Interesting Facts and other Oddities

Blue whale babies weigh up to 7 tonnes at birth.

A female cod can lay up to 9 million eggs.

Snakes can see through their eyelids.

Elephants spend 23 hours a day eating.

Vultures sometimes eat so much they can't take off again.

The Amazon 'Jesus Christ lizard' can run across water.

The biggest Antartic inland animal is a wingless fly measuring about 60 mm long.

Fleas can jump up to 30 cm, twenty times their own body length.

Bluebottle flies can smell meat from distances 7 km away.

Many birds migrate, but the Arctic tern travels furthest. It flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and back again, a trip of 32,000 kilometers.

Some animals can regrow parts of their bodies if damaged. Starfish can grow new 'arms.' Slow-worms can regrow broken-off tails. Lizards can grow new tails.

One golden poison-dart frog could kill up to 1500 people with its poison.

The giant squid has the largest eyes of any animal. They can be 39 cm across, which is 16 times wider than a human eye.

The peregrine falcon can spot its prey from more than 8 km away.

The sleepiest mammals are armadillos, sloths and opossums. They spend 80 per cent of their lives sleeping or dozing.

A mayfly only lives one day, but a tortoise can expect to live 100 years.

Stegosaurus was one of the most famous of the dinosaurs and was an impressive 9 metres long. But its brain was the size of a walnut

Strange but True Facts - Space

The ancient Greeks called our galaxy the Milky Way because they thought it was made from drops of milk from the breasts of the Greek goddess Hera.

Yuri Gagarin survived the first manned spaceflight but was killed in a plane crash seven years later.

Astronauts become a little taller in space. There is less gravity, so their bones are less squashed together.

Astronauts' footprints and Lunar Rover tyre tracks will stay on the moon for millions of years as there is no wind to blow them away.

About 1500 stars are visible at night with the naked eye in a clear, dark sky. There are 88 constellations altogether. The smallest star measures about 1700 km across. It is a white dwarf called LP 327-16.

The first object to orbit earth was Sputnik 1, launched by the USSR in October 1957.

The first animal in space was the Soviet dog, Laika, in November 1957. It died on the flight.

The first animals to survive in orbital spaceflight were the Soviet dogs, Strelka and Belka, launched in Sputnik 5 in August 1960.

The first person to orbit earth was Yuri Gagarin, from the USSR, in April 1961.

The first American to orbit earth was John Glenn in February 1962.

The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova, from the USSR, in June 1963.

The first person to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong in July 1969.