45 interesting facts about your favourite animals

Living on land or in the water, snails are gastropods that in some cases can grow up to 30 centimetres long (ugh). Notorious for their slime trails, researchers have found these may actually have some surprising uses, as antioxidants that can also reportedly regenerate human skin and act as all-natural wound-healers.

Forget about buying the love of your life a diamond ring. If you’re a male penguin, what you’re really interested in finding is a pebble to lay at the feet of your beloved. This gift has a practical purpose, though. The Adélie species of penguin make their nests out of pebbles and rocks, to keep the eggs inside safe from melting snows.

There’s something so joyful about the site of a bunch of penguins jumping into the air before plunging from the ocean onto the ice. Here again, penguins are eminently practical. According to BBC’s The Blue Planet, just before they make this little move “they release air bubbles from their feathers. This cuts the drag on their bodies, allowing them to double or triple their swimming speed quickly and launch into the air.”

These (arguably) cutest of all possible animals have a less attractive side. Once a year they go through what’s called a “catastrophic molt” and it’s as shocking as it sounds; they lose all of their feathers at once, which means no swimming or fishing for dinner for the two weeks or longer it takes for new feathers to grow in.

They eat tulip bulbs from backyards in the spring. In the autumn, they dig up planting beds to hide their acorns. And all winter long they chase the poor hungry birds away from the bird feeder. Still, these backyard thugs are surprisingly good neighbours. According to scientists, they’ll actually adopt orphaned baby squirrels as their own.

The videos are all over YouTube: macaque monkeys in Japan and elsewhere picking the pockets of tourists and taking their coins. What could possibly be inspiring these acts of larceny? Hunger. The clever macaques take their coins straight to vending machines and use them to buy themselves a little snack.

Fact: Pandas are endangered. Fact: Pandas are ADORABLE. Fact: Pandas don’t just eat bamboo, as most of us have been lead to believe (although bamboo does comprise a whopping 99 percent of their diets). Actually, giant pandas are omnivores and when they can get their paws on other comestibles, they also enjoy noshing on small animals and fish.

Sure, they eat roadkill (actually doing us a huge ecological favour). But that’s not the least party-friendly behaviour exhibited by vultures. According to Animal Planet, since these massive birds do not have any sweat glands, they’re forced to find another way to keep cool in the hot months. That way: pooing on their own feet.

According to an article in Modern Farmer magazine, sheep have a lot more going for them than might be immediately apparent. To wit, they “have rectangular pupils that give them amazing peripheral vision – it’s estimated their field of vision is between 270 and 320 degrees; humans average about 155 degrees – and depth perception.” Good luck sneaking up on these herbivores!

Not to be outdone for unusualness in the farmyard, goats have a few odd traits themselves. For starters, they have no teeth in their upper jaws. They’ve also got accents, which vary from country to county. And as if all that wasn’t peculiar enough, reports Mental Floss, one species of goat is known to have its muscles freeze up when it startles, causing it to fall over in a faint-like action.