Weird Animal Behaviors

The things that animals do can be outright breath-taking, but sometimes they’re just downright weird. Even though we’ve co-existed with animals for millions of years, they can still surprise us with strange behaviors that on the surface don’t make a lot of sense! From odd displays of domination, to trying to eat themselves whole, let’s take a closer look at why some animals do what they do.

Crocodiles Eating Rocks

If you looked inside a crocodile or alligator’s stomach, you’d probably see the remains of prey like fish and birds, along with any other animals they’d gobbled up! But there’d also be a rather intriguing addition to the menu: a pile of rocks! Almost like a side dish, those colossal crocodilians occasionally chow down any rocks they can find!

But what on earth would drive those mammoth reptilians to swallow a portion of pebbles? Obviously, it’s not for the nutritional value or the taste! Though there are a couple of theories explaining why they engage in that tooth cracking behavior; and one is that it aids their digestion.

Because crocodiles and alligators tear off large sections of their prey or swallow them whole, a few rocks in the stomach can help to crush and grate their fully-formed food. Especially meals that contain tough shells and bones!

Although, another theory suggests that the increased weight the rocks give them allows them to stay underwater for longer periods of time. With more rocks in their stomach, they can take a greater amount of air into their lungs and still sink! Although I reckon eating rocks is enough to give anyone that sinking stomach feeling.

Manatees Control Their Buoyancy With Farts

Manatees are sea creatures that once inspired the myth of mermaids, thanks to their graceful movements and the seriously strong booze those sailors must have been drinking! Because if they’d taken a more sober look, they might have noticed that those bulbous sea dwellers were swimming around using their farts.

But how exactly do they use that gas to get around? Manatees are incredibly heavy animals that weigh up to 1,300 lbs! But at that weight, an adult manatee can eat up to 130 lbs of vegetation each day, which means a lot of methane gas builds up inside them.

Manatee Fart by john heinbuch

Usually, sea dwelling animals that size have swim bladders to help regulate their buoyancy; Those are organs that contain a mix of oxygen and gas, allowing animals to maintain their depth without floating up or sinking.

But for all their underwater grace, manatees don’t have one! Instead they control their depth by releasing steady streams of gas from their lungs and from their butts! So if they want to float to the top, they’ll hold everything in. But if they want to sink to the bottom, they’ll let one rip!

The Intelligence Of Crows

Have you ever been called a birdbrain? You might think someone was calling you stupid, but it could have been a compliment that is, if that bird brain belonged to a crow! Those black feathered flyers are often credited as some of the smartest animals on the planet, and with good reason. The crafty corvids have learned how to fashion and use certain tools to help them get out-of-reach food.

Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow by PLOS Media

They also understand how water displacement works, which scientists observed as they dropped rocks into a water filled tube to raise up a floating snack. And they can even remember different human faces, meaning if you treat one badly, it’ll hold one hell of a grudge against you! Along with their many other signs of intelligence, scientists have concluded that crows have the reasoning skills of an average seven year old human child! And it all thanks to the composition of that utterly incredible bird brain!

Unlike most birds, crows have a phenomenally large forebrain, which is where high-functioning processes take place, like problem solving and complex thinking. It takes up approximately 80% of the crows total brain volume, which is shockingly similar in proportion to that of a human brain! So, it would seem that not all bird brains are birdbrains after all.

Zebra Finch Mating Habits

In the bird world, trying to find an attractive mate can be a real hassle. A lot of female birds invest huge amounts of energy into finding and breeding with males that have the best plumage, size, or nest. But not for the Zebra Finch! Those tiny birds find that the size and stamina of their mate is what sets them apart from the rest, as larger and fitter birds can better provide for their nest.

But if the wily female of that bird breed ends up with a small and unfit partner, she’ll lay much larger than average eggs that contain a lot more nutrients. Because Zebra Finches mate for life, the female has no reason to save up her resources for another, better partner. That means that the low genetic quality of the male is compensated for by good egg quality!

While nutrients can’t overcome genetic coding, a larger egg does give the chick inside a lot more nourishment, meaning it can grow larger and has a better chance of surviving once it hatches! That’s one weird way of compensating for an unfit father!

Pistol Shrimp Bubble Bullet

Measuring in at just over an inch and a half long, the pistol shrimp doesn’t look like it could do anyone or anything much harm! But that unassuming little creature has a deadly weapon hidden up its sleeve or in other words, in its claw! That gigantic pincer has a snapping mechanism that can snap shut at a shocking 60 mph! When it suddenly clamps down, the force results in a sound that can reach a deafening 218 decibels, that’s louder than most gunshots.

Amazing Pistol Shrimp Stun "Gun" | World's Deadliest by Nat Geo Animals

But because it’s so small, it sounds more like someone pouring milk on some aggressive cereal! It’s not called a pistol shrimp for nothing. It achieves that ear-splitting action thanks to the design of its huge pincer, which consists of two main parts a plunger and a socket. The shrimp opens its claws and builds up tension, before setting the whole thing off with incredible force! When the plunger slams into the socket, the water in it is suddenly displaced and jets out at a staggering 105 ft per second!

It’s so fast that the water pressure drastically drops and creates a vacuum, which then collapses and sends out a water pulse that’s so powerful it can stun nearby prey! The reaction also generates a flash of light and brief burst of heat that can reach up to 8000 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s as hot as the surface of the sun! So even though that little shrimp isn’t much bigger than your finger, you shouldn’t go sticking your digits anywhere near that super-tiny stun gun!

Capybaras Eat Their Own Poop

Capybaras are arguably the largest and most adorable rodents in the world. Able to grow up to 2 ft at the shoulder, and weighing up to 143 lbs, those semi-aquatic rodents are closely related to the equally adorable guinea pig! While they like their super-small relatives enjoy a diet of fruit, grasses, and vegetables, they also like to indulge in a hideous homemade treat: their own poop.

Rare Footage of Capybara Eating His Cecotropes カピバラは、そのCecotropesを食べる by Capybara World

As gross as it sounds, that bizarre behavior is a relatively normal and natural action called Coprophagy. Because some of the food Capybara’s eat like grasses can be hard for them to digest, they eat their waste in order to effectively digest it twice. So, those otherwise incredibly cute rodents will chow down on their own waste in the mornings, which is when their poo is still protein rich from yesterday’s meals! Do you think they’re still adorable now?

Cow Compass

Back in 2008, scientists began to notice a remarkable behavior in one of earth’s most unremarkable animals: cows. Thanks to the launch of the Google Earth tool, scientists were able to see that cattle all around the world weren’t just standing about randomly in their fields. A significant proportion of them appeared to be lined up on a north to south axis, almost like they were aligning themselves with the earth’s magnetic poles!

The discovery sent a ripple of excitement through the scientific community, which led to two very important questions: how and why were the cows doing that? Knowing as the earth’s magnetic field was the only common factor, they deduced that cows must possess a sixth sense of magnetism. It’s possible that that would have helped their ancestors during migrations, meaning they’d all inherited a great sense of direction!

But as attractive as all those theories sounded, the science wasn’t actually that strong. Follow up studies into that crazy cattle alignment found no such patterns, leading many to believe that the first findings had been a total fluke! As disappointing as it is, it looks like it’s time for the myth of internal cow compasses to be put out to pasture.

Female Brown Trout Faking Orgasms

Some women can think they’re pretty savvy in the bedroom, and for one reason or another try to fake certain carnal shenanigans. But they’re not the only species that can fake it! Scientists from Sweden's National Board of Fisheries discovered that female brown trout also fake it when they mate!

During their reproductive cycle, both the male and female fish of courting pairs quiver with their mouths open when they release their eggs and sperm. However, female fish often quiver without releasing their eggs, and the poor dude falls for it every time!

Trout Spawning in natural environment. HD video. by Lorne Chapman

Not only that, but the more ‘big O’s’ she fakes, the more males are attracted to her, believing they too have a chance of passing on their genetic material. But what purpose does all that fishy floundering have? Researchers believe that female trout trick their partners into this premature release so that they have more choice over who will father their offspring! Clearly, it’s a behavior that’s better for her than it is for him.

Dragonfly Faking Their Own Deaths To Avoid Males

While female trout seem to have it good, mating for some female dragonflies can turn into a desperate fight for survival! If the females aren’t lucky, hyper-aggressive males can injure or even kill them if they’re coerced into the ultimate carnal act! And it’s gotten so bad, that females have started going to a hilariously extreme to avoid mating with pestering partners, they fake their own deaths!

In 2017, a scientist in Switzerland witnessed a female moorland hawker dragonfly being harassed by aggressive males. All of a sudden, she dramatically dropped out of the sky, crashed on the ground, and lay completely motionless. It looked like she’d died from the sheer exhaustion from having to deal with so many annoying males!

But after the males moved away, she flew back up like nothing had happened. Now, the act of playing dead is seen in many species like frogs and more famously possums, to avoid being attacked by predators. But it seems that those dragonflies use the death feint to avoid predators of the Harvey Weinstein variety!

Alcoholic Vervet Monkeys

Humans love to indulge in an alcoholic beverage every now and again, but we’re not the only species that enjoys a cheeky tipple! Scampering about on the Caribbean islands of St Kitt, Nevis, and Barbados, the local population of Vervet Monkeys are notorious for their love of the devil’s juice! In their quest for the taste of hooch, they’ve been known to steal entire bottles of booze from bars and swipe cocktails from unsuspecting tourists!

Alcoholic Vervet Monkeys! - Weird Nature - BBC animals by BBC Studios

Confused by that boozy behavior, scientists began to observe those monkey’s strange hooch habits. And their studies revealed that they weren’t just drinking to indulge in the high, super-sweet sugar content of beverages like cocktails. When given a choice, some monkeys voluntarily chose the alcoholic alternatives, suggesting they’d learned to enjoy the fuzzy feelings of inebriation that come with alcohol consumption!

Further research showed that they even had drinking habits similar to humans, with some monkeys enjoying the occasional snifter, while others binge drank to the point they blacked out! Despite their famously dexterous grips, it looks like those monkeys need to learn how to hold their drink.

Buffalo Herd Democracy

The American electoral votes are a never ending nightmare for the nation, but in the animal kingdom, displays of democracy are ironically much simpler. Across the grassy plains of the African continent, herds of African Buffalo astoundingly cast votes on which direction they believe they should travel before moving on.

But obviously they’re not doing that by filling out a ballot! According to scientific observations, those cattle purposefully shift positions while they’re resting. But that isn’t to get comfy! By changing the direction they’re facing, they’re casting their own vote on which way they think the herd should travel, and the head female will move the herd off in that direction!

In other words, African Buffalo herd movements are guided by a majority vote. Although that looks like incredibly progressive behavior, not every buffalo gets a say, because only the females can cast the deciding votes! Looks like democracy isn’t the only thing humans share with African buffalo, even the males refuse to ask for directions!

Self-Eating Snake

Have you ever seen a cat attacking its own tail? It’s pretty hilarious. Although there’s nothing weirder or more frightening than watching a snake do the same thing.

(Original) Suicidal Snake eating itself by Rob Mott

The terrifying tail-eating behavior of snakes has inspired ancient symbols throughout the ages; like the ouroboros, which represents the eternal cycle of life and death. While it’s an incredibly beautiful emblem, the reason snakes really do that isn’t nearly as pretty.

Snakes can’t regulate their own body temperatures, so those cold-blooded animals sit under external heat sources like the sun, or a hot lamp to warm up. If they want to cool down, they’ll slither into water or a patch of shade. But if they get too hot, they become horribly confused.

The heat also ramps up their metabolism, falsely making them feel hungry. Disoriented and starving, they’ll attack and devour the first thing they see. Unfortunately, that can turn out to be their own tails! And because they’ve evolved to prevent their prey from escaping their jaws, once they start to self-cannibalize, they become their own can of pringles, and sadly they just can’t stop!

Goats And Heights

Everything in our world adheres to the law of gravity that is, except for goats. Several subspecies of those four hooved heretics make an absolute mockery out of physics with their utterly insane climbing abilities. The magnificent mountain goats of North America, for example, have adapted to spend most of their lives careering across steep, rocky mountainsides.

And over the pond in the European alps, Alpine Ibex can clamber expertly up just about anything even practically vertical brick dams! Along with their remarkable sense of balance, they have slightly soft, cloven hooves which spread their weight into the rocky crevices and grip on tight!

They’ve evolved to do so in order to reach high growing moss, lick salt from rocks, and get to tasty fruits and leaves at the tops of trees. While their behavior does technically make sense, seeing a herd of goats climbing a tree like these goats in Morocco are apt at doing is enough to blow even Einstein’s mind!

Tree Goats (Original) by Photo Workshop Adventures

That unusual behavior is usually witnessed in the Sous Valley, where the rare Argania tree grows. The delicious fruit that buds from its branches are a particular favorite of the local goats, who will happily hop up to the tops of those 25 ft trees! Although, with their veracious appetites, let’s hope those goats don’t eat themselves out of a tree to sit in!

Fainting Goats

While some goats are clearly fearless, there’s another truly bizarre breed that completely freezes at the slightest scare!

Fred Eichler vs Fainting Goats by Fred Eichler

Hilariously nicknamed fainting goats, the real name of those frightened fur balls is actually Myotonic Goats. Through breeding, they’ve inherited a genetic condition that causes their muscles to stiffen briefly when they’re startled. That is because normally when an animal is scared, a brief jolt of heart-racing adrenaline forces their muscles to move.

But the cell mutation that those goats have prevents their muscles from receiving the adrenalin, which causes them to completely lock-up instead! So even something as silly as a man doing a flip is enough to make them freeze in their tracks!

Goat Faints from Flip || ViralHog by ViralHog

Thankfully, that means they don’t actually faint! They just fall over and bounce back up once the stiffness goes away. While the reaction isn’t harmful or painful to the goats, you can imagine that being constantly snuck up on just to be laughed at is pretty annoying!

Aggressive Australian Magpies

Black and white Eurasian Magpies are known all over the world for their incredible plumage and brilliant brains. In fact, they’re widely considered to be one of the smartest birds in the world, a trait that sadly isn’t shared by their hyper-aggressive Australian cousins. Those frightening flyers perform dangerous dive bombs on innocent people strolling past their nests, as one incredibly unfortunate kid found out:

Australian boy's magpie attack caught on camera | 7NEWS by 7NEWS Australia

While their black and white plumage may make you think they’re just a breed of super-aggressive magpie, they’re actually not related to their Eurasian lookalikes. Those avid Australian birds are members of the artamidae family, like woodswallows and butcherbirds not the corvid family, like crows and Eurasian magpies!

So, every spring, Australian’s helmet up and hunker down from those strange swooping attacks, which have resulted in a staggering 600 injuries in 2020 alone! But they’re not doing it to cause chaos, they’re actually just trying to protect their nests!

That fearless strategy keeps potential predators away from their nests during breeding seasons, meaning they’ll attack almost anything that comes within about 160 ft of them! Fortunately, only about 10% of mating pairs become staunchly aggressive! But even that’s enough to put the land-down-under under constant attack!

The Strange Mating Technique Of Hooded Seals

When trying to impress a lady, some men puff up their chests to make themselves look a bit more buff. But when male hooded seals are trying to attract a mate, they puff up something drastically different! By closing off one nostril, the seal blows and inflates an elasticated membrane in his nasal cavity! The sac is then pushed out and presented like a big red clown nose, which gets its color from all the blood vessels running across the stretchy membrane.

Then he’ll wave his bulging sac around all the available ladies to prove just how big and powerful he is so the bigger his sac is, the better his chances are! But those seals don’t just have a nose for romance. They also use their inflatable nasals to square off against other competing males that can weigh up to 880lbs!

So, to save them the effort of physical confrontation, they just measure up each other’s balloon, and the larger of the two usually wins! Well, it might work for the hooded seal, but if you’re a man, don’t go waving a big red balloon in a pretty lady’s face before asking her out. It doesn’t work.

The Changing Colors Of Reindeer Eyes

Reindeer are best known for Rudolph’s fictional glowing red nose, but scientists have discovered that those animals genuinely do change their color but in a different way! Astoundingly, the backs of their eyeballs change color from gold in the summer to blue in the winter. That is all because of changes in their tapetum lucidum or “cats eye”, a mirrored layer that sits just behind their retinas.

That helps the animal to see in dim conditions by reflecting light that misses the retinal-sweet-spot back into the eye! And in the reindeer’s Arctic habitat, which can have weeks of unending light in the summer and month-long nights in the winter, adjusting their eyes to long-term lighting is essential!

So, when the season gets dark, the reindeer’s iris’ will dilate for months on end! But when they’re enlarged like that for an extended period of time, their eyes begin to swell, compressing the fibers that make up the tapetum. In its extended state, it would usually reflect yellow wavelengths, but when it’s compressed it reflects blue wave lengths!

So, in the summer, the reindeers golden tapetum reflects a lot of light out of the eye to help it deal with the near constant daylight. A bit like inbuilt sunglasses! And then in the winter the tapetum turns blue, which reflects less light out of the eye so that it can deal with the never-ending darkness!

Owl Sitting Crisscross Applesauce

Early in 2020, a viral sensation swept the world that left people scared and confused. Twitter user jvonne78 brought the world’s attention to a photo of an owl sitting "criss-cross applesauce".

Embed for https://x.com/jvonne78/status/1228064871524294667 could not be displayed

Considering no one has ever witnessed a bird sitting with its legs crossed like a yoga aficionado before, the internet began to ask if owls can really sit cross legged. While the deceptively long legs of those amazing birds look like they could bend like pretzels, the heart-breaking truth is that they actually cannot sit "criss-cross applesauce". Owl legs have backwards bending joints, so they physically can’t bend them like those of a human.

The owl is actually sitting on its hocks, which are the backwards bending joints between the birds thigh and its lower leg. It’s a resting behavior seen in many birds, although few of them have as many frontal feathers as that little owl. So, it would seem that the lay of those feathers is creating the illusion that the bird knows a few killer yoga poses!

Starling Murmurations

Just before dusk, skies around the world are suddenly blacked out by shapeshifting clouds that turn, twist, and loop in bizarrely beautiful patterns. But those aren’t clouds! They’re actually flocks of thousands of starlings. And when they perform those impossible acts of choreography high in the sky, they’re called a murmuration.

Starling murmuration 2020 #Geldermalsen by Marco Valk Nature & Wildlife Films

While they start out comprised of a few hundred or a few thousand birds, many more quickly join the night-time acrobatic routine. They can swell beyond a million individual flyers, with one murmuration in Somerset Britain attracting an astounding record of 6 million starlings back in 1999! But as mesmerizing as they are, why do they do it?

Grouping together like that offers safety in numbers, with sky-high predators finding it hard to target just one bird in the middle of such an immense flock. And by gathering like that, it allows the starlings to exchange information like where the best feeding areas are, as well as gathering to keep warm for the night. There’s nothing like performing an immense display of sky-high choreography to get you ready for bed!

If you were amazed at these weird animal behaviors, you might want to read about weird things animals do. Thanks for reading!