UNCOMMON FACTS

A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.
A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby or a cat.
A capon is a castrated rooster.
A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.
A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.
A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.
A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.
A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
A father Emperor penguin withstands the Antarctic cold for 60 days or more to protect his eggs, which he keeps on his feet, covered with a feathered flap. During this entire time he doesn't eat a thing. Most father penguins lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch. Afterward, they feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the mother penguins return to care for the young, the fathers go to sea to eat and rest.
A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.
A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
A Hindu temple dedicated to the rat goddess Karni Mata in Deshnoke, India, houses more than 20,000 rats.
A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.
A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.
A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.
A normal cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum (storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices).
A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.
A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes-sized insects in just one hour.
A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
A zebra is white with black stripes.
After mating, the male Surinam Toad affixes the female's eggs to her back, where her spongy flesh will swell and envelope them. When the froglets hatch, they leave behind holes in their mother's flesh that they will remain sheltered in until large enough to fend for themselves.
All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.
An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while cruising at 25 mph.
An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Ancient Egyptians believed that "Bast" was the mother of all cats on Earth. They also believed that cats were sacred animals.
Animal gestation periods: the shortest is the American opossum, which bears its young 12 to 13 days after conception; the longest is the Asiatic elephant, taking 608 days, or just over 20 months.

The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.
The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.
There are around 2,600 different species of frogs. They live on every continent except Antarctica.
There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in the United States. Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.
There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Turkeys originated in North and Central America, and evidence indicates that they have been around for over 10 million years.
Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water. Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards and forwards.
Whales and dolphins can literally fall half asleep. Their brain hemispheres alternate sleeping, so the animals can continue to surface and breathe.
When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.
When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
Worldwide, goats provide people with more meat and milk than any other domestic animal.