Absorb these little-known animal facts, then impress and amaze family and friends with your comprehensive and obscure knowledge of animals. You are sure to make them say "Whoa!"

• A beaver can hold its breath underwater for 45 minutes.
• A 70-pound octopus can squeeze through a hole no bigger than a silver dollar because it has no backbone.
• The longest recorded life-span of a tapeworm, to date, is 35 years.
• Penguins can jump almost 6 feet into the air.
• There are more sheep in New Zealand than people.
• An African ostrich egg weighs almost 30 pounds and is so strong that a 200-pound man can stand on it without it breaking!
• When it is born, a kangaroo is only 1 inch long.
• A shark can grow a new set of teeth in a week.
• The largest rodent in the world, the capybara from South America, can weigh over 170 pounds.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.
• Fleas can jump 130 times higher than their own height. In human terms, this is equal to a 6-foot person jumping 780 feet into the air.
• The world's largest amphibian is the giant salamander. It can grow up to 5 feet in length.
• There are no poisonous snakes in Maine.
• The blue whale can produce sounds up to 188 decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal, and has been detected as far away as 530 miles.
• The poison arrow frogs of South and Central America are the most poisonous animals in the world.
• A large swarm of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) can consume 20,000 tons (18,160,000 kilograms) of vegetation a day.
• Armadillos, opossums, and sloths spend about 80 percent of their lives sleeping.
• The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs, just below the knees.
• The leg muscles of a locust are about 1,000 times more powerful than an equal weight of human muscle.
• The air temperature can be determined by counting the number of cricket chirps in 14 seconds and adding 40.
• A shrimp's heart is in its head.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
• Ants cannot chew their food; they move their jaws sideways, like scissors, to extract the juices from the food.
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
• Despite the hump, a camel's spine is straight.
• The earliest cockroach fossils are about 280 million years old.