Fun Trivial Facts

Well, happy Monday to one and all. Tonight we are back on track with our Fun Trivial Facts. For those of you new to this blog, we chose Mondays to post fun trivial facts because most Mondays are pretty stressful for all but those retired folks... So, if you had a rough day at work, or a rough day at home, or even a rough day on the golf course, sit back, relax and enjoy this weeks edition of Fun Trivial Facts.

This week we are going to look at the animal kingdom for some strange facts: I am sure that many of you knew that a group of geese is called a gaggle. But, what I didn't know is that a group of geese is not ALWAYS called a gaggle. If the geese are on the ground, they are a gaggle. If you see a group of geese in the air, then they are called a skein.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds... Now I need to find out how long the Spruce Goose was in the air...hold on, be right back...aha, here it is...

Howard Hughes flew the Spruce Goose (really called the H-4) over a mile in less than a minute in 1947. The Spruce Goose is not a goose, but a giant wooden seaplane. We won't go into the history of the Spruce Goose tonight, but I thought it was fun to compare the flying of a giant wooden airplane to the flight of a chicken... anyway...

Now that we are talking water... a goldfish's attention span is 3 seconds. Do you think scientists actually studied how long they could keep a goldfish's attention? What did they do, make faces at the fish? Gotta wonder where some of these measurements come from sometimes...

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. Now that means I can't call people twits...(I learned that phrase from a friend from England...) unless I really want to refer to them as pregnant goldfish...

And did you know that the common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light? That would be very cool..

For those of you fascinated with belly buttons (there are some of you out there...) animals that lay eggs don't have belly buttons. That actually really does make sense because a belly button is where your umbilical cord was...

For those of you with a criminal bent...the fingerprints of a koala bear is virtually indistinguishable from those of humans...so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene. I could see where this might be a tad confusing if you lived in Australia, but anywhere else, unless the crime was committed in the koala pen, where in the world would you get your hands on koala fingerprints...?

Did you know that a duck's quack doesn't echo. Nobody has figured out why yet... perhaps we should fund a scientific study to determine why a duck's quack doesn't echo. Why...

On the flip side, a lion's roar can be heard 5 miles away... but nobody said if a lion's roar echoes...hmmm.

For those of you who are fanatical about brushing their hair with camel hair brushes, do you REALLY know what the camel hair brushes are made of??? Can you say squirrel hair??? Really, this came from "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" Oh, oh, now I am divulging some of my sources for these fun facts...

Well there you go, that should have you entertained at least for this week. Hopefully you had as much fun reading these fun trivial facts as I did unearthing them. Have a wonderful rest of the week.

Until tomorrow...