basset hound with the longest dog ears in the world has had them insured for £30,000.

      • Hard rock music makes termites chew through wood at twice their usual speed.

      • Red squirrels are being given rope bridges to help them cross busy roads in Formby, Merseyside.

      • A Michigan woman who runs a boutique for pets is stocking a special range of Halloween costumes for dogs.

      • Domestic turkeys cannot fly because of their size and breeding but, in the wild, they can fly at up to 50mph over short distances and run at 20mph.

      • The Giant African cricket enjoys eating human hair.

      • Ninety-five per cent of the creatures on earth are smaller than a chicken egg.

      • The first known ‘zeedonks’ were the result of an accidental mating between a male Chapman’s zebra and a female black ass (donkey) at Colchester Zoo in 1983.

      • Ziggy, the largest and oldest elephant ever in captivity, was taught to play ‘Yes, Sir, that’s my baby’ on the harmonica.

      • The Antarctic notothenia fish has a protein in its blood that acts like antifreeze and stops the fish freezing in icy sea.

      • Goat’s eyes have rectangular pupils.

      • The megalodon shark became extinct about 1.6 million years ago. Marine biologists have estimated the megalodon shark was double the size and weight of today’s great white shark.

      • Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers.

      • Sheep can detect other sheep faces in the way that humans do. Researchers claim they can remember up to 50 sheep faces.

      • Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of

       any mammal.

      • When mating, a hummingbird’s wings beat 200 times a second.

      • A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

      • The average American bald eagle weighs about 9lb.

      • Robins eat three miles of earthworms in a year.

      • The beautiful Cone Shell Molluscs are just 2in long but have a deadly poison-filled harpoon-like tooth that spears their prey, injecting it with lethal toxins.

      • A study has concluded that if a woodchuck could chuck wood it could chuck about 700lb.

      • Baby elephants can drink over 80 litres of milk a day.

      • An experiment in Canada determined that chickens lay most eggs when pop music is played.

      • A cow has four stomachs.

      • Two dogs were hanged for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.

      • All polar bears are left-handed.

      • A mother shark can give birth to as many as 70 baby sharks per litter.

      • The top speed of a pigeon in flight is 90mph.

      • An adult crocodile can go two years without eating.

      • Emus cannot walk backwards.

      • The oldest bird on record was Cocky, a cockatoo, who died in London Zoo at the age of 82.

      • A chicken’s top speed is 9mph.

      • Both gorillas and housecats purr.

      • Ostriches can run faster than horses and the males can roar like lions.

      • Squirrels cannot see the colour red.

      • If birds could sweat, they wouldn’t be able to fly.

      • The decapitated jaws of a snapping turtle can keep snapping for about a day.

      • Jackrabbits got their name because their ears look like a donkey’s (Jackass).

      • Sheep can survive up to two weeks buried in snowdrifts.

      • The last animal in the dictionary is the zyzzyva, a tropical American weevil.

      • The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.

      • Armadillos can catch malaria.

      • Baboons cannot throw overhand.

      • Lions are the only cats that live in packs.

      • To get a gallon of milk, it takes about 345 squirts from a cow’s udder.

      • A warthog has only four warts, all of which are on its head.

      • The penalty for stealing a rabbit in 19th century England was seven years in prison.

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