50 Cool And Interesting Facts People Learned About Animals

Just as there are many adorable facts about animals, there probably are just as many hyped-up myths that are not entirely true. There are many things about animals that people have misinterpreted over the years, so, let's go through some of them and debunk them!

Since childhood, everyone kept telling me that bats couldn't see. The consensus was that they are blind, but that's totally untrue, it turns out! "Blind as a bat" is only a witty saying, as most bats have functional eyes and can see pretty well. This misconception probably formed because of their acute hearing. Bats use echolocation to find prey in dim environments, but they are certainly not blind.

Has anyone ever warned you not to touch a baby bird because then his mother would no longer accept him as hers? Birds don't have such strong smell receptors to notice human scent, but disturbing baby birds and their nests still shouldn't become a hobby. The warbler, for example, has no sense of smell, so they can't really detect your scent at all.

But what if you come across a baby bird on the grass who's fallen off his nest? Educator Elizabeth Manning writes that it's best to leave as quickly as possible. Humans can pass diseases to wildlife, and vice versa. "In most cases, the parents are nearby and may be waiting for you to leave the area," Manning claims.

Here's another myth about wildlife for you: ostriches only bury their heads in the sand in children's books. Because they have relatively small heads, it only seems that they put their noggins under the dirt. In reality, when an ostrich is scared, he or she will flop to the ground and remain still to blend in with the environment. Ostriches only dig into the sand to turn the eggs in their nests.

When British pilots who came back from the Falkland War in 1982 claimed that they saw penguins topple over while looking at planes, the world really took it to heart and spread the myth like wildfire. Sure, the image is quite comical, but it's not true. In 2001, scientist Richard Stone spent five weeks observing the king penguins in the Antarctic and said that "not a single bird fell over after 17 flights."

"Some birds waddled away from the helicopters. Others became quiet. A few minutes later, they waddled back."

Opossums are adorable little critters who, according to some, sleep hanging from their tails. But, despite them impressively using their tails as a fifth limb to climb trees and other structures, the tails aren't strong enough to support their weights. 

Have you ever used the insult "You have a memory of a goldfish" against a forgetful person? If you did, it wasn't really accurate. Although many people believe that the memory of a goldfish spans three seconds, its memory can actually span several months. In fact, goldfish are much smarter than we might think. Scientists have even taught them to recognizehuman faces and drive a makeshift robotic car.