Animal Kingdom is full of surprises! We never get tired of learning something new about animals. Did you know that sloths can hold their breaths longer than dolphins? And there's a wasp so tiny - it's smaller than an amoeba! We've got the coolest animal facts - all gathered in this video.
One more animal that surprises us - a tiger. Their color raises multiple question. How can tigers hide from prey if orange is the color that draws attention? This and many more questions about animal kingdom will be answered in this video.
00:00Now, sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins.
00:03Yep, incredible, but true.
00:06They slow their heart rate so much, they can stay under the surface for up to 40 minutes.
00:11Unlike fish, dolphins and whales are aquatic mammals, which means they can't breathe underwater.
00:17When it comes to breathing, they're more similar to us than the fish.
00:21Both of them have lungs, and they breathe air through something we know as a blowhole.
00:25When they're under the surface, they hold their breath until they come up for some air again.
00:30Dolphins can stay under the water for 10 minutes.
00:33A sperm whale can hold its breath for 90 minutes,
00:36while an elephant seal holds the record when it comes to aquatic mammals
00:40and can stay under the water for 2 hours without having to go up.
00:45There's a wasp so tiny, much tinier than its name, it's smaller than an amoeba,
00:51even though amoebas are made of one cell only.
00:53You can see this wasp has the same body parts as the rest of the bugs – wings, brain, eyes, and the rest –
01:00but it's really a tiny version of an insect, since it's only 8 thousandths of an inch long.
01:07And the smallest adult insect we know of is a parasitic wasp with a big name, also known as the fairy fly.
01:15Their males don't have wings, they're blind, and only 5 thousandths of an inch long.
01:19Now, it's no coincidence each animal species has different colors and patterns.
01:25One of the reasons for that is to help them stand out when looking for their potential mating partners,
01:30or to send a warning to predators they're poisonous and hope they get the message right.
01:35Then, there are ambush predators, such as tigers.
01:39It's very important for them to remain invisible, because the difference is huge.
01:43If their prey sees them before they get there, no dinner that night.
01:48But why exactly are tigers orange?
01:51For us, orange is a color used for things that need to be ultra-visible.
01:56For example, items such as safety vests or traffic cones.
02:00To the human eye, orange will mostly stand out in the environment.
02:04So, if there's a tiger coming for you, you'll spot it relatively easily.
02:08But humans have so-called trichromatic color vision.
02:13When light from your surroundings enters your eye, it hits the retina, a thin layer located in the back.
02:19To process that light, the retina uses two kinds of light receptors, rods and cones.
02:25Rods can only distinguish differences in light and darkness.
02:28They can't sense color.
02:30Our eyes will mostly rely on rods in dim light.
02:34Cones are in charge of color perception.
02:36Humans mostly have three types.
02:38Cones for green, blue, and red.
02:40That's exactly why we call our vision trichromatic.
02:44Most humans see three primary colors, together with their colorful combinations.
02:49Apes and some monkeys also have such a style of vision.
02:53But most mammals that live on land, including cats, horses, deer, and dogs, have dichromatic color vision.
03:01Retinas in their eyes have cones for two colors only, green and blue.
03:05When humans get information from their green and blue cones only, they're considered colorblind since they can't, for example, tell the difference between green and red shades.
03:15This is similar with mammals that live on land.
03:19Deer are surely tigers' prey way more than humans.
03:22And deer don't see tigers as orange, but green.
03:25Green tigers would surely be more difficult to spot, which would mean more dinner for tigers.
03:32But evolution still decided to go with orange because it's simply easier to produce such a color.
03:38The only green mammal is a sloth, but its fur is not naturally green.
03:43It's because of the algae that grows in it.
03:45And they can hold their breath for 40 minutes.
03:48The water around the poles can get very cold during certain periods of the year.
03:53There's plenty of fish that live there, but when that happens, they need to swim away to survive.
03:59But there's a special group of fish native to the southern ocean near Antarctica.
04:05The temperatures there are from 28 to 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
04:09Technically, that's below freezing, but all those dissolved salts in the seawater don't allow it to freeze over.
04:15And these fish can survive because they have a special feature called glycoprotein.
04:21It helps them stay in their home because it acts as sort of a natural antifreeze.
04:26It's a protein that prevents all those ice crystals from forming in their blood and helps it continue to flow normally.
04:33Have you ever wondered how tiny animals like ants breathe?
04:37Try to open your mouth and throat, but at the same time, hold your chest and diaphragm still.
04:42The diaphragm is a muscular structure that separates the chest and abdominal cavities in all mammals.
04:49It expands as you breathe.
04:51If you can't do this, you can't hold your breath, because oxygen will still find its way into your lungs.
04:57At least, enough of it to keep up with your body's demands.
05:01But generally, when you breathe, diaphragm is actively pumping air in and out of your body.
05:07To survive without the diaphragm doing so, you'd need more than one throat and a way smaller body.
05:14Now, ants have 9 or 10 pairs of openings along the sides of their tiny bodies.
05:20They're called spiracles, and each is connected to branching series of tubes.
05:25It's a system similar to human lungs.
05:27Their blood doesn't carry oxygen from those tubes to the rest of the body.
05:31Instead, the tubes spread this oxygen.
05:34The endings of these branches directly touch the membranes of their cells.
05:39This can only work in really small animals.
05:42When the body is bigger than 8 tenths of an inch, these tubes are too long, so they can't diffuse air fast enough.
05:49There are a couple of reasons why giraffes have long necks, which, by the way, can grow up to be 6 1⁄2 feet long.
05:57From first glance, it seems evolution gave them those to reach the sweetest, topmost leaves of the trees.
06:04It's exclusive access other animals can only dream of, so giraffes don't have to compete for the best bites.
06:12But over time, researchers realized it's not the only reason.
06:16They also think the neck could be a good factor when male giraffes go into combat.
06:21The same as male antelopes will use their prongs or when a stag uses its antlers.
06:27The thicker the neck, the bigger the chances to win the combat.
06:32Some insects play possum when there's a predator nearby.
06:36For instance, in one research, scientists have observed an ant-lion larva insect.
06:41It played possum for 61 minutes.
06:44How does this even help?
06:45Well, let's say you're in a garden where you see a bunch of identical bushes with soft fruit.
06:51You go to the first bush and start collecting and eating fruits.
06:54Mmm, yummy!
06:55It's so simple!
06:57And you're doing it relatively fast.
06:59But as you strip that bush, it's getting harder for you to find more fruits.
07:04Plus, it's kind of irritating because it takes way more time now than at the beginning.
07:08So, now you need to decide whether to stay there and try to find more, or simply switch
07:14to another bush to have it all easy and fast once again.
07:18Assuming you are the predator, and predators are greedy, you'll just look for ways to eat
07:23as much fruit as possible in the shortest period of time.
07:27This means you'll go on and start collecting fruits from another bush, and the next one,
07:32and so on.
07:33Researchers use the same logic when it comes to bird and ant-line larvae.
07:37It appears that insects waste the predator's time when playing possum, which has a significant
07:43impact on how things go later.
07:46That way, they encourage the predator to look for food elsewhere, because the predator doesn't
07:51have that much time to waste.
07:53So, pretending to be not alive is actually a good way to stay alive.
07:58Depending on the species, young birds spend from 10 to 30 days in their eggs.
08:03There's no air inside, but Mother Nature created a perfect mechanism for them to still be able
08:09to breathe.
08:10As a young chick is developing inside the egg, it grows some kind of hollow, sack-like structure
08:16from the gut.
08:17It's like a tiny pouch that fuses with a second membrane that goes around the chick and its
08:23yoke.
08:23So, one end is attached to the chick, while the other is close to the inner surface of
08:28the egg shell.
08:30That way, this special membrane acts like lung tissue and connects the outside world with
08:35the chick's circulatory system.
08:37Most animals have two eyes, but some species need more.
08:42For example, some reptiles, amphibians, and fish have a third eye on top of the head.
08:48It's not something that improves their vision that much, but it simply helps them navigate
08:53via the sunlight and regulate their body temperature.
08:57Many invertebrates have more than two eyes.
09:00Most spiders have eight of them, because that way, they can spot their prey easier.
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