Life is mostly about the pursuit of knowledge and, therefore, the collection of fun facts. All my fun facts were harvested personally…They started as a physical book purchase from Amazon, then moved to a Kindle download where I bookmarked them by hand; at the conclusion of a book they were transcribed into a Snoopy Moleskine, and finally, they appear here for your personal wonderment.
Albatross spend 95% of their lives over open oceans; wandering albatross have the longest wingspan of all birds, 12 feet tip to tip; they can fly four million miles over a lifetime.
The sperm whale that attacked and sunk the whaling ship Essex in 1820 (the real world Moby Dick) was an 85 foot long male, weighing 80 tons with a 20 foot wide tail.
Penguins can cool their stomachs (using them like little refrigerators) to a temperature that slows digestion, they can therefore regurgitate and eat the same food over the course of days.
The first known description of grizzlies were by made by Spanish explorers in 1602, a full 200 years before the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These explorers witnessed grizzlies on the carcass of a whale on California’s central coast on what is now a Monterey Bay beach.
Coyotes are one of the fastest animals in the world capable of speeds up to 43mph. Less than ten animals in the world are faster. Pets only provide one to two percent of an average coyote’s diet
Market hunting destroyed the Labrador Duck, the great auk and the passenger pigeon. The capitalist market wiped nearly 30 million bison and 15 million pronghorn antelope from the continent, as well as the bright green and yellow Carolina Parakeet our only native parrot.
Pronghorn antelopes due to delicate bones and frames, and remarkably low body fat, broad nostrils, huge windpipes and outsized lungs and heart are capable of speeds of 55 MPH for males and 65-70 MPH for lighter females. They can run at 90% of their top-end speed for more than two miles.
In the 1600s 400 million beavers populated the North American continent, there was literally a beaver dam every half mile on every stream and on every watershed.
1.5 million deer collide with cars annually, 90% perish on impact.
Hummingbirds have no natural enemies; there are about 330 different species, most weighing only three to four grams.
At any one time, there are 20 billion chickens on earth; the average American eats about 27 every year.
Cuvier’s and Blainville’s beaked whales are the deepest diving creatures in the ocean.
Hawks (and some other birds) can see the ultraviolet spectrum unlike humans, allowing them to essentially see air, polarized light and the magnetic lines that stretch across the earth.
In Celtic myth, hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next.
Hernando Cortez brought 16 horses (one was a pinto) to Mexico in 1519, and by the 18th century there were millions of wild horses on the American Plains.
Asian elephants weigh about 11,000 pounds; their trunks are longer and heavier than a man; they eat 600 pounds a day and their sense of smell is six times more acute than a bloodhound.
Sharks can detect one part of blood in one million parts of water, and they can detect concentrations of fish extract of one part in one billion.
Duck stamps are the longest running series of stamps ever issued by the U.S. government. The federal duck stamp program was started in 1934 and has generated more than $750 million; 98 cents of each dollar is dedicated to buying waterfowl habitat – 5.3 million acres to date
Coyotes have 1,000 times the number of scent receptors we have and they have hearing that extends to frequencies about 25% higher than dogs. We kill about 500,000 coyotes per year, roughly one every minute.
Alligators prefer dog flesh to human flesh.
The passenger pigeon, It is believed, once constituted 25 to 40 per cent of the total bird population of the United States. It is estimated that there were three to five billion passenger pigeons at the time Europeans discovered America.
Sharks typically have several embryonic pups, the one that eats the others is the one that gets born.
In 1916, the Chesapeake bay retriever was the only American breed in the American Kennel Club.
Cats are either mousers or birders, that is, they chase either birds or mice, not typically both.