Everyone with a cat knows that felines love running around at night, especially when their so-called owners are trying to sleep. Despite that, cats aren’t actually nocturnal — they’re crepuscular, meaning they’re most active during dusk and dawn. The reason they prefer twilight has to do with their hunting instincts, as their eyes are well attuned to low-light conditions that allow them to see their prey while remaining hidden themselves. And because they’re descended from desert hunters, dusk and dawn are also favorable due to cooler temperatures. This doesn’t stop them from sleeping all day, of course, but they’re always ready to wake up in an instant — an adaptation that helps keep them safe from predators and alert to opportunities for tiny prey.

Cats always land on their feet.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fib

While it’s true that cats have a righting reflex that allows them to turn in the air and orient themselves so they land on their feet, it doesn’t always work. When it doesn’t, it’s usually because they didn’t fall from a height that was high enough.

Cats are hardly the only crepuscular creatures. Deer, rabbits, bears, skunks, and possums are among the other mammals you can see out and about as the sun is rising or setting. Birds such as barn owls and common nighthawks can also be crepuscular. Animals you might be surprised to learn are mostly nocturnal include koalas, beavers, and scorpions, among others — and some of them exhibit a level of nighttime activity that could even tire out your cat.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

 In the scorching deserts of North America, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and rainfall is scarce, a small rodent the size of a hamster is thriving — and it’s possible that it’s never taken a sip of water in its life. The kangaroo rat, named for the powerful hind legs that allow it to bound across the arid desert landscape, has solved one of survival’s trickiest problems: how to live in an environment that provides almost no water at all.

This seemingly miraculous feat is achieved through various evolutional adaptations. One of the kangaroo rat’s key characteristics is its ability to get all the moisture it needs from its primarily seed-based diet. When it breaks down those seeds during digestion, one of the byproducts is a small amount of water — just enough to sustain the animal.  

The world’s largest rodent can weigh as much as an NFL wide receiver.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fact

The greater capybara, native to Central and South America, weighs between 110 and 132 pounds on average, but one female specimen in Brazil reached a whopping 201 pounds — roughly the weight of the average male wide receiver.

But producing small amounts of metabolic water alone isn’t enough; kangaroo rats have also developed clever adaptations for conserving water. They don’t sweat or pant like other animals, preventing the loss of much-needed liquid from their bodies, and their kidneys concentrate their urine to an almost crystal-like consistency, with very little water lost through waste. Even their exhaled breath is partially recycled thanks to specialized nasal cavities, which condense moisture to be reabsorbed rather than escaping the body through breathing. 

The small, mostly nocturnal rodents also escape much of the daytime heat by remaining in their underground burrows out of the scorching sun. The combination of all these evolutionary and behavioral adaptations allows kangaroo rats — which have a lifespan of between two and six years — to survive in some of Earth’s hottest and harshest environments without drinking a drop of water.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

Immortality is the dream of ancient mystics and futuristic transhumanists alike, but for humans and most other animals on Earth, the promise of such longevity remains out of reach — that is, unless you’re a jellyfish known scientifically as Turritopsis dohrnii, nicknamed the “immortal jellyfish.” The life cycle of most jellyfish begins with a fertilized egg that grows to a larval stage called a planula. Eventually, the planula attaches itself to a surface, and forms into a tubelike structure known as a polyp. These polyps eventually bud and break away into an ephyra, aka a young jellyfish, and these floating youngsters then develop into adult medusae capable of sexual reproduction.

Jellyfish are fish.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fib

Jellyfish aren’t fish — they’re an invertebrate in the phylum Cnidaria. Marine biologists often prefer using the terms “jelly” and “sea jelly” for this reason.

Most species of jellyfish call it quits at this point, and eventually die like every other species on Earth — but not Turritopsis dohrnii. Instead, when this creature becomes damaged for whatever reason, it can revert to a blob of living tissue that eventually turns back into a polyp, and once again its developmental process repeats. Of course, this jellyfish isn’t immune to the numerous dangers of the ocean — whether from predators or climate change — but if left to their own devices, these incredible creatures can just go on living forever. 

Although the immortal jellyfish is a longevity outlier in the animal kingdom, there are a few other organisms that can pull off similar feats. Planarian worms display a limitless ability for regeneration, and can become two worms when cut in half. Additionally, the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is resistant to basically everything, as it can reassemble its genome and effectively return to life even after intense heat or radiation — a feat that earns the hardy bacterium the fitting nickname “Lazarus microbe.” Maybe immortality isn’t so impossible after all.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

While dogs are often touted as man’s best friend, cats can be so aloof that they seem like little more than a passing acquaintance. However, there is more going on between felines and their human owners than a cat’s sometimes steely exterior may suggest. In October 2022, researchers from France published results from an experiment examining the relationship cats have with their owners’ voices. In the study, cats responded more positively to a familiar human voice (swishing tails, pivoting ears, pausing grooming) than when they heard the voice of a stranger. 

Cats have more bones than humans do.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fact

Humans have 206 bones, but the average cat has 244. A majority of these extra bones are found in a feline’s long tail and backbone. Where humans have up to 34 vertebrae, cats have some 53 vertebrae, giving them additional flexibility and twisting ability.

This builds on previous research from 2013 that found a similar connection between a familiar voice and its effects on a cat — though none of the felines in that study even bothered to get up in response to the voices they recognized. Unlike dogs, cats were never domesticated to follow a human’s orders, and instead were the product of a more symbiotic relationship, as the rise of agriculture gave rise to rodents and other pests for cats to hunt.

The French researchers also studied how owners spoke with their pets; specifically, if they used cat-directed speech — aka baby talk — which is known to positively impact both babies and canines. (In fact, babies learn words more quickly when listening to baby talk.) Owners’ voices were recorded asking questions such as “Do you want to play?” and “Do you want a treat?” using both cat-directed speech and human-to-human conversational speech. Like dogs and babies, cats reacted more positively to cat-directed speech than to an owner’s normal speaking voice.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email