The Mega Mouth Shark hunts by making its mouth glow to attract prey. Lives in the deepest parts of the ocean and last time I checked never has been caught on film alive.

1. Elephants are the only wild animals that mourn over a lost member of their herd... every year. On the anniversary of their herd member's death, the herd revisits the area that the member died and mourns over the loss for a few days.
2. Elephants are extremely empathetic/sympathetic towards each other, and even towards other animals. Elephants don't like to see others in trouble or getting hurt.
3. There are 13 different otter species.
4. Otters can live up to 16 years in the wild.
5. Male sea otters sometimes... 'accidentally' mistake baby seals for female otters and will attempt to mate with them until the seal dies of drowning.
6. Dolphins 'name' each other and objects; they refer to the given names when communicating. Dolphins are the only wild animals known to do this.
7. Dolphins are bullies; they, sometimes, pick on porpoises and other smaller mammals until the poor thing dies.
8. Cows have best friends and they miss each other when they are separated.
9. The two-toed and three-toed sloths are not even related! They are part of two different animal families. Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, respectively. :o
10. Baby cats are called kittens.. What? Already knew that? Did you know that baby rabbits are also called kittens, not bunnies.
11. Giant Pandas are probably the most misunderstood animal; scientists still can't figure out if they are raccoon or bear. (This study/debate has been going on since the species was discovered in 1869!)
12. Despite its name, the Giant Panda isn't all that big; they only get to, at the most, 250 pounds and stand about 3 feet tall at the shoulder. It was named "giant" panda because of its similarities with the, much smaller, red panda.
13. Giant pandas used to be extremely omnivorous (they ate meat and vegetation) but, due to limited resources, they have slimmed their diet down to mainly bamboo and other vegetation, though they do still eat meat on occasion.
14. Dogs don't like being hugged; they see it as being belittled.
15. Female dogs bite more often than male dogs do.
16. The Chihuahua was named after a state in northern Mexico where it was discovered in 1850.
17. Dogs are not completely color-blind. They can only see ranges of blue, yellow and violet; this helps them see in the dark and detect movement better.
18. Speaking of night-time vision. Cats have excellent night-time vision due to excessive light receptors in their eyes. Cats, however, cannot see in 100% darkness; they still need some source of light to be able to see anything.
19. Cats voices can range to make more than 100 unique sounds, while dogs voices can only make up to 10 unique sounds.
20. Cats' taste buds cannot detect sugar.
21. Ancient Egyptians worshiped cats to the point that they would mummify cats after they have died.
22.Cats use their whiskers for a few different purposes. They use them for balance, smell, and determining whether or not a space is too small for them to fit through.
23. There is an old folk lore behind the whole "dog is man's best friends" spiel that goes: In ancient Egypt, man worshiped the cat. The cat was smart and took advantage of man's worship. The cat enslaved man and forced them to build monuments for the cat, until dog came... The dog chased the cat away and freed man from the cat's evil. The dog became "Man's best friend".
24. The Pope was one of the causes for widespread of the black plague... How is this an animal fact? During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Pope Innocent the 8^th proclaimed cats to be evil. As a result, thousands of cats were burned. The widespread cat killings led to an explosion of the rat population, which provoked the effects of the Black Death.
25. Many people, ever since the Middle ages, have thought of cats to be evil. Many, many cats have been tortured, killed and burned due to this thought.
26. Cats can't be evil, though.. They bring you 'presents' because they think that you're bad at getting food yourself and they don't want you to starve! QuQ
27. Gorillas can lie... There was a gorilla named Koko that was taught to communicate with sign language. Koko also had a 'pet cat' that lived with her. One day, Koko's trainer visited Koko and found that the sink had been ripped out of the wall. When asked what happened, Koko blamed it on the cat. ⁽¹⁾
28. Some marsupials have two.... 'private parts'.
29. The oldest living animal discovered was a 507 year old clam, called Ming, who was accidentally killed when scientists tried to open its shell to determine its age... Oops!
30. Snails can sleep for up to 3 years at a time.

Ferret babies are also called kittens, but mostly kits.
Tasmanian Devil females, part if the marsupial family, will eat their own newborn kittens--yes, them too--if they don't start to drink milk fast enough. This also replenishes the female's energy, no matter how disgusting it sounds.

In response to some facts I have read on here

New study's show that some big cats CAN purr, but only when they breathe out.

And cheetahs can make many more noises then just chirping.



@whoever said they watch documentaries

I do to, usually on natures website.

I have a whole slew of reptile based fun facts.

1. Hognose snakes are known to play dead as a means of self defense rather than biting at a predator. They will go as far as to defecate on themselves to sell the act!
2. Garter snakes give live birth, usually in numbers of 20-40 babies. The largest amount of babies born at one time was 98.
3. In the wild, bearded dragons will often stand on their hind legs to run from danger.
4. Until 1994, Crested Geckos were thought to be extinct. 20 years later, they're one of the most popular animals in the pet industry.
5. Amazon tree boas spend their entire lives in trees. They live, eat, drink (raindrops and mist that gathers on the leaves), mate, and give birth in the trees of tropical South America.
6. Iguanas are extremely hardy animals. They can stay under water for 28 minutes and drop 40 feet from a tree onto solid ground without sustaining injury.
7. There is a creature known as the Flying Dragon-- its a tiny lizard that is native to Asia. While the name is Flying Dragon, they actually glide. This is done with specialized ribs that extend with extra skin to create wings.
8. Axolotls are critically endangered in the wild, but they thrive in captivity. This is due to their natural habitat becoming polluted. (Lake Xochimilco)
9. Axolotls are a type of salamander that fails to undergo a metamorphosis, and so keeps their kills and webbed tail into adulthood.
10. Recent studies show that reptiles in general are much smarter than they were once thought to be. They are capable of learning routes and tricks in small amounts of time.
11. Many snakes can live over 25 years.

Some of my facts exist to debunk myths. Others are just interesting facts.

* There is a common myth (I think it has been mentioned here) that the daddy longlegs is the most poisonous of all spiders and is only harmless because its mandibles lack the strength to penetrate human skin. This is not true. Daddy longlegs are harmless because they have no venom at all.

* Cheetahs are the only cats that do not have retractable claws.

* Hyenas are the only mammal whose females are typically larger than the males.

* The most powerful bird in the world is the Harpy eagle. It is capable of plucking a 40-pound sloth from a tree branch and carrying it to its nest in the forest canopy.

* The octopus is so intelligent that some biologists assert that if it were not for its very short lifespan of 1.5 years, it would be the dominant species on the planet.

* Other than humans, there are only three animals in the world who have displayed hard evidence of a critical language-learning trait called fast mapping: chimpanzees, dolphins, and Border Collies. No one has been able to explain why this ability exists species-wide in chimps and dolphins, but in only one breed of dog. Some of the border collies tested have vocabularies in excess of 1,000 words.

* The skin of a polar bear is black.

* Some members of the weasel family, like the wolverine, are similar to humans in that they will kill other species purely for sport.

* The two animals that are most feared by the Inuit tribes are the polar bear and the mosquito.

* The shark is the only fish that gives birth to live young, rather than laying eggs.

* Sea otters are beginning to evolve away from the ability to walk on land. More and more of them are born lacking the limb strength to support their bodies, and consequently spend almost their entire lives in the water.

* All deep-sea Anglerfish you will ever meet are female.

* The stomach acid of buzzards and vultures will kill anthrax bacteria, which otherwise can survive for centuries in very harsh conditions.

* The most powerful kick ever recorded - are you ready for this? - was produced by a Thai-American martial artist named Mike Chaturantabut. During the filming of a documentary, he kicked a padded wall that was loaded with sensors. The first time, he broke the sensors. The sensors were replaced and thicker padding was added. With his second kick, he delivered 1,600 pounds per square inch with his bare foot. That's the equivalent of the force behind two cars crashing head-on at 50 miles per hour. Sometimes humans are pretty amazing animals, too!

Actually, though the 'fact' you referred to is still indeed a myth, the Daddy-Long-Legs and the Daddy-Long-Legs Spider are two very different animals; the Daddy-Long-Legs does not have venom or fangs but the Daddy-Long-Legs Spider does. It is unknown whether it has extremely toxic venom or not, however, because there have been no scientific human trials on the matter(the only way to find out would be to milk the venom from the spider and inject it into a human, no such studies have occurred).

I never post anything on the internet without first researching it thoroughly. I got my information from the University of California entomology department. The UC system includes Berkeley and UCLA, which rank first and second among public research universities in the United States. The website reads:

"Daddy-Longlegs are one of the most poisonous spiders, but their fangs are too short to bite humans."

This tale has been lurking around for years. I have heard it repeatedly in the United States and even heard a schoolteacher misinforming her class at a museum in Brisbane, Australia.

Daddy-longlegs spiders (Pholcidae) Here, the myth is incorrect at least in making claims that have no basis in known facts. There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing any detrimental reaction. If these spiders were indeed deadly poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom into humans. For a variety of reasons including Amnesty International and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done. Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their being especially poisonous is just that: a myth. There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.

What about their fangs being too short to penetrate human skin? Pholcids do indeed have short fangs, which in arachnological terms is called "uncate" because they have a secondary tooth which meets the fang like the way the two grabbing parts of a pair of tongs come together. Brown recluse spiders similarly have uncate fang structure and they obviously are able to bite humans. There may be a difference in the musculature that houses the fang such that recluses have stronger muscles for penetration because they are hunting spiders needing to subdue prey whereas pholcid spiders are able to wrap their prey and don't need as strong a musculature. So, again, the myth states as fact something about which there is no scientific basis.
In summary

For true daddy-long-legs, the opilionids, the myth is certainly false, and for the daddy-long-legs spiders it is certainly not based on known facts."

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify my point.

I'm pretty sure that's about what I just said..? O.o

"Pholcids, or daddy long-legs spiders, are venomous predators, and although they never naturally bite people, their fangs are similar in structure to those of brown recluse spiders, and therefore can theoretically penetrate skin. For these reasons, "This is most probably the animal to which people refer when they tell the tale," the entomologists assert.

But is pholcids' venom extremely poisonous? Surprisingly, because they almost never bite, scientists have never bothered to conduct research to determine their venom's toxicity to humans . In 2004, the Discovery Channel show "Mythbusters" stepped in to fill this knowledge void. The team set out to coax a daddy longlegs spider into biting the arm of the show's co-host, Adam Savage.

Their official conclusion? Myth busted. The spider was able to penetrate Savage's skin, and he reported nothing more than a very mild burning sensation from the venom that lasted just a few seconds."-Natalie Wolchover, Live Science

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Oh, and there are four (possibly five, if the Onza is counted) different cat species that do not have retractable claws, Cheetahs aren't the only ones. >.>

http://wildcatsarena.blogspot.com/2012/07/non-retractable-claw.html

"Several unique features suggest this, including a different hunting style and the fact that onzas have non-retractable claws, like dogs and cheetahs, not retractable claws like cougars and most other big cats."- The Cryptid Zoo: Onza


Thank you, for your time.