Stephens - The A to Z of Animal Facts

T he aardvark is the first animal in the dictionary and therefore, it is the first in this book. They are incredible animals! They can eat up to 60,000 ants and termites in one night. That equates to over 21 million a year. It is not good to be an ant when an aardvark is around !

A n aardvarks claws are spoon-shaped; they are as strong as steel and can rip into extremely hard ground. These are used to dig out soil to get at the ants and termites .

A ardvarks also have the ability to seal their nostrils to prevent the ants crawling inside. They are so unique in the animal world that they are the only species in their order but their closest relative is the mighty elephant. I knew that trunk looked familiar .

T he sex of an alligator is determined by the temperature when they are conceived .

A lligators teeth fall out when theyve been worn down but are then replaced. An alligator can go through 2,000 teeth across its lifetime .

A nts have two stomachs; they have no lungs and no ears but they can hear by feeling the vibrations on the ground through their feet .

A n ant colony was found that stretched over 6,000km .

S izes in antelope vary massively depending on their species. The giant eland can be as tall as 9 feet while the royal antelope stands at only 25 centimetres tall .

A ntelope have scent glands in between their hooves so a lost antelope can find the herd by following this scent .

W e know the armadillo has a hard shell but their name was a little too literal when describing this. The word armadillo means little armoured thing. Luckily, the armadillo cant hear you call them that as they are pretty much deaf and blind .

S ome species of armadillos have sex whilst running .

D espite armadillos being known for rolling into a ball when threatened, only 2 of the 20 species can do so .

T he agama lizard has a unique and very vibrant way to attract females. During breeding season, they will turn their heads and tails a bright orange while their bodies turn blue .

A nteaters can grow up to 2.1 metres long. Their tongues are 60 centimetres long, can come out twice as far as the length of their head and are strong enough to fight off jaguars. None of this strength and size stopped eccentric painter, Salvador Dali, from walking one on a lead around Paris .

D espite being 7 metres long, the mouth of an anteater is only 1 inch wide .

T he albatross has the largest wingspan of any bird with a staggering width of up to 11 feet 6 inches .

A n albatross was observed laying eggs and raising her young at the ripe old age of 63. The oldest human to ever have a baby was .

A n albatross can circumnavigate the globe in 46 days .

T he arctic fox has the warmest pelt of any animal found in the Arctic. They can endure temperatures as low as -70C. An arctic fox will not even shiver until the temperature reaches -70 C .

A lpacas will use a communal toilet. Because of their ability to naturally go in one place, some Alpacas have been house trained .

A n alpacas fleece is hypoallergenic, water resistant and fire resistant .

T he Amazonian margay wildcat can mimic the distress call of a baby monkey to trick adult monkeys to come down to the forest floor .

T he aardwolf may be second to the aardvark when it comes to alphabetic order but this relation of the hyena is more similar in behaviour to an aardvark, hence its name. It looks wolfish but has a sticky tongue and can eat up to 300,000 termites a night .

A beavers teeth will never stop growing. They gnaw on things to keep them at a manageable length. If they dont, then their teeth will grow into their brains !

A brown slime is secreted from a sac under a beavers tail; it can be collected and used as a vanilla flavouring. It is FDA approved for human consumption. I hope this doesnt put you off your vanilla ice cream .

B ald eagles will free fall in pairs with their talons locked together in an attempt at courtship .

B etween the 40s and 60s, bald eagles were nearly wiped out across almost all of America due to an insecticide, which worked its way up the food chain, causing the eggshells of bald eagles to be too thin. They bounced back with their numbers going from 471 pairs at their lowest to 9700 pairs .

A badgers burrows, called setts, have been found to be centuries old .

B adgers also have a communal toilet that is away from their homes .

B lue whales are known for their size but how big are they? Well, the arteries of their heart are so big that a human could swim through them. It would be a tight fit but you could swim through. Their lungs are so big that a single breath from a blue whale could inflate two thousand balloons .

B arracudas are attracted to shiny objects as they hunt silvery fishes. This means that they will mistake pieces of jewellery worn by swimmers as a potential food source .

C harles Darwin studied barnacles for seven years and was obsessed with them as part of his grand theory of evolution. He once sent a question-filled letter to somebody who had seen two barnacles having sex. Darwin never noticed that many barnacles change the size and shape of their penis to suit their environment .

T o produce one pound of honey, bees have to fly 55,000 miles, which is over twice around the earth. Their task may be somewhat easier by the fact that they have a positive charge which means pollen will jump onto their fur .

A bees wings flaps over 11,000 times a minute, thus giving them their distinctive buzz. The height of their flight is also impressive with bees observed flying higher than Mount Everest at 30,000 feet .

B ees will sometimes fall asleep tucked up in flowers during their time of hunting for nectar. Something less cute about bees? Bees can get sexually transmitted diseases .

M ore people die in the US due to bee stings than snakebites .

W e all know that bats are the only mammals that are able to fly but if they couldnt then they would struggle to get around as their leg bones are so thin that they couldnt walk. Their knees also bend the other way to a humans .

B ats are responsible for tequila as the agave plant is critical to the tequila making process and bats are the primary pollinators of the plant .

B at droppings can be made into gunpowder .

A bats knees bend in the opposite direction to ours. It allows them to run on all fours .

A bats wings can be so thin that blood vessels can be seen on the inside .

B eetles have been around for over 270 million years .

B aboons can supplement drinking by licking their fur clean of condensation .

A socially low-ranking baboon will babysit for a higher-ranking female to elevate his status .

A bowhead whale was found in 2007 with a harpoon embedded in its neck, which had been manufactured in 1890 .

B uffalo will sometimes circle back to get behind hunters. It is called Black Death .

A fully grown blue marlin is 14ft long but at birth is shorter than an inch long .

A bobcat, which can weigh up to 33lbs, can hunt an adult deer, which can weigh up to 250lbs. That is over 7 times its size .

W e have explored some animals beginning with A and B but some just need a little bit more time and detail to truly appreciate and thats what were going to do here. Some carefully selected animals will be given a few more paragraphs throughout the book. First up is the majestic and beautiful butterfly .

Butterflies are well loved and fondly thought of because of the colour and patterns of their wings. I mean moths arent as well liked as butterflies are and that is because they are a tad more boring to look at. Or perhaps it's because they buzz around your lightbulb rather than fluttering around on woodland walks but we are not here to talk about moths (that will come when we reach M). We are here to talk about butterflies; you know butterflies, with the colourful wings? Right? Wrong. They're not actually colourful. The wings of a butterfly are transparent with scales on top that reflect light, giving them their colour .