general knowledge quiz

Amazing facts for kids

   Click here for more facts about elephants!

The typical laboratory mouse runs 2.5 miles per night on its treadmill.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.

The elephant is the largest animal on land. But it is much smaller than the blue whale.

Did you know moths are not really attracted to light? Moths fly towards the blackest point which is behind the light.

Did you know Sailor, Dead Leaf, Paper Kite, Blue Striped Crow, Julia and Great Egg Fly are all names of BUTTERFLIES

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The rhino is a primitive-looking animal. They have looked the same for thousands of years. There are two species of rhino: the white (or square-lipped rhino) and the black (or hooked-lipped rhino). The black rhino has three toes on each foot. Both the black and white rhino have two horns.

Ancients Greeks believed earthquakes were caused by giants fighting underneath the ground. The Ancient Japanese thought there was a giant spider living under the earth, and each time it moved, it caused the earth to quake

Our body has some natural protection for our eyes. Our eyelashes help to keep dirt out of our eyes.  

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Hundreds of years ago, rockets were invented in China. The first rockets were shaped like arrows and they were not very powerful. The power of early rockets came from gunpowder. 

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More Amazing facts :

--If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

   --The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet.

    --On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

     --The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

    --It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

    --Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

    --Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?

   --Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.

   -In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

  -- The act of snapping one's fingers is called a "fillip".

-----The dot on top of the letter  'i'  is called a tittle.

-- Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.

---Any number, squared, is equal to one more than the numbers on either side of it -- 4x6 is 24, 5x5 is 25 etc.

--A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.

--The word four has four letters. In the English language there is no other number whose number of letters is equal to its value.

--The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache.

----No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half.

   --A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

   --The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its   own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

   --Polar bears are left handed.

    --The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank  #1 for animal having the most taste buds.

   --The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like a   human jumping the length of a football field.

   --Butterflies taste with their feet.

--. It is impossible to sneeze and keep ones eye's open at the same time.

   --Elephants are the only animals that can't jump. ( thankfully !!)

   --A cat's urine glows under a black light.

   --An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

--Cockroaches can change course as many as 25 times in one second, making them the most nimble animals known.

--Mosquitoes do not bite. They stab. A mosquito has no jaws, hence when attacking a victim, it pierces it with its long proboscis and sucks the blood up through it's nasal tube.

    --Starfishes haven't got brains.

- Ostriches live about 75 years and can reproduce for 50 years.

- Some breeds of vultures can fly at altitudes as high as 36,900 feet.

--The skin of the armpits can harbor up to 516,000 bacteria per square inch, while drier areas, such as the forearms, have only about 13,000 bacteria per square inch on them.

--The most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million people die from malaria every year

-A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles or about 9,460,800,000,000 kilometers.
A light nanosecond is the distance light can travel in a billionth of a second and is 1 foot or about 30 cm.

INTERCHANGEABILITY contains the words THREE, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, THIRTEEN, THIRTY, THIRTY-NINE, EIGHTY, EIGHTY-NINE, NINETY, and NINETY-EIGHT

One thousand contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

FOUR has four letters; no other number has this property in English such that the number of letters in the name equals the number.

Some words with horizontal symmetry (they reflect themselves across a horizontal line) are: BEDECKED, BOOHOOED, CEBID (a type of monkey), CHECKBOOK, CHOICE, CODEBOOK, COOKBOOK, DECIDED, DIOXIDE, DOBCHICK, EXCEEDED, HIDE, HOODOOED, ICEBOX, KEBOBBED, OBOE, OKEECHOBEE.

Some words with vertical symmetry are MOM, WOW, OTTO, MAAM, MA'AM, TOOT, AHA, AA, AHA, AIA, AMA, AVA, AWA, HAH, HOH, HUH, MAM, MIM, MM, MUM, OHO, OO, OXO, TAT, TIT, TOT, TUT, UTU, VAV, WAW.

R.S.V.P. comes from the French phrase, 'répondez, s'il vous plaît,'  which means 'please reply.' According to western etiquette, you should reply promptly if you receive a formal invitation.

A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are not the same distance. On the ocean, a nautical mile measures 6,080 feet. A land or statute mile is 5,280 feet.

A nanosecond (ns or nsec) is one billionth (10^-9) of a second and is a common measurement of read or write access time to random access memory

INTESTINES has each of its letters occurring twice. Some other such words: APPEASES, ARRAIGNING, BERIBERI, BILABIAL, CAUCASUS, CHOWCHOW, CONCISIONS, COUSCOUS, ESOPHAGOGRAPHERS, FROUFROU, GENSENGS, GREEGREE, GUITGUIT, HAPPENCHANCE, HORSESHOER, HOTSHOTS, JIPIJAPA, MAHIMAHI, MESOSOME, MILLIEME, MIMETITE, RAPPAREE, REAPPEAR, SCINTILLESCENT, SHAMMASH, SHANGHAIINGS, TEAMMATE, UNSUFFICIENCES, VETITIVE

There are three sets of letters on the standard typewriter and computer keyboards which are in alphabetical order, reading left to right. They are f-g-h, j-k-l, and o-p.
 

Bird records

• The largest bird in the world today is the Ostrich Struthio camelus. The North African Ostrich subspecies is the tallest of all the Ostriches. Males can be 2.74 m tall. The head and neck can be 1.4 m long. The average height is around 2 m.
• The smallest bird in the world is either the Bee Hummingbird Mellisuga helenae from Cuba and the Isle of Pines or the Little Woodstar Acestrura bombus of Ecuador and northern Peru. The male hummingbird is 57 mm and weighs 1.6 g. Half of its length is taken up by the bill and the tail. Some experts think the Woodstar is even smaller.
• The bird with the largest wingspan is the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans which lives in the southern oceans. Its wings average 2.54 - 3.51 m. The largest recorded wingspan was of a very old male whose wings measured 3.63 m.
• The Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus has the longest bill of any bill measuring 34 - 47 cm.
• The bird with the longest bill to body size is the Sword-billed Hummingbird Ensifera ensifera that lives in the high Andes from Venezuela to Bolivia. Its bill is 10.2 cm long, four times longer than the bird's body, not counting the tail.
• Ostriches Struthio camelus have the longest legs. Their legs can be up to 1.3 m long.
• A number of swifts have the shortest legs. Their family name Apodidae means 'lacking legs'.
• Jacanas (Jacanidae family) have the longest toes relative to body length. Some of the larger Jacanas can have 'toespans' of at least 15 cm.
• The Phoenix Fowl has the longest feathers. The upper tail can grow for six years and one measured 10.6 m. The Phoenix Fowl has been bred as an ornamental bird in Japan since the mid 17th century and is a breed of the Red Jungle Fowl Gallus gallus.
• The longest feathers of a wild bird relative to body size, are the central tail feathers of the male Ribbon-tailed Bird of Paradise Asptrapia mayeri. It lives in the mountain rainforest of New Guinea.
• The most feathers ever counted on one bird was 25 216 on the Tundra Swan Cygnus columbianus. 80 per cent of feathers were on the bird's head.
• The least number of feathers ever counted was 940 on a Ruby-throated Hummingbird Archilochus colubris. But this bird, relative to its body size, has more feathers than most other birds. It measures only 9 cm.
• The Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus is the fastest bird and fastest of any kind of animal. It can reach speeds of at least 200 km when diving for prey in the air.
• Hummingbirds have the fastest wingbeat. The Horned Sungem Heliactin cornuta, in tropical South America beats its wings at 90 beats per second.
• Hummingbirds, Family Trochilidae have been recorded in experiments, hovering for 50 minutes.
• The Artic Tern Sterna paradisaea is believed to migrate the furthest. It flies from the shores of the Arctic to the Antarctic. One banded Arctic Tern cover 22 530 km flying from the White Sea Coast of Russia to Fremantle, Western Australia.
• Relative to body size the Long Rufous Humingbird Selasphorus rufus makes the longest migration. It measures 10 cm and flies from as far north as Alaska to Mexico and back again - 10 000 km.
• The highest recorded altitude for any bird was 11 277 m for a Ruppell's Griffon Vulture Gyps Rueppellii. It flew into a plane.
• The largest bird egg is from the Ostrich Sturthio camelus. The egg measures 15 - 20 cm long, 10 - 15 cm in diameter and weighs 1 - 1.78 kg.
• The smallest known egg is the egg of the Vervain Hummingbird Mellisuga minima of Jamacia and nearby islets. The egg is barely the size of a pea and measures less than 10 mm in length and weighs 0.356 g.
• The largest nest was built by a pair of Bald Eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus was 2.9 m wide and 6 m deep.
• The Mallee Fowl Leipoa ocellata of Australia builds a mound for a nest. These mounds have been measured at 4.57 m high and 10.6 m long. A mound this size means the bird moved 250 cubic metres of vegetation and 300 tonnes of soil.
• The Rhinoceros Auklet Cerorhinca monocerata which measures 35 cm and nests on islands in the North Pacific excavates a burrow of 2 - 3 m in length. Burrows up to 6 m are not uncommon and 8 m burrows have also been found.
• Emperor Penguins Aptenodytes forsteri make the deepest dive of any bird ranging from 444 - 483 m. They also stay under water the longest. The maximum dive time recorded has been 18 minutes.
• The fastest swimmer is probably the Gentoo Penguin Pygoscelis papua at 27 km per hour.
• The fastest runner is the Ostrich Struthio camelus. It can run up to 72 km per hour over short distances.
• The only poisonous birds known are the three species of Pitohui from Papua new Guinea - the Hooded Pitohui Pitohui dichrous the Rusty Pitohui P. ferrugineus and the Variable Pitohui P. kirhocephalus. The Hooded Pitohui is the deadliest. The skin and feathers contain almost the same homobatrachotoxin as the Poison Arrow Frogs.

Courtesy http://www.amonline.net.au/webinabox/birds/about/records.htm