facts
- Female chickens, or hens, need about 24 to 26 hours to produce one egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again. In addition to the half-hour rests, some hens rest every three to five days and others rest every 10 days.
- Coffee beans aren’t beans – they are fruit pits.
- Apple seeds are poisonous!
- House flies have a lifespan of two weeks.
- Only female mosquitoes bite.
- Each year 96 billion pounds of food is wasted in the U.S..
- Only food that does not spoil: honey.
- The first non-human to win an Oscar was Mickey Mouse.
- In its ancient form, the carrot was purple, not orange.
- Butterflies can’t fly if their body temperature is less than 86 Fahrenheit degrees (30 Celsius).
- Contrary to popular belief, possums, squirrels, chipmunks, and mice don’t carry rabies.
- One reason that kittens sleep so much is because a growth hormone is released only during sleep.
- Recycling a 3 foot (90cm) stack of newspapers can save one whole tree.
- If you plant an apple seed, it is almost guaranteed to grow a tree of a different type of apple.
- Flamingos are not naturally pink. They get their color from their food, tiny blue-green algae that turn pink during digestion.
- Tigers not only have striped fur but they also have striped skin.
- Did you know it takes a plastic container over 50,000 years to start decomposing?
- Chewing gum was created by the Mayans over 300 years ago. They boiled the sap of the sapodilla tree and chewed it.
- The Amazon rainforest produces half the world’s oxygen supply.
- Koalas almost never drink water. They get fluids from the eucalyptus leaves they eat.
- For every M&M you eat you have to run the length of a football field to burn it off.
- Tomatoes were once referred to as “love apples”. This is because there was a superstition that people would fall in love by eating them.
- The Atlantic Ocean has a greater salt content than the Pacific Ocean.
- Crocodiles swallow rocks to help them dive deeper.
- Polar bears’ fur is not white, it’s clear. Polar bear skin is actually black. Their hair is hollow and acts like fiber optics, directing sunlight to warm their skin.
- Almonds are members of the peach family.