And it’s thought by many neuroscientists such as Rodolfo Llinas of New York University that such goal-directed active movement, a biological property known as “motricity,” is a requirement for the development of the nervous system.

bonobos, related to chimpanzees and native to the Congo, have been found to engage in French kissing.

What they discovered was that not only fish, but spiders and many insects can taste their food by the structures that are most likely to first come in contact with the food. And this in many invertebrate species turns out to be the feet.

at least a fifth of all mammalian species are bats.

Research suggests that the earliest flying reptiles swallowed small pieces of volcanic rock and could breathe out flammable gases like hydrogen produced in their own bodies. It is hypothesized that their ingenious “fire breath” was used as a defense against predatory reptiles.

Also surprising to scientists have been the recently documented virgin births in captivity of several types of sharks—the hammerhead, the bonnethead (also known as the shovelhead), and the blacktip.

the mangrove killfish, lives in South American and southern US coastal swamps that can either dry up or become so toxic that the fish has to find refuge in the mud or by flipping and jumping across land. Amazingly, its skin and gills change so the killfish can breathe air and survive out of the water for as long as ten weeks.