10 Cool Nature Facts About Strange Animals, Plants, and More

Nature is full of eminently unbelievable animals, plants, and more. Here are some facts about natural entities to prove just how incredible Mother Earth is.

1. The fish that produces sand

This is the parrot fish, the fish that produces sand. In fact, 85% of the sand in the coral reefs were produced by a parrot fish. But how does it do this?

The answer is fascinating. The parrot fish eats algae found on coral and rocks. Because of its beak like mouth, it eats the coral and rock along with the algae. Then, the coral and rock fragments that were eaten by this fish gets ground up in the fish's intestines. The fish then poops out super fine sand. According to digitaljournal.com, a large parrot fish "Scarus rubroviolaceus, found in Hawaii, is capable of bioeroding up to 380 ± 67 kg (838 pounds) of coral into sandy sediment a year."

2. The plant that responds to touch

This plant called the sensitive plant/humble plant has leaves and grows pink globular flowers. When touched or stimulated, the leaves of the plant close up. The purpose for this is that this is the plant's defense mechanism. According to britannica.com, its ability to react to stimulants this quickly is due to the plant's "rapid water release from specialized cells located at the bases of leaflet and leaf stalks."

The plant is also known to droop when it is dark and open back up when it is daylight. It is native to the eastern part of the U.S. and the West Indies.

3. The tree that can warn others of danger

Acacia trees, famously known for existing in Australia and Africa, actually have the ability to warn other trees of danger. If one acacia tree begins to get eaten by a tree eating animal, like a giraffe for example, the tree will release a chemical called ethylene. According to tanzania-experience.com, this chemical can travel up to 45m. Once alerted by this chemical, the neighboring trees know to make themselves unappealing to tree eating animals by increasing their levels of tanin in their leaves.

4. The snakes with heat detectors

Some snakes have holes in their faces, as seen in the image above, called the pit organ. According to nature.com, this organ allows snakes to sense infrared radiation from living creatures up to one meter away. This helps the snakes hunt for prey, especially at nighttime when it is too dark to see.

5. The amphibian that can regrow any of its limbs

Salamanders have the ability to regrow limbs that they lose within weeks. According to medium.com, when a salamander loses a limb, the wound gets sealed with a blood clot like a human's does. This is where the human experience begins to differ from the salamander's. A clump of stem cells called a blastema forms beneath the surface of the wound. Impressively, these stem cells multiplies and recreates the missing limb. These cells convert into bone cells, skin cells, and muscle cells in order to create a perfect duplicate.

Based on the levels of certain cells, vitamins, or acids available, the salamander can determine how much of the limb needs to be regrown.

6. The 7 foot tall penguin species

There is an extinct species of penguin called the colossus penguin that were nearly 7 feet tall. According to roaring.earth, these penguins lived around 37 million years ago. The fossil found in Antarctica of one of these penguins was 6 foot 8 and guessed to have weighed around 250 pounds.

8. The country with no mosquitoes

According to worldatlas.com, Iceland's low temperatures are too cold for mosquitoes. Because the country has three major "freezes and thaws every year," making it so mosquitoes would not have time to lay and hatch eggs while it is warm enough before the freezing temperatures come back. The climate of Iceland has caused the extinction of mosquitoes in this country.

9. The fish with the transparent head

The pacific barreleye is a fish with a transparent head. According to mbari.org, this unusual fish can rotate its eyes into its head and look at the scene above them through their transparent head. With this ability and light sensitive eyes, the fish can faintly see the silhouettes of potential prey above them. Due to living towards the bottom of the ocean where there is no sunlight, having these light sensitive eyes and the ability to inconspicuously look up at prey is a helpful tool that these fish have.

10. The fire tornadoes

This is called a fire whirl and is made up of a core of fire with a pocket of air on the outside that rotates like a tornado and are formed from wildfires or firestorms. According to skybrary.aero, form from the convergence of of a wildfire and a warm updraft. Typically, a fire whirl only lasts a mere few minutes and are 10-50m tall. However, if it generates faster winds, it has the potential to last 2o minutes and be 1km tall. They are also commonly found near volcanic eruptions.

This list just proves that there is a wide variety of unusual yet fascinating things that nature has to offer.