300 Random Animal Facts

Luke Ward
18 Minutes Read
Updated:

It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.

    If you’re looking for the most interesting list of animal facts, you’re at the right place!

    Here are 300 of the best fun & random facts about animals!

    Gorillas can catch human colds and other illnesses.

    A newborn Chinese water deer is so small it can almost be held in the palm of the hand.

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

    A lion in the wild usually makes no more than twenty kills a year.

    The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.

    The world’s smallest dog was a Yorkshire Terrier, which weighed just four ounces.

    Turtles, water snakes, crocodiles, alligators, dolphins, whales, and other water going creatures will drown if kept underwater too long.

    Almost half the pigs in the world are kept by farmers in China.

    On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.

    Deer have no gall bladders.

    There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.

    Snakes are carnivores, which means they only eat animals, often small ones such as insects, birds, frogs and other small mammals.

    In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they’re moose hunting.

    The bat is the only mammal that can fly.

    The leg bones of a bat are so thin that out of the 1,200 species of bats, only 2 can walk on ground. These are the Vampire bat and the Burrowing bat.

    Some male songbirds sing more than 2,000 times each day.

    The only mammals to undergo menopause are elephants, humpback whales and human females.

    Blue-eyed lemurs are one of two (non-human) primates to have truly blue eyes.

    A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food.

    For every human in the world there are one million ants.

    If you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground it can’t hop – they use their tails for balance.

    If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will become pale!

    Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down.

    The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet.

    The average fox weighs 14 pounds.

    The scientific name of the red fox is Vulpes vulpes.

    Alligators generally live between 30 & 50 years.

    A single elephant tooth can weigh as much as 9 pounds.

    The turkey is one of the most famous birds in North America.

    A housefly hums in the key of F.

    During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs.

    Canis lupus lupus is the scientific name for a grey wolf.

    To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, push your thumb into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly.

    It is much easier for dogs to learn spoken commands if they are given in conjunction with hand signals or gestures.

    Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death!

    Male rabbits are called “bucks,” females are “does.”

    The flamingo can only eat when its head is upside down.

    Animals generate 30 times more waste than humans which is 1.4 billion tons every year.

    Ants never sleep. Also they don’t have lungs.

    A group of owls is called a parliament.

    Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 liter bottles.

    Pear and apple seeds contain arsenic, which may be deadly to dogs.

    Cows have one large stomach that is divided into four compartments to go through the different stages of digestion.

    An anteater is nearly 6 feet long, yet its mouth is only an inch wide.

    The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants and is as long as three Greyhound buses.

    A herd of sixty cows is capable of producing a ton of milk in less than a day.

    A grasshopper can leap 20 times the length of its own body.

    At birth, baby kangaroos are only about an inch long – no bigger than a large water bug or a queen bee.

    The smell of a skunk can be detected by a human a mile away.

    There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in its body to kill six cats!

    Cats have lived with people for only 7,000 years.

    A black panther is really a black leopard.

    The honey bee has been around for 30 million years.

    The dumbest dog in the world is the Afghan hounds.

    A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

    A dog’s shoulder blades are unattached to the rest of the skeleton to allow greater flexibility for running.

    Tigers have striped skin as well as their fur.

    Hippos can run faster than humans!

    The Latin name for moose is alces alces.

    The earliest European images of dogs are found in cave paintings dating back 12,000 years ago in Spain.

    Baby horses can walk and run after just a few hours of being born.

    The kangaroo’s ancestors lived in trees. Today there are eight different kinds of tree kangaroos.

    A woodpecker can peck 20 times per second.

    The great horned owl has no sense of smell.

    Scientists have performed brain surgery on cockroaches.

    The flea can jump up to 200 times its own height. This is equal to a man jumping the Empire State Building in New York.

    Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale.

    The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War Two hit an elephant.

    A garden caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

    A moth has no stomach.

    George Washington’s teeth were made of elephant ivory, and walrus tusks.

    Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.

    Goats and sheep are seasonal breeders.

    An elephant can smell water up to 3 miles away.

    Deer can’t eat hay.

    A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time.

    In 2003, Dr. Roger Mugford invented the “wag-o-meter” a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.

    Every day of the year, 100 whales are killed by whale fisherman.

    If you cut off a snail’s eye, it will grow a new one.

    The ostrich has two toes on each foot which gives it greater speed.

    Lonomia obliqua is the world’s deadliest caterpillar.

    ‘Jaws’ is the most common name for a goldfish.

    The most dogs ever owned by one person were 5,000 Mastiffs owned by Kubla Khan.

    On average, cows poop 16 times per day!

    The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in seventeenth-century England. During heavy rainstorms, many homeless animals would drown and float down the streets, giving the appearance that it had actually rained cats and dogs.

    The most poisonous fish in the world is the stone fish.

    Killer whales are not whales at all, rather a species of dolphin.

    Goats were the first animals domesticated by man in 10,000 B.C.

    Dogs have sweat glands in between their paws.

    The fear of animals is called zoophobia.

    We share 70% of our DNA with a slug.

    We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp.

    Fireflies do not bite or have pincers. Fireflies are harmless, they don’t even carry diseases.

    Chocolate, macadamia nuts, cooked onions, or anything with caffeine is harmful to dogs.

    No two tigers ever have the same stripes, and this is how individual tigers can be identified.

    The American Kennel Club, the most influential dog club in the United States, was founded in 1884.

    The longest recorded life span of a slug was 1 year, 6 months.

    A whale’s heart beats only nine times a minute.

    Elephants are covered with hair.

    A ‘haw’ is the third eyelid of a cat, which can only be seen when the cat isn’t well.

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About The Author

Luke Ward
Luke Ward

Luke Ward is the owner of The Fact Site. He has over 14 years of experience in researching, informative writing, fact-checking, SEO & web design. In his spare time, he loves to explore the world, drink coffee & attend trivia nights.

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