The Female is Pregnant with Pregnant Daughters and Other Fascinating Animals Facts

- The blood of mammals is red; insects’ blood is yellow; the blood of some crustaceans such as crabs, shrimps and lobsters is blue; the sea cucumber’s blood is green and the blood of cockroaches has no color.

- The adult male of the blind and wingless parasitic wasp (Dicopomorpha echmepterygis) mate with their sisters inside the egg of a lepidopsocid barklouse (Echmepteryx hageni) and die without ever leaving the host egg.

- The strikingly beautiful bird named Resplendent Quetzal, or Guatemalan Quetzal will kill itself soon after being captured or caged.

- It was recently found out that a 60 mph bubble jet of water is created when the claws of the pistol shrimps hit each other. When the bubble blows, it creates a sound louder than a rocket launch and for a split second, the temperature in the bubble rises at 4,426 C (8,000 F). The popping, which lasts a billionth of second also creates a flash of light.

- Did you know that camels have three sets of eyelids to protect their eyes from blowing sand? The upper and lower eyelids have eyelashes and the third one is a thin membrane also called haw or nictitating membrane that they can see through during a sandstorm. Other animals with a third eyelid (scientific term: plica semilunaris) include cats, dogs, rabbits, birds and sharks.

Resplendent Quetzal image credit

- Flamingoes are born grey; they turn pink (or orange) due to their main source of food—shrimp, which is high in alpha and beta-carotene (human skin also turns yellowish or orange when eating plenty of carrots, a high beta-carotene food). The beautiful bird’s unusually shaped beaks are specially adapted to separate mud and silt from the food they eat and they can only eat when their head is upside down.

- It was recently discovered that the world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, has a snake-like venom in its bite which sends victims into shock and stops their blood from clotting.

- Owls cannot move their eyes due to their tubular-shaped eyeballs; but they have 14 vertebrate bones in their necks giving them the flexibility to turn it to about 270 degrees.

- Snails produce a colorless, sticky substance that acts as protective mantel under them as they move along, thus, these creepy crawlies can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.

- More human deaths were caused by fleas than all the wars combined; as carriers of the bubonic plague, rat fleas were responsible for reducing the global population by a quarter in the 1400’s.

- Aphids reproduce parthogenetically where the viviparous female is already pregnant with pregnant daughters. This is virgin birth many times over as grandma gives birth to daughters, grand daughters and great grand daughters all at the same time…or something like that.

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