34 Fascinating Facts About Nature That You Probably Didn’t Know

Nature is a world of wonder, here are 34 cool facts about nature

The natural world is full of wonders, here are 34 of the coolest facts about nature.

If you plant an apple seed, it is almost guaranteed that the tree that grows will produce a different variation of apple. This is because apples are highly heterozygous, that is to say, their seeds contain all sorts of different chromosomal traits that, during reproduction, battle it out for genetic dominance. So if you pull an apple from an apple tree, take out all its seeds, plant each seed, each one will give you a different type of apple tree.

Acacia trees grow all over the African Savannah and are a very unique type of tree. They have their own defence system. When animals — mostly giraffes — start to eat up their leaves, the tree increases tannin production to levels making their leaves unappealing to animals. That’s not all. The tree then emits a cloud of ethylene gas which leads to other trees also starting to ling produce more tannin making their leaves unappealing.

Whereas the majority of men and women are sub-fertile by the age of fifty, oak trees don’t start producing acorns until they reach fifty.

Some behavioural scientists believe that one of the reasons that cats bring us dead animals is that they see us as useless hunters who can’t provide for ourselves. So they bring us the dead animals as a way of trying to provide for us.

If ever you get lost out at sea with your pet cat, don’t waste your freshwater on it. It doesn’t need it. Cats can drink seawater. Their kidneys are so efficient that they can filter out the salt.

Cows are extraordinarily loving and extraordinarily forgiving. They also have best friends. Not just that, research done by Krista McLennan of Northampton University indicates that their affection for their best friend is so strong that they feel stressed and often panic when they are separated.

Despite being so loving and docile, when threatened, cows can be deadly. For example, in the US alone they kill on average kill 22 people annually, global figures are unknown, but are believed to be in the low hundreds. When threatened, they tend to form into groups and launch surprisingly well coordinated attacks, which can involve charges. Yep, threaten cows and you could find a group of them charging towards you.

Everybody views rainbows differently. Because we all see the world from a different set of eyes, when we stand next to a person and see a rainbow, because inevitably we are looking at the world from a different angle, we see the rainbow through different sets of raindrops meaning we see different rainbows.

Whereas human babies suck on a dummy or their thumbs for comfort, baby elephants suck on their trunks.

Technically, it is possible for an adult — who is not lactose intolerant — to survive on human milk alone. It would lead to deficiencies in many things and due to it being high in fat content it certainly would not count for a healthy diet, not even close. But it would keep you alive. The downside is it would take between three and four women each day to produce enough milk for just one adult to survive.

Human females are the only mammals on earth that have permanent breasts. All other mammals only have breasts when they are feeding a child. It’s believed that breasts as a permanent feature came about as a result of humans evolving to walk on two feet. They are a means of telling men that women are of pregnancy age, so their primary purpose is as a tool to attract men for means of procreation. So when in heat, instead of presenting their rear ends — like other mammals — women would present their breasts instead. So if you ever wondered why both men and women alike can’t help but look at breasts if there’s even a hint of them on show, it is by evolutionary design. Male crotches are the same, if ever there is a hint of a bulge on a man, all eyes will immediately identify it. Meaning yep, our eyes all want to check out male crotches and female breasts and rear ends to see if it’s babymaking time.

If Earth’s history was condensed into 24 hours, the first life would have emerged at 4 AM, land plants would have emerged at 10:24 PM, dinosaurs would become extinct at 11:41 PM, and human history would have begun at 11:58:43 PM.

Owls don’t have eyeballs. Yep, that most unique of creatures that can turn its head a crazy 270 degrees, does not have eyeballs. What they have instead are eye tubes — which allow them superior night vision and binocular vision. However, these eye tubes are static which is why they have such crazy flexible necks, because unlike us — who can move our eyes to change our plane of vision — they have to move their heads.

The three-banded armadillo may be able to roll itself into a ball, which the nine-banded armadillo cannot, but the nine-banded armadillo is capable of transforming itself into a floating device and a sinking device, which the three-banded is not. Yep, rather crazily the nine-banded armadillo can both float and sink. When they want to float, they swallow air and inflate their intestines, making themselves buoyant. When they want to sink, they expel air, allowing them to run across the bottom of a body of water.

Hirondellea gigas — a small, shrimp-like amphipod — have a layer of aluminum hydroxide gel to cover their exoskeleton. No jokes, this shrimp makes its own aluminium armour. It does this because it is a deep water shrimp, so the aluminium acts as a kind of pressure-resistant armor.

There are estimated to be 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the global polar regions. However, unlike popular belief the majority of these are not found at the North Pole, the majority of the polar bear population actually live in Canada. It is approximated that there are 16,000 living there at current — approximately two-thirds of the total global population of polar bears.

Reindeer’s eyes literally change colour with the seasons. In the summer, their eyes are golden but in the winter they change to a dark blue. The reason for the change is to increase the scatter of reflected light. So their eyes change colour so as to give them the optimal vision for the strength of the sun.

Ever wondered why roosters don’t go deaf, despite the fact that their wake-up calls can hit levels upwards of 140 decibels? It’s because they have the power to shut off their ears. Researchers found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external auditory canals close off. That means it does no damage to its ears when it crows because it has by all accounts inbuilt earplugs.

Adult giraffes normally sleep while standing up. However, baby giraffes have a much more comfortable way of sleeping. They use their extra flexible necks to twist their heads around and rest against their own behinds. Meaning baby giraffes use their asses as pillows.

There are studies that say that the majority of male giraffes have more sexual activity with fellow males than females. However, it is believed that this is a misunderstanding about what is going on. Despite this, it is likely that giraffes and other animals in the animal kingdom do engage in homosexual activity. But there are no gay animals per se, mainly because animals unlike humans do not have a sexual orientation — sexual orientation is a human thing. That means there are no straight animals either.

Goats have accents. They don’t have languages. But they do have accents, and they pick them up from each other. The coolest thing, researchers believe that the way they have evolved to do this can help us understand how we came to learn how to communicate with each other.

Democracy is not limited to humans, there are many species of monkeys that practice a form of democratic behaviour. Also, red deer are known to practice a form of democracy, as are African buffalo. In the African buffalo herd, democracy is used to decide which way to go in. The females will stand up, look in a particular direction, then lay back down. The direction that gets the most looks is the direction that they typically traverse in. If voting is strongly divided, often the head splits up temporarily.

Dolphins have been known to help shipwreck victims fight off sharks and stay afloat. There are two theories as for why, one theory is that because they are mammals they are able to understand drowning, and because they are intelligent they able to detect us as fellow sympathetic creatures. Because they understand drowning, and are able to detect when we are in distress, if we are drowning or under attack by sharks while drowning, they help us. The other theory is they see us as an ally in the fight against sharks, so they help us not out of sympathy but out of an alliance against sharks.

Armadillos armour is so strong, that bullets have been known to ricochet off it. And though it is not bullet-proof per se, it is a tough cookie to break.

You should never be mean to a crow. Here is why, their memories are capable of recognition. That means once a crow has seen you they have the capability of remembering you for their entire lives, so get on the wrong side of one and make one dislike you… Well everyone knows what crows are like.

Tigers are one of the most revengeful animals on the planet. If they are wronged, they will make an effort to take revenge against whoever it is that has wronged them. Not just that, but they actually remember those who have harmed them, meaning even if the person who wronged them gets away, if the Tiger gets a chance at revenge in the future, it will take it. One of the most famous stories documenting this is John Vaillant’s The Tiger.

Rather crazily, a cheetah does not roar. It meows like a cat. Not exactly like a cat, it’s a more powerful meow. But it’s still a meow.

Having sex if you are a male bee sucks. Basically, when they have sex their penises explode and they die. This is why during a Queen's nuptial flight, during which she will mate with a dozen or so males, she leaves a trail of dead behind her.

The male orb weaver spider has a clever way to stop his partner from eating him while they are mating. His penis is detachable. Yep, male weaver spiders have detachable penises, so basically their penises are in a way like dildos which they give to the females. After inserting their penises into the female spider, they abandon it inside them and run away. If they are lucky, they will get away, if they are not, they will be eaten.

Female tarantulas typically live for between 20 and 25 years, but can live up to 40 years. Male tarantulas on the other hand typically only live for 7 to 8 years. The divergences are because of a mixture of factors, including the fact that the females eat the males after mating.

Female pandas are only in heat for 24 to 72 hours each year. This is why it is so difficult for zoos to get pandas to mate, and why boosting population numbers in the wild can be so difficult.

Gorillas may be by far and away the most powerful primate in terms of physical strength, but despite this, they actually have the smallest penises, with the average erect length being just 6 centimetres (2.4 inches).

Even though we have no idea how to cure ageing, it is possible to live forever, or at least to not die from ageing. Jellyfish are the proof. Some species of jellyfish can enter a stage called the medusa stage, the most famous is called the immortal jellyfish a.k.a. Turritopsis dohrnii. When this jellyfish becomes injured or gets old, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean and starts to decay, out of which it regenerates by reverting to an earlier stage in its life cycle called polyps.

Just as humans have conjoined twins, snakes can as well. That means yes, there really are two-headed snakes out there and what is crazy about them is that they compete with each other over food. National Geographic explains of the non-venomous ladder snake Elaphe scalaris: “First the two heads have to decide they’re both hungry at the same time, and then they have to agree to pursue the same prey. Then they might fight over which head gets to swallow the prey. To make it even more complicated, since snakes operate a good deal by smell, if one head catches the scent of prey on the other’s head, it will attack and try to swallow its second head.” That means yes, a two-headed snake not only exists, it might actually try to eat itself alive.

That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:

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