Rats and Other Fascinating Creatures

Ok so for Christmas my mother got me a really neat book entitled The Book of Incredible Information and I took it along with me yesterday knowing that I would be waiting a lot. It's full of a bunch of interesting facts and quotes and what not. Some of them are more interesting than others but I was baffled to read what I did on rats. So much so that I decided to share with you guys. Rats are definitely not my favorite animal... I highly doubt that I would ever have a pet rat, but some people do. To each their own I suppose but here's the facts:

*Talk about pet rat owners, President Teddy Roosevelt kept them in the White House.

*The average lifespan of a rat is less than three years, but one pair can produce 2,000 offspring IN A YEAR! (Quick math for you guys, that's roughly 6,000 kids in a lifetime of 3 years.)

*Health officials in China feed feral rats flavored birth-control pills.

*A group of rats is called a mischief.

*One pair of rats shed more than a million body hairs each year, and a single rat can produce 25,000 droppings in a year.

*It's a myth that rats like cheese. In fact, they're lactose intolerant and can't digest dairy.

*Some rats can enter an opening as small as a half-inch wide.

*Each year, rats cause more than $1 billion in damages in the US alone.

*Some rats can swim as far as half a mile in open water, dive through water-plumbing traps, travel in sewer lines against strong currents, and stay underwater for as long as three minutes.

*Rats constantly gnaw anything softer than their teeth, including bricks, wood, and aluminum sheeting. (If brick is softer than their teeth, just how strong ARE their teeth?!?)

*A rat can fall 50 feet without injury. What's more, rats can jump 35 inches vertically and 48 inches horizontally.

*Rats use their tails to regulate their temperature, to communicate, and to balance.

*Rats are intelligent and have excellent memories. Once a rat learns a route, it never forget it.

*Rats are colorblind and cannot vomit or burp.

Kinda makes you dislike rats even more huh??

I also found a page on other interesting creatures. Check out these facts:

*When some types of frogs vomit, their entire stomach comes out. The frog then cleans out the contents and swallows the empty stomach. (Gross!)

*Pacific Island robber crabs love coconuts so much that they have developed the ability to climb trees to satisfy their cravings.

*The water-holding frog is the greatest survivor in the animal kingdom. When it rains, the frog absorbs water through the skin. It then burrows into the sand, where it can live for up to two years off its water reserve.

*The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees.

*A chameleon can focus its eyes separately to watch two objects at once. This lizard also has a tongue that is longer than his body.

*The eyes of the ostrich and the dragonfly are bigger than their brains.

*The electric eel can produce 350 to 550 volts of electricity up to 150 times per hour without any apparent fatigue.

*Spider silk is five times stronger than steel, but it is also highly elastic- a rare combination in materials. Silk stretches 30 percent farther than the most elastic nylon.

*A large parrot's beak can exert 500 pounds of pressure per square inch, enabling the bird to feast on such delicacies as Brazil nuts with a simple crunch.

*The extinct Madagascan elephant bird laid eggs as large as 13 inches in length and 9 inches in diameter. Today ostriches lay the largest eggs, up to 8 inches in length and 6 inches in diameter.

*Wasps can make paper by mixing wood pulp with saliva to form a paste, which dries stiff.