Fish form orderly queues in emergencies. When evacuating through narrow spaces in sketchy situations, schools of neon tetra fish queue so that they don’t collide or clog up the line. Scientists interpreted this behaviour as showing that fish can respect social rules even in emergencies, unlike us humans.
100 Mind-Blowing Behaviour Facts
Some animals display autistic-like traits. Autistic traits in animals include a tendency toward repetitive behaviour and atypical social habits.
Boars wash their food. National Geographic reported that at Basel Zoo in Switzerland, zookeepers watched adult and juvenile wild boars pick up sandy apples and bring them to a nearby creek in their environment to wash before eating. Though some items like sugar beets were eaten without human-like behaviour, the boars brought a whole dead chicken to the creek to wash before chowing down. One ecologist called this a “luxury behaviour.”
Insects are attracted to light because of the moon. Bug behaviour can be especially strange, but scientists predict that night insects (like moths) are attracted to lights because they used the light of the moon to navigate the Earth way before artificial lights were made.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas. During an experiment conducted on four captive gorillas, scientists observed a difference in behaviour. Peak sexual behaviour was observed during menstruation rather than after.
The first roller coaster was invented to stop sinful behaviour. When LaMarcus Thompson created the first roller coaster in Coney Island, he did it to stop the sinful lifestyle of New Yorkers. The rise of brothels in the late 1800s disgusted Thompson who wanted to provide a family-friendly way to indulge.
At the Humane Society of Missouri, kid volunteers comfort anxious shelter dogs by reading to them. Shelter dogs have usually lived through significant trauma. This makes it difficult for some dogs to be adopted due to their changed behaviour. To solve this, the Humane Society of Missouri created the Shelter Buddies Reading Program. It pairs kids aged 6 to 15 with anxious, mistrustful dogs to socialize them for home life.
When giraffes fight, they neck it out. Giraffes are a funny-looking bunch. When a viral video broke out of two giraffes fighting, the Internet found it hard to take them seriously. However, neck fights are the natural aggressive behaviour of giraffes. Usually, they get into these fights when competing for a mate.
Studies have shown that playing Tetris can curb sex, drug, and food cravings. Maybe it’s because the physical and visual representation of “fixing” things to fit just right gives us the illusion of having our sh*t together, or maybe it’s something else. Nonetheless, it’s proven that Tetris helps lessen impulsive behaviour. Carnal desires, no more.
No one knows why flamingos stand on one foot. Flamingos usually pose with one foot tucked under their bodies. A theory suggests that they do it to conserve body heat in the cold water of their feeding areas, but it has not been confirmed. Astonishingly, a study showed that this behaviour does not cause muscle strain in their legs, meaning they can do it without physical effort.
African buffalo herds display voting behaviour, in which individuals register their travel preference by standing up, looking in one direction, and then lying back down. Only adult females can vote.
Earth has a squishy interior. Earth’s interior is not solid but rather has a semi-solid or ‘squishy’ consistency owing to high temperatures and pressures. This squishy consistency allows the mantle to flow and move over geological timescales, which is responsible for phenomena such as plate tectonics, volcanic activity and Earthquakes. One consequence of this squishy interior is a process known as post-glacial rebound. During the last ice age, large portions of Earth’s surface were covered by glaciers, causing the underlying mantle to deform and sink. As the glaciers melted and receded, the mantle slowly rebounded back to its original position over thousands of years, causing the land above it to rise. This process is still occurring today in places such as Canada, Scandinavia, and Greenland, where the land is still rebounding from the weight of the glaciers that once covered the region. Recent research has found that West Antarctica is rising faster than anywhere else in the world, thanks to data from ESA’s GOCE gravity mission. The study of post-glacial rebound provides important insights into the structure and behaviour of Earth’s interior, and how it responds to changes in the surface environment over long timescales.
Axolotls are solitary animals. You’ll rarely find them in a group or even pairs, though they do exhibit some unique behaviour as a mating ritual. That’s not to say they’re unfriendly, but they do seem to prefer keeping themselves to themselves.
Some cat breeds (called “puppy cats”) are bred specifically to exhibit dog-like behaviour.