105 Fun Facts About Pet

Under what name is the budgerigar usually sold in American pet shops?

Parakeet is the name American pet shops use, though the word really covers many small long-tailed parrots; the budgerigar is simply the one that became a household pet.

Which pet bird holds the world record for the largest vocabulary, at 1,728 words?

A budgerigar named Puck knew an estimated 1,728 words by his death in 1994, far ahead of N'kisi, a much larger parrot celebrated for his speech, whose documented vocabulary was about 950.

Wild budgerigars are native to which country?

Australia's dry interior is their home, where nomadic flocks follow food and water; the birds also gave Australians a slang term for tight men's swimwear, budgie smugglers.

Despite the famous myth, experiments show a trained goldfish can remember a cue for about how long?

Several months is the safe answer: goldfish trained to feed from a coloured tube still knew it long afterwards, and they can tell shapes, colours and sounds apart as well.

Goldfish were first domesticated in which country?

China's goldfish is now kept worldwide, and pets dumped in North American lakes have become an invasive pest, growing far bigger than in a bowl and muddying the water as they feed.

In 2005, which European capital banned goldfish being given away as carnival prizes?

Rome's 2005 bylaw banned giving away goldfish as prizes and outlawed round fishbowls, which campaigners called cruel; the same rules made regular dog walks compulsory.

Virtually all pet golden hamsters descend from a single female captured in 1930 in which country?

Syria is where zoologist Israel Aharoni of the Hebrew University dug up a mother and her litter near Aleppo in 1930; their descendants reached Britain in 1931 and founded the pet population.

The German verb 'hamstern', taken from the hamster's name, means to do what?

To hoard is the meaning: a hamster crams food into cheek pouches that reach back to its shoulders and carries it home to store, so Germans borrowed its name for stockpiling.

Like humans, guinea pigs cannot make which nutrient themselves and must get it from food?

Vitamin C must come from food because guinea pigs, like humans, lack the working enzyme that makes it; they get scurvy without fresh greens, and 1907 experiments on them helped show that diet cures the disease.

A happily excited guinea pig performing little hops in the air is said to be doing what?

Popcorning is the name for those sudden joyful hops, likened to kernels popping; rabbits do a similar happy leap called a binky, and ferrets have a 'war dance'.

Guinea pigs were first domesticated around 5000 BC by people living where?

The Andes are where people first bred guinea pigs, and for meat rather than company; they are still raised for the table there today.

What is the collective noun for a group of ferrets?

A business, once spelled 'busyness', is the collective noun for ferrets, probably tame descendants of the wild polecat, long used to flush rabbits and rats out of their burrows.

The domestic bunny is a domesticated form of which wild species?

The European rabbit, once largely confined to Iberia and southern France, is the ancestor of every domestic breed; people carried it around the world, where it became a crop pest.

What is the fancy rat, the most common pet rat, a domesticated form of?

The brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, is the species behind the fancy rat; the hobby traces to Jack Black, self-styled rat-catcher to Queen Victoria, who sold unusually coloured rats as pets.

Which pet rodent has fur so dense that dozens of hairs grow from each follicle?

The Chinchilla's coat was so prized that trappers made the animal rare in the wild, and both wild species are now listed as endangered.

Bettas, or Siamese fighting fish, can breathe air at the surface thanks to which organ?

The labyrinth, a lung-like organ, lets a betta gulp air at the surface, so it can live in the stagnant, oxygen-poor rice paddies and pools that would suffocate most fish.

Which talking pet bird, prized for its mimicry, belongs to the starling family?

The Hill myna, a starling of South and Southeast Asian forests, mimics human speech so well that demand for cage birds has fuelled a trade in young taken from the wild.

Wild axolotls survive only in lakes near which capital city?

Mexico City's Xochimilco canals are the axolotl's last wild home, since neighbouring Lake Chalco was drained; it is critically endangered there, yet laboratories and aquariums around the world keep it in large numbers.

The leopard gecko, a common pet lizard, lacks which feature most geckos have?

Adhesive toe pads are missing on the leopard gecko, which has clawed toes and lives on the ground in the rocky deserts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, unlike wall-climbing geckos with sticky feet.

The harmless corn snake is often killed because it resembles which venomous snake?

The Copperhead's blotched pattern gets its harmless lookalike killed, which is a poor bargain: the corn snake hunts the rats and mice that raid barns and grain stores.

Hermit crabs have been seen queuing up from largest to smallest in order to do what?

Swap shells: when a roomy empty shell turns up, crabs gather beside it in size order, and once one moves in, each crab behind takes the shell just vacated.

The 14,000-year-old Bonn-Oberkassel puppy's teeth suggest that people had done what?

Nursed it through distemper: enamel damage records weeks of an illness that usually kills, which the puppy probably survived only because people kept it fed, watered and clean.

How many permanent teeth does an adult dog have?

An adult dog has 42 permanent teeth, twenty on top and twenty-two below, replacing 28 deciduous puppy teeth; despite around 450 breeds, all share the same dental formula.

In 2023 which breed ended the Labrador Retriever's 31-year run as America's most popular dog?

The French Bulldog took the American Kennel Club's top spot on 2022 registrations, having ranked only 14th a decade earlier; the breed's build means most litters are delivered by caesarean.

Which is the smallest recognised dog breed in the world?

The Chihuahua, capped at six pounds by its breed standard, is named after the Mexican state where it was first noted in the mid-1800s; it may descend from the Techichi, a dog kept by the Toltecs.

Despite its name, the Great Dane is a breed from which country?

Germany is the Great Dane's home: known there as the Deutsche Dogge, it was bred to hunt wild boar and guard noble estates, and despite its English name has no known connection with Denmark.

The longest-lived verified dog, Bluey, reached 29 years and was what breed?

Bluey, an Australian Cattle Dog from Rochester, Victoria, lived from 1910 to 1939; Guinness crowned a Portuguese dog named Bobi in 2023, then withdrew his title a year later for lack of proof.

Domestic cats descend from which wild species?

The African wildcat slipped into the first farming villages to hunt the mice in the grain stores, so cats more or less domesticated themselves.

The earliest known sign of a tamed cat, from about 7500 BCE, was found beside a human on which island?

Cyprus had no native wildcats, so the cat buried beside a human at Shillourokambos about 9,500 years ago must have been brought by boat from the mainland.

Cats purr when content and, less famously, when they are what?

In pain or under stress, a cat often purrs too; the low rumble, from about 25 hertz, is thought to help bones and tissue heal, which may be why a hurt cat does it.

Extra-toed cats are nicknamed after which writer, whose old home still houses dozens?

Ernest Hemingway's old Key West house, now a museum, is home to about sixty cats, half of them six-toed; the story goes that they descend from Snow White, a ship captain's gift to the writer.

Most cats go wild for catnip, but which ones usually ignore it?

Young kittens usually ignore catnip until they are a few months old; the response is inherited, and a sizeable minority of adult cats never show it at all.

A falling cat knows which way is up, and twists to land on its feet, thanks mainly to what?

Its inner ear tells a falling cat which way is up, then a flexible spine does the twisting; the tail is not essential, since tailless cats can right themselves too.

Kitty Litter, the cat-box filler Edward Lowe began selling in 1947, was made of what?

Clay it was: when a Michigan neighbour's sand pile froze in 1947, Edward Lowe gave her absorbent fuller's earth for her cat's box instead, and it worked far better than sand or ashes.

The world's first cat cafe opened in 1998 in which city outside Japan?

Taipei's Cat Flower Garden opened in 1998; the idea then boomed in Japan, where city flats leave little room for pets, starting with an Osaka cafe in 2004.

The Siamese cat's dark face, ears, paws and tail are the result of what?

Temperature-sensitive albinism is the cause: a mutated enzyme makes pigment only in cooler skin, so the extremities darken, while kittens are born cream or white and colour up later.

Grumpy Cat, the internet celebrity, owed her permanent scowl to an underbite and what condition?

Feline dwarfism, together with an underbite, gave Tardar Sauce her permanent frown; she rose to fame after her owner's brother posted her photo on Reddit in September 2012.

Creme Puff, the oldest cat ever recorded, died in 2005 at what age?

Creme Puff reached 38 years and three days, living from 1967 to 2005 with owner Jake Perry in Austin, Texas; her record entered the 2010 Guinness World Records book.

Laika, the first animal to orbit Earth in 1957, was what kind of dog?

A stray mongrel from Moscow, Laika was picked off the streets because strays were judged hardier; the Soviets did not reveal until 2002 that she died of overheating within hours of launch.

At which Tokyo station did Hachiko, the loyal Akita, wait for his dead owner for nearly ten years?

Shibuya Station unveiled a bronze statue of Hachiko in April 1934 with the dog himself in the crowd; it was melted down for metal in wartime, and a new one took its place in 1948.

In 1925 the sled dog Balto led the final leg of a relay rushing diphtheria serum to which Alaskan town?

Nome faced a diphtheria epidemic, so twenty mushers and about 150 dogs relayed the serum 674 miles in five and a half days; Togo's team carried it 91 miles, the longest leg, and Balto's ran the last.

Lassie is a female character, but which male collie, his name a word for a friend, first played her in 1943?

Pal is said to have won the part during filming of Lassie Come Home from a female collie first cast; his trainer later acquired the Lassie name from MGM, and Pal's descendants kept the role for generations.

Rin Tin Tin, the canine film star, was rescued from a battlefield of which war?

World War I is where the story began: American soldier Lee Duncan found the German Shepherd puppy in a bombed kennel in Lorraine, France, in 1918, and his later hit films helped keep the young Warner Bros. studio afloat.

Nipper, the dog in the His Master's Voice painting, is shown listening to what?

A phonograph in the broad sense: Francis Barraud first painted an Edison cylinder model, then repainted it as one of the Gramophone Company's own disc players so that the firm would buy the picture.

Alex, who learned over 100 words in Irene Pepperberg's lab, was which kind of parrot?

An African grey bought from a pet shop at about a year old, Alex could name colours and materials and count to six, and seemed to understand his words rather than merely repeat them.

Bo, the Obama family's Portuguese Water Dog, was chosen partly because of what?

Malia's allergies steered the family to a low-shedding breed; Bo arrived at the White House in April 2009 as a gift to Sasha and Malia from Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife.

Which president was photographed lifting his beagles, Him and Her, by the ears?

Lyndon B. Johnson lifted the pair by their ears and dog lovers protested; Nixon's famous Checkers, by contrast, was a Cocker Spaniel sent as a gift for his daughters.

Sea-Monkeys, novelty pets sold since the 1960s, are actually what?

Brine shrimp lay eggs that survive drying out in a dormant state and hatch when added to water, the trick that let Harold von Braunhut sell them as 'Instant Life' before renaming them Sea-Monkeys in 1962.

The Pet Rock, sold in a box with air holes and straw, was invented in 1975 by a man in what profession?

Ad executive Gary Dahl dreamed up the Pet Rock in a bar in 1975 while friends grumbled about their pets, and sold nearly 1.5 million at just under $4 each before the fad died within months.

The name of the Tamagotchi digital pet combines the Japanese words for 'watch' and what?

Egg (tamago) plus 'watch' (uotchi) gives Tamagotchi; pupils tended them in class so much that many schools banned them, and its creators won a 1997 Ig Nobel prize for the working hours the toy swallowed.

Furby, the 1998 robotic pet, starts out speaking only which made-up language?

Furbish is the language: a Furby is programmed to swap in English words the longer it is played with, which looked so much like learning that America's NSA banned the toys from its offices in 1999.

Nintendogs, the 2005 pet-simulation game, was the second best-selling title on which console?

Nintendo DS owners stroked their puppies on the touch screen and spoke to them through the built-in microphone; Nintendogs sold almost 24 million copies, second only to New Super Mario Bros.

Which US president's family kept a raccoon named Rebecca at the White House?

Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace kept Rebecca the raccoon, originally sent to the White House to be served at Thanksgiving 1926; she walked on a leash and had an embroidered collar.

Which 2006 UK Act banned selling pets to under-16s?

Animal Welfare Act rules for England and Wales replaced a 1951 ban that covered only under-12s, and also made it an offence to offer an animal as a prize to a child who has no adult with them.

Which international body adopted the 1987 European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals?

The Council of Europe, a Strasbourg body separate from the EU, drew up the treaty, whose ban on surgery done only for looks outlaws ear cropping wherever it has been ratified.

A gene mutation shared with their wild cousins has left pet cats unable to detect which basic taste?

Sweet tastes are lost on cats because the mutation stops their taste buds binding to sugary molecules. It helps explain why cats tend to ignore sugary food.

A dog's eye has two types of colour-sensing cone, not three; which two colours can dogs see?

Blue and yellow, plus shades of grey, make up a dog's visual world. Dogs struggle to tell red from green, so a red toy lying on green grass is hard for them to spot.

Theobromine, which dogs break down far more slowly than people, makes which treat poisonous to them?

Chocolate is dangerous because a dog needs about 17.5 hours to clear just half of the theobromine it has eaten. In severe cases the symptoms can last for three days.

Which breed ran ahead of horse-drawn fire engines to clear a path, becoming the firehouse mascot?

Dalmatian puppies are born plain white, and the famous spots usually show up within about ten days. The breed got on so well with horses that it was easy to train as a carriage escort.

Kabosu, the dog whose 2010 photo became the Doge meme and inspired Dogecoin, was which breed?

Shiba Inu Kabosu was photographed by her owner, Atsuko Sato, for a blog post. The picture only became a meme three years later, captioned in multicoloured Comic Sans.

Which singer named her cats Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson and Benjamin Button after screen roles?

Taylor Swift said the first two names honour "strong, complex, independent women" from Grey's Anatomy and Law & Order. Benjamin joined the family after appearing in her "Me!" video.

Which pop star's pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, drank green tea with the mayor of Osaka on a 1987 tour?

Michael Jackson shared a two-bedroom hotel suite in Tokyo with Bubbles on the Bad tour. Strict quarantine laws kept the chimp out of the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Which poet kept a tame bear at Trinity College, Cambridge, because the rules banned pet dogs?

Lord Byron resented having to leave his dog Boatswain behind, and the college statutes said nothing about bears. He even suggested the bear should apply for a fellowship.

Queen Elizabeth II was given a puppy named Susan for her eighteenth birthday; which breed was Susan?

Pembroke Welsh Corgi Susan even went along on Elizabeth's honeymoon. The Queen owned more than 30 corgis during her reign, and they were descended from Susan.

Formally they are frenetic random activity periods; what do cat and dog owners call these bursts?

Zoomies usually last a few minutes or less and end as abruptly as they began. They often strike just after a bath, at dawn or dusk, or when an owner comes home.

Genetic research suggests house cats descend from which species, first tamed in the Near East?

The African wildcat is the probable ancestor of every pet cat, a conclusion reached in 2007 after researchers sampled domestic cats from around the world.

An odd-eyed cat, with one blue eye and one green or amber eye, shows which condition?

Heterochromia is most common in solid white cats, whose white gene stops pigment forming in one eye. It is a myth that every odd-eyed cat is born deaf in one ear.

Calico cats are almost always female because the gene for orange fur is carried where?

The X chromosome carries the orange gene, and a female has two, so one can switch on orange fur while the other does not. A rare male calico arises only from a genetic quirk such as chimerism.

Which coat pattern is marked by an M shape on a cat's forehead and stripes by its eyes?

Tabby coats come in several styles, and the narrow-striped mackerel is the most common. The classic style swirls into a bullseye mark on each side of the body instead.

Which cat breed, shaped by a mutation that shortens the tail, comes from an island in the Irish Sea?

Manx cats are one of the national symbols of the Isle of Man. The island has put them on commemorative crown coins and on many of its postage stamps.

The hairless Sphynx cat breed began with a kitten named Prune, born in which country?

Canada is the unlikely home of the breed: Prune was born in Toronto to an ordinary black and white shorthair. Early breeders called the cats "Moonstones" before settling on Sphynx.

Which cat behaviour, usually seen when a cat feels at ease, may be a leftover from nursing as a kitten?

Kneading, often called making biscuits, means pushing the front paws in and out against something soft. Kittens weaned too early may even try to suckle the person they do it to.

Cats can squeeze through any gap wide enough for their head because which bones are free-floating?

Collarbones in a cat float free instead of bracing the shoulders against the skeleton as a person's do. That lets the whole body follow wherever the head will fit.

The tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer behind the retina of cats and dogs, helps them do what?

To see in dim light, the eye gets a second chance when the layer bounces light back through the retina. A cat's is so brilliant that ancient Egyptians believed it reflected the sun at night.

The maneki-neko, a lucky cat figurine common in Japanese shops and restaurants, is posed doing what?

Beckoning with a paw is meant to bring the owner good luck, though visitors often mistake the gesture for a wave. The cat is traditionally a calico holding a koban coin.

Which Egyptian goddess, shown with a cat's head, was honoured by pilgrims with offerings of mummified cats?

Bastet started out as a fierce lioness goddess and only later softened into a cat. At her temple city of Bubastis, mummified cats were often buried next to their owners.

Larry became the first official Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office in 2011 at which address?

10 Downing Street had kept working cats for decades, but Larry was the first to be given the title officially. An earlier mouser, Peter III, served under five different prime ministers.

Tama, a calico cat in a hat, lifted passenger numbers on a Japanese railway by holding which post?

Station master Tama's main duty at Kishi Station was to greet passengers. In place of a salary, the railway gave her a year's worth of cat food and a gold name tag.

The first cat in space flew on a rocket in 1963; which country sent her?

France sent Félicette, a Parisian cat, up and recovered her capsule safely just 13 minutes after the rocket was ignited. She had no monument until a crowdfunded bronze statue was made decades later.

In which US state did Stubbs the cat serve as honorary mayor of Talkeetna for some twenty years?

Alaska's town of Talkeetna kept Stubbs as honorary mayor from his kittenhood in 1997 until 2017. He drew 30 to 40 tourists a day who hoped to meet the mayor.

CC, a kitten born at Texas A&M University in 2001, was the first pet produced by which technique?

Cloning gave CC her name, which stood for CopyCat or Carbon Copy. She lived to 18 and had kittens of her own, the first time a cloned pet had given birth.

Which US president's family adopted Socks, a stray who leapt into their daughter's arms in Arkansas?

Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea was leaving her piano teacher's house when Socks jumped into her arms. Socks never tolerated the family's later dog, Buddy, and ended up living with the president's secretary.

Which rock singer dedicated a solo album to his cats and wrote the song "Delilah" about one?

Freddie Mercury dedicated his album Mr. Bad Guy to his cat Jerry, to Tom, Oscar and Tiffany, and to "all the cat lovers across the universe".

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats sets to music a book of light verse by which poet?

T. S. Eliot wrote the poems of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s to amuse his godchildren. Lloyd Webber began setting them to music in 1977.

Which racing breed hits 43 mph with a gallop that lifts all four feet off the ground twice a stride?

Greyhound speed comes from a light but muscular build, a large heart and an extremely flexible spine. Off the track the breed is gentle, and many sleep with their eyes partly open.

Which short-legged breed was developed to scent, chase and flush badgers out of their burrows?

Dachshund means "badger dog" in German. Its skin is loose enough not to tear while it tunnels through tight burrows after its prey.

Which breed's elaborate show clip began as a practical trim for retrieving shot birds from water?

Poodle coats were clipped close so the dog was not weighed down while swimming, with fur left over the joints and vital organs. Smaller poodles were once common circus performers.

Which hunting dog from Central Africa is called "barkless" because it makes a yodel-like sound?

Basenji dogs owe the odd sound to an unusually shaped larynx. The New Guinea singing dog is one of the few other dogs with a similar voice.

Which crossbreed did Wally Conron introduce as a low-shedding guide dog, a trend he came to regret?

Labradoodle pioneer Sultan worked as a guide dog for a woman in Hawaii for ten years. Conron later said the craze he had started caused "a lot of problems".

Chaser, who could fetch 1,022 different toys by name, belonged to which clever herding breed?

Border Collie Chaser was a 76th-birthday present for retired psychology professor John Pilley, who trained her from the age of eight weeks.

What name is given to the thumb-like extra digit on the inside of a dog's or cat's front leg?

Dewclaw digits sit where a thumb would, and wild cats use theirs as an extra claw for catching and holding prey. On the hind legs they usually have little bone or muscle.

Which Victorian polymath, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, invented the ultrasonic dog whistle?

Francis Galton built the whistle to test how high a pitch different animals could hear, trying it on a house cat as well as on dogs. It is still sometimes called Galton's whistle.

In J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Nana the nursemaid dog is which breed, like the author's own pet Luath?

Newfoundland dog Nana is employed by the Darling family as a nanny. After the children vanish, a guilty Mr Darling moves into her kennel as penance and even travels to work in it.

The Beatles song "Martha My Dear" is named after Paul McCartney's pet Martha, a dog of which breed?

Old English Sheepdog Martha gave her name to one of the few Beatles songs on which McCartney played all the band instruments himself, leaving only the orchestral parts to session players.

Tintin's Wire Fox Terrier is called Milou in Hergé's original comics and what in English editions?

Snowy got his original name, Milou, from the nickname of creator Hergé's first girlfriend, Marie-Louise. The dog was modelled partly on a terrier at a café Hergé used to visit.

Choupette, a Birman cat received as a Christmas gift, was the pet of which fashion designer?

Karl Lagerfeld first looked after Choupette while her owner, the model Baptiste Giabiconi, was abroad, and was then given her for good. She stayed with him for the rest of his life.

In Homer's Odyssey, which faithful dog recognises Odysseus after twenty years away, then dies?

Argos is found lying neglected on a dung heap, too old and weak to move, when his owner comes home. Homer gives the dog's passing the solemn wording normally kept for fallen warriors.

Which pet turtle was revealed in the comics as the species of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

The red-eared slider is named for the red stripe where its ears would be and for sliding off rocks into the water. Escaped and released pets have let it settle far beyond its North American home.

Koi, the pond fish bred for ornament in Japan since the 1820s, are varieties of which fish?

Carp is exactly what the name says, because koi is simply the Japanese word for the fish. The fancy ones are properly nishikigoi, or "brocaded carp", a name coined only in the 1910s.

A cat that sniffs something, curls back its upper lip and holds the pose is showing which behaviour?

The flehmen response draws scent into the vomeronasal organ above the roof of the mouth, a second way of smelling. Horses show the same grimace just as strongly.

Which cat stars in a 9th-century poem by a monk who compares its hunting to his own scholarly work?

Pangur Bán means "White Pangur". The anonymous monk's eight short verses survive in a single manuscript, a notebook now known as the Reichenau Primer.

Towser, a cat credited with killing an estimated 28,899 mice, patrolled what kind of workplace?

A whisky distillery, Glenturret, kept Towser as its pest controller from 1963 to 1987. Each morning's catch was laid out on the still house floor, and Guinness auditors watched her for days to estimate the total.

Oscar, a therapy cat at a Rhode Island nursing home, became famous for apparently predicting what?

Patients' deaths seemed to follow within hours whenever Oscar chose to nap beside someone. Staff began phoning relatives as soon as they found him asleep next to a resident, so they could say goodbye.

In the Garfield comic strip, which dog arrived with Jon's roommate Lyman and then stayed for good?

Odie turned up at Jon's door with Lyman, who brought only a suitcase and the dog, much to Garfield's dismay. When Lyman was phased out of the strip, ownership quietly passed to Jon.

Which Disney character, first seen as a bloodhound in The Chain Gang, became Mickey Mouse's pet dog?

Pluto was called Rover in his second cartoon, where he was Minnie's dog. He only got his familiar name in The Moose Hunt in 1931, and he is officially a mixed breed.