Do you know …
...how long animals live? The animal which lives the longest life is the tortoise. It sometimes lives between 300 and 400 years. The crocodile can live for 300 years, the elephant and the eagle – for 100 years.
...that elephants are very good swimmers?
…that the elephant can pick up a coin with his trunk? The trunk is everything for the elephant. The elephant can do with his trunk much of what we do with our hands. It can pick up a man and put him on his back; then it can pick up and give him a coin which fell from his pocket.
…that when an elephant grows, everything grows on it except its eyes?
…about the march of 37 elephants across the Alps? When Hannibal fought Rome thirty-seven of his elephants made a march across the Alps covered with ice and snow. We know that his elephants were African, but Hannibal’s elephants were smaller then the African elephants of today.
…that crocodiles are cold-blooded? Their temperature rises and falls together with the temperature of the air.
…that in the old, old days, many, many years ago crocodiles lived in Europe?
…that crocodiles kill more people in Africa than any other wild animal?
…that in the eighteenth century in France there was a big wolf which greatly frightened the people? It killed and ate 90 men before people could kill it.
…that if you feed a bear too much, it will starve to death? When you feed a bear too much it will not eat roots and berries which are necessary for its long winter sleep.
…that the snow leopard of Tibet has a tail longer than its body?
…that once there lived a tortoise in America with a flower growing on its back?
…that scientists think that cleverest wild animal is the chimpanzee and the second is the orang-outang and the third is the elephant?
Lions are cleverer than tigers and leopards.
Among the domestic animals the cleverest are the horse and the dog. There animals take much from the people with whom they live.
…that animals can talk to one another? Of course they cannot talk as people can, but many animals can express joy, fear, anger by their shouts. Monkeys, for example, make many different sounds with their mouths, which have different meanings.
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