STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

ANIMAL-EATING HERBIVORES

Plants aren’t the only unexpected carnivores in the world. Some

herbivores like cows and sheep will also turn on their fellow

farm animals if their food is low in nutrients.

COMPENSATION FOR UGLINESS

Zebra finches have been known to lay slightly larger eggs when

their mate is considered to be less attractive. Supposedly the

extra nutrients and room to grow are meant to compensate

for the father’s poor genes.

SQUIRTING BLOOD

Squirting blood as a defence mechanism would be bad enough

but Horned Lizards take it a step further by squirting it

out of their eyes!

GRIEF AND BURIAL

Elephants have several seemingly human rituals concerning

death and the dead. For example, they have been known to visit

gravesites regularly, to bury their dead, and even spend time in

“grief” around the body of a fellow dead elephant.

RUNNING BACKWARDS

Completely blind and in the dark, naked mole rats can run just

as fast backwards as they can forwards.

UNDERGROUND BULLY

On the subject of naked mole rats, the queen mole rat is the

only female in the mole rat colony that can actually have

offspring. Why? Because she pushes the other females around

so as to cause them stress and prevent them from procreating.

HOLDING GRUDGES

Crows have the ability to remember human faces, and apparently

if they don’t like you they won’t forget you either. Scientists who

trapped some crows for research made this discovery when the

crows would constantly heckle them whenever they walked into

the lab. By using masks they came to realize that the crows actually

held a grudge against the people who had trapped them.

Interestingly enough, the children of the crows would later

carry on the same grudge.

WAR DANCE

Ferrets will perform a series of frantic sideways hops

whenever they get excited