Animals Facts for Kids
Amazing facts about creatures big and small
A camel's hump does not store water — it stores fat, which provides energy during long desert journeys. The hump flops over when the fat is used up.
Despite its name and tiny size, the elephant shrew is more closely related to elephants and aardvarks than to true shrews.
The common swift spends almost its entire life in the air, eating, sleeping, and even mating on the wing — landing only to breed. Young swifts may fly for two years without touching the ground.
When a pistol shrimp snaps its claw, the resulting cavitation bubble briefly flashes with light — a phenomenon called sonoluminescence.
The mimic octopus can impersonate at least 15 different animals, including flatfish, lionfish, and sea snakes, by reshaping its body and changing colour.
Leafcutter ants can carry pieces of leaves up to 50 times their own body weight — the human equivalent of lifting a double-decker bus.
Both mother and father flamingos feed their chick on a nutrient-rich red liquid called crop milk, which is produced in their digestive tract.
New Zealand's kiwi bird cannot fly and is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its bill, which it uses to sniff out earthworms in the ground.
Giant pandas must eat between 12 and 38 kilograms of bamboo every day because bamboo has so little nutritional value. They spend up to 16 hours a day eating.
Horseshoe crab blood is bright blue and contains a unique compound used to test medical equipment and vaccines for contamination — saving millions of human lives.