Strange but True

Your guide to all the unusual, unique, and unbelievable stuff that goes on in nature.

Barely bigger than a glue stick, a short-tailed shrew produces venomous spit that paralyzes small prey like insects, worms, and snails. It also slows down the heart of larger victims like mice and small snakes.

Eating machines: To lay a single egg, a mama wood duck needs to eat more than 300 insects, snails, and other invertebrates per hour for eight hours. Wood ducks usually lay about a dozen eggs each spring.

Give me shell-ter! Thanks to a hinge on its bottom shell, a box turtle can tuck its legs and head inside its shell and close it up tight. Box turtles are the only turtles in Missouri that can do this.

Before unleashing its funky fury, a striped skunk often flares the hairs on its tail like a scared cat, stamps its paws, clicks its teeth, and growls. Sometimes, it even flips into a handstand and walks around.

If a tiger beetle’s legs were as long as yours, it could run over 200 miles per hour. At top speeds, the half-inch-long insect’s vision becomes blurry, and it must stop for a moment to regain its sight.

To get a girlfriend, a ruffed grouse climbs atop a log, puffs out his chest, and flaps his wings. The motion creates a drumlike thumping that can be heard over a quarter of a mile away.

Water striders glide across the water’s surface at speeds up to a hundred body lengths per second. To keep up, a human speed skater would have to zip around the ice track at over 400 miles per hour.