Many of our assumptions about animals are not true. Therefore, each time repeating them, we, unwittingly, contribute to the spread of unrighteousness. It never happened, check out the 10 most common "facts" about animals, which is not true.
10. Zebra
Looking at black-and-white stripes of zebras, it is difficult to believe that they serve the animal as camouflage. However, this is the generally accepted explanation that has become widespread since, as a man saw this animal. Through a series of studies, scientists rejected the theory of masking, although not close to the answer, why the Zebra stripes.
The myth was born due to the fact that people looking at zebras from their own point of view. In fact, it seems, has every right to exist is an assumption that, mingling with each other, confusing the color help the animal to blend in with the environment.
However, according to researchers from the University of calgary (Canada) and the University of California at Davis (USA), that didn't help the zebras hide from predators. Animals that prey on them, such as lions and hyenas, can easily detect the Zebra at almost any time of the day or night. In addition, predators can smell the smell of Zebra long before you see her, so camouflage as protection from predators actually plays no role.
Scientists have not yet found any social advantages that could have Zebra stripes within the same group. However, in several studies it was found that black-and-white Zebra stripes serve as protection from biting insects — horseflies and tsetse fly.
9. Piranha
Even if piranhas and look like they were born and raised in the depths of hell, they still criticize and condemn in vain for many years. A simple thought about the water, swarming piranhas, most people perceived as certain death, a man dedicated to the whole movies.
Although the fact that they have terribly sharp teeth, which they can brutally flay the skin from his victim is true, the belief that they are attacking living animals, and even people — more than a myth. Of course, they may want to do it... like any other animal with teeth.
While no known case that a school of piranha had deliberately attacked or killed a person. There are separate cases of fishermen accidentally caught a piranha in their networks, which is understandable.
Despite what they show in the movies, piranhas do not kill mammals for food, because of their usual "food preferences" are limited to dead or decaying carcasses. Even in times of famine, if they have to kill for sustenance, piranhas usually prey on insects and other fish, not the fat cows, as it became commonly accepted after the return of Theodore Roosevelt from his trip to the Amazon.
The inhabitants of the Amazon basin, surprisingly, all the time swimming in piranha-infested rivers. Some even provoked them to attack, getting in a pond with predators. "Testers" were out of the water with only a few bites, which, of course, was not like stripped to the bone meat like we used to see in Hollywood movies after the attacks of piranhas.
8. Komodo
If we had to choose the most horrible reptile, based on statistical data and objective analysis, they would probably crocodiles. But judging by the gutted guts and a sense of encompassing horror, it is no other animal like the Komodo monitor lizard.
Being so pretty and creepy by nature, Komodo dragon and kill quite a terrifying way. Biting their prey, they give him their deadly, disease-causing bacteria from the mouth area and just let the infection do its thing. Or do it themselves?..
In fact, the Komodo dragons there is no quantity of dangerous bacteria sufficient to kill animals. Predatory reptiles kill their prey the traditional way — with a poisonous bite. Venom glands in Komodo dragons were discovered in 2009 by researchers from the University of Queensland (Australia).
The man responsible for the emergence of this myth, named Walter auffenberg (Auffenberg Walter). He saw the victim after being bitten by a Komodo monitor lizard began to develop a dangerous infection, and suggested that reptiles kill their prey with dangerous bacteria. Thanks to his book "Behavioral ecology of the Komodo" ("The Behavioral Ecology of the Komodo Monitor") today almost all believe in the theory about bacteria, which is still not checked.
7. Penguins
In real life we almost do not interact with the penguins. We know that these fascinating creatures live a charming life in very harsh conditions — maybe some of the harshest on our planet. Even the way they walk, reminding the person that makes us smile tenderness.
To think that the penguins are actually horrible creatures who are among the most depraved acts in the animal Kingdom is a real blasphemy for most of us. Unfortunately, for a long time we thought they were completely wrong.
For example, males of the Adelie penguin, living in Antarctica, regularly engaged in necrophilia and rape. This was first documented by the British scientist studying their behavior during an expedition to Antarctica between 1910 and 1913. When he later wrote an article about these animals, a section that talked about sexual behavior of penguins, many felt too perverse for publication. As a result, he published a separate, 4-page brochure with this under cover among the small number of biologists of the time.
This type of behavior is not limited to males. Discovered that the female Emperor penguin Chicks are stealing other penguins to compensate for their inability to reproduce offspring. Encountering resistance, they resort to direct violent methods. They don't even have to attract other penguins. In some cases, the female Emperor penguin Chicks are stolen from a completely unrelated species of birds, trying to raise them as their own.
6. Pigs
Tell me, without hesitation, what first comes to mind when someone says the word "pig"? Probably something greasy and sweaty creatures, lying in the mud. Even in common parlance there is an expression "sweat like a pig" to say about someone's excessive sweating.
However, pigs are no sweat glands so to cool off, they have to roll around in the mud. Contrary to popular belief, pigs are very clean animals.
Our wrong idea about their relationship to the purity arose due to the fact that we see pigs in most farms and households are forced to live in dirt, in the muck of their own feces and urine. In nature wild pigs leave droppings in the same territory on which they live.
Some of the boars and the boars even go for a few kilometers until you find water to wash their food before eating, what most of us don't do even in the presence of the crane at a distance of several meters.
5. Howardi
Because in the name of these creatures is the word "ear", many people think that they crawl into the human ear and lay eggs there. In reality, there are no records that the earwig got into the human ear. They have wings but they fly well and get to the human ear without the aid of wings can be difficult.
Howardi, moreover, are more maternal care for newborns than other types of animals. The mother earwig should be near her baby during the first days, and it would be difficult to do, if he were somewhere high in the ears of a man.
Some scholars suggest that this myth originated because of the shape of the rear wings of howardi, in a folded condition resembling a human ear. However, most scientists disagree with this theory.
4. Mantis
As for sexual habits, perhaps, in nature there is no such nasty creatures, like praying mantises. As we are told on the channel "Discovery Channel", the mating ritual of the praying mantis is not completed until the female eats the head of male that just mated.
But when biologists checked this widespread belief, we found that it is not true. The female mantis who ate the heads of their males, doing this in captivity. This environment was totally different from the one preferred by the insects of a private personal space where they used to mate. Instead, above them stood men in white robes, greedily watching their every movement.
Pair Bogomolov, who participated in early experiments, were also hungry. Therefore, males could eat their mating partners, as well as females.
However, when the scientists created conditions close to natural, they got a different result. 69 experiments only one female mantis ate the male after mating.
In the wild very rarely there are cases that the female praying mantis eat the male after mating. It happens, but rather as an exception to the rule.
3. Cockroaches
The notion that cockroaches are the only creatures on the planet, able to survive after a nuclear explosion, goes on the Internet, being the topic of conversation during the lunch break and dialogues in movies for many years.
The myth may have been born after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when it was subsequently discovered that some cockroaches survived the radiation conditions. However, they were not the only creatures who did.
Cockroaches, of course, have a higher resistance to radiation and extinction than other creatures, but recent studies indicate that they would be the first beetles destroyed when you drop huge bombs on the ground.
It turns out, a nuclear explosion, most likely, would have survived flour beetles and many species of microbes.
2. Dogs
When it comes to training dogs, most of us have heard about the technique of "alpha dog": to declare his dominance and to let them know who the boss is, because in the wild all the way.
Technique is based on the belief that every wolf pack has an alpha male, dominant leader who commands all. Therefore, pet can be trained similarly.
As you may have guessed, this is a pretty hard way of training. But it also illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how reality interacts in a wolf pack. The theory about the alpha male is based on early studies of the behavior of the pack in unnatural conditions. Later, during the examination of packs living in the wild, early findings have been refuted.
In wolf packs there is no dictatorial male leader, because their social structure is more like their biological families than in North Korea. Even research conducted among wild dogs (which, as some may argue, are different from wolves), has shown that the leaders of the pack are more likely to become experienced and more Mature animals than static alpha males.
1. Sloths
In many cultures around the world, these animals are synonymous with laziness. This belief was confirmed when scientists found that these animals sleep 16 hours a day. However, the study was conducted among animals kept in captivity and not living in the wild.
When another team of researchers began to study three-toed sloths in their natural habitat, it was found that sloths actually sleep at 9 and a half hours a day. The reason for the difference of opinion was obvious: sloths in captivity, do not need every day to fight for survival, as do animals in the wild.
Sloths, in addition, incredibly slow when moving from one place to another, but their speed has nothing to do with laziness. Many other animals even more sluggish than a sloth, and no reason not associating laziness with them.