Interesting facts about Humans | Homo sapiens

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

Subfamily: Homininae

Tribe: Hominini

Genus: Homo

Species: H. sapiens

Trinomial name: Homo sapiens

115 Interesting facts about humans

1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.
2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.
5. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
6. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.
7. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
8. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
9. Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.
10. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.
11. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.
12. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
13. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.
14. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
15. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
16. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
17. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
18. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
19. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.
20. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
21. The average person laughs 13 times a day.
22. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
23. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.
24. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!!
25. People with higher number of moles tend to live longer than people with lesser number of moles.
26. Humans were first infected with the HIV virus in the 1930s.
27. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.
28. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening. Layers of cartilage in the joints gets compressed during the day.
29. There are approx. 550 hairs in the eyebrow.
30. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
31. The life span of a taste bud is 10 days.
32. The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
33. The largest known kidney stone weighed 1.36 kilograms.
34. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
35. Kidney stones come in any color--from yellow to brown.
36. Babies are born without kneecaps. They appear when the child is 2-6 years of age.
37. Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!
38. The average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime.
39. If you ate too many carrots you would turn orange.
40. The force of 1 billion people jumping at the same time is equal to 500 tons of TNT.
41. A baby is born every seven seconds.
42. You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only .000000000000071 ounce of its spray.
43. You breathe about 10 million times a year.
44. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you'll have a bad dream.
45. The foot is the most common body part bitten by insects.
46. The most common time for a wake up call is 7 a.m.
47. The typical person goes to the bathroom 6 times a day.
48. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.
49. The most sensitive finger on the human hand is the index finger.
50. The human body weighs 40 times more than the brain.
51. After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.
52. A person swallows approx. 295 times while eating dinner.
53. Your urine will turn bright yellow if you eat too much asparagus.
54. There are more people alive today than have ever died.
55. The human body is better suited to two four-hour sleep cycles than one eight-hour one.
56. A man's beard contains between 7000 and 15,000 hairs.
57. A beard grows an average of 140mm a year
58. A hair is 70 per cent easier to cut when soaked in warm water for two minutes
59. Women's hair is about half the diameter of men's hair
60. During an average lifetime, a man will spend 3,350 hours removing 8.4 meters of stubble
61. 4.5 million people have their health 'adversely affected' by air pollutants each year.
62. 4 million children die each year from inhaling smoke from indoor cooking fires that burn wood and Dung
63. 4 million people die annually from diarrhea infections, caused by poor sanitary conditions
64. The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.
65. Your Hand Can Have A Mind On Its Own
66. You Could Remove A Large Part of Your Internal Organs and Survive
67. The Strong Contraction of Your Heart Creates Enough Pressure To Squirt Blood As Far As 30 Feet
68. You Can Still Have An Erection After Death
69. Heart Attacks Are More Likely To Happen On Monday
70. Three Hundred Million Cells Die In Your Body Every Minute
71. Babies Have More Bones Than You Do
72. Your Hair Is Almost Indestructible
73. You Can Survive Without Food But Not Without Sleep
74. If stomachs did not have a lining of mucus, your stomach would digest itself.
75. There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
76. It takes about 60 seconds for a human blood cell to make a complete circuit of the body.
77. The average person will shed 40 pounds of skin in his/her lifetime.
78. 1/15th of a pint of blood is pumped with every heartbeat.
79. Humans share 98.4% of our DNA with chimps. In comparison, we share 70% of our DNA with a slug.
80. The lightest baby to survive weighed a mere 283 grams.
81. On average, women say 7,000 words per day while men manage just over 2,000 words.
82. The human brain uses 20% of the body’s energy but is only 2% of the body’s weight.
83. On average, humans lose 40-100 strands of hair per day.
84. A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100mph.
85. A cough can reach the speed of 60mph.
86. The average person will drink about 16,000 gallons of water in his/her lifetime.
87. It takes 17 muscles to smile while taking 43 muscles to frown.
88. The human brain is composed of 75% water.
89. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
90. More germs are transferred while shaking hands compared to kissing.
91. There are approximately 550 hairs in a person’s eyebrow.
92. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
93. The number of eye blinks varies greatly from about 29 blinks each minute if you are talking to someone to only 4 blinks each minute if you are reading.
94. The average human blinks 25 times per minute.
95. A nail takes around 6 months to grow from base to the tip.
96. Each second 10,000,000 cells die and are replaced in your body.
97. Your liver performs over 500 functions in your body.
98. The average person spends 1/3 of their lifetime sleeping.
99. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
100. Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
101. The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself.
102. One human hair can support 3kg.
103. Humans are the only animals that cry tears and blush.
104. It takes the interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.
105. If the normal one hundred thousand hairs on a head were woven into a rope, it could support a weight of more than twelve tons.
106. The fingernail grows about 1.5 inches per year.
107. The total amount of skin covering an adult human weighs 6 lbs.
108. The average person flexes the joints in their fingers 24 million times during a lifetime.
109. Each person inhales about seven quarts of air every minute.
110. On average, we breathe between 12 and 18 times a minute.
111. The average guy will grow about 27 feet of hair out of his face during his lifetime.
112. Approximately 1 out of 25 people suffers from asthma.
113. The average man sweats 2 1/2 quarts every day.
114. One out of every hundred American citizens is color blind.
115. A human heart beats 100,000 times a day.

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Falcon | Falco berigora | Falco peregrinus

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Aves

Order: Falconiformes

FAMILY: Falconidae

GENUS SPECIES: Falco peregrinus / Falco berigora

Amazing Facts about Falcon

1. Can see a 10 cm. object from a distance of 1.5 km.
2. Visual acuity is 2.6 times better than human.
3. Can see sharp images even when diving at 100 miles/hr.
4. Falcon's scientific name comes from the Latin word, "Falco Peregrinus" which means wandering falcon, traveler, or foreigner.
5. There are 39 species of falcon - the Peregrine is one of five commonly found in Canada. There are 3 subspecies of Peregrines ~ American, Artic and Peale's.
6. 5 types of falcons live in the U.S. ~ gyrfalcon, peregrine, merlin, American kestrel, and prairie falcon
7. Peregrines are the most well known of the falcons.
8. Some like to migrate south to Latin America in the winter. They can migrate as far as 10,000 miles ~ farther than other birds.
9. Peregrines can live up to 17 years.
10. The female is called a falcon, the male is called a tiercel.
11. They vary in size depending on where they live ~ the biggest are in Alaska.
12. Their wings are thin and pointed, and span about 40 inches.
13. Slim birds with a small head. The male is about 1/3 the size of the female. Their bodies average 15 - 21 inches long and weigh about 2 pounds. The female will weigh about 10.6 ounces more than the male.
14. Adult Peregrines have blue-gray wings, backs, and heads, with white undersides marked with black bars going across the chest. There faces are white under their chin. They have large, dark eyes and very sharp beaks and yellow talons (feet).
15. Peregrines make a "kek-kek-kek" noise, especially when angry or aggressive.
16. They have very good eye sight ~ they can spot a meal up to a mile away.
17. They are raptors (Latin meaning "to seize") - birds of prey / carnivores - and eat other birds ~ sparrows, starlings, gulls, ducks, and their favorite, pigeons. In fact, during WWII they were often shot in England to keep them from eating the pigeons that were carrying important messages to the forces.
18. Falcons are the swiftest birds of prey and are very muscular. In level flight the travel about 50 kilometers (31 miles) an hour. In a dive, called a "stoop" they reach speeds over 300 kilometers (186.33 miles) an hour!
19. They have a unique way of hunting for food ~ they dive at their prey so fast that they overtake it by surprise, catching it in mid-air, and the speed kills the prey instantly. They are diurnal - they hunt during the day. The capture takes less than 2 minutes!
20. An adult eats about 70 grams (2 1/4 oz.) of food a day ~ that equals about 2 blackbirds.
21. In the city it has been observed that falcons don't like to land on the ground ~ even if their meal falls to the ground, they won't go get it. In fact, they don't usually fly lower than the level of their nest.
22. They are at the top of the food chain, so adult peregrines have no natural predators. They do however, face many threats from humans ~ use of pesticides, altering of landscape and habitats, egg collecting, hunting, and taking of the young for falconry. Baby falcons (eyases) are a tasty meal for owls, racoons, and mountail cats.

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Elephant | Loxodonta africana | Elephas maximus indicus

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Proboscidea

Family: Elephantidae

Genus: Elephas

Species: E. maximus

Subspecies: E. m. indicus

Trinomial name : Elephas maximus indicus / Loxodonta africana

Elephants are mammals, and the largest land animals alive today

Amazing Facts about Elephants

1. Has hearing range between 1 and 20,000 Hz. The very low frequency sounds are in the "infrasound" range.
2. Humans cannot hear sounds in the infrasound range.
3. Elephant Facts ... Did You know ?
4. Elephants stomp when they walk.
5. Elephants sleep standing up.
6. Sometimes baby elephants lie down to sleep.
7. Elephants bathe. Sometimes the spray dirt on themselves to get the parasites off. Sometimes they bathe in mud
8. Elephants live in herds.
9. They cool off by fanning their ears. This cools the blood in their ears. That blood goes to the rest of their body and cools off the elephant.
10. They poop 80 pounds in one day.
11. Elephants weigh 10,000 pounds. It would take 250 students to add up to 10,000 pounds.
12. They collect food with their trunks.
13. Only grown up ladies and their babies live in the herds.
14. The daddy elephants leave the herd when they are 12 years old.
15. They fight with their tusks.
16. They eat grass and bark.
17. During the wet season they eat things low to the ground.
18. During the dry season they use their trunk to gather food from trees and bushes.
19. They suck up water into their trunks and shoot it into their mouths.
20. Elephants need lots of room to roam and eat. (Some of us think that this must mean they are not happy in the zoo or in the circus.)
21. They can run 24mph for short distances.

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