Category Wildlife

Many species of birds have flexible necks, but owls rank among some of the most impressive when it comes to rotating their heads. While it’s a common misconception that owls can turn their heads 360 degrees, they still can perform some pretty dramatic feats when it comes to checking out their environment.

Many owl species are capable of turning their heads 270 degrees in either direction. That means “they can look to the left by rotating all the way to the right, or vice versa,” LiveScience.com reports. They can also position their necks so that their heads are almost upside down while their bodies are still facing forward, states The Owl Pages.

So why do owls need to turn their heads as far as they do? Unlike humans and animal species that have spherical-shaped eyes, owl’s eyes are elongated tubes that are fixed in their eye sockets by bone. While this tubular shape comes in handy for an owl’s amazing binocular eyesight, an owl cannot turn or roll its eyes. They can only look straight ahead. So having the flexibility to turn their heads allows them to get a good look around.

Equally as amazing as the head-turning habits of owls is how they can rotate their necks as far as they do without cutting off blood flow to their brains. Research conducted in 2013 at John Hopkins University School of Medicine tried to explain just that. If humans attempted to turn their heads as quickly or as far as owls do, artery linings would tear, causing blood clots to form and potentially leading to a stroke not to mention broken necks, explained study author Dr. Philippe Gailloud in a statement.

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The color red does not make bulls angry. In fact, bulls are partially color blind compared to healthy humans, so that they cannot see red. According to the book “Improving Animal Welfare” by Temple Grandin, cattle lack the red retina receptor and can only see yellow, green, blue, and violet colors. Color vision in mammals is accomplished by a collection of cone cells on the back of the eye (the retina). There are three kinds of cone cells: one kind that detects predominantly red colors, another kind that detects mainly green, and the last kind that detects mainly blue. Although cone cells respond most strongly to their main color, they can still respond to other close colors. This color overlap of the cones’ sensitivity is what allows us to see so many colors. For instance, a pure yellow color stimulates both the red cone and the green cone, and we experience the combination as yellow. If instead of looking at a pure yellow dot of light, you looked instead at a red dot very close to a green dot with the right balance, you would still experience yellow because the red cones and green cones are being stimulated in the same way. This fact makes the manufacture of computer screens very practical. Instead of implanting a million pixels into a computer screen at every point, each with a different color, the manufacturer only has to construct a grid of red, green, and blue pixels. Humans are actually looking at an array of red, green, and blue dots on a screen but perceive millions of colors. Most mammals, including bulls, are dichromats. This means that they only have two different kinds of cones, as opposed to the three in humans. Bulls lack the red cones, but still have the green and blue cones. A bull’s vision is very similar to the vision of a human with red-cone color blindness, known as protanopia. To them, a red cape looks yellowish-gray. It is perhaps the threatening, waving motion of the matador’s red cape that enrages a bull, and not the color.

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Elephants are incredible creatures. The largest land mammals on earth, they show a wide range of behavioral and emotional patterns in their up-to-60-year lifespans. They grieve over the bodies of dead herd members, and can even recognize their own reflections in a mirror. And, of course, there’s that old saying: “Elephants never forget.” While it may be an exaggeration, there’s more truth to the adage than you might realize. 

Science has also proven that elephants have great memories. In 2007, researchers at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland placed urine samples in front of female elephants at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya; according to Scientific American, the elephants “acted up” when they smelled urine that didn’t come from an elephant in their herd. The researchers concluded that elephants can recognize and track as many as 30 of their companions. “Imagine taking your family to a crowded department store and the Christmas sales are on,” said psychologist Richard Byrne, one of the scientists who participated in the study. “What a job to keep track of where four or five family members are. These elephants are doing it with 30 traveling-mates.” Elephants “almost certainly know every [member] in their group,” Byrne said, and exhibit cognitive abilities “far in advance of anything other animals have been shown to have.” 

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The term crocodile tears refers to feigned or insincere sadness.  This term has an etymology dating back several centuries.  As early as the fourth century, crocodile tears are referenced in the literature as a metaphor for fake sorrow.  Apparently, the fable goes that crocodile’s weep while eating their prey because they are sad; however, this sadness is fake.

The term crocodile tears became widely popular after it was documented in a fifteenth-century book titled, The Voyage and Travel of Sir John Mandeville, Knight.  A passage from the book reads: “In that country be a general plenty of crocodiles …These serpents slay men and they eat them weeping.”

As you may already know, crocodilians likely feel bad about little–especially feeding.  However, the premise of the crocodile-tears metaphor may be true.  In other words, the observation that alligators, crocodiles and other crocodilians cry is apparently true.  

In humans, crocodile tears (paradoxical lacrimation) is a medical condition that causes a person to tear up while eating.  Crocodile tears typically occur as a complication of Bell’s palsy; Bell’s palsy is a temporary facial paralysis due to damage of the facial nerve.  Specifically, when the facial nerve regenerates in the wake of Bell’s palsy, it does so incorrectly thus resulting in tears during mastication. Crocodile tears are treated using a shot of botulinum toxin administered to the lacrimal gland.

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In the past, it was a common belief that snakes couldn’t hear much if anything since they have no external ears and don’t seem to respond to noises. However, scientific research refutes this common misconception.

As previously mentioned, snakes do not have external ears (pinnae) or eardrums like we do but they do have fully formed inner ear structures. In addition to their inner ear structures, they have a bone called the quadrate bone in their jaws. This bone moves slightly in response to vibrations while they slither on the ground.

For many years it was undetermined whether or not snakes could hear noises that were not ground vibrations. Research has since shown that this quadrate bone does, in fact, respond to airborne vibrations as well as ground vibrations1? (thought to be due to spinal nerves that have conducted the vibrations from the skin recognizing them and causing the quadrate bone to vibrate, referred to as somatic hearing). As with other animal ears, this movement is transferred (via bones) to the inner ear and then signals are sent to the brain and interpreted as sound.

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“Blind as a bat.- Ouch that must hurt. Especially if you’re a bat! Because bats are NOT blind. And they can see better at night than in daylight. The myth about their blindness could have come about because we all learn that they use echolocation – using echoes of self produced sounds bouncing off objects – to navigate. Research says that some bats do not echolocate and have sharp vision instead to help them. In fact, studies say that occasionally some bats use their eyes even for hunting. Reports suggest that there are more than 1,000 species of bats and they have evolved different visual abilities. For instance, there are species with visual receptors that help them see better in daylight and a few colours too. Apparently, some species can even see ultraviolet light, which humans can’t!

There are at least 1,300 species of bat, according to the advocacy group Bat Conservation International, and those species are a diverse bunch: Some feed off flowers; others eat insects; and three (all Latin American species) feed off blood.

So different species have evolved different visual abilities. Researchers reporting in a 2009 study in the journal PLOS ONE, for example, found that Pallas’s long-tongued bat (Glossophaga soricina) and Seba’s short-tailed bat (Carollia perspicillata), two small bats from South and Central America, have visual receptors enabling them to see in daylight and to see some colors. In fact, some of the receptors may enable these bat species to see ultraviolet light, wavelengths of color that are outside of the human visual spectrum. 

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