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| August 30, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 408
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Rated
4.00 stars from 35 votes
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The most dangerous animal on the planet is a mosquito.
At the top of the risk list from mosquitoes is malaria. Even after decades of battling against the mosquito carrier, an amazing 40% of the world's population, mostly those living in the world's poorest countries, is still at risk of malaria. The disease causes more than 300 million acute illnesses each year and over a million deaths annually, mainly children under five.
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| Source: Syngenta.com via Jason Langberg
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| August 27, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 542
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Rated
4.28 stars from 32 votes
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The flea can jump 350 times its body
length (over seven inches high and thirteen inches long). It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
The flea when jumping accelerates 50 times faster than a space shuttle. Without its outer shell it would get smashed by the velocity of the jump.
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| Source: Insecta-Inspecta.com via Emily Pinson
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| July 30, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 470
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Rated
4.22 stars from 18 votes
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Ant trails always fork at 60-degree angles.
Trails leading away from an ant nest always fork at a 60-degree angle, similar to a capital Y. On their way out to pick up food, they take either the left or right branch (30 degrees off their current heading). On their return home, ants need only stay as straight as possible to find their nest.
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| Source: National Geographic
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| July 24, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 438
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Rated
4.45 stars from 20 votes
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A hive of bees must pollinate 2 million flowers to collect the nectar to make one pound of honey. For this they must fly a total distance of approximately 55,000 miles -- or more than twice around the globe.
Honey is effectively regurgitated nectar that has been partially digested by a honeybee. Mmmmm...
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| Source: Wikipedia and Bright & Briscoe
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| July 8, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 257
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Rated
3.86 stars from 21 votes
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There are more plastic flamingos than real ones in the United States.
More than 20 million plastic pink flamingos have been sold since 1957. Flamingos are pink because of the beta-carotene in the shrimp they eat.
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| Source: "So Now You Know" by Bright & Briscoe
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| July 4, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 217
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Rated
4.55 stars from 22 votes
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Penguins have a special organ that turns salt water into fresh water.
Turns out a gland near their beaks filters the saltwater -- once the gland gets full, a penguin will knock his beak on a rock to empty the salt out.
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| Source: Katie Higgins's Snapple cap & Penguin Facts
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| June 27, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 164
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Rated
4.36 stars from 14 votes
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A dachshund (the "weiner" dog) named Baron ran the 50-yard dash in 4.22 seconds. His legs are 4 inches long.
The record for a human being is 5.15 seconds (set by Canadian Ben Johnson in 1988).
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| Source: Animal Planet
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| April 9, 2007
| Animals
FactID: 604
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Rated
3.94 stars from 16 votes
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Bugs outnumber humans 200 million to one!
Insects make up more than half of all living things on Earth, comprising over one million species. For every human, there are 200 million insects. This figure does not include non-insect arthropods, such as spiders and scorpions.
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| Source: Nova ScienceNow and National Park Service
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| November 7, 2006
| Animals
FactID: 186
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Rated
4.20 stars from 35 votes
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On average, every square mile of the earth has the same number of insects as the total number of people on earth (currently 6.5 billion)
The earth's surface area is 197,000,000 square miles.
Multiply those and you get 1,280,500,000,000,000,000 (1 quintrillion or 1 billion billion) insects. That's a lot of bugs.
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| Source: Insect website & Zoobooks.com via Santhe Nagaraj
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| November 18, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 483
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Rated
4.59 stars from 34 votes
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There is a difference between a poisonous snake and a venomous snake.
If you bite a snake and it makes you sick, it's poisonous. If a snake bites you and it makes you sick, it's venomous. Hence, rattlesnakes and cobras aren't poisonous, they're venomous.
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| Source: Jessie Tackett and Snakeman
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| October 18, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 462
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Rated
3.62 stars from 16 votes
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Beavers can hold their breath underwater for 45 minutes.
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| Source: Snapple bottle cap via Jason Langberg
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| October 9, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 453
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Rated
4.55 stars from 22 votes
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A python in the Everglades split itself in half after trying to eat a live 6-foot alligator.
The 13-foot Burmese python was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Pythons are not native to the Everglades -- rather, they have been introduced via pet owners who abandoned their pythons.
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| Source: National Geographic via Jason Langberg
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| September 30, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 446
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Rated
4.08 stars from 12 votes
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Warning: Armed dolphins are now loose in the Gulf of Mexico!
Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with toxic dart harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several of these dolphins are thought to have been let loose inadvertently.
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| Source: Guardian via Chris Cummings
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| September 29, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 445
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Rated
3.70 stars from 20 votes
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Only female mosquitoes bite.
The mosquito's probiscis is very sharp and thin, so it's often not even felt. After sucking in about 5 microliters (5 x 10-6 liters), the mosquito flies off. Unfortunately, some saliva remains in the wound causing swelling and itching.
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| Source: HowStuffWorks via Jason Langberg
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| July 15, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 388
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Rated
3.65 stars from 17 votes
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Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
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| Source: Priscilla Tsai
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| July 3, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 378
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Rated
3.73 stars from 15 votes
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Thai fishermen netted a 646-pound catfish believed to have been the world's largest freshwater fish ever caught in Thailand, a researcher said Thursday.
The nearly 9-foot-long Mekong giant catfish was landed May 1 by villagers in Chiang Khong, a remote district in northern Thailand, and weighed by Thai fisheries department officials, said Zeb Hogan, who leads an international project to locate and study the world's largest freshwater fish species.
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| Source: ESPN via Jason Langberg
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| June 10, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 359
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Rated
4.05 stars from 19 votes
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Dolphins are the only other mammals besides humans that have sexual intercourse for pleasure and not necessarily for the purpose of fertilization.
Most dolphins have a brain roughly equal in weight to an average human brain. It is estimated that they have the intelligence of a two-year old human.
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| Source: Snopes.com via Neal Patel
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| May 27, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 349
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Rated
4.17 stars from 18 votes
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At birth, koalas weigh only 0.5 grams and are the size of a bee!
Eventually they grow to about 20 pounds (9,000 grams) by eating mostly eucalyptus leaves (approx. 500 grams/day as adults).
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| Source: Berkeley site and Wikipedia via Shaival Patel
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| May 9, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 328
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Rated
3.29 stars from 17 votes
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The oldest known animal was a tortoise, which lived to be 152 years old.
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| Source: Jason Langberg's Snapple Bottle Cap
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| May 5, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 327
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Rated
3.83 stars from 12 votes
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The starfish is the only animal that can turn its stomach inside out.
The cardiac stomach, which is a sacklike stomach located at the center of the body, may be everted - pushed out of the organism's body and used to engulf and digest food. Some species take advantage of the great endurance of their water vascular systems to open the shells of mollusks (clams, mussels, etc.), and inject their stomachs into the shells. Once the stomach is inserted inside the shell it digests the mollusk in place!
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| Source: Wikipedia via Katie Higgins
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| April 30, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 323
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Rated
3.93 stars from 14 votes
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Deb: What are you drawing?
Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.
Deb: What's a liger?
Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
Anyway, it turns out they're not just in Napoleon Dynamite! There's a
real liger in Russia!
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| Source: Moscow News and IMDB quotes via Erin Fornoff
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| April 10, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 304
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Rated
4.38 stars from 13 votes
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Sharks are amazing!
Tiny ultra-sensitive ears can detect the movement of prey within a quarter of a mile!
Hypersensitive nostrils can detects a single drop of blood in the water up to 50 yards away. The jaws of a great white can exert 42,600 pounds per square inch of pressure - 24 times the power of a jackhammer.
Great whites have 50 triangle-shaped teeth at any given time. The narrow bottom ones grab and hold prey while the top row cuts the flesh. As front teeth are broken or lost, they are replaced by the new ones from multiple rows of reserves.
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| Source: Men's Journal, May 2005
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| March 16, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 275
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Rated
4.10 stars from 10 votes
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Koko the Gorilla can communicate with humans!
Using a modified version of sign language, Koko has a vocabulary of over 1,000 words, in addition to understanding spoken English!
Dr. Penny Patterson has been teaching her for 23 years and there are some great videos of her signing, painting, etc.
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| Source: "A Conversation with Koko" on PBS
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| February 26, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 260
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Rated
4.62 stars from 21 votes
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Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, fights crocodiles, venomous snakes, and sharks but is scared of birds.
Crocodile Hunter is scared of parrots, because they always bite him and have "nearly torn his nose off", while he says he's been "catching crocodiles since I was nine".
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| Source: Scientific American via Jason Langberg
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| February 20, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 251
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Rated
3.75 stars from 12 votes
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Monkeys can ride dogs.
Check out Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey and his first commercial.
And then there is always the skateboarding dog. Animals rock.
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| Source: ESPN & WKMG-TV8 via Jason Langberg
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| February 12, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 240
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Rated
3.31 stars from 13 votes
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Some dogs have tails (Labradors, Dachshunds) and others don't (e.g. Rottweilers).
It's not because some grow tails and some don't. Most breeds got their start in docking of tails to avoid a tax that was charged on "luxury" dogs - aka pets. Since working dogs weren't taxed and typically had their tails docked, breeders began docking tails to avoid paying the tax.
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| Source: American Rottweiler Club via Elsa
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| February 8, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 238
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Rated
4.31 stars from 13 votes
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Chimpanzees make for funny superbowl commercials (with outtakes)...all this monkey business for only $7.2 million...
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| Source: Careerbuilder.com and NYTimes
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| February 6, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 233
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Rated
4.50 stars from 8 votes
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Shrek isn't just a funny ogre, he's also a funny sheep in New Zealand.
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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
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| February 4, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 235
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Rated
4.59 stars from 17 votes
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Cows have digestive enzymes in their noses which is why you often see them with their tongues in their nostrils.
It helps them digest their food better.
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| Source: Elsa's biology professor
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| January 18, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 207
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Rated
4.17 stars from 12 votes
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Birds don’t have receptors for capsaicin. Capsaicin is the molecule responsible for providing the heat in spicy food.
Spike your bird food with some cayenne and it will deter the squirrels.
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| Source: New Scientist via Aaron Fulkerson
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| November 9, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 129
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Rated
3.89 stars from 9 votes
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A giraffe can run faster than a horse
and go longer without water than a camel.
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| Source: Katie Corbyons
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| September 8, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 98
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Rated
4.14 stars from 7 votes
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Rabbit milk is the most caloric of all mammals.
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| Source: Katie Higgins
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| August 15, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 86
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Rated
4.46 stars from 13 votes
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Approximately 50% of Orangutans have fractures
or broken bones from falling out of trees.
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| Source: Animal Planet
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| August 13, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 83
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Rated
3.50 stars from 8 votes
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1 in 4 million
lobsters is blue.
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| Source: Animal Planet
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| June 24, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 63
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Rated
3.67 stars from 6 votes
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A baby rabbit is called a kitten.
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| Source: Katie Higgins
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| May 5, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 33
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Rated
3.80 stars from 5 votes
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The amazon jungle has anacondas,
turtles, cats, monkeys, macaws, ants, spiders, frogs, etc.
Yet 20% of the all the animal weight in the Amazon jungle is
made up of ants.
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| Source: Wolford and Wright. To Inherit the Earth. via Sara Miner
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| April 17, 2004
| Animals
FactID: 15
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Rated
3.17 stars from 6 votes
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Dogs can skateboard. Incredible.
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