Je suis en train d'Ă©couter une Ă©mission totalement fascinante sur ANimal planet et je vous met le lien:
http://www.animalplanetasia.com/outrage ... ndex.shtml
C'est vraiment super intéressant!
Je vous met les faits d'aujourd'hui (avant qu'ils ne soient enlever pour mettre ceux du prochain épisode). Allez sur le lien pour les faits des prochains épisodes, cliquez sur chacun des thèmes du menu de gauche et vous aurez différents faits sur les animaux qui sont plus fascinants les uns que les autres:
50. The fastest animal on Earth is the tiger beetle, which can run up to 171 times its size in one second. Despite its famous reputation, the cheetah would have to run 770 kilometres per hour just to catch up with this slippery insect.
49. Speed is impressive, but even more amazing is stamina. The honours go to the common swift of Europe and Asia. This bird can remain in the air up to three years without having to make any stops. It eats, sleeps and mates while flying, and lands only to lay eggs, rest its wings, or because it is bored.
48. As the saying goes: from hurry only tiredness remains. There is one animal that lives life very calmly and without any stress. From South America we have the slowest animal in the world - the sloth. It is a species that moves at a surprising 0.2 kilometres per hour. We generally find it perched up on a tree and it comes down only when it has to relieve itself. There are times when it moves with a bit more speed, especially if it is to protect its young. But despite its efforts, it moves just five times faster than a snail!
47. From slowness we move to inefficiency, and this is the case with the penguin, which, compared to any other animal, burns twice as much energy walking. This is due to the fact that its legs are very short, and so it must expend a lot of effort in order to get moving.
46. Elephants can't jump, not even with the help of hurricane-force winds. It is too heavy to lift all four legs at the same time. The flea, however, can jump up to 200 times its own height. This is equivalent to a man jumping the Empire State Building in New York.
45. The roach is more alive than it appears to be - and this statement can be interpreted in various ways. Its brain is located in its body, and if by accident (natural or human) it should lose its head, it can live up to nine days completely decapitated. Its sad ending comes not because it can't think, but because it can't eat.
44. However, there are species that don't have this worry simply because they don't even have brains, as is the case with the starfish. A network of nerves controls all of its movements and activities.
43. In the mammalian world, there are some animals that lack mental agility. The Indonesian tarsier is a primate known for its large eyes. However, few people know that the size of one eye is much larger than its brain.
42. When a lion is ready to mate, there is no lioness that can escape him. Copulation takes place every 15 minutes for an entire week. However, this show of insatiable vigor only occurs every two years.
41. The pig is another 'Don Juan' with much stamina. Its climax can last up to 15 minutes.
40. Clams do not need to worry about the lack of partners, since they are able to change genders whenever they please. However, to change from a male, which is how they are born, to a female can only be done once. That operation is irreversible.
39. There are species that concentrate more on the conquest than on the end result. The Australian bowerbirds' favorite colour is blue. In order to attract a mate, the male uses branches to build a 'love shrine' which it paints blue by mixing its saliva with bilberry juice. Once the shrine is the right shade of blue, the female makes her triumphant entrance - and if she likes it, they mate.
38. Doves are very sociable birds, enjoying the company of other doves to the maximum. In fact, loneliness affects them so deeply that it impedes their ability to lay eggs. But even though they may be alone, the sight of their own reflection is enough to resolve the problem, and as if by magic, they begin to lay eggs.
37. The rhinoceros’ horn simply a mass that is not attached to the skull and is made of a protein found in our hair and fingernails called keratin.
36. Speaking of hair, one of the most common characteristics of mammals is that they all have hair, including the dolphin. At birth, this charming animal arrives into the world with a moustache. But due to a natural depilatory process, within a short period of time the moustache falls off by itself.
35. Vanity aside, a mane of hair goes beyond cosmetics. It is a good type of camouflage. The stripes on a tiger are not found just on its coat; the skin of this predator is also striped. But curiously enough, even though the zebra's coat is striped, its skin is not.
34. How about hair as a means of transportation? The gecko can walk over vertical surfaces thanks to tiny hairs that allow it to adhere to things.
33. What is most amazing is the functionality of these designs. Take the egg. Without entering the eternal debate of which came first, the chicken or the egg, let's examine one simple fact - there are rounded eggs and pointed eggs. Their shape is the direct result of their parents' habitat. Birds that live on land lay round eggs, while birds that live on cliffs lay eggs that won't have a sad ending by easily rolling away.
32. Another reality of natural designs is that size is not always related to the degree of agility. The elephant's trunk is so sensitive that if it were disposed to, it could lift a sewing needle. But the infants of this species can take up to six months to learn how to control and manage their own trunks.
31. The woodpecker is no longer a mystery. With head movements at 20 per second, you'd think that they would be crazy, but scientists have discovered that these birds have a spongy area behind their beaks that works as a shock absorber.
30. Many consider the beaver to be an impulsive animal that only drills tree trunks. It is known that it can cut a trunk that is 25 centimetres in diameter in six seconds. This is not due to an anxiety problem, but rather, to a dental one. If the beaver didn't dedicate itself to filing its teeth, these would grow to the point of piercing its lower jaw.
29. Orangutans would have us believe that they are experts in tree climbing, but they hide a secret that hurts. About 50% of these primates have fractured or broken bones, a consequence of regularly falling off trees.
28. Giraffes, with their tall and erect necks, are one of the best illusionists in the animal kingdom. If we had to guess how many bones it has in its neck, would we need a calculator? Not really! The giraffe has the same number of bones in its neck as a human: seven in total.
27. The Kodiak bear is the largest land carnivore in the world. Its weight is equal to the combined weight of 14 male gymnasts, or about 862 kilograms. This giant creature, however, loses its title against a challenger from another habitat.
26. The blue whale is the largest creature that has ever lived on this planet, weighing about 170 tons and measuring about 34 metres in length. This is the same as the combined weight of 22 elephants and the length of seven giraffes lying in a row. It would take a sloth more than half an hour to go from one end to the other. Its heart is as large as a small car, and its arteries are so wide that a man could swim in them without much trouble.
25. Insects also have their own opponent. The Goliath beetle wears its name with much pride, since it is the largest living insect in the world. It can weigh as much as a cheeseburger, although it is much less appetising! An interesting fact is that 1,590,493 of these insects together would weigh the same as the blue whale.
24. But in this demonstration of grandeur we have one honourable mention: the kangaroo. The amazing thing about this marsupial is not its size, but rather, the extremity of its growth. At birth, it is not much larger than a bean, and once it becomes an adult, it has grown up to 60,000 times its size! This fact makes it the animal that grows the most between birth and adulthood.
23. Regarding size, some species seem to defy the laws of nature. This is the case with the paradoxical frog. The tadpole is five times larger than its parents.
22. The koala never drinks any liquids. This is because it can obtain all the liquid it needs from the leaves of the eucalyptus, which are made up of 50% water.
21. Not all animals follow such a healthy diet, and this is where the complications arise. African elephants suffer from indigestion. That is why they move their bowels frequently. Put into numbers, an elephant produces 100 kilograms of manure per day - but nature has its own cleaning crew. There is a certain type of beetle that feeds on elephant waste and makes the 'evidence' disappear as if by magic.
20. There are other more hygienic species that clear up after themselves. The great tit produces excrement in small fecal sacs that it later removes from its nest. Using this cleaning method, it removes 500 fecal sacs each week.
19. Although it has always been said that eating too fast does not help the stomach do its job properly, this does not take into account the digestive habits of the thorny devil. This reptile's prey is always in motion and if it doesn't hurry, it will stay without its lunch. It's been calculated that the thorny devil eats at a speed of 45 apm, or rather, 45 ants per minute. Behaving much like a gourmet, it eats them one at a time, so that one meal is a feast of approximately 3,000 ants.
18. Frogs are other animals that suffer from digestive complications, and when they need to regurgitate what they've consumed, they find themselves in dire straits. Frogs can't vomit, and whenever they need to, they end up vomiting their entire stomach.
17. The hummingbird, besides being restless, presents a number of curiosities. It can fly in reverse; it flaps it wings 100 times per minute; and in order to produce the energy necessary to maintain all this physical activity, it eats twice its weight in nectar every day - definitely a very speedy metabolism!
16. The blue whale's song can reach 188 decibels - that's as noisy as a rocket.
15. Wolves hunt in packs, and so effective group communication is essential. They use different howls to let others know what the situation is. But in valleys that are surrounded by mountains, echoes can affect this strategy with confusing messages, which is why a wolf's howl does not produce an echo.
14. Some animals can't speak. They don't emit even the most minimum of sounds, but they have found ways to let others of their own kind know where they are. Some animals have pheromones (a substance that affects the behaviour of others in the same species) in their urine, and they leave a trail for others to follow. Such is the case with some ants. Leaving just a milligram of this chemical is enough for other ants to follow, even if they have to go around the world three times.
13. The moth's antennae are so sensitive that they can track even the tiniest amount of female sexual pheromones. The monarch butterfly can detect its lover's scent from eight kilometres away.
12. Male mosquitoes find females by listening for the sound of their fluttering wings. The female fluttering is much faster than that of the male. Although there are thousands of mosquitoes in one swarm, all of them fluttering their wings at once and looking to make a romantic conquest, Romeo will always be able to find his Juliet.
11. But if insects are amazing, arachnids aren't far behind. All land spiders breathe through a hole on the rear part of their bodies. The water spider, as its name indicates, lives underwater but breathes air by using a web to create an underwater bell that it uses to store the air bubbles it has brought from the surface. On closer inspection, it could be said that this spider pioneered scuba diving.
10. It's very challenging to be an animal that needs to breathe air but spends most of its time underwater. The Fitzroy river turtle covers a lot of aquatic miles. When surfacing, it absorbs two-thirds of the oxygen it needs through its rectum.
9. What about animals that breathe air but sleep underwater? The manatee sleeps in between taking breaths. Since it needs to surface every 20 minutes, it takes advantage of the time in between to take a nap.
8. Dolphins don't have time to sleep much. But as they are one of the most intelligent mammals, they've learned to sleep using only half their brains. While one half rests, the other remains alert and continues the respiratory process, without interruptions, and without nightmares!
7. The offspring of the Australian crab spider eat their own mother. Once the young emerge from their eggs, they begin to suck on the mother's legs, until they leave her completely dried up.
6. Some fishes in South America die after laying their eggs or after mating, which also happens to the octopus. However, it has been discovered that if you remove an octopus's reproductive organs, it can live until a ripe old age - albeit bored and without much company.
5. If we had to name one of the animals most dangerous to humans, we would no doubt nominate wolves, bears or snakes. However, reality can be found behind a pair of tender-looking eyes. In comparison to any other animal, the whitetail deer is the species that inflicts the most harm on humans, because of all the traffic accidents they cause.
4. Speaking of faces that can be deceiving, there is another animal that is very dangerous. The actual estimate of annual human deaths due to sharks is 10; however, 100 more people die each year from being stepped on by cows.
3. Death is a reality of life and it has been proven that all mammals produce almost one billion heartbeats before dying. The mouse produces close to one billion, but its life cycle is just 850 days. The elephant has about 75 years through which to spread out those heartbeats. Humans are the exception. They are the only mammals that have a triple amount of heartbeats during a life cycle.
2. They say sharing is a way of life and perhaps some animals have taken this statement to extremes, like for example the prairie dog. The largest known colony was registered in the state of Texas in the United States. It was 160km wide, 402km long, and with 400 million inhabitants.
1. If this number is impressive, there is another that is even unpronounceable. In reality there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on planet Earth. If this is incredible, more surprising still would be to find out who took count!
j’ai appris beaucoup de chose c’étai ben l’fun a lire.
Super intéressant comme article!!
