40 Facts About Animals That Might Make You Look Like The Smartest Person In The Room

NOTE! The Bird displayed on this picture is not a crow but it’s a Grackle and it was used because of the angry face and it’s a lil bit similar to a crow Crows never cease to amaze with their incredible intelligence, and it isn’t confined to recognizing threats and holding grudges.

Prior research indicates that crows possess the talent to devise tools and even count. Stories abound of crows dropping nuts onto busy roads, waiting for cars to crack them open, and then retrieving the food once the traffic stops.

Some crows have even figured out how to use sticks to extract insects from tree bark or fashion hooks from twigs to fish out food from hard-to-reach places. The study from the University of Washington undeniably contributes to affirming the crows’ place in the intelligence hierarchy among birds.

Crows, it appears, are creatures of memory, holding on to grudges and recalling threats even after a lengthy span of 17 years.

It’s pretty obvious that animals can feel grief. Dogs mourn their owners and each other, and cats mourn the food they were supposed to get 20 minutes ago but didn’t because their human servant tried to sleep in on a Saturday. But one thing that animals don’t do is hold funerals. Cats would probably think it’s sign of personal weakness.

Actually, some animals do hold funerals, and one startling example of an animal that does this is the humble magpie. According to The Telegraph, magpies have been observed engaging in behavior that not only looks like grief, but also a lot like a memorial service. A magpie that encounters the body of another magpie might approach it and peck at it carefully, as if saying, “Frank! Frank! Wake up!” If the body doesn’t respond, the magpie will fly off, and then come back a few minutes later with a few blades of grass, which it will lay next to the body. But researchers haven’t just observed a single bird doing this — other magpies will join in the ritual, each one bringing its own offering of grass. Then the magpies will stand next to the body for a little while before flying away.

This behavior has also been observed in crows and ravens, so not only is it not an anomaly, it isn’t even a behavior that’s confined to a single species. Anthropomorphism rules.

Ever wondered why your heart seems to beat in sync with your dog’s? This is not a figment of imagination, but rather, a scientific fact. Pioneering research from the University of Jyväskylä has made incredible revelations about the profound physiological connection between dogs and their owners.

Every day, we share our cities with an array of wildlife. From birds and insects to squirrels and raccoons, these creatures navigate the concrete jungles alongside us.

But in Los Angeles, a global city of over 18 million people, there’s another species sharing the living space – the elusive mountain lion.

A recent study from the University of California (UC), Davis, Cal Poly Pomona, and the National Park Service highlights an intriguing aspect of urban wildlife.

The researchers found that mountain lions of Los Angeles are shifting their activities, avoiding typically human-frequented spaces to maintain a safe distance.

Animal campaigners are calling for a ban on the public sale of fireworks after a baby red panda was thought to have died from stress related to the noise.

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, a conservation charity that runs Edinburgh Zoo, said Wednesday that it was likely that Roxie, a 3-month-old red panda kit, “died due to stress caused by fireworks being let off across the city centre.”

Fireworks are set off across the United Kingdom on and around Nov. 5, known as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night, in celebration of the failure of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament by a group of dissident Catholics in 1605.

The tradition is centuries old and unique to the U.K., with some towns creating huge elaborate effigies of Guy Fawkes to be burned — sometimes instead building models of contemporary figures, including former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

But animal rights campaigners and pet owners have long complained that the noise causes extreme distress to animals.

The zoological society said that the red panda’s mother also died just five days earlier and that her death could also be related to fireworks noise.

Margays are small, wild cats that live in the evergreen and deciduous forests of Central and South America. They live primarily in trees and use their long, heavy tails for balance.

Mostly nocturnal, Margays hunt in trees and eat birds, eggs, fruit, and small mammals. Female Margays produce a litter of only one kitten every two years. This, along with the fact that Margays have been hunted for their coats, makes these majestic cats endangered.

A solitary dolphin in the Baltic Sea appears to be talking to himself, potentially because he’s lonely, according to a new study.

Over 69 days between Dec. 8, 2022 and Feb. 14 2023, the researchers detected 10,833 sounds, including several usually related to communication. These included 2,291 whistles, 2,288 burst-pulses — a rapid series of clicks sometimes associated with aggression — 5,487 low-frequency tonal sounds and 767 percussive sounds. The findings were published in a new study on Oct. 31 in the journal Bioacoustics.

Among these noises, the dolphin produced three distinctive whistles. “Bottlenose dolphins have what are known as signature whistles, believed to be unique to each individual, much like a name,” Filatova said. “If we hadn’t known that Delle was alone, we might have concluded that a group of at least three dolphins was engaged in various social interactions.”

When you hear about Sgt. Stubby’s accomplishments, it’s hard to deny that he’s worthy of his title. Per the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, in 1917, Stubby was found wandering the grounds of Yale University, where the 102nd Infantry was training. The regiment adopted Stubby, and he quickly became their mascot, boosting morale with tricks like saluting with his paw. When the division shipped out for France, Pvt. J. Robert Conroy smuggled the dog onto their ship. Conroy’s commanding officer discovered Stubby, but he allowed him to stay when the dog gave him a salute.

But Stubby’s contributions weren’t limited to simple tricks. In February 1918, Stubby followed the 102nd Infantry to the front lines, where he became acutely familiar with the smell of gas. One morning, while the soldiers were sleeping, Stubby smelled a gas attack and roused the regiment with barks and bites, likely saving their lives. Later, Stubby would help locate wounded soldiers on the battlefield. At one point, Stubby even helped his regiment capture a German spy, biting the German’s legs and making him fall over.

For his contributions, Stubby was awarded the rank of sergeant, making him the first dog to be given rank in the United States Armed Forces, per the Smithsonian. In the years after World War I, Sergeant Stubby met several U.S. presidents and received many awards. He died in 1926, and his taxidermied corpse is held in the National Museum of American History.

Cats have nine lives — and apparently they have 900 miles in them, too.

Benny and Susanne Anguiano, a couple from Salinas, California, were reunited with their missing cat after he mysteriously traveled that far.

On a trip to Yellowstone National Park in early June, the couple’s beloved house cat Rayne Beau was spooked and ran off into the dense trees.

Distraught, they spent the rest of their trip desperately scouring the forest for him, at times getting lost themselves. They laid out his favorite treats and toys, hoping to lure him back to their campsite.

Benny Anguiano told NBC News that a Yellowstone employee came by their campsite to warn him that a pack of coyotes had attacked a small dog in the area — and that the couple would be lucky if their cat made it through the night. By the time the trip had concluded, Rayne Beau was still missing, Benny Anguiano said.

“We had to leave without him,” Susanne Anguiano said in an interview with NBC affiliate KSBW of Salinas. “That was the hardest day, because I felt like I was abandoning him.”

But as they were leaving Yellowstone, she spotted a special symbol.

“We were driving along and out of nowhere, these double rainbows appear, and it just knit it all together for me,” she told KSBW.

She said she took her cat’s namesake in the sky as a sign to remain hopeful for Rayne Beau’s return. Sixty days later, her wish on the rainbow came true: Her furry friend had been found.

The old English proverb “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” has been used since the 16th century to describe the difficulty of getting someone to act in their own best interests.

Now, research by equine scientists suggests the use of this phrase has been inadvertently maligning horses for centuries.

Horses have the ability to think and plan ahead and are far more intelligent than scientists previously thought, according to a Nottingham Trent University study that analysed the animal’s responses to a reward-based game.