Fact-based Weird Facts
Octopuses Have Three Hearts and Blue Blood
Two hearts serve the gills, one serves the body, and that one stops when the octopus jets away.
Home Series Animal Body Oddities
Animal Body Oddities
Some animals are built in ways that sound like a joke told badly: an octopus with three hearts and blue blood, a shrimp whose punch boils the water, a wombat that leaves cube-shaped droppings. This collection gathers the strangest real bodies on Oddly into one reading order, from the sea floor to your own sofa.
Every article here is fact-based and lists its sources. Read them in order for a tour that starts in the ocean and ends with the smallest survivor of all, or dip in anywhere: each piece stands on its own.
Articles
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Part 1
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Part 2
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Shrimp Whose Punch Boils the Water
The mantis shrimp swings its club so fast that the water in front of it boils into bubbles, and their collapse adds extra damage and tiny flashes of light.
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Part 3
Fact-based Weird Facts
Butterflies Taste With Their Feet
A butterfly landing on a leaf is not resting — it is drumming the surface with its front legs to find out what the leaf is, because it has taste receptors in its feet.
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Part 4
Fact-based Weird Facts
Koalas Have Fingerprints Almost Identical to Ours
Under a microscope a koala's fingertip carries the same loops and whorls a human one does, close enough that specialists have struggled to tell the two apart.
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Part 5
Fact-based Weird Facts
Polar Bears Are Not Actually White — They're Transparent
Polar bear fur has no white pigment at all: the guard hairs are transparent and hollow, the white comes from scattered light, and the skin underneath is black.
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Part 6
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Real Nemo's Dad Would Have Become His Mom
Every clownfish starts adult life as a male, and when the female who rules an anemone disappears, her partner turns into a female and takes her place, so in a real reef Marlin would have become Nemo's mum.
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Part 7
Fact-based Weird Facts
Hippos Make Their Own Sunscreen
A hippo climbing out of a river shines orange-red in the sun, and that glossy coat is a sunscreen it makes in its own skin, one that keeps germs away as well.
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Part 8
Fact-based Weird Facts
Cats Cannot Taste Sweetness
A gene cats need to build a sweet taste receptor is broken, so the cake your cat is sniffing does not taste sweet to it at all.
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Part 9
Fact-based Weird Facts
Sloths Are Secretly Excellent Swimmers
Slow on the ground, sloths float thanks to gas from digesting leaves, keep their noses up like a snorkel and swim about three times faster than they walk.
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Part 10
Fact-based Weird Facts
Tardigrades Spent Ten Days in Open Space and Lived
Three thousand microscopic animals were bolted to the outside of a spacecraft, the lids were opened, and most of them came back perfectly fine.