Curated playlist
Cosmopolitan mammals
- Humpback whaleHumpback whales fell to fewer than 5,000 by the 1960s, but around 135,000 lived worldwide in 2018.
- CattleThe word cattle comes from a Latin word meaning a sum of money. It first meant movable property, as opposed to land.
- SheepSheep can remember the faces of fifty other sheep for over two years. A 2001 study in Nature found it.
- CatThe oldest solid evidence of a tamed cat comes from Cyprus, not Egypt.
- Brown ratThe brown rat is called the Norway rat, but it did not come from Norway. It may come from northern China.
- RabbitOn the Isle of Portland, older residents still refuse to say the word "rabbit".
- DogA dog buried in Germany 14,223 years ago had survived distemper as a puppy.
- OrcaThe orca, also known as the killer whale, is the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family. Some orcas have been seen swimming with dead salmon balanced on their heads, like odd little hats. It is a playful image for an animal with such…
- Sperm whaleThe sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, makes the loudest sound of any animal on Earth. Its underwater clicks reach a source level of 236 decibels. That volume is only one oddity in a toothed whale that lives in every ocean and hunts…
- Blue whaleThe blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, has a heart that weighed 180 kilograms in one stranded North Atlantic animal. No other creature has been found with a heavier one. That heart belongs to a baleen whale of the rorqual family…
- HumanAny two humans share over 99% of their genetic code. That makes people more uniform than chimpanzees.