Happy National Trivia Day!

Learn wild and wacky facts about animals in our zoo and around the world

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Ah, National Trivia Day! The holiday that celebrates those trivial facts that get stuck in your memory. In honor of this holiday, we wanted to share a few bits of animal trivia you can use to impress your friends (and expand your knowledge)!


Lions are the only big cats who live in socially structured groups. They are also the only big cat species in which the males look distinctly different from the females. 

When a lion roars, it can be heard up to five miles away.Coyotes are sometimes called “prairie wolves” or “brush wolves.”

Humboldt penguins are actually warm weather penguins. Their natural habitat can be found along the coasts of Peru and Chile.

Galapagos tortoises can live up to a year without eating or drinking due to their slow metabolism and large internal stores of water.

The oldest recorded Galapagos tortoise lived to be 152 years old!

The largest recorded Komodo dragon was 10.3 feet long.

Komodo dragons can eat up to 80% their weight in a single feeding.

A grizzly bear’s top speed is 30 mph.

Otters have the thickest fur of any mammal, with nearly 1,000,000 hairs per square inch!

Unlike many cats, jaguars do not avoid water. They are actually skilled swimmers!

Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world?

A peregrine falcon can fly and dive up to 200 miles per hour, making it the fastest bird in the world!

A newborn kangaroo is only about one inch in length; that is roughly the size of a lima bean!

A hummingbird can flap its wings 80 times per second. However, in contrast to their fast flying, hummingbirds are not physically able to walk.

A snail can sleep for up to three years! What a nap!

Octopus have three hearts!

The fingerprints of koalas closely resemble human fingerprints, and there have been several cases in which koala fingerprints have baffled Australian police at crime scenes!

Honeybees have five eyes!

A giraffe’s heart weighs 25 lbs! It is also two feet long!

Bats are the only mammals who are able to fly. 

An ostrich’s eye is larger than its brain!

Hippopotamuses sweat a red fluid, and a female’s milk is also tinted pink!

Cheetahs are the only members of the cat family who cannot retract their claws.

Tigers can eat up to 88 pounds of food at one time.

Most species of monkeys, like humans, have two sets of teeth. The first set are referred to as milk teeth, which are useful primarily during nursing.

American opossums are born just 11-13 days after the parents mate!

Elephants are pregnant for 22 months before their young are born.