Table of Contents
Introduction 8
Beastly basics 10
Animals must move, breathe and possess a head 12
Animals must have sex to reproduce 18
Two different species cannot interbreed 21
Complex animals have more genes 24
Fish were the first animals to leave the oceans 27
The first animal to leave the Earth was a dog 29
We've got animals well catalogued 32
Humans didn't invent it 34
A muddle of mammals 38
All mammals are warm-blooded 40
Bulls are enraged by the colour red 44
Camels store water in their humps 45
Bats are blind 46
Lemmings commit suicide by leaping from cliffs 47
Humans evolved from chimps 49
Elephants use their trunks like straws 51
The lion is King of the Jungle 55
You're always within 6ft of a rat 58
Porcupines can shoot their quills 61
Marsupials are found only in Australia 62
Curious diets 64
Pets' corner 66
Dogs see only in black and white 68
One dog year is equivalent to seven human years 69
Dogs say woof 70
Rabbits should be fed carrots 71
A cat can survive any fall 72
Goldfish have seven-second memories 74
Feathered fallacies 76
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand 78
Penguins hang out with polar bears 80
A duck's quack does not make an echo 83
Owls can turn their heads through 360 degrees 84
Turkeys come from Turkey 86
Magpies love to steal shiny objects 87
Touching a baby bird will cause the parents to abandon it 89
Pigeons are just flying rats 91
Bread is bad for birds 93
London's parakeets were released by Jimi Hendrix 95
Just how wrong are the movies? 97
Reptiles and amphibians 100
You can get warts from toads 102
Chameleons change colour purely for camouflage 104
Boa constrictors suffocate their prey 107
T-Rex was the largest upright dinosaur, and other dodgy dino myths 109
Life aquatic 114
All sharks are merciless killing machines 116
Watch out for piranhas! They kill 120
The blue whale is the world's largest living species 122
Whales and dolphins are fish 124
Octopi have eight tentacles 127
All eels are born in the Sargasso Sea 128
The horseshoe crab is a living fossil 130
Don't mix them up 132
Creepy crawlies and minibeasts 134
Daddy longlegs are the most poisonous spiders 136
Earwigs burrow into human ears 137
Centipedes have 100 legs 139
Bees always die after a sting 140
All spiders have eight eyes 142
A praying mantis female will always eat the male following sex 144
An earthworm cut in two becomes two new worms 146
Other myths and misnomers 148
Are you pronouncing it wrong? 155
Let's start a new wave of fake facts 157
Index 158
Acknowledgments 160
