59 Fun Facts About Hard Nature

Humans have four types of photoreceptor cell. How many does a mantis shrimp have?

Their clubs also strike with an acceleration of about 10,400 g, fast enough to boil the water around them into cavitation bubbles.

To what temperature does the air around a lightning flash heat?

A lightning channel heats the surrounding air to about 30,000 °C, roughly five times the Sun's surface temperature; the explosive expansion of that air is thunder.

Tardigrades in their dormant state have survived temperatures as low as what?

Dormant tardigrades have survived −272 °C, about one degree above absolute zero, and have also survived the vacuum and radiation of open space.

Who first described tardigrades in 1773, calling them "little water bear"?

Johann August Ephraim Goeze described them in 1773 as 'kleiner Wasserbär', little water bear; Lazzaro Spallanzani supplied the name Tardigrada, slow walkers, three years later.

Which bristlecone pine, felled on Wheeler Peak in 1964, proved to be about 4,900 years old?

Prometheus, a Great Basin bristlecone pine on Wheeler Peak, Nevada, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student; its rings showed it was at least 4,862 years old.

Pando, the quaking aspen clone in Utah's Fishlake National Forest, has roughly how many stems?

Pando has roughly 47,000 genetically identical stems sharing one root system across about 43 hectares, with an estimated mass of around 6,000 tonnes.

Oregon's Armillaria ostoyae "humongous fungus" covers about how much ground?

The Malheur National Forest Armillaria ostoyae spans about 3.5 square miles, roughly 2,400 acres, and may weigh up to 35,000 tons, making it a candidate for the largest organism by area.

Which desert plant grows only two leaves in its entire life, which can last over a thousand years?

Welwitschia mirabilis of the Namib Desert grows only two leaves from a woody crown; they keep growing for a life that can exceed a thousand years, shredding into ribbons in the wind.

Wolffia microscopica, the fastest-growing flowering plant, doubles in about how long?

Wolffia microscopica doubles its biomass in about 29.3 hours, the fastest recorded for any flowering plant; these watermeals are also the smallest flowering plants, like specks of cornmeal on a pond.

A Venus flytrap shuts fully only if a second trigger hair is touched within about how long?

A second trigger-hair touch within about twenty seconds is needed to close the trap; the double-touch rule stops the Venus flytrap wasting energy on raindrops and debris.

Lake Baikal, 1,642 m deep, holds roughly what share of the world's fresh surface water?

Baikal holds about 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, more than all the North American Great Lakes combined, and at 25–30 million years old it is the oldest lake.

What is the maximum known depth of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench?

Its floor is more than 2 km farther from sea level than the summit of Everest is above it.

Angel Falls in Venezuela, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall, has a total height of what?

Angel Falls drops 979 m in total, with an uninterrupted main plunge of 807 m; its Pemon name is Kerepakupai Vená.

In 2025, the surface of the Dead Sea sat roughly how far below sea level?

In 2025 the Dead Sea surface lay about 440 m below sea level, the lowest land point on Earth; its 34% salinity is about 9.6 times the ocean's, and the level drops roughly a metre a year.

The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water, has a salinity of about what?

Caspian water averages about 1.2% salinity, roughly a third of seawater's 3.5%, which is one reason it is argued over as both a lake and a sea.

Which Meghalaya village is reportedly the wettest place on Earth, with about 11,872 mm of rain a year?

Mawsynram averages about 11,872 mm of rain a year; it sits about 15 km west of Cherrapunji, which long held the title in every schoolbook.

Earth's lowest reliably measured temperature, −89.2 °C, was recorded at which Antarctic base?

Vostok Station, founded by the Soviet Union in 1957, logged −89.2 °C on 21 July 1983; it sits at the southern Pole of Cold and sees no sun in polar night.

On what date was the record 134 °F (56.7 °C) air temperature measured at Furnace Creek, Death Valley?

The 134 °F reading came on 10 July 1913; the highest reliable modern readings at Furnace Creek are 130 °F, reached in August 2020 and July 2021.

The Atacama Desert averages roughly how much rain per year?

The Atacama averages about 15 mm of rain a year; it lies in a two-sided rain shadow between the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range, and some stations have never recorded rain.

The most recent Yellowstone supereruption, which created the present caldera, was how long ago?

The Lava Creek eruption about 640,000 years ago formed the present caldera; the first and largest cycle, 2.08 million years ago, produced the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and the Island Park Caldera.

Old Faithful erupts on average about every how many minutes?

Old Faithful erupts on average about every 92 minutes, with intervals between roughly 44 and 125 minutes; the 1870 Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition named it.

Which island emerged in 1927 from the caldera left by the 1883 eruption in the Sunda Strait?

Anak Krakatoa, 'Child of Krakatoa', first broke the surface in 1927 inside the 1883 caldera; Rakata is the only surviving remnant of the original island.

What height did the joint Nepalese–Chinese survey publish for Everest in 2020?

The joint survey announced 8,848.86 m in December 2020, measured to the snow cap; China's 2005 rock-height figure had been 8,844.43 m.

Roughly how many individual trees are estimated to stand in the Amazon rainforest?

A 2013 estimate put the Amazon at about 390 billion individual trees belonging to roughly 16,000 species; about 60% of the forest lies in Brazil.

Which two deserts cover more area than the Sahara?

Antarctica and the Arctic are the two largest deserts; a desert is defined by low precipitation, not heat, and the polar regions receive very little.

Which animal produces the loudest sound of any creature, with clicks reaching 236 decibels underwater?

Sperm whale echolocation clicks have been measured at 236 decibels, the loudest sound any animal makes; the species also has the largest brain, over five times a human's by weight.

The heart of a stranded North Atlantic blue whale, the largest known in any animal, weighed how much?

The heart, from a blue whale stranded in Newfoundland in 2014 and preserved by the Royal Ontario Museum, weighed about 180 kg; the animal itself can reach 30 m and 190 tonnes.

The colossal squid's eyes, the largest of any known creature, measure at least what across?

Colossal squid eyes measure 27–30 cm across, the largest of any known animal; the species is also the heaviest invertebrate, with a confirmed 495 kg specimen.

Greenland sharks reach sexual maturity at roughly what age?

Females mature at around 150 years; the oldest individual in the 2016 eye-lens study was estimated at 392 years, plus or minus 120, the longest-lived vertebrate known.

Which mammal may be the longest-lived of all, with individuals exceeding 200 years?

Bowhead whales can live past 200 years, one individual estimated at 211; old stone harpoon points recovered from living bowheads back up the age estimates.

The "immortal jellyfish" Turritopsis dohrnii is named for the founder of a zoological station in which city?

The species honours Anton Dohrn, who founded the Stazione Zoologica in Naples in 1872; it can revert from a sexually mature medusa to a polyp colony, restarting its life cycle.

The first living coelacanth was described from specimens caught off which country from 1938?

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer found the first specimen in a trawler's catch off East London, South Africa, in December 1938; a second species turned up in Indonesian waters in 1997.

Horseshoe crab blood is harvested for Limulus amebocyte lysate, which is used to detect what?

Limulus amebocyte lysate clots in the presence of bacterial endotoxins, so it is used to test injectable drugs and implants; the blue, copper-based blood sells for thousands of dollars a litre.

Electric eels can deliver shocks of up to how many volts?

Electrophorus voltai, described in 2019, discharges up to 860 volts, the strongest of any known animal; electric eels are knifefish, not true eels, first described by Linnaeus in 1766.

How many eyes does a box jellyfish have in total?

Box jellyfish have 24 eyes in total, six on each of four rhopalia; unlike most jellyfish, some of these are true camera-type eyes with lenses, corneas and retinas.

Which snake is widely regarded as the world's most venomous by LD50?

The inland taipan's venom has the lowest murine LD50 of any snake; it lives in semi-arid central-eastern Australia and is known to Karnic-speaking Aboriginal Australians as dandarabilla.

Of over 170 poison dart frog species, how many are documented as used to poison darts?

Only four species, all in the genus Phyllobates, are documented as dart poisons; most indigenous South American blowgun darts were tipped with curare from plants instead.

Bombardier beetles make their boiling defensive spray by reacting hydrogen peroxide with what?

Hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide mix with catalase and peroxidase enzymes in a reaction chamber, yielding benzoquinones and steam near 100 °C that is ejected with an audible pop.

Which Nobel laureate first decoded the honeybee waggle dance?

Karl von Frisch decoded the waggle dance in the 1940s and shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for it; the dance's angle from vertical encodes the food's direction relative to the sun.

Which bird's migration from Alaska to New Zealand is the longest known non-stop flight of any bird?

Bar-tailed godwits of the subspecies baueri fly from Alaska to New Zealand in about nine days without stopping, over 11,000 km, the longest non-stop flight recorded for any bird.

Arctic terns nesting in Iceland and Greenland average round trips of roughly what distance each year?

A 2010 geolocator study found Greenland and Iceland terns average about 70,900 km a year; one Farne Islands bird logged 96,000 km in ten months, and the species sees two summers annually.

Emperor penguins can dive to about what depth while hunting?

Emperor penguins have been recorded diving to about 535 m and staying under for more than 20 minutes, the deepest and longest dives of any bird.

Male bee hummingbirds, the smallest birds alive, weigh on average how much?

Male bee hummingbirds average 1.95 g and females about 2.6 g; the species is endemic to Cuba and can eat half its body weight in nectar a day.

Which is the world's only flightless parrot and also its heaviest?

The kākāpō is nocturnal, endemic to New Zealand and one of the very few birds that breed in a lek system; males can weigh over 3 kg.

Which South American bird has a fermenting, ruminant-like digestive system and clawed chicks?

The hoatzin ferments leaves in an enlarged crop, giving it a manure-like smell and the nickname stinkbird; its chicks have two claws on each wing for climbing.

Around 70–80% of a male superb lyrebird's vocalisations are what?

About 70–80% of the male's song consists of imitations of other species, mostly other birds, though it will occasionally impersonate a marsupial.

Which mammal has a gestation of around 22 months, the longest of any mammal?

The African bush elephant carries a calf for about 22 months, the longest gestation of any mammal; its trunk ends in two finger-like processes, one more than an Asian elephant's.

What is the aye-aye's method of tapping on wood and listening for grubs called?

Percussive foraging: the aye-aye taps up to eight times a second, listens for hollows, gnaws a hole, then fishes the grub out with its thin, elongated middle finger.

Sloths are unusual among mammals for not having how many neck vertebrae?

Nearly every other mammal, giraffe included, has exactly seven; sloths break the rule in both directions depending on the genus.

Which animal produces cube-shaped dung?

Common wombats produce cube-shaped droppings, shaped by varying elasticity along the intestine; the cubes are thought to stay put where they are placed to mark territory.

Male platypuses carry venom in a spur located where?

The venomous spur sits on each hind foot of the male; females are born with spur buds but lose them, and the platypus hunts by electrolocation with eyes, ears and nostrils shut.

Which is the most trafficked mammal in the world?

Pangolins are widely cited as the most trafficked mammal, taken for meat and for keratin scales used in traditional medicine; all eight species gained CITES Appendix I protection in 2017.

Which writer used the term "aurora" in his extensive writings about the phenomenon in 1619?

Galileo Galilei used 'boreale aurora' in 1619 in the Discourse on the Comets, naming the lights for the Roman goddess of dawn; solar wind exciting oxygen and nitrogen produces the colours.

Which fish can produce up to 300 million eggs at a time, more than any other known vertebrate?

The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, can carry up to 300 million eggs, more than any other known vertebrate; females release them into open water for external fertilisation.

How long is the axolotl genome sequenced in 2018, then the largest animal genome ever completed?

At 32 billion base pairs, roughly ten times the human genome, it revealed pathways that may drive limb regeneration.

Which animal is the only primate known to be venomous?

The slow loris licks a toxin from glands on its upper arms and mixes it with saliva; its bite can cause anaphylactic shock, making it the only venomous primate known.

How does a stooping peregrine falcon strike a bird so as not to injure itself on impact?

The falcon clips one wing of the bird after a steep high-speed dive; third eyelids clear its eyes during the stoop.

On what date was the peregrine falcon removed from the US Endangered Species list?

DDT restrictions let released birds breed successfully, and the species was delisted on 25 August 1999.

Which French explorer was the first European to find a Rafflesia, in 1797, while detained on Java?

Deschamps was held three years by the Dutch; Joseph Arnold's 1818 Sumatran specimen gave R. arnoldii its name.