New York City’s drinking water is often called “the Champagne of tap water,” and while it doesn’t sparkle, it does have another unique property: It contains microscopic crustaceans. The tiny creatures are nearly invisible to the naked eye, and when they are spotted in a freshly poured cup, they resemble small specks of white dust. Despite their size, the crustaceans — aka copepods — play a major role in keeping the city’s water supply safe. That’s because copepods eat mosquito larvae often found floating in water, naturally improving its quality and taste — a particularly important job considering New York City has the largest unfiltered water system in the U.S. 

Some shrimp can shoot bubbles to catch their prey.

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Pistol shrimp are named for their unusual method of stunning their meals: shooting air bubbles at speeds similar to a bullet. The bursting bubbles create shock waves, complete with flashes of light and loud noise, which have been known to disrupt underwater submarine communication.

Residents of the Big Apple get most of their water from the Catskill and Delaware Watersheds, which supply about 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water per day to more than 9 million city dwellers and those in nearby suburbs. While the water isn’t filtered, it is treated with ultraviolet light and chemicals such as chlorine, and it undergoes around 600,000 health and water quality tests per year. Copepods can survive these cleansers, flowing through the system to often wind up in a glass of New York’s finest tap water. Despite the benefits of copepods, their existence has created concerns for religious Jewish communities that prohibit shellfish consumption. However, water quality engineers and biologists — who report that copepods exist around the globe in nearly all types of water and are entirely safe to consume — note that the creatures can easily be removed with at-home water filters.

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Lists of the world’s most intelligent animals don’t often feature cows, but our bovine friends have more emotional depth than they tend to get credit for. A 2011 study by scientists at the University of Northampton in England revealed that not only do cows have best friends, but they also get stressed out when separated from their BFFs — a relatable quality if ever there were one. The research was conducted by comparing heart rates and cortisol levels during 30-minute sessions in which a cow was penned with a “preferred partner” it was known to have a close bond with, then a “familiar but nonpreferred individual.” When the besties shared a pen together, their heart rates were lower and other signs of stress were also reduced.

Cows are colorblind.

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Cows have red-green colorblindness, meaning both red and green appear as shades of gray and/or black to them. Red-green colorblindness is also common in dogs, horses, and cats.

Cows aren’t the only animals that form friendships. Chimpanzees and bonobos do, too, as do several others, including dolphins, horses, certain birds, and marmots. Dolphins can identify their friends by taste, whereas most other creatures are known for simply grooming, remaining in close proximity to, and touching their besties — capuchin monkeys, for example, gently stick their fingers in one another’s eye sockets as a bonding ritual.

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Enlisting animals into military service isn’t entirely unusual — dolphins have been used for underwater surveillance and even camels have helped haul supplies. Those successes could be why a Coast Guard program meant to train pigeons for search and rescue missions was able to get off the ground in the late 1970s. Project Sea Hunt’s goal was to more easily (and quickly) find people lost at sea using trained pigeons to act as real-time spotters. Despite their reputation as nuisance fowl, pigeons are easily trainable creatures with outstanding eyesight; they (like many birds) may even have better vision than humans, thanks to their ability to see UV light.

There’s no scientific difference between pigeons and doves.

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There’s not much difference between the birds beyond their name; the word “dove” has Nordic origins, while “pigeon” comes from French. Both birds belong to the Columbidae family and are often categorized by size, but the use of the terms is often subjective.

Pigeons selected for the program underwent six months of training to spot yellow, orange, and red objects in the ocean (the most common colors for flotation devices and rafts), and were then placed in special pigeon chambers underneath helicopters that had a view of the water below. When the trained birds spotted a bright color, they could signal to Coast Guard pilots above by pecking a special pedal that flashed a signal in the cockpit. Test runs found that the pigeons were able to spot targets 90% of the time, compared to the human success rate of just 38%. The pigeons were also faster than their human counterparts, spotting potential victims before humans did 84% of the time.

Despite these successes, Project Sea Hunt was shuttered due to federal budget cuts in the early 1980s. In the years since, the Coast Guard has combined flyovers, ocean-tracking software, and other methods to quickly and safely rescue those lost at sea.

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