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Golden tigers are one of the rarest animals on the planet. These tigers’ stunning coats do not make them a separate species, though. They’re a breed of Bengal tigers. Their unique coloring is actually a genetic mutation from recessive genes.
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The natural world runs on a hierarchy of power. There is perhaps no better metaphor than that of the queen bee: an all-powerful overlord of hives teeming with thousands of workers.
But is that really the case? Colonies are “queenright” when they have a queen bee. Sometimes, though, the queen is wrong.
Commonly known as killer whales, are orcas really as evil as they sound?
This monochromatic marine mammal has been rumored to play with its lunch: innocent, giggling dolphins. But! Everything isn’t as it seems.
Cetacean stranding is the official term for ‘beaching,’ when a dolphin or a whale gets itself stuck on land. Depending on the species, stranding is explained by several different reasons.
Instances of both single strandings and multiple strandings have been recorded. The latter are instances of group beachings.
Every single category within the animal kingdom features species who regularly exhibit homosexual behavior: vertebrates and invertebrates; amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles; even insects!
We do know that animals can experience pleasure. Think about stroking a cat under its chin or getting the good spot right behind a dog’s ear.
But do they experience pleasure from all interactions? Say, carnal ones? Humans are known to derive pleasure from sex, but do animals?
Arguably the most well-known invertebrate in the world, jellyfish earn their renown from their ethereal presence and their massive populations. Rumors abound about this sea creature’s lifespan. Do immortal beings really populate our seas? It seems like there are hundreds of thousands in every ocean in the world, washing up on beaches from California to Namibia to Japan.
Can they live forever?
Only about .02 inches big (half the size of the tip of a pencil point or ¼ the width of a nickel), the tardigrade is a microscopic invertebrate that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. Most closely related to insects and crustaceans, tardigrades have 8 legs but look more like the horizontal version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than any bug or crab.
Despite the advancements of science and everything we know about the natural world, the individuality of fingerprints is a still a shocking fact to wrap one’s head around. Every single human being has a unique set of fingerprints. What about others in the animal kingdom?
Records of this morbid behavior in other species go back as far as the 2nd century A.D. Claudius Aelian was a Greek scholar who wrote an entire book about it, citing 21 different incidents. Questions about why some animals behave this way have cropped up over the centuries. Even today, scientists struggle with pinpointing the reason. The biggest question is whether or not the animals commit suicide, knowing what it is.
(photo: “Macho mandrill” by Tambako the Jaguar)
The largest of all monkeys, mandrills are impressive figures best known for their stunning coloring. While every color of the rainbow can be found in all manner of life, even Charles Darwin noted that “no other member in the whole class of mammals is colored in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrills.” In his book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin refers to these variegated primates often. Perhaps one of the first to record this species, he certainly paved the way to further study and understanding of them.
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Giant pandas have shorter lifespans than most others of the ursidae family, averaging 20 years.
They come of age any time between 4 and 8 years old, after which the females are sexually active.