10 Spot Ramble: Animal Edition
Who’s ready for a 10-Spot Ramble? I am! I am!
But this time, instead of just any old random facts, I’ve decided to narrow the focus: animals.
(Cue The Animal Song by Savage Garden as the background music for this post. Now mourn the fact it’s been more than a decade since that was the song of the summer. Sigh. I’m getting old.)
1. The only dog that doesn’t have a pink tongue is the chow. I don’t know how this worked out, but I do know with certainty it’s not because the dog and giraffe mated. It’s true the giraffe has a blue/black tongue as well – but if you look at the proportions of a chow it’s obvious there is no giraffe blood in it. (All cross-species mating realities aside.)
2. Turtles, water snakes, crocodiles, alligators, dolphins, whales, and other water going creatures will drown if kept underwater too long. This, my friends, is why these creatures were not allowed to live in the residence halls I used to supervise. Our rule? Animals in the rooms must be underwater 100% of the time and be small enough to flush. Residence Hall dwellers around the country moan, but Resident Assistants coming back from school breaks to the smell of dead, rotting animals rejoice…
3. Almost half the pigs in the world are kept by farmers in China. I also learned from Barbara Walters pigs are smarter than dogs. It almost turned me off bacon. Then I remembered the yumminess of crumbled bacon in grits and decided the pig was going to have to take one for my team.
4. The only mammals to undergo menopause are elephants, humpback whales, and human females. I haven’t gone through menopause. (Obviously, as I’m currently sporting a pregnant belly that is starting to resemble a hard hat taped to my midriff.) However, I’ve been around women with menopause and it hasn’t been pretty… so it’s safe to say I want to avoid any elephant experiencing a hot flash.
5. Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down. I didn’t know cows could dream! I remember the t.v. commercial about happy cows living in California, but I thought that was a fictitious marketing plan. I had no idea there are cows worldwide, not suffering from mad cow disease, dreaming bovine dreams. Who knew?! Now, who’s going to interpret their dreams? I sense a TLC show coming up…
6. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet. If you’ve ever wondered why this sentence is shown for font demonstrations, now you know. Don’t you feel smarter?
7. A house fly hums in the key of F. You can’t tell me this isn’t a fun fact for you! Doesn’t it make you want to go out and find a house fly just to check it?!
8. Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death! When Lizard was in high school he was the recipient of a scorpion sting. It didn’t go so well for him, in fact he’s allergic to scorpions and had convulsions, etc. Strangely enough, the remedy for the allergic reaction was anti-venom using goat byproduct. That, then, made him allergic to all goat by-products, so we don’t eat feta cheese and are scared to own a pet goat, even though they’re the most sociable of all animals and bah in a pleasing manner. All because of a scorpion… so I’m glad to know how to kill the suckers! I’m keeping the alcohol handy.
9. An anteater is nearly 6 feet long, yet its mouth is only an inch wide. I know a few six-foot humans I wish had a small mouth. Might make them easier to be around, although we’d never be able to go out to eat hamburgers. Just french fries. Thin ones. LIke those from In-N-Out.
10. The dumbest dog in the world is the Afghan Hounds. I waitressed in college at a restaurant attached to a hotel. The hotel sponsored the Afghan Hound dog show and I was stunned by how many of the dog owners looked exactly like their hounds! (I learned that’s common for dog owners — and now that we own poodles I have been known to look at them, then at the mop of frizzy, naturally-curly hair on my own head and say, “hm…”) The Afghan Hound may officially have pebbles for brains, but I bet the runner-up for dumb dog is the dachshund. How smart can a dog named like a guttural sneeze actually be? Yep, barely smarter than a dog named after a blanket that looks like one of Charlie’s Angels. The end.
What are your favorite random animal facts?