Buzz
Nature, full of life in all its colorful beauty and surprises, can also be pretty off-putting. It’s a truth that rarely makes it into those serene nature documentaries, but the reality is animals are living creatures—and being alive often involves some pretty unpleasant stuff.
Animals share many of the gross habits we humans enjoy, but they’ve got a few extra tricks up their sleeves that we’d never dream of. Some of your favorite creatures are hardwired to do some truly stomach-turning things that we rarely acknowledge. After reading this, you'll never look at an animal the same way again.
10. Fruit Fly Swarms Are Essentially Giant Orgies
If you’ve ever waved your hand through a cloud of fruit flies hovering over some random spot in your house, we’ve got news for you: you’ve just interrupted their wild party. To those fruit flies, you were the ultimate buzzkill.
Those wild, chaotic fruit fly swarms are essentially like swinger parties, and they’re bizarre. The fruit flies pair off and begin to set the mood with what animal experts call—and we apologize in advance for the mental image—“oral sexual foreplay.” Once things heat up, they dive right in. Two fruit flies, with a life span of just 40 days, will engage in lovemaking for an impressive 20 minutes.
But it doesn’t stop there. After finishing with one partner, the female fruit flies will sample a few of the other males nearby. Due to their biology, the last male she mates with will be the one to father her offspring, so they engage in these orgies to try out different suitors before deciding on a mate for reproduction.
So, if you’ve ever waved your hand through a fruit fly orgy, you might want to think about washing it off.
9. Petting Birds Gets Them Excited
Ever stroked a bird’s back? Ever had it snuggle up to you after a gentle touch? It might have seemed like a sweet moment between pet and owner, but for your bird, that was a whole different story. That was foreplay.
Most birds interpret a stroke from their head to their back as the beginning of a mating ritual. They don’t see it as a simple scratch; to them, it signals that you're ready for anything. This excites them sexually, often causing them to pant with heightened excitement.
If they’re really into it, they’ll let you know in a unique way—by vomiting on you. If you’ve really turned a bird on, it might try to offer you regurgitated food, and it’ll throw up all over you in the hope that you catch the hint. If you treat them well, they’ll let you know there’s more where that came from.
They may even get aggressive when they realize you’re not meeting their expectations. Once the bird realizes you're not responding in kind, it may lash out, leaving you with an angry, frustrated, sexually charged bird pecking at you.
8. You’ve Likely Consumed Beaver Anal Secretions
Chances are, you’ve unknowingly consumed beaver anal secretions—or at least had some sprayed on your face. You probably missed it because it’s listed as “castoreum”—or more commonly, just “natural flavors”—but that’s exactly what castoreum is: beaver anal secretions. And it’s what gives things like ice cream and perfume that distinct, extra flavor.
Castoreum is a yellowish secretion from a beaver’s castor sac, which is essentially the organ they use to mark their territory. It’s a mixture of anal fluids and urine, and it has been used for years to enhance the flavor of vanilla ice cream, give cigarettes a musky aftertaste, and add a fruity note to perfumes.
While it’s not as commonly used as it once was, that’s not because it’s repulsive. The reason is simple: adding beaver anal secretions to ice cream is expensive. Today, a touch of beaver anus is a rare luxury reserved for the most high-end brands.
7. Some Frogs Turn Elephant Dung Into Their Home
The ornate narrow-mouthed frog, a tiny creature only 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) long, can be found in the forests and savannas of Southeast Asia. It typically makes its home under a bed of fallen leaves—but if there aren’t any leaves around, it will happily settle inside a giant, pungent mound of elephant dung.
As it turns out, elephant dung makes for a fantastic home—if you can stomach the smell. Not only does the frog get shade from the harsh sun, but it also gets an all-you-can-eat buffet. The frog can snack on the insects crawling through the dung, and when bugs are scarce, it munches on the leftovers the elephant didn’t fully digest.
But frogs aren’t the only creatures making a home in the dung. As the esteemed biologist Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz noted in his scientific paper, “Shit Happens (to be Useful),” “A dung pile can become a small ecosystem on its own.” This is because so many animals are eager to move into a pile of elephant poop and call it home.
6. Proboscis Monkeys Use Their Rage to Show Off Their Rage-Ons
When male proboscis monkeys are upset, they make sure you know. They’ll leap up and down, shake branches, show off their teeth—and yes, they’ll also flaunt a boner fueled by pure anger.
Proboscis monkeys aren’t aroused by their anger; they’re just permanently erect. Every second of every day, these monkeys walk around sporting a stiffy. But when they’re pissed, they make sure to flaunt it. They’ll spread their legs as wide as possible and thrust it right at you.
This isn’t just something that happens occasionally. It’s the proboscis monkey’s go-to reaction to any potential threat. When they sense a confrontation is coming, they might hold off on showing their teeth until the situation escalates. But they’ll immediately start performing—using the scientific term—“erect penis displays.”
5. Falcon Breeders Let Birds Mate With Their Heads
If a falcon was raised in captivity, there’s a good chance it didn’t come from a loving pair of falcons. Falcon breeders take a rather unusual approach to creating a new generation of falcons in their care.
The process begins when the falcon breeder ‘imprints’ on a male falcon—or, more bluntly, tries to get it sexually excited. The breeder will engage in mating dances and make specific calls to get the falcon in the mood. If everything goes right, the falcon will fly onto the breeder’s head and get to business.
The breeders wear special hats to catch the falcon’s semen, which is then injected into the eggs of a female falcon. While this may sound clinical, it’s still incredibly strange. Before the breeder can proceed with the injection, they must also charm the female falcon. She won’t allow the breeder to inject the eggs unless she is, as one guide puts it, sexually aroused enough to ‘present herself for copulation.’
4. The Greater Short-Horned Lizard Shoots Blood From Its Eyes
When threatened, the greater short-horned lizard employs a defense mechanism straight out of a horror story. It retaliates by spraying blood from its eye sockets—and it’s not a small amount. These lizards can spray their enemies with blood from up to 1.2 meters (4 feet) away.
The lizards have special muscles that can constrict the blood flow in the veins around their eyes, redirecting it to shoot out like a water gun. It might sound like a suicidal tactic, but for reasons no one fully understands, they can keep spraying blood from their eyes all day without tiring out.
And they squirt blood for just about anything. This isn’t a last-ditch effort; even the tiniest irritation, like a speck of dust in their eye, will make them bleed.
3. After Scorpions Shed Their Tails, They Die of Constipation
When scorpions get snagged by their stingers, they can still escape. They’ll squirm and thrash around until their tails fall off. The severed stinger will keep trying to sting the attacker, buying the scorpion time to get away. It sounds like a pretty cool and effective defense mechanism—until you read on.
The issue is that a scorpion’s tail isn’t just for stinging. It’s also where their anus is located, and the tail doesn’t grow back. Once it’s gone, the scorpion can no longer relieve itself. Over time, its body fills up with waste until it bursts.
But it doesn’t happen quickly. The scorpions can suffer for up to eight months in agony before they finally die. When they get backed up, the pressure from the excrement inside them becomes so intense that another part of their tail bursts open, only to start filling up again.
When every section of their tail has exploded in a grotesque mess, the scorpion will clog up one final time and burst, experiencing one of the most excruciating deaths imaginable. After eight months of suffering, the scorpion dies—because it’s literally too full of shit to survive.
2. Bored Ducks Turn to Cannibalism
Ducks are not fond of boredom. In the wild, they handle it just fine—no iPads to distract them; they’ll simply venture out to explore a new part of the river. But in captivity, it’s a whole different story. Without the space to wander, they turn to alternative forms of entertainment: visiting their fellow ducks, committing murder, and feasting on their bodies.
One harrowing witness account of a duck-on-duck slaughter tells of a Muscovy duck snatching a soon-to-hatch egg from another duck: “The male Muscovy cracked open the egg and sank his teeth into the fully-formed chick inside,” the witness recalled. “With a quick flick of his head, he swallowed the duckling whole.” All of this happened right under the watchful eyes of the parents. Savage.
To stop a murderous, bloodthirsty duck mid-kill spree, the only solution is to trim its beak so it can no longer use it. It’s such a frequent problem that custom beak-trimming machines are made to prevent a backyard cannibalism reenactment from happening.
1. Some Birds Keep Cool by Pooping on Themselves
Certain birds—such as storks, condors, flamingos, and vultures—use a peculiar method called urohidrosis (note: not “urohydrosis”) to cool down. Here’s how it works: You poop on your own feet, then spend the rest of the day walking around with poop on your feet, never bothering to clean it up. If you want to try this technique at home, feel free to give it a go.
It’s a bizarre method of dealing with the heat, but so widespread that it’s almost like the bird version of sweating. Only, instead of perspiration, these birds release a mix of feces and urine onto their legs.
The white fecal residue left behind provides some protection from the sun—but it’s still a pretty gross strategy for staying cool. If not cleaned off soon enough, the birds risk developing bruises on their legs due to the excessive poop.
So, the next time you feel gross from sweat, just remember: it could always be much, much worse.
