Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Caedmon got a really cool animal book for Christmas, featuring dangerous venom, bites, weird facts, and strangest behavior. It is fabulous! I have learned a lot!

#1. I don't think I will swim ever again!
-Cookie Cutter sharks grab onto prey with their lips and form tight suctions. Then they dig their immense teeth into the animal, twist their bodies like a cookie cutter in dough. They have even left bite marks on submarines.

-Viperfish are designed to kill in total darkness, slamming into pray and stabbing it with fangs. Upon impact, the hinged fangs tilt inward, pulling the prey inside the mouth and forcing it down the viperfish's expandable throat!

-Box jellyfish kill humans in less than 5 minutes. Their sting is so painful that victims usually go into shock from the pain and end up drowning before they can reach help.

-Great white sharks can smell a drop of blood 3 miles away. They strike from behind and wait patiently for the victim to bleed to death.

#2 Man's strength seems very small compared to animals, much less the God who created these animals!
-Hippos have 2-foot-long canine teeth and weigh 7,000 lbs!

-Komodo dragons are 300 pounds and one bite causes a slow and painful death of infection due to more than 50 different strains of bacteria in their mouths.

-Aardvarks have chisel-shaped claws, stronger than a pickax. They frequently claw lions to death.

-Great horned owls have 10 times more crushing power in their talons than a man has in his hands.

-Peregrin Falcons zoom in at 250 mph to grab prey.

-Cheetahs can reach 68 mph in 3 seconds.

-A single breath from a blue whale could blow up 2,000 balloons!

-Elephants eat 450 pounds of food daily.

-Venom the size of a few grains of salt from a poison dart frog can kill a human. The victim can't stop salivating, then goes into convulsions, and finally, suffers heart failure.

-Reticulated pythons can unhinge their jaws and swallow a deer headfirst and whole! That would be cool to see!

-Blue-ringed octopus can kill 25 people with a single dose of venom. Victims become blind within seconds, lose the ability to swallow and speak, then become completely paralyzed. The victim is fully aware that all this is going on.

#3 Some weird, hopefully useless information
-Lobsters can shoot their urine 5 feet to chase rivals away. They urinate continuously so they need 2 bladders, which are in their heads!

-Elephant seals will sleep so deeply that humans can walk up and sit down on one without waking it up.

-Cheetahs purr, like house cats. They can't roar. Other big cats-lions, tigers, and leopards roar, but they can't purr.

#4 Our days were numbered before time, so we shouldn't sit around worrying about death. It is amazing to ponder the creativity of our God just in the creatures he has made. What an imagination!