Curiosities from Animal World – 10 Pictures

Animals – those wonderful creatures! Regardless of the species, animals continue to amuse and delight us with their behavior every day. This time, we're revealing some curiosities from the animal kingdom.

1. Elephants

Elephants like to swim, and they can “smell” water from a distance of 5 kilometers. As we mentioned in one of the previous articles, elephants use their trunks for many different purposes, like bathing and breathing. But, while diving, elephants use their trunk as a snorkel. Also, they use it for communication because it can produce sounds. They live in families where females have a leading role. A characteristic that resembles so much of people's is their grief. When an elephant from a herd dies, all the members of that herd are grieving, frequently even sadder and longer than humans.

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2. Dolphins

Dolphins are known to like to help other animals and humans, too. Thus, if necessary, they will stay with injured or sick friends and help them to float to the surface, until the help arrives. Dolphins will help whales that wandered into the shallow water to find a way out to the open sea, and they will protect people from dangerous sharks gladly.

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3. Dogs

Dogs can recognize sounds much faster and much better than people, which is not surprising if you know they can hear sounds that are at four times greater distance than the people can hear. Dogs' sense of smell is 100 thousand times more sensitive than humans', and they can determine the direction which the smell is coming from with the help of air flow and their wet muzzle.

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4. Cows

Cows are known to be very caring and loving mothers, also known for their willingness to walk for miles in search of their calves. Cows have a “panoramic view”, which means their eyes can see all 360 degrees. They have an excellent sense of smell and can smell something from a distance of several kilometers, and they can also hear and differentiate various high and low frequency sounds.

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5. Butterflies

Is it just me, or do you all feel that we don't pay much attention to beautiful animals like butterflies? Besides being beautiful, butterflies are very intelligent. In fact, some species lay their eggs on plants that contain toxic substances, in order to protect the eggs. Caterpillars eat the plants, keeping the toxins that aren't bothering them in. As such, they become tasteless to birds and other predators. Speaking of tastes, let's just say that butterflies' sense of taste is 200 times stronger than humans'. Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is known as 'stray' butterfly. Why? Well, this species of butterflies during their eight-month migration exceeds four thousand kilometers, and during the journey four generations of butterflies shift.

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6. Chicken

Chicken have a complex communication system that consists of 30 different sounds which, in case of emergency, serve to warn each other of the danger. Hens and chicken begin to communicate before chicken even hatch from their eggs, and it works in a way that hen produces a sound, so that their chicken can recognize their mother's voice after they hatch. Chicken also have an excellent memory and can differentiate up to a 100 different faces – of course, chicken ones.

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7. Hippos

Hippos, just behind elephants, are second largest terrestrial animals by weight. It's almost unbelievable that in spite of their weight they can run faster than humans.

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8. Mice

Mice are extremely adaptable animals that are equally good at the role of a pet as well as at living in the wild. This makes them one of the most successful mammals living on Earth. In nature, mice are known as top architects who build underground tunnels with special exits to escape in case of an emergency.

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9. Rats

Rats are not just disease carriers, as many people like to imply, but extremely sensitive animals who often sleep huddled next to each other. They share parental roles and they take care of sick or injured rats from their group. Rats also have structured social hierarchy.

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10. Sheep

Sheep are known for their ability to self-heal by feeding on herbs that can help them to overcome the disease. Believe it or not, sheep have great memory – they can remember sheep's and human faces up to 2 years. Goats, on the other hand, are known as animals that are easily adaptable. Even though they are, by definition, domestic animals, they'll easily adapt to living in the wild if necessary – which is a real rarity for domestic animals.

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