Animals

Tuesday, 1 September 2026
27 facts about turtles
27 facts about turtles
The only vertebrates so armored
The first turtles appeared on Earth at the end of the Permian about 240 million years ago. Although the first ones had neither plastron nor carapace, ...

Did you know?

Octopus
Some species of octopuses, when attacked by a predator, can discard an arm that crawls along the bottom to distract the predator.
Brown recluse spider
Brown recluse spider is native to southern and central United States.
Dodo bird
The name dodo, adopted in the English-speaking world, first appeared in an account by the travel writer Thomas Herbert in 1634.
He assumed that it came from Portuguese. In this language, the word “dodo” means “stupid.”
Pink river dolphin
Unlike other dolphins, they do not have a dorsal fin, but a long dorsal ridge.
Javan hawk-eagle
The breeding usually happens every two years.
The young typically stay with their parents for a year after fledging.
Basking shark
In the past, basking sharks were known as sea serpents.
Because these sharks sometimes swim in large groups on the surface, occasionally one behind the othe ...
Red-necked wallaby
Alloparenting is common among red-necked wallabies.
Females often take care of a non-descendant young.
Bird of Paradise
Male birds of paradise also cross interspecies boundaries in their amorous conquests.
From eggs hybrids are hatched (quite a rare phenomenon in animals living in the wild). Ornithologists have counted over 20 types of such hybrids in birds of paradise.
Insects
Insects breathe using tracheae, to which air is supplied through spiracles.
Tracheae are protrusions of the insects' body walls that branch into a system of tubes inside the body. At the ends of these tubes are liquid-filled tracheae through which gas exchange occurs.
Salamanders
Juveniles
Newly hatched salamander is in a larval form that needs to metamorphose before becoming an adult for ...