Maybe I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it here again. A snail can sleep for up to three years. Can you imagine? I mean, picture, if you will, a New York City snail falling asleep somewhere in a gutter crevice three years ago at noon. Yawning, it comes back out on the sidewalk, say, at the end of March in 2020, only to find the streets completely deserted due to the pandemic.
Now. I don’t know if you are friends with any snails or not, but they have the ability to really freak out. Albeit, it takes them four or five days to show a reaction. That’s why most people miss it. But I bet there were some pretty confused snails this year. Heck. Maybe always.
Speaking of the passing of time and animals. I’ve often heard that pigs are smart animals. I’ve never spent much time with a pig — at all — unless you consider certain brunches at fine hotels. That is an entirely different matter. But whether we like to consider this or not, pigs have sex like every other mating species on earth. The thing is, pigs have orgasms for up to thirty minutes. Somehow, I think this would be a hard thing to watch if you were a pig farmer.
And just when you thought you’d heard it all? Male koalas have two penises, and female koalas have two vaginas. I don’t even know what to say about that.
Animals are amazing, and they can do all sorts of things we’ve never dreamed of. Take bats. Bats are incredible. I mean, they are the only flying mammals. Flying squirrels, while very cool, should be called gliders, as they don’t actually fly. But bats wear those cool little leather pilot helmets and go at it like crazy. Yet the very best thing? They can eat up to 1,000 insects per hour. Forget spraying on the OFF. Hire a bunch of bats instead.
Let’s head to the sea for just a moment.
Octopuses have three hearts. This shouldn’t surprise any of us, really, as they have eight arms. If you do the math, in comparison to us, they should technically have four hearts. But maybe since they don’t have legs, that all balances out somehow. The question remains. If they have a heart attack, does it happen in all three?
I am certain I’ve written about this dolphin fact before, but I’ll say it again. They call each other by individual names. I love this. “Hey Larry, let’s go to the lagoon for a while.” “Sure, right behind you, Ted, but don’t swim so fast this time. I want to look at the electric eels when we go by.” I love them for that.
Then, there is this. Sharks kill fewer than five people per year. Humans kill about 100 million sharks per year. And so it goes.
Animals are smart. In ways we can’t even imagine. Take Sea Lions. A sea lion is the first nonhuman mammal with the absolute proven ability to keep a beat. I’ve seen them dance. I’ve seen them groove. They are better than I am, I’ll tell you that much.
Some animals have SuperHero powers. Take the little guys, like chipmunks. Even squirrels. Any of those little animals that have small-sized bodies and fast metabolisms. They have the ability to see in slow motion. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is. That is “objects in the mirror appear much smaller” cool.
Finally, it’s all in black and white. When it is born, a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces. But we know how enormous they can grow — all the way to six feet tall and 275 pounds.
Just remember. Our lives are expanding in this world. May we grow them in the right direction.
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“My turn shall also come:
I sense the spreading of a wing.”
― Osip Mandelstam
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“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”
― Paul Klee
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“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
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Chipmunks, like Super Heroes. And those with three hearts, and eight arms.
