Myths vs facts
Twelve bits of animal “common knowledge”, gently rubbed out by our resident eraser.
Goldfish have a three-second memory.
Goldfish have a memory span of at least three months — not three seconds. [source]
Bats are blind.
Bats are not blind. [source]
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand.
Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand. [source]
Lemmings throw themselves off cliffs.
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide; the myth was popularised by the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness. [source]
Red makes bulls angry.
Bulls are not enraged by the colour red. Cattle are dichromats, so red doesn’t stand out; it is the perceived threat from the bullfighter that provokes the charge. [source]
Camels store water in their humps.
Camel humps store fat, not water. [source]
Daddy longlegs spiders are deadly but can’t bite you.
Daddy longlegs spiders are not secretly the world’s most venomous spiders. [source]
Porcupines shoot their quills.
Porcupines cannot shoot their quills. [source]
Cut a worm in half and you get two worms.
Cutting an earthworm in half does not generally make two worms. [source]
Touch a baby bird and its parents will abandon it.
Touching a baby bird will not make its parents reject it. [source]
Chameleons change colour to match the background.
Chameleons can’t change colour to match any background; they usually change colour for social signalling, mood and heat regulation. [source]
Old elephants go to secret graveyards to die.
There are no “elephant graveyards” where old elephants go to die. [source]