Curated playlist
Herbivorous mammals
- 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.
- HorseWhy can a horse sleep standing up yet collapse if it never lies down? Deep REM sleep requires lying down.
- ElephantAn elephant can crack a peanut shell without breaking the seed inside.
- African buffaloThe African buffalo has never been domesticated, not once. Its wild relatives the yak and water buffalo were tamed.
- GoatGoats are the only ruminant that regularly climbs trees. They also have slit-shaped pupils and no tear ducts.
- ElkEarly English colonists gave the elk a name that belonged to the European moose. Shawnee and Cree called it wapiti.
- Asian elephantThe Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, is the largest living land animal in Asia and the only surviving species in its genus, Elephas. Since 1986 the IUCN Red List has classed it as Endangered. The reason is a drop of at least half in its…
- PronghornThe pronghorn can run 55 miles per hour over half a mile, faster than any other American land animal.
- RabbitOn the Isle of Portland, older residents still refuse to say the word "rabbit".
- GiraffeA giraffe's neck has the same seven vertebrae as almost every other mammal. Each one is over 28 centimeters long.
- HippopotamusUntil 1909, naturalists grouped hippos with pigs. Their closest living relatives are whales and dolphins.
- GorillaGorillas owe their name to the voyage of a Carthaginian explorer who sailed around 500 BC, and nobody can say for certain what he saw. Hanno the Navigator led an expedition down the west African coast, toward the area that later became…
- African bush elephantThe African bush elephant, Loxodonta africana, is the largest living animal on land, and one bull shot in Angola in 1974 shows how large it can become. That animal stood 3.96 metres at the shoulder. Its weight was estimated at 10.4 tonnes.…
- Giant pandaThe giant panda is a bear that still has a meat eater's body. Yet about 99 percent of its diet is bamboo.
- ZebraCharles Darwin once wrote that "a female zebra would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra." He wrote that in 1871, and it shows how much attention the animal's coat drew from naturalists.…
- CapybaraThe capybara, Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, can doze in a river with nothing but its nose above the water. It is also the largest living rodent. A typical adult in the Venezuelan llanos weighs 48.9 kilograms, roughly the size of a large dog.…
- NutriaSheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, once sent SWAT sharpshooters after the nutria, a plant-eating rodent from South America. The animal is also called the coypu, and its scientific name is Myocastor coypus. It lives in…