If you’re a parent who doesn’t always have time for a bedtime story, or your children have memorized Goodnight Moon after hearing it 17 times, allow us to present you with an alternative to a simple pre-sleep story: telling your kids a new fun fact each night!
One parent on Reddit recently asked others to share the best, simple fun facts that can satiate a child’s curiosity at bedtime, and readers did not disappoint. Below, you’ll find all of the best facts that both kiddos and adults can enjoy, so be sure to upvote the info you can’t wait to share with your little ones!
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"Arctic" means "Bear" "Antarctic" means "No Bear". Not because polar bears live in the arctic and no bears live in the antarctic, but because to get to the arctic you follow the bear constellations, the Big and Little Dipper, and to get to the antarctic you go away from them.
In Switzerland, it's illegal to own just one guinea pig; if you have any, you have to have at least two. They get lonely!
A flock of sheep in North Wales had to be quarantined because they'd learnt to lay down and roll over cattle grids. If they'd made contact with other sheep they might have passed the behaviour on, and all the cattle grids in Britain would become ineffective.
Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale!
The rarest precious jewels in the universe are not diamonds or rubies, they're pearls and amber.. Most precious stones just need minerals and pressure, and that's found everywhere. Amber needs trees, and pearls need oysters, and those are only on earth.
Did you know that there are colors that humans can't see? Animals like the mantis shrimp can see a lot more colors than we can, which means that there are "secret colors" that we will never get to know about. Non 4-year-old explanation: the vast majority of humans see things in "channels" of red, green and blue. Some humans are lucky and are born with four "channels", called [tetrachromats]. Mantis shrimp see things in TWELVE different "channels", and can even see ultraviolet and polarized light.
Its funny how all of these end up being animal facts.
While sea otters sleep, they hold paws so they don't float away from each other.
Also, sugar is pretty much tasteless to cats. They don't have taste buds for sweetness.
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Might be kind of “big thinking” for a 4y but that has always stuck with me.
Butterflies taste with their feet. When they land on a flower, they can tell if it's good to eat just by standing on it.
Birds are dinosaurs.
Whales and dolphins are more closely related to hippos than fish.
A cartoonist named the spikes on the stegosaurus tail.
There are more plastic flamingo lawn ornaments in the US than there are wild flamingos in the entire world.
Horses can't throw up and will get sick from tummy aches to potentially need surgery.
And it can be fatal. Also, instead of having multiple stomachs and ruminating, they have a 4ft long chamber in their intestine called the caecum, filled with bacteria that breaks down their roughage. Changes to a horse's diet must be made slowly so the bacterial strains have time to adapt. Lastly, if they don't chew their food properly (say, if they rush their meal or they have bad teeth) they can get 'choke'. Not the same as in humans, it's a function of having a long and horizontal oesophagus. A food bolus can get stuck partway to the stomach and causes a bulge into the trachea (windpipe), severely restricting breathing. The vet will try 'drenching' (forcing liquid down) but it's not always successful. Very traumatic all around. My local yard lost a pony to choke a couple of weeks ago, devastating.
1. Honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly edible!
2. Penguins waddle because their legs are short and their bodies are chubby. It helps them balance on the ice.
3. The sound a giraffe makes is called a "bleat." It's sort of like a sheep's sound but much quieter.
4. A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance." Isn't that a fun word?
5. Octopuses have three hearts! Two pump blood to the gills, and one pumps blood to the rest of the body.
6. Lightning is like a giant spark of electricity. It happens when tiny ice crystals bump into each other in a cloud.
7. Bees dance to tell other bees where to find yummy flowers. It's like a bee dance party!
8. Cats have a special "meow" just for humans. They learned that we pay attention when they make that sound.
9. Your fingerprints are unique. No one else in the world has the same fingerprints as you!
The fruit orange was named before we had named a color orange
Did you know that cats aren't technically domesticated? They're still technically wild.
Actually, not exactly. The house cat (Felis Silvestris Catus) descended from the African Wild Cat (Felis Silvestris Lybica), and is now a separate species that is considered domesticated. True wild cats cannot be domesticated. That said, house cats (FS Catus) can become feral and do pretty well in the wild (except for my dumb cat who once lost his food bowl while sitting next to it).
Tell them "Right now, as you are going to bed at night in the middle of winter, there is another little child somewhere else walking up in the morning where it is summer".
* William I of England was too fat to fit in his coffin.
* Platypus lay eggs and make milk.
* Cows have 4 stomachs.
* Lots of fish can feel electricity
* Cheetahs mew like cats. They can't roar.
* Red seaweed lives deeper in the sea than green seaweed.
We are all made from star dust.
The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.
Wombats poop cubes.
Looks just like the wombats that live in the nature reserve behind our fence in Australia.
Owls cannot turn their eyes in their sockets, they are fixed in place which is why they do the goofy little head rolls/bobs. Its their method of depth perception.
When owls bob their heads when zeroing on a prey target, their heads move in a triangle shape. It's believed they're using trigonometry to calculate.
tell her about those butterflies that have wing patterns that look like eyes that makes animals think they're a predator
a zebra's stripes are as unique as a human's fingerprints.
ok, let's try for a non-animal fact. the planet Venus spins in the opposite direction of other planets
a word spelled the same way forward as it is backwards is called a "palindrome." Mom, dad, and racecar are examples.
When it's Winter in the United States, it's Summer in Australia. When it's Winter in Australia, It's Summer in the United States.
If a month begins on a Sunday, it will have a Friday the 13th.
Cue the Bluey episode where they celebrated Christmas by the pool with a barbecue, and my niece and nephew were thoroughly puzzled (we're in Europe).
Sloths hair grows from their belly.
Sloths climb down from their tree about once a week to poop.
Kangaroos can pause their pregnancy.
Sharks sink if they stop swimming.
A giraffe has a nerve that goes from under their tongue alllllll the way down their neck down near their heart and then back up.
Only a small part of your eye can detect color. (Cones)
Smell is the strong scent tied to memory because the nerve that manages smell goes directly to the brain instead of having a connection along the way.
The tongue is the strongest muscle in the body by size to weight standards.
There’s a SKELETON hiding inside everyone you know!
I heard that on average there is more than one skeleton inside people
While a zebra is smaller than a horse, a zebra can kick with more power than a horse (I think a horse generates about 2000 psi with a kick, while zebras are closer to 3000 psi).
However, domesticated horses are often shod, which makes their kicks much more nasty than being kicked by a bare hoof. Speaking from experience...
the US government has a federal reserve of 1.4 million lbs of cheese
Sure I have some suited for children.
* not all ladybugs, are ladies.
* locust are just hungry hungry grasshoppers.
* Most of the fruit we eat is bought from other nations during the winter.
* with each mile you go into the earth, the more warm it gets.
* There is no pasta at the center of the earth.
* Many house cats wandering neighborhoods are more likely to visit a neighbor if they use the same detergent as their owners.
* Dogs will wait for you, almost forever.
* Tomatoes, Cassava root, potatoes, corn and supposedly ~~earthworms~~ ~~apple pie~~ Navy bean soup… are all from the American continent.
* Exercise allows you to become smarter and faster.
Start with a subject and do facts for a week then switch it up. For example
Dinosaur facts for a week, then space, then history, then geography.
Note: this post originally had 55 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Here's my contribution: most people think that Mt Everest is the tallest mountain the world but it's not. Mt Everest is the *highest* mountain in the world, the tallest mountain is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Mauna Kea is both taller and lower than Mt Everest because it starts on the ocean floor and most of it is underwater.
A giraffes tongue is purple to stop it from getting sun burnt. Maned wolves are not really wolves. Their name means Golden Dog And they bark, not howl. An iguana has 3 eyes. The 3rd is on top of their head, it detects light changes.
Here's my contribution: most people think that Mt Everest is the tallest mountain the world but it's not. Mt Everest is the *highest* mountain in the world, the tallest mountain is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Mauna Kea is both taller and lower than Mt Everest because it starts on the ocean floor and most of it is underwater.
A giraffes tongue is purple to stop it from getting sun burnt. Maned wolves are not really wolves. Their name means Golden Dog And they bark, not howl. An iguana has 3 eyes. The 3rd is on top of their head, it detects light changes.
