-A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.

-A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.

-A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.

-About 10% of the world's population is left-handed.

-A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.

-A person afflicted with hexadectylism has six fingers or six toes on one or both hands and feet

-A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.

-A zebra is white with black stripes.

- Porpoises and dolphins communicate with each other by squeaking, growling, moaning, and whistling. Porpoises and dolphins are mammals. There are about 40 species or kinds of porpoises and dolphins. Most porpoises and dolphins navigate by using "echolocation". The largest member of the dolphin family is called an orca or killer whale.

- The hippopotamus gives birth under water and nurses its young in the river as well, though the young hippos do come up periodically for air.

-A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime

The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.

The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.

The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.

-- How the wind blows. As the sun warms the earth’s surface, the atmosphere warms too. Some parts of the earth receive direct rays from the sun all year and are always warm. Other places receive indirect rays, so the climate is colder. Warm air, which weighs less than cool air, rises. Then cool air moves in and replaces the rising warm air. This movement of air is what makes the wind blow.

- Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

--Why do we might feel warmer wearing a dark-colored jacket than a light-colored one? . Dark colors absorb light energy. Light colors and white reflect light energy. When light shines on your dark jacket, the jacket fabric absorbs light energy. The absorbed light energy causes electrons in the atoms of the jacket to vibrate. This activity releases heat energy, which makes the jacket—and you—warmer. That's why we like to wear more dark colors in winter and more light colors in summer.

-While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.

-At 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound produced by any animal.

--A flute made of bone is the oldest playable musical instrument in the world. It’s a flute carved from a bird’s wing bone more than 9,000 years ago. The flute was discovered with other flutes at an ancient burial site in China.

- The fastest dog, the greyhound, can reach speeds of upto 41.7 miles per hour. The breed was known to exist in ancient Egypt 6,000 years ago

-- Glue dates back to prehistoric times. Artists once mixed colorings with raw eggs, dried blood, and plant juices to make sticky paints for cave murals. Later, ancient Egyptians and other people learned to make stronger glues by boiling animal bones and hides. Today companies make glues using synthetic substances.

-A cat sees about six times better than a human at night because of the tapetum lucidum , a layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.

-A cat uses whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any passage.

-A cat will clean itself with paw and tongue after a dangerous experience or when it has fought with another cat. This is an attempt by the animal to soothe its nerves by doing something natural and instinctive.

-The grizzly bear can run as fast as the average horse!!

- The female lion does more than 90% of the hunting while the male simply prefers to rest. !!

- A jellyfish is 95 percent water!

- At birth, a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.

-Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!

-You blink over 10,000,000 times a year!

- Of all the words in the English language, the word ' set ' has the most definitions!

- The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!-

- Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed... or is that paws?!

- A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!

- A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

-A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.

elephants mourn their dead (i think)

Awesome Sugarzoe! This is a great board, I love this crap.


The reindeer moss one is pretty cool...and I've always wanted to see one of those gigantic sunfish. They're really cool/weird looking too.

wow u r weird! lol jk i luv yah

u know too much

The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car, and it's tongue is as long as an elephant.




The pelican uses the funny looking pouch under its lower beak for catching fish. It does this by swooshing into the water and scooping up as many fish as possible.

The heaviest fish ever caught was the OCEAN SUNFISH. It weighed 4,928 lbs.
Did you know pearls are found in oysters? The largest pearl ever found was 620 carats.


The swordtail is the fastest swimmer of all the fish



-Most animals don't eat moss. It's hard to digest, and it has little nutritional value. But reindeer fill up with lots of moss, because the moss contains a special chemical that helps reindeer keep their body fluids warm. When the reindeer make their yearly journey across the icy Arctic region, the chemical keeps them from freezing-much as antifreeze keeps a car from freezing up in winter.



A Cloud forest hosts huge numbers of plants and animals; the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica, host over 425 bird species and more varieties of insects than anyone knows.

Jason and Kyra is a very fast-paced read. It's certainly "direct," and it does present a view of high school that challenges stereotypes. But is directness such a good thing? What I found a bit discomforting was the use of slang; since I never came across some of the terms there (for example "tight," in the way Jason uses it), I don't know how authentic it is. The best word to describe it: sweet.

Posted by Jenny at January 27, 2005 12:46 AM

Jason and Kyra is one of the best books I've ever read. I enjoyed it. I can't wait for Dana Davidson's next TEEN book.

Posted by Riqua at August 11, 2004 06:37 PM

My comments on this book are short and direct.....A MUST READ

Posted by Jasmine at July 8, 2004 03:17 AM

Dana Davidson is a wonderful writer. I must have read Jason & Kyra 10 times already. From my 13 years of life, and in all my hundreds of books that I have read, this was my all time favorite. She puts everything in perspective. I will most definitely read more of her books when she writes more!!

Posted by Brittany at July 7, 2004 02:59 PM

i loved this book so much! dana davidson has such a direct, clear way of writing that reading this book was like watching a movie... and reading about kyra was like reading about myself...i hope i can find my jason one day!

Posted by Carla at July 1, 2004 06:17 PM

I really loved Jason and Kyra! It was a good book, and it captured every aspect of teenaged dating perfectly!

Posted by Brittany at June 27, 2004 01:27 AM

Jason & Kyra is the best book I 've ever read!!!

In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.

The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.

The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.

Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.

Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.

Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.

The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.

The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.

The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.

Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed.

Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.

SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.

Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.

Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.

Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.

The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.

The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.

You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.

Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely publicized for obvious reasons.

Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.

The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.

The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.

A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.

The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.

The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.

King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.

Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.

In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.

Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.

Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.

Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.

Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.

Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.

You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.

To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.

Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.

A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.

A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.

Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.

Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.

At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.

Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.

If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.

Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.

Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.

Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg."

When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.

Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.

Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.

If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.

When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.

In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.

Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.

Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.

The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.

Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.

In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.

It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.

The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.

The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.

The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

- "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language

The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.

- No word in the English language rhymes with "month".

- An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

-An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

The average person laughs about 15 times a day.

The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime.

- All polar bears are left handed.

-Ants don't sleep.