violet.booklover's Book Journey

This book was made for me. I loved it so much. Gorgeous art, fun animal facts, so much heart.

“Humans exploit [animals] for their attributes yet despise them for exhibiting their natural behavior and simply adapting to the environment we created”

Read this to learn facts like these:

• Opossums have 50 teeth, which is the most of any North American mammal
• Star-nosed moles have around 100,000 nerve endings in their nose, almost 6 times more than human hands. Giving them the best sense of touch of any mammal.
• Star-nosed moles are the fastest eating animal on earth, identified and consuming pray in less than a quarter of a second, about half the time it takes a human to react to a green light when at an intersection
• Groundhog burrows are complex structures that have multiple entrances and dedicated rooms for sleeping nursing and waste
• Groundhogs have aided in multiple scientific discoveries, including treatments and vaccines for hepatitis B and, thanks to their excavation skills, some culturally significant archaeological sites”
• The Florida alligator population stands at 1.3 million individuals: that’s roughly one alligator for every 16 people living in the state
• Alligators have the strongest bite of any animal measured about 2000 pounds per square inch that’s over 12 times stronger than a human bite
• Armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets the only known vertebrae to do so
• Prairie dogs live in complex networks of burrows called coteries which function as our neighborhoods do and can span across square miles
• Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin Texas is home to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, making it the site of the largest urban bat colony on the planet. The bridge draws over 100,000 tourists each year.
• Texas is home to 33 of the 47 species of bats that live in the United States more than any other state
• Bats can consume more than half their body weight in insects each night
• Mexican free-tailed bats fly at speeds up to 99.4 mph making them the fastest mammal on earth
• Pronghorns or the fastest land animal in North America, second only globally to the cheetah. They can reach speeds up to 60 mph.
• Pronghorns can see up to three miles away
• Magpies enjoy a symbiotic relationship with cattle, often seen perching on their backs in search of ticks to eat
• Magpies are expert builders who fortify their nests with a layer of mud, making them last for years and allowing them to be utilized by other birds for shelter during the winter
• Bears have a sense of the smell 100 times greater than humans and can smell food over a mile away
• Cottontail rabbits can run up to 18 miles per hour
• Squirrels teeth can grow up to six inches a year—hence the need to chew to shave them down
• Turkey vultures have potent stomach acid that makes them impervious to diseases like tuberculosis, anthrax, rabies and distemper when eating infected carcasses
• Turkey vultures can detect the presence of carrion from over a mile away

(Can you tell I love bats?🦇) Highly recommended this amazing book!