Animals often capture our attention by being cute, but wildlife is just that – wild. In order to thrive in their often extremely challenging natural environments, many creatures have adapted curious features and quirks, ranging from purple tongues and snowball fights to holding votes and even getting drunk.
Click through this gallery to uncover 30 fascinating facts about creatures great and small...
Surprisingly for animals that weigh an average of 3.5 tonnes, hippos can run at speeds of around 19 miles per hour (30km/h) – far beyond the approximately 10 miles per hour (16km/h) that the average human can manage. A resident of sub-Saharan Africa, their full title of 'hippopotamus' comes from the ancient Greek, meaning 'water horse'. Hippos spend up to 18 hours a day in water to keep cool and support their massive frames, but they cannot properly swim and instead walk along the bottom while periodically surfacing for air.
With distinctive red, orange and blue beaks and make-up-like markings around their eyes, these curious little seabirds are often called 'the clowns of the sea'. Less well-known is that their colourful plumage is actually only their summer coat. Winter sees them shed the outer plates of their beaks, lose their mascara-esque facial features and moult away their wing feathers, making them much duller-looking birds – so much so that even experts can mistake them for a different species.
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Giant pandas are among the world's best-known and best-loved under-threat species. The good news is that in 2017 their conservation status was upgraded from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable', but less well-known are their curious toilet habits. Not only do they poo 40 times a day, male pandas also sometimes climb trees backwards with their hind paws to pee in a handstand position. They do this to mark their territory more extensively during their limited mating window.
Japanese macaques are nicknamed 'snow monkeys', and those that live in the northern forested regions of Japan have a propensity to warm themselves in hot thermal springs when temperatures drop below zero. The monkeys are often photographed relaxing in the pools, but once they've regained their energy the younger macaques like to play in the snow, rolling snowballs along the ground to enlarge them. The games have no obvious survival purpose, but entire troops do it just for fun.
Snow leopards have a wide range of athletic talents which are useful for living at altitudes of 10,000 feet (3,000m) and above. Short forearms and long hind legs help them navigate the steep and rugged mountain landscape, while their wide paws help distribute their weight over snow. They can also travel more than 25 miles (40km) in a night, but their jumping is their most amazing ability. The cats can leap nearly 30 feet (9m) – some six times their average body length.
Young pygmy goats are social beings and – like some of their human counterparts – like to try and fit in with their peers by adjusting their accents. A UK study showed that baby goats who formed social groups called creches at five weeks old had similar calls, or 'accents' – and that these calls became more similar as they got older. Bats and whales are the only other non-human mammals known to adjust their vocal sounds according to their social environments.
By the end of 2024 more people will have gone to the polls in elections around the world than in any previous year – and it's not only humans that exercise their democratic right. European bison work by majority rule and 'cast a vote' for where they want to go by facing in the relevant direction. Eventually one bison makes a move and if it's the herd's preferred option then the group follows. If it's a less popular option, few follow and the group may split for a short time before coming back together.
Emperor penguins – the largest of 18 species of penguin – are native to Antarctica where they breed and raise their young. When they breed, the female lays a single egg before passing it over to her mate to incubate and heading off to feed at sea for nine weeks before the chick hatches. The males left behind to look after the egg will not eat for up to four months, relying entirely on the reserves of body fat they built up during their own summer feast ahead of the breeding season.
Immortal jellyfish – or turritopsis dohrnii to use their scientific name – may well live up to their title. Most jellyfish species are pretty short-lived, but these 'immortal' creatures can essentially roll back their biological clocks when hurt or nearing starvation via an ability called transdifferentiation. It's a complicated process which, in theory, could preserve the jellyfish indefinitely, but this is yet to be proven in practice. Expert data has only been available since the 1980s.
One in every three mouthfuls of our food depends on pollinators like bees, so encouraging them to go about their business is vital for human welfare. However, their hard work can be hindered in hot weather when they sometimes get drunk on fermented nectar – making them wobble and stagger around much like a drunk human. And if they try to get back into the hive while they're still 'buzzing', guard bees act like bouncers and prevent them from entering until they've sobered up.
Kingfishers are among the world's most colourful birds thanks to their striking blue plumage. However, this flash of colour is a trick of the eye and the individual feathers down its back are actually brown – they only appear brilliant blue thanks to a phenomenon known as structural colouration. Another fun fact is that kingfishers' beaks are so aerodynamically efficient that the design of many Japanese bullet trains is modelled on them.
Polar bears are known for their lustrous white coats of fur – perfect for blending in with their snowy surroundings – but what lies beneath is jet-black skin. In fact, their fur isn't white either, but is instead translucent and only appears white because it reflects visible light. Another lesser-known polar bear fact is that they are the only bear species deemed to be marine animals, since they spend so much time on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean.
Howler monkeys live up to their moniker by being noisy – so noisy, in fact, that their calls can be heard up to three miles (5km) away and reach 140 decibels, according to one estimate. By comparison, a jet engine at takeoff reaches about 150 decibels – enough to damage an eardrum. Howler monkeys make a loud whooping noise or roar to establish their territories, with neighbouring troops howling back and forth to let others know their locations.
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Llamas tend to be quite quiet creatures, albeit ones known for their sometimes-comedic facial expressions. But their preferred method of communication is humming, which the animals can do in different ways to express a range of emotions including excitement, anxiety and curiosity. Mothers also hum to communicate with their offspring while male llamas make a distinctive gargling sound while mating – a noise known as an orgle.
We all get by with a little help from our friends and it turns out cows are no different. According to research that measured their heart rates and cortisol levels, many cows have a preferred partner, or 'best friend', and experience less stress when they're hanging out together. There may well be additional benefits to being so social – another study showed that calves raised in pairs perform better in cognitive tasks than calves raised alone.
Theories abound as to why zebras have their distinctive black and white stripes. Some say that they act as camouflage against predators, while others say that they're a fingerprint-like identifier for other zebras or that they help the animals keep cool. However, a 2019 experiment showed that fewer horseflies landed on zebras and horses wearing black and white-striped coats than landed on regular horses. Scientists said that the stripes confused the horseflies' low-resolution vision, making it tricky for them to land.
Sloths are among the slowest animals in the world – plus they snooze for about 15 hours a day – and this is reflected in their metabolism. Spending most of their lives hanging upside down, sloths feed mostly on the fibrous leaves, fruits and sap of certain trees, and their digestion is so slow that, when full, their stomachs can account for 37% of their body mass. They are also 'picky poopers', often making a very slow descent all the way down to the ground to relieve themselves.
Elephants are renowned for their size, which helps them feed from trees with their trunks and deter predators, particularly when standing together in a group. These distinctive characteristics are also the main reason they can't jump – because they just don't need to. The bones in an elephant's knees are pointed downwards, unlike in most animals, and they have relatively weak lower leg muscles and inflexible ankles. They can't summon the necessary spring to push off the ground – even if they wanted to.
Dalmatians are known for their spotty appearance, but when they're first born they're actually a brilliant white. The black spots start appearing within two weeks of birth and continue to develop until they're a year or so old. Dalmatians are a particularly charismatic breed, and according to the American Kennel Club depictions of spotted dogs date back as far as ancient Egypt. The first written description dates from 1375.
While their incessant buzzing may just sound irritating to some, the common housefly is actually surprisingly tuneful and consistently hums in an F key. All musical notes are caused by vibrations – be it from plucking a guitar string, the vibrating air inside a trumpet or the beat of a fly's wings. Common houseflies typically beat their wings at 190 times per second and the human ear interprets that frequency as a pitch along the F major scale.
Mallards are normally associated with park ponds but in California some of these ducks have been joining the locals and surfing along the beaches of Santa Barbara. Researchers have observed the birds letting the swash of a wave carry them down the beach, where they would stick their beaks in the sand to unearth and eat Pacific sand crabs. Researchers speculated that this behaviour could be "a recent by-product of adaptation to human-dominated landscapes".
Dolphins have similar personality traits to humans, and, according to experts, this may even extend to occasional substance abuse. The creatures were shown in a TV documentary to be 'getting high' off pufferfish, which eject a strong defensive toxin when threatened. In small enough doses the chemical seems to induce a 'trance-like state' in dolphins – who were spotted playing and passing a pufferfish between them for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
The octopus is one of the world's most curious creatures. Extremely intelligent, they have a brain-to-body ratio that's the largest of any invertebrate. They can change colour to communicate with other octopuses, possess an astonishing ability to camouflage and are capable of using tools. They also have three hearts and blue blood, which contains copper instead of iron like most other animals as it is better at transporting oxygen in cold, low-oxygen conditions under the sea.
Tigers have extremely distinctive stripy coats, which act as camouflage thanks to a process called 'disruptive colouration' that mimics natural sunlight and helps the animals blend in with grasses and trees. They may look obvious to the human eye but most of their prey – deer, for example – are colour blind to orange and can't easily see them. Another fun fact about tigers is that their skin is stripy too – with each pattern as unique as a human fingerprint.
Standing up to 18 feet (5.5m) tall, giraffes are best known for being the world's tallest land mammals. But they're unusual in other ways too, and their tongues are a strange dark-purple colour thanks to the density of melanin pigments they contain. There's no definitive answer as to why, but experts think the colour provides UV protection as they nibble leaves off the tops of trees under the relentless sun of the savannahs, grasslands and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa.
Kangaroos are part of the macropodidae family, which means 'big foot' – a reference to their large back feet. Appropriately, these Australia and Papua New Guinea natives are the world's largest marsupials. It may come as something of a surprise, therefore, that newborn joeys are just one inch (2.5cm) in length when they're born. They then travel unassisted through their mother's fur to her pouch, where they largely stay in safety until they're mature enough to leave at around 10 months.
Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, contrary to popular belief. Traditionally, people would leave out milk for these spiky little guys – a habit partly informed by the once-common belief that hedgehogs stole milk straight from cows' udders. However, while they do have a sweet tooth, hedgehogs can't digest lactose (milk sugar), so hedgehog-lovers are far better off leaving out water and cat food should they spot one in their gardens.
Gorillas share 98% of their DNA with humans and, because they are so genetically similar, can easily exchange infections with them. However, respiratory infections that are relatively mild in humans can have dire consequences in gorillas – not to mention other apes – and the common cold or flu can be fatal. Studies have shown that a cold can spread rapidly around a troop of gorillas, although fortunately it didn't tend to spread between neighbouring groups.
Red squirrels are famously antisocial; they live alone and are very territorial, apart from during mating season. However, while they enjoy their solo lifestyles, on rare occasions they will adopt young squirrels that have lost their mothers. It is very rare – scientists studying the animals found only five cases of adoption in 20 years – and there is one condition. The abandoned kits must be near relatives, with all five cases involving nieces, nephews, siblings or grandchildren.
As their name indicates, giant anteaters rely on a diet of ants and termites and can eat up to 30,000 insects in a day. Key to this is being able to reach inside ant and termite nests, which they do with a tongue that can reach up to two feet (61cm) outside their mouths – the longest tongue of any land mammal. There's more too: the visible tongue is thought to represent just one third of the total tongue length, meaning that their tongues could reach up to six feet (183cm).