2-Bubonic plague has not gone away completely.An epidemic in Vietnam between 1965 and 1970 affected up to 175,000 people.
3-Anatomist Gunther Von Hagens offered to buy the body of Russian basketball player Alexander Sizonenko, who is 2.39 metres (7 feet 10 inches) tall, even though he was not dead at the time! Sizonenko refused.
4-People with the condition Cotard syndrome believe that they are already dead, and are walking corpses.
5-In 1945, crocodiles killed 980 Japanese soldiers (of 1,000 in total) who entered a mangrove swamp to escape the British navy.
6-Polar bears have black skin underneath their white fur.
7-The killifish lives in temporary ponds in Venezuela.When the ponds dry up, the killifish embryos can survive in the mud, with no water or oxygen, for more than 60 days. No other creature can hold its breath for so long!
8-The cosmopolitan sailfish can swim faster than a cheetah can run! It can swim at least 109 kilometers (68 miles) per hour, while a cheetah can only manage 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour.
9-In just over 100 years, the ‘passenger pigeon’ went from being the most common bird in the world (in 1810) to being extinct (in 1914).
10-The blue whale has the slowest heartbeat of any animal – it only beats four to eight times a minute.
11-Shaving a pregnant mouse makes her produce more milk and grow larger babies.A bald mouse can digest more food without overheating, and so makes more milk.
12-Some scientists believe that hidden or ‘silent’ genes can return after millions of years.A ‘throw back’ happens if a silent gene gets turned back on – making dolphins with legs, for example, or people who are as hairy as apes!
13-A rhino’s rock-solid horn is made of keratin – the same substance as human hair, skin and nails.
15-Cats don’t like walking across aluminium foil – they hate the noise it makes!
16-Some horseshoe bats in India share their burrows with porcupines.
17-Geese can fly up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) above the ground.
19-Bats always turn left when they come out of a cave.
20-The vervain hummingbird builds a nest half the size of a walnut shell and lays an egg that’s only a centimeter (0.39 inches) long.
21-Savi’s shrew (a tiny mouse-like mammal) is so small it uses the tunnels dug by large earthworms.
22-The largest coprolite (fossilized dinosaur faeces) measures 50 centimeters (19.6 inches) wide and was from a Tyrannosaurus rex more than 65 million years ago. It weighs 7 kilograms (15 pounds 6 ounces).
23-The only fruit eaten by aardvarks is called aardvark cucumber. The cucumber grows underground and relies on the aardvark to spread its seeds.
24-Giraffes have a special valve to help their hearts pump blood all the way up their long necks.
25-Elephants are the only animals with four knees.
26-Most hamsters blink with one eye at a time.
27-A porcupine can swallow 100 times the amount of poisonous hydrogen cyanide that is needed to kill a human and suffer no ill effects!
28-The emperor penguin can dive to depths of 534 meters (1,751 feet) – over one and a half times deeper than a human scuba diver can reach.
29-Rodents (such as rats and mice) make up 40 per cent of all mammal species on earth.
30-The viperfish impales creatures on its teeth by swimming straight at them. Its needle-like teeth are so large, they don’t even fit in its mouth fully!
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