Learn interesting trivia and information about a wide range of science topics with our fun science

facts for kids.

Plant Facts
Explore the amazing world of plants with our interesting range of fun plant facts for kids. Learn about

Tree resin which has been fossilized is known as amber, it sometimes contains plant material
or small animals that were trapped inside. More tree facts for kids.

Some plants are carnivores, gaining nutrients by eating various small insects and spiders. A
well known example of a carnivorous plant is the Venus Flytrap.

Bamboo can be a fast growing plant, some types can grow almost a metre (3.28 feet) in just
one day!

While using energy from sunlight, plants turn carbon dioxide into food in a process called
photosynthesis.

Around 2000 different types of plants are used by humans to make food.

Onions might taste good but they can be painful to chop. A gas is released when you cut onions that
irritates you eyes, the tears you produce while this happens are your bodys way of washing it from
your eyes.

In the agricultural industry, to ensure crops of food grow well water is often added to soil in
the form of irrigation.

Plant matter found at the bottom of areas with water such as swamps can eventually turn
into coal due to a process called metamorphosis (changing form).

There are over 200,000 identified plant species and the list is growing all the time.

Poison ivy produces a skin irritant called urushiol. Touching poison ivy will cause an allergic
reaction, usually in the form of an itchy rash on the skin.

Fertilizers are chemicals added to plants to help them grow. Important elements in fertilizers
include nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Manure (animal waste) is also used as a
fertilizer.

trees, flowers, photosynthesis and more before checking out some cool information and trivia on weird
species such as poison ivy and the venus flytrap.

Facts About Animals

Dinosaurs probably lived to be between 75 to 300 years of age. Scientists figured this out
from looking at the structure of their bones.

 One way to tell the age of a fish is by looking at its scales. They have growth rings just like
trees. These are called circuli. Clusters of them are called annuli. Each annuli show one year.
The northern fur seal, rather than using a layer of fat to keep it warm, depends on its thick fur
with some 300,000 hairs per square inch.

The chameleon has a tongue that is 1.5 times the length of its body!
Did you know porpoises could surf? They are frequently seen riding the bow wave of a ship.
They make no swimming motions and can ride the wake for more than an hour. They can
also turn on their side or flip completely around. Surfs up porpe!
Fish swimming at depths of 15,000 feet (almost 3 miles down!) can withstand a pressure of
7,000 pounds per square inch. They are able to live in these crushing depths by pumping gas
into their swim bladder.
You may have heard someone say, Its raining cats and dogs. There have been actual
documented cases from all over the world of fish, frogs, dead birds, snakes, snails, beetles,
worms and jellyfish raining down from the sky in great numbers, but no reports of showers of
cats or dogs.
The blue whale, the largest animal to have ever existed, is 96 feet long and weights 125 tons.
This is as much as 4 large dinosaurs (Brontosauri), 23 elephants, 230 cows or 1800 men.
Some animals produce their own lights, called bioluminescence. The Brazilian railroad worm
has a red light on its head and green lights down its side. All it needs to drive on the street is
a turn signal.
The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon. It can fly at a speed of 168-217 miles per hour.
The largest egg laid by a living bird is that of the North African Ostrich. It is 6 to 8 inches in
length and 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The smallest is that of the hummingbird. It is less than
0.39 inches in diameter.
Whether an alligator is a male or female can be determined by the temperature of the nest
where the egg is hatched 90 to 93 degrees will make it a male; 82 to 86 degrees will turn
it into a female.
Animals with some of the longest lives are the Marions tortoise (152 years), the fin whale
(116 years) and the deep-sea clam (100 years).
An electric eel can produce a shock of 600 volts. Thats enough to stun large animals
even knock a horse off its feet.
Cows can sleep standing up.

 Salamanders are known to come out of wood when it was burning inside a fireplace, this is
because Salamanders hibernate in wood.
Some frogs can pull their eyes into their throat and help push food down!
An African adult elephant eats about six hundred pounds of food a day; thats four
percent of the elephants body weight!
The smallest fish in the world are the pygmy goby and the Luzon goby, from the Philippines,
which are only one-half-inch long when they are full grown.
The 14-foot-long narwhal is a whale whose tooth can reach up to eight feet long!
Chimpanzees use tools more than any other animal except man.
Elephants purr like cats do, as a means of communication.
The mandrill baboon has a red nose, blue cheeks, and an orange beard!
Hummingbirds flap their wings between 50 and 70 times a second!
When an octopus gets angry, it shoots a stream of black ink.
There are about 100 billion birds in the world, and about 6 billion of them make their homes in
the United States.
The emperor penguin is playful, and often times lies on its chest and side to slide along the
ice and snow.
The leatherback is the biggest sea turtle, and it can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds.
The snapping shrimp, only 1 1/2 inches long, makes a noise with its one big claw, which
sounds exactly like a firecracker.
Flying fish actually glide on wind currents above the surface of the water, sometimes up to 20
feet above the surface.
Sea snakes are the most poisonous snakes in the world.
Adult male giraffes bang their long necks together in a form of ritual fighting, during which no
harm is done to either giraffe.
The stonefish, which lives off the coast of Australia, is the most poisonous fish in the world.
The black-necked cobra, which lives mostly in Africa, spits its venom into the eyes of its
victim, to cause it blindness.
When two lovebirds appear to be kissing, they are actually grooming each other with their
bills to keep clean and neat.
A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other
animals is fun!
The dipper bird builds nests behind waterfalls for protection.
Vultures can soar for hours without one beat of their wings.
Sea horses pull themselves around with their chins leading them.

 Foxes sometimes nip at the heals of cattle so the stomping of the cattle makes mice and
other rodents come out of the ground, for the fox to eat.
The guanaco of South America, a cousin of the camel, has pads on its feet to keep its feet
from burning on desert sand or freezing in mountain snow.
The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own.
Blue jays often forget where they hide winter supplies of food.
The largest bird egg ever laid was laid millions of years ago by the Madagascar, or the
elephant bird.
Today, the ostrich is the bird that lays the largest eggs.
Scallops swim with jet-propelled speed by clapping its shell open and shut.
Some ducks and geese can fly as much as 332 miles a day!
The lung fish can live out of water for as long as four years!
The Egyptian vulture uses stones to smash ostrich eggs.
Birds save energy by flying in a V formation.
Theodore Roosevelt was the U.S. President with the most pets, including a lion, hyena,
wildcat, five bears, and many more!
Killer Whales are the only sea animal that outranks the Tiger Shark as top predator of the
sea.
Salamanders breath through their skin.
People used to think the Manatee was a mermaid.
Some fish have eyes that are the same size as their stomach!
A female seahorse lets her husband store her babies inside his stomach!
There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee.You dont see all of
them because most are too fine and light to be noticed.
The bee frog of Africa is no bigger than a bee.
An okapis tongue can grow to be 17 inches long.
Cows have four-chambered stomachs.
Fish have gel-slime on their bodies that protects them from parasites.
An owls eyes are bigger than its brain.
The faster kangaroos hop, the less energy they use.
The flying fox of Africa has a wingspan of fifty inches!
Giraffes have black tongues.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
Some frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and continue living.
Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.

 A ducks quack has no echo.

Cats can make over 100 vocal sounds, while dogs can only make 10.
Texas horned toads can shoot blood out of the corners of their eyes.
Starfish have eight eyesone at the end of each leg.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
The only bird that can fly backwards is the Hummingbird.
Alligators cannot move backwards.
A starfish doesnt have a brain.
Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.
An ostrichs eye is bigger than its brain.
The Arctic tern flies an average of 22,000 miles a year!
A hummingbird weighs less than a penny!
Camels have three sets of eyelids.
The flying fox is a bat with a wing span over five feet.
On ostrichs egg weighs 3 1/2 pounds.
A giant squids eyes are bigger than dinner plates.
Dogs sweat only through their tongues.
A kangaroo can jump 45 feet!
A rabbits teeth never stop growing.
You can lead a cow up a stairwell but not down a stairwell.
Dogs cant see colors. Theyre color blind.
Squirrels cant remember where they hide half of their nuts.
The stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut!
Bats always turn left when they leave their caves.
Octopuses have 3 hearts.
A giraffes tongue can measure 21 inches.
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day!
Some wild tigers can eat up to 40 pounds of meat at a time, and not eat again for several
days.
The first animal sent up to outer space was a dog.
The blue whale is the largest animal that ever lived (it could reach 100 feet long and weight
up to 150 tons!)
The smallest frog is less than 3/8 of an inch in length.
The smallest cat is the Singapuras and weighs only 4 pounds.
Most hamsters blink one eye at a time.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

 Cows have four stomachs.

Only one mammal cant jump the elephant.
Dragonflies can fly up to 50 miles per hour.
A goldfish can live up to 40 years.
A peregrine falcon can reach speeds up to 200 miles per hour.
A skunk can spray its stench twelve feet away.
Female lions do 90% of the hunting.
A duck has three eyelids.
Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.
A gecko uses its tounge to clean its eyeballs!

Facts About the Human Body

Can you feel the pulse in your wrist? For humans the normal pulse is 70 heartbeats per
minute. Elephants have a slower pulse of 27 and for a canary it is 1000!
If all the blood vessels in your body were laid end to end, they would reach about 60,000
miles.
Abraham Lincoln probably had a medical condition called Marfans syndrome. Some of its
symptoms are extremely long bones, curved spine, an arm span that is longer than the
persons height, eye problems, heart problems and very little fat. It is a rare, inherited
condition.
In one day your heart beats 100,000 times.
Half your bodys red blood cells are replaced every seven days.
By the time you are 70 you will have easily drunk over 12,000 gallons of water.
Coughing can cause air to move through your windpipe faster than the speed of sound over
a thousand feet per second!
Germs only cause disease, right? But a common bacterium, E. Coli, found in the intestine
helps us digest green vegetables and beans (also making gases pew!). These same
bacteria also make vitamin K, which causes blood to clot. If we didnt have these germs we
would bleed to death whenever we got a small cut!

 It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.

That dust on rugs and your furniture is not only dirt. Its mostly made of dead skin cells.
Everybody loses millions of skin cells every day which fall on the floor and get kicked up to
land on all the surfaces in a room. You could say, Thats me all over.
It takes food seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach via the esophagus.
A humans small intestine is 6 meters long.
The human body is 75% water.
Your blood takes a very long trip through your body. If you could stretch out all of a humans
blood vessels, they would be about 60,000 miles long. Thats enough to go around the world
twice.
The strongest bone in your body is the femur (thighbone), and its hollow!
The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body.
The average human dream lasts only 2 to 3 seconds.
The average American over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
The farthest you can see with the naked eye is 2.4 million light years away!
(140,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.) Thats the distance to the giant Andromeda Galaxy.
You can see it easily as a dim, large gray cloud almost directly overhead in a clear night
sky.
The average person has at least seven dreams a night.
Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.
Your brain is 80% water.
85% of the population can curl their tongue into a tube.
Your tongue has 3,000 taste buds.
Your forearm (from inside of elbow to inside of wrist) is the same length as your foot.
Submitted by: Josh

 A sneeze travels at over 100 miles per hour. Gesundheit!

Your thigh bone is stronger than concrete.
Your fingernails grow almost four times as fast as your toenails.
You blink your eyes over 10,000,000 a year.
There were about 300 bones in your body when you were born, but by the time you reach
adulthood you only have 206.
The smallest bones in the human body are in your ear!
Your mouth uses 75 muscles when you speak!
When you wake up in the morning you are at taller than when you go to sleep, because you
have let your spine straighten back out after all the bending, sitting, and moving you have
done!
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
The average growth of hair is half an inch per month.
If hair remains uncut, it can grow up to 5 feet long.
Your tongue, eye, and jaw muscles are among the strongest muscles in your body.

Facts About Insects and Bugs

Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats.
Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over
2700 times their original size.
There may be as many as 3,000 different kinds of insects more than all the other animal
and plant species combined.
Of the huge numbers of insects, only a tiny amount, one percent, are harmful to humans.
Most insects are harmless or actually beneficial. For example, without bees to pollinate
flowers, plants would not have a way of reproducing and we wouldnt have anything to eat!

 Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about
half a year.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old 80 million years older than the
first dinosaurs!
The desert locust is the worlds most destructive insect. It can eat its own weight in food
every day. Large swarms can gobble up to 20,000 tons of grain and plants in a day.
The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a
pound of honey!
Out of every 1,000 Mosquitos, one female carries a disease that could be fatal to humans.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
The average housefly lives for one month.
There is only one insect that can turn its head the praying mantis.
A slug has four noses.
Some male spiders pluck their cobwebs like a guitar, to attract female spiders.
A mosquito flaps its wings 500 times a second.
Only male crickets can chirp.
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day!
About 80% of the Earths animals are insects!
The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.
Dragonflies can fly up to 50 miles per hour.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old 80 million years older than the
first dinosaurs!
The praying mantis is the only insect that can look behind its shoulders.

 One kind of insect called a spittlebug, lays its eggs in a big nest of saliva bubbles. I guess no
predator would look for a meal in there!
A snail can sleep for 3 years straight!
The heaviest insect in the world weights 2.5 ounces.
A cockroach can live for up to 3 weeks without its head!
A butterfly has its taste receptors in its feet!
The mayfly only lives for 8 hours!
The female black widows poison is 15 times deadlier than a rattlesnakes!
There are worms in Australia that are over 4 Feet Long!
The weight of all the termites in the world outweigh the weight of all humans 10 to 1!