ANIMAL FACTS

first of all, ferrets:

Ferrets sleep for about 20 hours a day.

Ferrets were once used to string electrical and telephone cables. In the late 1960's, Boeing Aircraft Corporation in Seattle and British Columbia Telephones used ferrets to lay the guidewires for pulling the heavier cables through conduits. (Just think, that plane you flew in may have been ferret strung.) Ferret stringing ended because ferrets, being the contrary little animals they are, would often just stop in the middle of a conduit and take a nap.

ferret superstitions:

If you are bitten on the neck by a ferret, you will become one of the undead. (orig. Eastern Europe)

Drink the remaining milk from a dish a ferret has lapped from and you will be cured of the whooping cough. (orig. Britain & Ireland)

So, most ferret owners are very healthy vampires.

insects:

A cockroach can live for nine days without its head.

Dragonflies can fly at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.

Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight. They depend completely on their slaves for survival.

An ant can lift over 50 times its own weight. This is the equivalent of a human lifting a lorry!

The world's smallest insect is the fairy fly, only 0.2mm long.

Only female mosquitoes bite. Females need the protein from blood to produce their eggs.

The colour a head louse will be as an adult can depend on the colour of the person's hair in which it lives.

other things:

Sloths spend 80% of their lives asleep.

The embryos of tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother's womb. The survivor is the baby shark that is born.

Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air.

Sperm whales can descend to about 10,000 feet when they are searching for food.

An albatross can sleep while it flies. It apparently dozes while cruising at 25 mph.

The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly straight up, backward, and upside down

Baby hedgehogs are called urchins.

The polar bear is one of the world's few all-white animals. Only its eyes, nose pad, and lips are black; although beneath its white fur, its skin is also black.

A chamaeleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.