Animals Facts for Kids
Amazing facts about creatures big and small
The immortal jellyfish can transform itself back into a juvenile polyp after reaching adulthood, essentially reversing its aging process. Scientists are studying this ability for clues about aging in other animals, including humans.
The wide, hammer-shaped head of the hammerhead shark gives it nearly 360-degree vision — it can see above and below it simultaneously. The head also spreads out sensory pores that help detect electrical fields from buried prey.
Koalas have fingerprints so similar to human fingerprints that they have reportedly confused crime scene investigators. They evolved independently from human fingerprints — making them one of the rare examples of convergent evolution in this trait.
Giant pandas have a carnivore's digestive system but eat almost exclusively bamboo, which has very little nutrition. To survive, they must eat up to 84 pounds of bamboo every single day for up to 16 hours.
Female praying mantises sometimes eat the male during or after mating. Far from harming reproduction, this provides nutrients that help her lay more and better-nourished eggs.
Bats navigate in complete darkness using echolocation, emitting ultrasonic pulses and interpreting the echoes. Some species can detect an object as thin as a human hair while flying at full speed.
The Portuguese man o' war looks like a jellyfish but is actually a colonial organism made up of thousands of individual animals called zooids, each specialized for a different function like stinging, digesting, or reproducing.
Northern elephant seals can dive to depths of nearly 5,000 feet and hold their breath for up to two hours. To do this, their blood contains far more oxygen-storing hemoglobin than land mammals, turning it nearly black.
When threatened, the frilled-neck lizard spreads a large frill around its head, opens its mouth wide, and hisses loudly. If the bluff fails, it runs away on its two hind legs at impressive speed.
Honeybees tell their hive-mates exactly where to find flowers using a 'waggle dance.' The direction of the dance indicates the direction of the flowers relative to the sun, and the duration tells the distance.