People Share Interesting Wildlife Facts That Not A Lot Of People Know, Here Are The 40 Best Ones

There are reports of elephants finding humans sleeping under trees and the elephants think they're dead. People have woken up with elephants gently stroking them with their trunk and in some cases they try to cover them with branches and sticks as a "burial"

Elephants are one of the few animals who mourn their dead and have rituals.

Vultures are really important for the ecosystems they live in, but a lot of vulture species are critically endangered due to human activity. Vultures have stomach acid so powerful that it can destroy things like botulism and anthrax, thus cleaning up the environment when they eat rotting meat that contains those things. There is evidence for a correlation between the drastic decline in India's vulture population and the boom in the stray dog population, since less vultures means there is more food for the dogs to scavenge. This has also sadly led to a rise in rabies which kills many people and animals. Many people find vultures scary, but for the most part they are harmless and we really need to have them around. Please consider supporting vulture conservation projects.

Owls bob their heads up and down to help improve their depth of perception.

You can try it out yourself. Focus on an object and bob your head. It doesn't work for us, but you do look like an idiot.

Raccoons have the most soft, velvety, devilish little hands.

Baby raccoons purr and knead like kittens. Did not know this myself until last spring when a wildlife rehabber posted a call to arms for people to help. (Figured I've raised enough neonatal kittens, my experience would be helpful.)

A ban has been lifted in my state and people are poisoning adult raccoons without considering the babies they are orphaning. Last year I raised and released 11. So far this year I've raised and released 27. I've also officially become a wildlife rehabber. One of the females I raised last year showed back up, babies in tow! Wasn't sure how she'd respond after being away for a bit but she let me check her out and treat her battle wounds.

Elephants have a specific warning call that means “human.”.

Manatees control their buoyancy by farting.

You can’t cull coyote populations. Through howling they know how many are in their pack and if the number drops the females will respond by having larger litters. Killing coyotes just creates more coyotes.

Crows can mimic human voices similar to parrots. I experienced that first hand while hunting on public land. Heard a little boy calling "MOM" "MOM!!" only to realize that the voice came from a crow flying overhead.

I’ve told this one before, but some bar-tailed godwits (a wading bird) fly from Alaska to Australia non-stop in the longest continuous migration of any bird (maybe any creature).

To do this, they shrink their internal organs so they can pack more fat (for energy) into their body. They’re basically balls of fat when they take off. And when they’re in flight, they shut most of their organs down to devote all energy to flying.

And they’re just medium sized nondescript brown birds that peck around in the mud. I love wading birds, man.

Young goats pick up accents from each other, joining humans, bats, and whales as mammals known to adjust their vocal sounds to fit into a new social group.

If you put a hamster wheel in the middle of the forest, you'd expect that small creatures would ignore it. They don't. Instead, they absolutely love it! Scientists believe it's because it provides some kind of novel stimulation that hits the core of most animal brains!

Every single whiptail lizards is female. They reproduce by parthenogenesis, a natural form of asexual reproduction.

Caribou & Reindeer are the same species. Their ankles make a clicking sound when walking. It helps the herd follow each other in snowstorms. My knees make clicking sounds…but that’s just lack of cartilage😕.

There is a type of mouse that behaves like a tiny wolf. Members of this species travel in packs, hunt live prey, and even howl. It is called the Grasshopper Mouse, named for one of its primary food sources.

Opossums brains are about 1/5th the size of other mammals their size. And mostly smooth, so precious and so dumb.
Eponarose:
Amazing Opossum Fact 1: It is extremely rare for them to have rabies!
Amazing Opossum Fact 2: They were used in the development of anti-venom!

My favourite fact ever: penguins have knees. Will never not baffle me. Knees.

There are coyotes in every major city in the USA. If you’re in the US, you’re likely less than 1mi away from one.

Edit: contiguous USA.

Flamingos are not naturally pink. They are born grey. But their feathers turn pink because of their diet of shrimp and algae.

IntelligentHippo4245:
To add on to Flamingos, they can lose their color when raising their babies because it’s so intense of an experience.

When a hornet invades a beehive, the bees will swarm it, and raise the heat of their bodies burning the invader to death. This ends with perhaps dozens of the hive's protectors dead, but is seen as worth it to protect the hive and it's inhabitants.

An opossum's body temperature is too low for rabies to survive in it. They also kill most ticks that try to latch on.