Mongooses are good parents, they raise their cubs very carefully and tenderly. Moreover, the father is much more caring than the mother. One naturalist described that when the offspring of tame mongooses living in captivity were taken away, the mother reacted calmly to this, and the father could not find a place for himself and searched for missing children for several days.
The capital of New Zealand has its own mini-Hollywood, which is jokingly called «Wellywood». The complex of film studios was created by the efforts of Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings. It was in Wellington that he took his first steps in life and in the world of cinema.
In French, there is the concept of Dépaysement, which expresses the feeling experienced by someone who is not at home. This feeling arises because a person is an immigrant or a foreigner and feels disconnected from the roots.
Adolf Hitler was very fond of animals and was against killing them. He mentioned that he was a vegetarian in his personal diary, and even considered introducing vegetarianism as an official ideology after the war.
In 2011, Mark Twain's famous novels were published in the USA in a new edition — publishers replaced words that were actively used at the time of the author, but are considered offensive now, with more politically correct ones.
Scientists have found that an enzyme contained in the saliva of bats is able to help people suffering from heart disease. Getting into the human blood, this enzyme prevents seizures, and with prolonged use can completely cure the heart.
Renaissance art produced a real revolution, but it was not the textbook Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael who started it. One of the most important artistic innovations of the era was oil painting. Since the time of Vasari, it has been considered that it was invented by the Dutch master Jan van Eyck [1390-1441]. In fact, pigments diluted in vegetable oil were used in Afghanistan in the VI century [archaeologists discovered this already in our days, when they began to explore the caves that opened behind the backs of the Bamiyan Buddhas blown up by the Taliban], and oil painting reached Northern Europe by the XII century [it is mentioned in the treatise of Presbyter Theophilus «On Various Arts»]. However, it was van Eyck who brought this technique to virtuoso perfection.
Rats are so good at surviving that they are found in radioactive areas and even at research stations in Antarctica, where they penetrate despite all precautions. Rats are excellent swimmers, they can swim more than 40 km and will feel good. And these small rodents can stay under water for up to 72 hours.
The Burgundy snail, which lives in France, spends most of its life in hibernation, but when warm rain begins, it emits melodious singing. There is a special cavity under the sink, which allows the snail to make sounds.
The heart of the blue whale is the largest in the world, its weight is about a ton. It is much bigger than the heart of an elephant, the largest land creature. At the same time, the pulse does not happen more often than 20 beats per minute, usually 5-10 beats, and the diameter of the spinal aorta reaches 40 cm.
