50 Fun Facts That’ll Brighten Up Your Day

Rats laugh when tickled.

27. Cheetahs can’t roar, they can only meow, because of the absence of the hyoid bone in its neck.

28. Penguins are not heavy enough to set off landmines. Because of this, there is a huge nature preserve on the Falkland Islands, with 1 million penguins of 5 distinct species.

29. Sea otters have pockets and many adults carry their favorite rock at all times to break open clams and other shellfish.

30. Squirrels plant thousands of new trees each year simply by forgetting where they put their acorns.

In 1926, President Coolidge and his wife were gifted a raccoon as a Thanksgiving dinner gift. They did not want to eat her, so they named her Rebecca and kept her as a pet. She had a free range of The White House and would go on trips with the couple.

32. There is a small island named Okunoshima Island in Japan that is the site of an abandoned World War 2 chemical weapons manufacturing facility and is now home to hundreds of cute bunnies.

33. According to FDA standards, an eight-ounce glass of juice is allowed to have up to 5 fruit flies.

34. A sloth can hold its breath for up to 40 minutes, 4 times longer than a dolphin. They sleep for 15 hours a day and its internal organs like the heart, spleen, and liver are arranged to accommodate living upside down. The grip of a sloth is so strong that when they die they sometimes remain hanging on trees.

35. The oldest recorded Yo Mama joke comes from a Babylonian stone tablet. The tablet is from around 1,500 B.C.E. and was written by a student.

After "the world’s largest beach clean-up" at Mumbai's Versova beach, Olive Ridley turtles returned to lay eggs for the first time in 20 years.

37. There is a sport called Extreme Ironing, in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing.

38. People living in Hong Kong and Japan who cannot afford to live in a house, take advantage of McDonald's "doors are always open" policy and live in their restaurants. These people are also known as McRefugees.

39. A blue whale's heart can weigh in excess of 1,300 lbs and be the size of a small car. Their heart beats at a rate of 8–10 beats per minute and can be heard from over 2 miles away.

40. In 2009, Stephen Hawking held a party open to all, but only publicized the party after it was over so that only time-travelers would know to attend. As expected, nobody showed up to the party.

Cristiano Ronaldo bought his agent (Jorge Mendes) a whole Greek Island as a wedding present.

42. The first police car was bought in Akron, Ohio in 1899. Its first assignment was to pick up a drunk man.

43. J.K. Rowling was famously rejected by 12 publishers before Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone was accepted by Bloomsbury - and even then only at the insistence of the chairman's eight-year-old daughter.

44. Norway's coastline is so complex that if you stretched it all into a straight line it would circle the Earth two and a half times.

45. In 1908, the Russian Olympic team arrived at the Olympics in London 12 days late because it was still using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar.

Seagulls stomping on grass is called the rain dance. This mimics rain by vibration and brings earthworms and other bugs to surface.

47. Trained African giant pouched rats have found thousands of unexploded landmines and bombs. Researchers have also trained these rats to detect tuberculosis and most recently they are training them to sniff out poached wildlife trophies being exported out of African ports.

48. Gibbons is one of the only non-human primates which practice monogamy. Both parents play a vital role in raising their young.

49. Alex, the African Grey parrot, is the only animal to ever ask an existential question. He asked “what color” he was.

50. When puppies are faced with a scary object, they look to see how nearby humans are reacting. If the human is calm, the puppy is more likely to approach the object.