Animals Facts

Sea otters often sleep in groups (called 'rafts') and have been known to hold each other's paws while napping so they don't drift apart in the ocean discovermagazine.com discovermagazine.com .

A decapitated rattlesnake head can still reflexively bite and inject venom even an hour after being cut off. In fact, severed snake heads have been known to attack and envenomate unsuspecting humans smithsonianmag.com .

The small-banded kukri snake has a gruesome feeding habit: it slices open the belly of a live toad with its knife-like teeth and then inserts its head to pull out and eat the organs one by one – avoiding the toad’s poisonous skin glands smithsonianmag.com .

Cows have best friends and get stressed when they are separated.

Male ring-tailed lemurs settle territorial disputes with “stink fights” – they rub their tails on scent glands and then wave the odorous tails at rivals to assert dominance smithsonianmag.com .

After giving birth, mother Stegodyphus spiders literally sacrifice themselves: over two weeks the mother vomits up her liquefied insides to feed her spiderlings, and when she finally dies, her babies consume her carcass smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .

Wombats are unique for producing cube-shaped poop. Scientists believe they evolved to drop cubic feces so it won't roll away, allowing wombats to mark their territory with stable, stackable scat smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .

A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance."

Oxpecker birds not only eat ticks off large mammals – they also sip blood from the open wounds of their hosts. These little birds will keep sores open and drink from them, essentially behaving like tiny vampires on rhinos, giraffes, and buffalo smithsonianmag.com .

A blind cave crustacean called Xibalbanus tulumensis is the only known venomous crustacean. It injects prey with paralyzing, digestive venom, liquefies the insides, then sucks out the slurry like juice from a juice box smithsonianmag.com .

When threatened, sea cucumbers will literally expel their internal organs – essentially puking their guts out as a defense mechanism. Remarkably, they can grow their intestines back in a few weeks smithsonianmag.com .

A species of ant (Formica archboldi) in Florida decorates its nest with the decapitated heads and limbs of its prey, especially trap-jaw ants – earning it the nickname “skull-collecting ant” smithsonianmag.com .

Vampire bats can drink blood from a wound for up to 30 minutes without waking the victim. Their saliva contains special enzymes that prevent blood from clotting while they feed, and highly sensitive nerves guide them to warm blood-rich spots on their prey smithsonianmag.com .

The box jellyfish (aka sea wasp) is one of the most venomous creatures on Earth – its sting can kill a human in as little as 5 minutes. This deadly jellyfish also has 24 eyes (for a full 360° view) and even four rudimentary brain-like structures to coordinate its 15 tentacles smithsonianmag.com .

Black widow spiders have venom about 15 times more potent than a rattlesnake’s. True to their name, female black widows often consume their mates after mating, liquefying the unfortunate suitor with their powerful digestive enzymes smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .

One golden poison dart frog carries enough toxin to kill 10 adult humans. Indigenous Emberá people in Colombia have used this frog’s deadly secretions to tip blowgun darts for hunting smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .

The slow loris, an adorable big-eyed primate, is actually venomous. It licks a gland on its arm that secretes a toxin, giving its bite a flesh-rotting effect – slow loris bites can cause severe infection or anaphylactic shock in humans smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .

The Surinam toad gives birth in one of nature’s most unsettling ways: dozens of baby toads erupt from holes in the mother’s back. After the female’s eggs are embedded in her skin and hatch, fully formed young toads pop out through the pores on her back smithsonianmag.com .

Thanks to an extremely slow metabolism, sloths can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes underwater – beating dolphins (who last about 10 minutes) by a wide margin iflscience.com iflscience.com .

Octopuses have three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood.

Several species of skink lizards in New Guinea have bright green blood (and even green bones and tongues) due to extremely high levels of biliverdin pigment – about 20 times higher than the lethal concentration in humans smithsonianmag.com smithsonianmag.com .