Help inspire your kids’ curiosity about the natural world with these fun facts about animals. You might just learn something new!

Fun facts about animals are entertaining, but they can help inspire your child’s curiosity about the animal world. Learning interesting things about animals can inspire awe and wonder and help your children feel more connected to nature. That connection can play an important part in their relationship with animals.

You may not encounter a penguin or hippopotamus on your woodsy stroll, but your child might notice a hummingbird flying backwards or a butterfly ‘tasting’ with its feet. They might in turn feel more invested in animals’ well-being and grow up to defend their environment.

Children are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for Nature. Properly cultivated, these values can mature into ecological literacy, and eventually into sustainable patterns of living.

Zenobia Barlow

A greater curiosity for and understanding of animals is also a great tool for helping your children face and overcome their fear of insects or other creatures.

MAMMALS & MARSUPIALS

• chipmunks
  • Chipmunks can gather up to 165 acorns in a single day. To temporarily store their food, they use their cheek pouches, which can expand up to three times the size of their head.
  • Similar to their squirrel cousins, some chipmunks are scatter hoarders, hiding their food in thousands of different caches. Others are larder hoarders, hiding their stashes in a ‘larder’ in their burrow.
  • Most chipmunks live in underground burrows, although some make their nests in logs or bushes.
• bats:
  • They are the only flying mammals (though other mammals can glide).
  • They can reach speeds of over 100 miles per hour.
  • Their droppings (guano) can be used to make gunpowder.
  • They are important pollinators. (Over 300 species of fruit depend on bats for pollination.)
  • Some species use echolocation to “see”,
  • others have better eyesight than humans.
• Sloths:
  • From the moment they are born, sloths are able to lift their entire body weight upwards with just one arm.
  • Specialised tendons in their hands and feet lock into place, allowing them to hang upside down for long periods of time without wasting any energy.
  • All sloths are colour-blind, can only see poorly in dim light and are completely blind in bright daylight.
  • Sloths can swim through water three times faster than they can move on the ground.
• raccoons
  • The black markings across raccoons’ eyes allow them to see better – even in the dark – by reducing glare.
  • Their front paws are especially sensitive. Raccoons also use use a technique called “dousing”(dipping their food in water) to heighten their sense of touch, wetting their paws to stimulate the nerve endings.
  • They have adapted to a wide range of habitats, from cities and towns to high mountains.
• skunks
  • A skunk’s odorous spray (which they release as a defense mechanism) has a reach of up to 10 feet, but the smell can be detected up to 1.5 miles away.
  • Before releasing their pungent spray, skunks often perform a warning dance that may include backing away, raising their tail, stomping their feet and – for some – even doing a handstand.
  • Skunks don’t have great eyesight, but they have very good senses of smell and hearing.
  • Skunk spray happens to be highly flammable.
• Chipmunks and other small animals have fast reaction times because they process information more quickly. They are essentially seeing everything around them in slow motion.
• Bears don’t actually hibernate! “Bears go into torpor, which while similar to hibernation is different. When in torpor bears reduce both their heart and breathing rate, and their temperature drops, but less so than animals that hibernate.”
• In preparation for winter, red squirrels make mushroom jerky by drying out mushrooms and placing them in trees.The blue whale can measure up to 100 feet long. Its heart weighs about 400 pounds.
• Koalas’ fingerprints are so similar to humans’ that they might complicate a crime scene.
• Giraffes have black/purple tongues that are around 50 cm long.

• Female lions (lionesses) do 90 percent of the hunting, while males protect the pride.
• Zebras’ stripes may help them ward off insect bites.
• Koalas sleep between 18 and 22 hours a day.
• Polar bears have black skin and their hairs are hollow.
• Polar bears have such a good sense of smell that they can smell a seal on the ice 32 km away and a seal’s breathing hole 1 km away.
• Squirrels practice “deceptive caching“, pretending to hide a nut in an attempt to throw off potential thieves (birds and other squirrels).

BIRDS

• Chickens are the closest living relatives to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• Ostriches have the largest eyes of any land animal, the size of a billiard ball.
• Penguins’ black/white coloring acts as camouflage in the water: white when viewed from below (looking at the light above) and black when viewed from above (looking at the dark water below)
• Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards, they are the smallest birds (the bee hummingbird weighs only 1.95 grams), they have the smallest eggs (about the size of a pea), and their hearts can beat more than 1200 times per minute when flying.

• Ravens can imitate human speech, sometimes even better than parrots.
• Flamingos eat with their heads upside down.
• Birds can sleep with one eye open and half their brain awake.
• Migrating birds can also partially shut off their brains while flying, taking mid-air naps.
• More than 200 species of birds practice a curious habit called anting: placing or rubbing live or crushed ants among their feathers. It’s not clear why they do this. It may be a form of self-stimulation, or it could be that the formic acid secreted by the ants benefits the birds by:
  • helping to decrease skin irritation
  • helping to control parasites (mites, lice)
  • making the ants easier to eat.
• Baltimore orioles can eat as many as 17 caterpillars in a minute.
• “Peregrine falcons may reach speeds of 200 miles per hour when diving for prey. They use their balled-up talons to knock out their prey, then catch the hapless, falling bird before it hits the ground or water.”

• Why don’t birds fall off their perches when asleep? “Two thin tendons, called flexor tendons, extend from the leg muscles down the back of the tarsus bone and attach to the toes. When a bird lands on a perch, these tendons tighten and so the toes lock around the perch. This involuntary reflex keeps a sleeping bird from falling off a perch. The tendons stay tight until the legs straighten.”
• STARLINGS – murmuration
  • murmuration: the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky (NPR)
  • WHY? “Starlings can pack themselves into a roosting site… at more than 500 birds per cubic metre, sometimes in flocks of several million birds. Such high concentrations of birds would be a tempting target for predators. No bird wants to be the one that a predator picks off, so safety in numbers is the name of the game, and swirling masses create a confusion effect preventing a single individual being targeted.“ (phys.org)
  • HOW? “[O]ne bird affects its seven closest neighbors, and each of those neighbors’ movements affect their closest seven neighbors and so on through the flock. This is how a flock is able to look like a twisting, morphing cloud with some parts moving in one direction at one speed and other parts moving at another direction and at another speed.” (Treehugger)

INVERTEBRATES (INSECTS, AMPHIBIANS, ARTHROPODS, GASTROPODS, MOLLUSKS)

• A bee’s wing beats 190 times per second.
• Caterpillars have 12 eyes.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• The honeybee has to travel 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make one pound of honey.

• Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.
• The horsefly can fly up to 90 mph.
• There are close to a million species of insects around the world, with a possible 30 times that number yet to be discovered.
• All bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. Technically, “bugs” are an order of insects called Hemiptera.
• Spiders aren’t actually insects.
• The water [strider]’s legs are so buoyant they can support fifteen times the insect’s weight without sinking. Even in a rainstorm, or in waves, the strider stays afloat.
• dragonflies:
  • can eat between 3-100 mosquitoes per day
  • only eat prey they catch while flying
  • have been around for 300 million years
  • once had wingspans of up to 2 feet
  • have the longest migration of any insect (the globe skinner dragonfly travels 11,000 miles back and forth over the Indian Ocean during migration)
• cicadas:
  • periodical cicadas have one of the longest insect lifespans (13 or 17 years), though only 2-6 weeks are spent aboveground
  • cicadas emerge in densities of more than a million per acre, or around 25-30 per square foot
  • by emerging in masses, cicadas overwhelm their predators, who fill up and can’t eat any more
  • in a full-scale emergence, the mating call of male cicadas can reach over 100 decibels, louder than a chainsaw or lawnmower
• worms:
  • Worms aerate soil, allowing the passage of air, water, nutrients and minerals.
  • In one acre of land, there can be more than a million earthworms.
  • Worms breathe through their skin and have 5 ‘hearts’ (aortic arches).
  • Worms can regenerate some segments of their body.
  • The sun’s UV rays can be harmful to worms, so they are generally only seen at the surface in cloudy or wet weather.
• ladybugs / ladybirds / ladybeetles
  • “The name ‘ladybug’ was coined by European farmers who prayed to the Virgin Mary when pests began eating their crops. After ladybugs came and wiped out the invading insects, the farmers named them ‘beetle of Our Lady.’ This eventually was shortened to ‘lady beetle’ and ‘ladybug.’” (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC)
  • Their coloring and spots are a warning to predators that they taste terrible!
  • They are technically beetles, not bugs.
  • There are 5,000 species around the world, not all of them red (some yellow, orange, brown, pink, black).

• ants
  • A leafcutter ant can carry up to 50 times its body weight and lifts objects by using only its jaws.
  • A field ant’s neck can hold 5,000 times its body weight.
  • The trap jaw ant can close its jaws very quickly — at approximately 100 miles per hour.

• moths
  • Moths are mimicry masters, impersonating less palatable animals or blending in with their environment.
  • They are often considered pests (especially in agriculture), but some are also important pollinators.
  • Moths have an excellent sense of ‘smell’, using their antennae. A male moth can detect a single molecule from a female more than 7 miles away!
  • Their wingspan varies greatly from species to species: an African micromoth (2mm) vs. a white witch moth (28cm).
• roly polies / potato bugs / wood bugs
  • Not actually bugs, not even insects — these “bugs” are actually terrestrial crustaceans.
  • Various names: roly poly, potato bug, isopod, tiggy-hog, parson-pig, cheesy bug, slater bug, woodlouse, pill bug, doodle bug.
  • Their defense mechanisms include rolling up into a ball for protection, as well as and releasing an odor.
  • They like dark, moist environments.
  • They play an important role as decomposers.
• slugs
  • Land-living slugs have four retractable tentacles: two for seeing and smelling, two for touching and tasting.
  • Slug slime is a liquid crystal that facilitates locomotion, keeps their skin moist, protects them from fungi and bacteria, and helps them find a mate.
  • They come in a variety of colors including brown, black, yellow, green, pink, red and blue.
  • Slugs can stretch up to 20 times their length when squeezing through small spaces in search of food.
  • They play an important role by eating detritus and producing fertilizer.
• wasps
  • Wasps live on every continent except Antarctica.
  • Wasp nests are made from the ‘paper’ they make by chewing and spitting out pieces of wood/bark.
  • Wasps can be distinguished from bees by their narrower ‘waists’ and pointed (not rounded) lower abdomens.
  • A queen wasp forms a new colony every Spring.
  • Only female wasps have stingers, making them the primary protectors of the nest/queen.
  • Wasps play an important role as pest controllers. They are also important pollinators.
• Salamanders (like other amphibians) are known as “indicator species” due to their sensitivity to environmental change and pollution. They provide environmentalists with important insight into how an ecosystem is functioning.
• grasshoppers
  • Grasshoppers’ hind legs act like catapults, allowing them to jump high in the air. If humans had comparable jumping abilities, they would be able to leap more than the length of a football field.
  • Grasshoppers’ “ears” are on their bellies/abdomens.
  • Their noises are made through stridulation (rubbing their hind legs against their forewings) or by crepitation, loudly snapping their wings as they fly.

WINTER SURVIVAL

Animals’ winter survival techniques include:

• migration (e.g., butterflies, birds, elk)
• hibernation (e.g., groundhogs, wood frogs, bats)
• torpor (e.g., bears, squirrels, raccoons)
• brumation (e.g., turtles, snakes)
• changing color (e.g., snowshoe hares, arctic foxes)
• thicker coats (e.g., mountain goats, moose)
• making their own ‘antifreeze’ (e.g., insects, fish)

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Language is fascinating and can pique our children’s interest, especially when combined with a subject they love: animals. Collective nouns for animals are a great source of humor and creativity and are simply fascinating!

MAMMALS & MARSUPIALS

• aardvarks: an armory
• apes: a shrewdness, a troop, a family, a band
• baboons: a rumpus, a troop, a flange
• badgers: a cete, a colony
• bats: a colony, a cauldron, a flock, a camp, a cloud
• bears: a sloth, a sleuth
• beavers: a malocclusion, a colony, a family
• boars: a singular, a sounder, a herd
• buffalo: an obstinacy, a gang, a herd, a troop
• camels: a caravan, a flock, a train, a herd
• cats: a clowder, a destruction, a pounce, a glaring, a cluster, a clutter, a kindle, a litter, a pillow
• cattle: a mob, a herd, a drove, a team, a yoke
• cheetas: a coalition
• coyotes: a wiliness, a pack
• deer: a herd, a parcel, a bunch, a mob, a rangale
• dolphins: a pod, a troop
• dogs: a litter, a pack, a cowardice, a comedy, a cry, a kennel, a mute
• donkeys: a pace, a herd, a coffle, a drove
• elephants: a parade, a herd, a memory
• elk: a gang, a herd
• ferrets: a business
• foxes: a skulk, a leash, an earth
• giraffes: a tower, a totter, a herd, a corps
• goats: a herd, a trip, a drove, a flock, a tribe
• gnus: an implausibility, a herd
• gorillas: a troop, a band, a whoop
• hedgehogs: an array
• hippopotami: a bloat, a thunder, a sea, a herd
• hyenas: a cackle, a clan, a pack
• jaguars: a prowl, a shadow, a leap, a parade
• kangaroos: a mob, a troop, a court, a herd
• lemurs: a conspiracy
• leopards: a leap, a lepe
• lions: a streak, a pride, a sawt
• martens: a richness
• mice: a mischief
• moles: a labor
• monkeys: a machination, troop, a barrel, a carload, a tribe
• mules: a pack, a span, a barren
• orangutans: a buffoonery, a family, a troop, a band
• otters: a romp, a raft
• oxen: a drove, a team, a yoke
• pandas: an embarrassment, a sleuth
• pigs: a drift, a drove, a sounder, a team, a passel, a litter
• platypuses: an impossibility
• polar bears: a pack, an aurora, a celebration
• porcupines: a prickle
• porpoises: a turmoil, a pod, a school, a herd, a shoal
• prairie dogs: a coterie, a colony, a town
• rabbits: a colony, a nest, a warren, a husk, a dawn, a herd, a wrack
• raccoons: a mask, a gaze, a nursery, a committee, a smack, a brace, a troop
• rhinoceroses: a crash, a stubbornness, a herd
• seals: a harem, a herd, a pod, a rookery
• sloths: a bed
• skunks: a stench, a surfeit
• squirrels: a scurry, a dray
• tigers: an ambush, a streak
• unicorns: a marvel
• weasels: a sneak, a gang
• whales: a pod, a gam, a herd, a school
• wolves: a pack, a rout, a route
• wombats: a wisdom
• zebras: a dazzle, a zeal, a herd, a cohort

BIRDS

• albatross: a rookery, a flock, a gam
• buzzards: a wake
• cardinals: a radiance, a college, a conclave, a deck, a Vatican
• chickadees: a banditry, a dissimulation
• chickens: a clutch, a brood, a flock, a peep
• cormorants: a gulp, a flight, a sunning, a swim
• crows: a murder, a horde, an unkindness, a conspiracy, a cauldron, a caucus, a congress, a cowardice, a hover, a mob, a muster, a parcel, a storytelling
• doves: a pitying, a dole, a dule, a flight
• ducks: a safe, a paddling, a raft, a dopping, a plump, a team, a brace, a flock, a badling
• eagles: a jubilee, a convocation, an aerie, a congress, a soar, a spread, a tower
• egrets: a conjugation, an RSVP, a skewer, a wedge
• falcons: a cast, a bazaar, a cadge
• finches: a charm, a trembling, a company, a trimming, a glister
• flamingo: a flamboyance, a stand
• geese: a gaggle, a skein, a chevron, a wedge, a flock
• grouse: a pack, a chorus, a drumming, a covey, a grumbling, a leash
• gulls: a colony, a screech, a squabble, a flotilla, a pack, a scavenging
• hawks: a cast, a kettle, a boil, a knot, a spiraling, a screw, a stream
• herons: a siege, a sedge, a battery, a hedge, a pose, a rookery, a scattering
• hummingbirds: a shimmer, a charm, a bouquet, a hover, a glittering, a tune
• jays: a scold, a party, a band, a cast
• kingfishers: a clique, a concentration, a crown, a rattle, a realm
• larks: an exaltation, an ascension, a chattering, a happiness, a spring
• loons: an asylum, a water dance, a cry 
• magpies: a tiding, a charm, a gulp
• mallards: a sorde, a sute, a brace
• narwhals: a blessing
• ostrich: a wobble, a flock, a troop
• owls: a parliament, a bazaar, a glaring, a sagaciousness, a silence, a stooping, a wisdom, a blizzard, a stable, a jail, a prohibition
• parrots: a pandemonium, a company, a prattle
• partridge: a covey, a bevy, a bew, a jugging, a warren
• peacocks: an ostentation, a muster
• pelicans: a pod, a squadron
• penguins: a colony, a waddle, a raft, a rookery, a huddle, a tuxedo
• pheasants: a nye, a flock, a bouquet, a nest, a nide
• pigeons: a dropping, a band, a flight, a kit, a loft, a passel, a plague, a school
• puffins: an improbability, a raft
• puma: a prowl
• quail: a covey, a flock, a bevy
• ravens: an unkindness, a bazaar, a congress, a conspiracy, a constable, a rant, a scatter
• robins: a worm
• rooks: a building, a parliament
• sandpipers: a bind, a contradiction, a fling, a hill, a time-step
• sparrows: a ubiquity, a crew, a flutter, a host, a quarrel, a tribe
• starlings: a clutter, a murmuration, a chattering, a cloud, a constellation, a filth, a scourge, a vulgarity
• storks: a muster
• swallows: a swoop, a gulp, a flight, a kettle, a flight, a richness
• swans: a ballet, a bevy, a drift, a herd, a regatta, a whiteness, a wedge
• swifts: a box, a drift, a swoop, a screaming frenzy
• thrushes: a mutation
• toucans: a durante
• turkeys: a rafter, a gang, a death-row
• vultures: a wake, a kettle, a committee, a cast, a colony
• warblers: a bouquet, a fall, a confusion, a wrench 
• woodpeckers: a gatling, a descent, a descension, a drumming, a fall
• wrens: a chime, a herd
• waxwings: an ear-full, a museum

INVERTEBRATES (INSECTS, AMPHIBIANS, ARTHROPODS, GASTROPODS, MOLLUSKS)

• ants: a colony, an army, a nest, a bike, a swarm
• bees: a swarm, a cast, a cluster, a colony, a drift, an erst, a grist, a hive, a nest, a rabble, a stand
• butterflies: a kaleidoscope, a flutter, a flight, a swarm, a rabble
• caterpillar: an army
• crabs: a cast, a scuttle
• crickets: a crackle
• fireflies: a conflagration
• flies: a business, a cloud, a swarm
• grasshoppers: a cloud, a swarm
• jellyfish: a smack, a bloom, a brood, a fluther, a smuth
• ladybirds/ladybugs: a loveliness
• mosquitoes: a scourge, a swarm, a cloud
• snails: an escargatoire, a walk, a rout
• spiders: a venom
• worms: a bunch

REPTILES and AMPHIBIANS

• alligators: a congregation
• cobras: a quiver
• crocodiles: a bask, a congregation, a float
• frogs: an army
• lizards: a lounge
• rattlesnakes: a rhumba
• toads: a knot, a knab, a nest
• turtles: a bale
• vipers: a generation

FISH

• barracudas: a battery, a school
• eels: a swarm, a bed
• fish: a school
• goldfish: a glint, a troubling
• salmon: a run
• sardines: a family
• sharks: a shiver
• stingrays: a fever
• trout: a hover

sources:

• An Exaltation of Larks, James Lipton
• Collective Nouns
• List of Animal Names

Check out our Collective Nouns of the Wild poster series in our Get the Kids Outside shop.