The world’s smallest fish (as far as we know) is the stout infantfish. It’s only about one-third of an inch long which makes it the world’s smallest vertebrate. It would take about a half a million of these little guys to weigh a pound.
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/041027_Smallest_Fish.html
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=639
OK… wait. There’s one even smaller. It’s the Paedocypris progenetica, a tiny member of the carp family found in an acidic peat swamp in Indonesia.
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060125_ap_smallest_fish.html
OK… wait. There’s one smaller yet. It’s the male anglerfish Photocorynus spiniceps found in the Philippines. It measured in at a mere 6.2 mm long.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4666736.stm
OK… wait. Just kidding… Let’s move on, shall we?
“Sailfish are the fastest fish in the ocean and have been clocked leaping out of the water at more than 68 miles (110 kilometers) per hour.”
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/sailfish.html
Catfish whiskers are called barbels.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fish/catfish/index.html
Likely the world’s largest catfish was the 9 feet long, 646 pound Mekong giant catfish caught May 1, 2005 in northern Thailand. It is listed as a critically endangered species by the World Conservation Union.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0629_050629_giantcatfish.html
[Stated “fact”: Jellyfish don’t have brains.] True. They just have a basic nervous system that allows them to sense things like light and color and respond appropriately to certain types of stimulation.
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/pub/seascience/jellyfi.html
Some jellyfish have tentacles that can be over 100 feet long.
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/pub/seascience/jellyfi.html
The tentacles of the Portuguese Man-of-War can inflict severe stings even though the animal is dead.
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/pub/seascience/jellyfi.html
Dolphins sleep with half of their brains at a time. This allows them to always be able to come to the surface for air when they need to.
http://www.sleephomepages.org/sleepsyllabus/fr-b.html
[Stated “fact”: A shrimp’s heart is in its head.] Not really. A shrimp’s heart is in the rearward part of its cephalothorax – as opposed to its abdomen – along with its stomach, bladder and reproductive organs. The foremost head section contains the brain. Seems logical to me…
http://www.shrimpcrabsandcrayfish.co.uk/Shrimp.htm?Anatomy.htm~mainFrame
http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/Biology/Harbour/SPECIES/SHRIMP/ANATOMY.HTM
Shrimp have between 7,000 and 30,000 individual eyes (onmatids) on each eyestalk. In spite of that, they orientate themselves mainly by touch.
http://www.shrimpcrabsandcrayfish.co.uk/Shrimp.htm?Anatomy.htm~mainFrame
The world’s largest octopus is the Giant Pacific octopus. It can weigh over 400 pounds with an arm span of around 25 feet. And yes, they are called “arms”…
http://www.aqua.org/animals_giantpacificoctopus.html
The mature female Giant Pacific octopus has 280 suckers on each arm for a total of 2240. The male has fewer because the arm that is used for mating – the hectocoylized arm – only has 100 suckers.
http://marine.alaskapacific.edu/octopus/factsheet.html
Octopus and squid are cephalopods – meaning their arms are attached to their head. I’m glad humans aren’t assembled like that…
http://www.aqua.org/animals_giantpacificoctopus.html
Most of the sounds a dolphin makes don’t come from its mouth but instead are produced in its nasal cavity.
http://www.imms.org/dolphins.php
The “seal” with the large front flippers that it can walk on is really a sea lion. True seals have short, weak front flippers.
http://www.imms.org/sealions.php
Manatees, even though they sort of look like walrus, are most closely related to the elephant.
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Manatee/sciclassman.html
Some manatees have fingernails at the tips of their flippers. They are such slow moving mammals – yes, they are mammals, remember? - that frequently algae will grow on their skin.
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Manatee/phycarman.html
Killer whales are actually just big old dolphins. They were once more accurately referred to as “whale killers”.
http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/killer-whale/scientific-classification.htm
“Orca”, even though it sounds like a word that should mean “fierce” or “vicious”, actually means “in the shape of a barrel or cask” in Latin – referring no doubt, to the killer whale’s body shape.
http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/killer-whale/scientific-classification.htm
Killer whales are the largest predator of mammals alive today. The largest male ever recorded was 32 ft. long and weighed 22,000 pounds.
http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/killer-whale/physical-characteristics.htm
The mudskipper – even though it is a fish – spends a good bit of its time out of water. It breathes through its skin (cutaneous breathing) and moves around easily using its fins and tail.
http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/mudskippers/intro.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskipper
In the seahorse world, it’s the male who becomes pregnant and carries the young. And yes, the seahorse is a fish and they give birth as opposed to laying eggs.
http://www.seahorse.org/cgi-bin/faq/smartfaq.cgi?answer=1058833018
http://www.seahorse.org/cgi-bin/faq/smartfaq.cgi?answer=1058829987
The giant clam is the world’s largest bivalve mollusk measuring up to 4 feet in length and weighing up to 500 pounds. They’re not dangerous to humans unless you strain something trying to lift one out of the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tridacna
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Tridacna_gigas.html
Lobsters can amputate (or simply remove) one of their own claws to escape from danger. It’s OK though, they can grow another one.
http://lobstermanspage.net/lobstrs/lfacts.html
Lobsters grow only by molting or shedding their old shell. It takes 20 – 25 molts or up to seven years before a lobster reaches a legal size of approximately one pound. Legal size is actually determined by a length measurement not by weight.
http://lobstermanspage.net/lobstrs/lfacts.html
http://www.maine-lobster.com/lobfacts.htm#legal
[Stated “fact”: A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.] Better fact: Some sharks – not all – have nictitating membranes (translucent eyelids) they use to cover their eyes for protection… but I wouldn’t really call that a “blink”. Fish don’t have eyelids like us out-of-water creatures do.
http://www.everwonder.com/david/sharks/anatomy/
[Stated “fact”: A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.] It’s probably a bit more accurate to say that a goldfish is “with eggs” or that they are “ripe” – and there’s no verifiable information to prove that they are known as “twits”.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020329.html
Blue whales, the largest mammal to ever inhabit the earth, can grow up to 100 feet long and weigh over 100 tons. (That would be equivalent to the weight of 14 large African elephants.)
http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/bluewhl.htm
Baby blue whales (calves) at birth can be up to 27 ft long and weigh up to 3 tons. While nursing, the calves can gain up to 200 lbs in weight a day.
http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/bluewhl.htm
During feeding season, the blue whale can eat up to 4 tons of krill each day.
http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/bluewhl.htm
A shark’s skin structure and pattern helps prevent barnacles and other ocean organisms from attaching to it. This design is being tested in coatings to see if it will accomplish the same thing for ships.
http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2005news/marinecoating.htm
Giant squid can grow up to 60 ft. long and weigh up to – well, quite a bit. Nobody’s really sure. Smaller ones have been photographed in their natural habitat… that would be like, the ocean…
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageseas/deep-side-monsters.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0927_050927_giant_squid.html
A tuna will die if it stops swimming.
http://www.bumblebee.com/tuna_life.jsp
Albacore are the only tuna that can be marketed as “white meat tuna”.
http://www.bumblebee.com/tuna_portraits.jsp
In periods of drought, the western African lungfish can remain dormant for up to two or three years.
http://www.oregonzoo.org/Cards/Rainforest/lungfish.african.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/l/lungfish.asp
Have you heard (or read) that a goldfish has a memory span of only 3 seconds?
Looks like those little guys can actually do much better than that…
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1179348.htm
…and MythBusters TV apparently did a segment where they taught goldfish to swim through a maze – Episode eleven but I haven’t seen it…
http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/html/sinking_titanic.html
Ribbon worms are the longest invertebrate (animal without a backbone). They can be the size of a pencil and up to 90 ft. long – maybe twice that long when they’re stretched out.
http://www.seawater.no/fauna/slimormer/kjempe.htm
The largest “turtle” is not the Galapagos tortoise. It’s the leatherback turtle weighing up to 1,800 pounds with up to an 8 foot shell. It’s also the fastest, having been clocked swimming at 22 miles per hour.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-turtle.html
Bull sharks can live in both salt and fresh water and have been found 1800 miles up the Mississippi River in Illinois. Do not try to make friends with one…
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/bullshark/bullshark.htm
[Stated “fact”: The Ganges River in India boasts the only genuine fresh-water sharks in the entire world.] Not really. Even though there are not many of these guys around, six different species have been identified living in other rivers.
http://www.elasmo-research.org/conservation/river_sharks.htm
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