A platypus seems more like a Tim Burton creation than a real species. In fact, National Geographic says the scientists that first examined platypi specimens thought they were a hoax. After all, they've got a duck bill, webbed feet, a beaver tail and the body of an otter.
Read MoreChocolate, cookies and cream, or just plain vanilla. These are America's favorite ice cream flavors, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. But there's a new top flavor vying for contention, by way of Ecuador: guinea pig ice cream.
Read MoreIf you're considering going out and finding a sweet kitty cat of your own, one breed is known to be smarter than others.
Read MoreNo matter what country it represents, a flag is enormously symbolic. It represents a nation's past and its present. How a flag is perceived by its citizens can be vastly different from the way it's perceived by other nations. And a great example of this problem is Japan's "Rising Sun" flag.
Read MoreHuge insects are terrifying. No one wants to be assailed by horse flies or mosquitoes the size of your fist. But in a way, tiny insects are even more terrifying. A mosquito the size of your fist ... well, at least you can see it coming. Midges, chiggers and flies? Ugh.
Read MoreWouldn't it have been great to be a woman in the Renaissance? All those fancy dresses, and the ... fancy dresses. Nope, life pretty much sucked for women in the Renaissance. And guess what? You didn't even get a fancy dress.
Read MoreIf you loved Sesame Street as a child, then you should hate that woolly mammoths went extinct. After all, wasn't Snuffleupagus a tusk-less woolly mammoth? One possibility is that mammoths took a wrong turn on the way to Sesame Street and ended up on Cemetery Street. But scientists have other ideas.
Read MoreThe ragdoll is a fairly new breed - it was developed in the 1960s from a population of feral cats in a Riverside, California neighborhood.
Read MoreIt's difficult to know exactly why, but in recent days, the question has been raised: can the president of the United States extend a presidential pardon to himself? Maybe it's a societal innocent curiosity, or because Mercury is stuck in retrograde.
Read MoreEarth isn't dirt all the way through — the dirt and rock that make up Earth's crust only go down about 19 miles. Under the crust, there are four additional layers — the upper mantle, the lower mantle, the outer core, and the inner core, and those parts of the planet are pretty inhospitably hot.
Read MoreThousands of years after the collapse of their civilization, the Greek empire still reigns as one of those most successful of all time. Sure they gave us things like the Olympics, but they were more than just athletes. They were thinkers, and pioneers in many areas of science and philosophy.
Read MoreThere was plenty of evidence that women could be astronauts long before NASA ever took them seriously. Here's the untold truth of women in space.
Read MoreMount Everest is one of the world's most alluring places. As the highest point on Planet Earth, it's one of the few destinations people will happily risk their lives to get to. Sometimes when the mountain's victims die in highly visible places they become landmarks. Such is the case of Green Boots.
Read MoreIn the case of the dollar bill, you might overlook the fact that it features a pyramid right on its backside. What's the story? There are two possibilities.
Read MoreThough there are many contenders for the title of World's Smallest Dog Breed, with adorable bundles of love like the Yorkshire terrier and the miniature greyhound seeming like definite possibilities, there can, as with Highlanders, be only one, and it weighs only a little more than a pound.
Read MoreThe stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. But the lone star featured on the state flag has a special place in the hearts of Texans.
Read MoreSchlitzie the Pinhead was one of the most famous circus sideshow acts ever. Schlitzie's unusual "pinhead" appearance brought swarms of audiences to the circus sideshows he called home. But Schlitzie's life was incredibly hard behind the scenes. Here's the untold truth of "Schlitzie the Pinhead."
Read MoreBruce Lee was a true international man of mystery, with immense mental and physical strength. The result was a man who had total confidence in his ability to achieve greatness, and followed through with it by just about every metric. Fame? Check. Chiseled abs? Check. Fortune? Absolutely.
Read MoreHorses are quite the superlative animal. Even amongst the ranks of this uber creature, some horses rank as bigger and badder than the rest. Which breed ranks as the biggest of all?
Read MoreGenerally, fish sell for pennies on the dollar, as evidenced by the accepted method of transport -- plastic bag. Maybe it's because most humans think they don't feel pain, but our poor piscine friends don't often get the royal treatment. But some are incredibly expensive.
Read MoreEver since we've been putting things in water, they've been getting all biofouled, and for millennia, we've been struggling to deal. Over the ages, humans have tried everything from scraping chains against the hull to coating hulls with glass. But the answer lies in painting boat bottoms red.
Read MoreIf there's one thing most people know about the dodo bird, it's that they were dumb.
Read MoreIn June of 2001, a soft-spoken old white guy hit the soft-spoken old white guy lottery when he brought his grandmother's old Navajo blanket to an Antiques Roadshow taping and discovered that it had more than just sentimental value. It was worth big time money.
Read MoreThose with $1 million or more, account for 45 percent of the world's total wealth. Guess how many of them there are... If your answer was 36 million, you're correct, according to Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report.
Read MoreEddie Money was a blue collar rocker, saxophonist, and champion of the everyman who managed to rack up 11 Top 40 hits. Here's the untold truth of Eddie Money.
Read MoreLet's start by saying that narrowing down "the rarest" type of just about any animal is kind of a tall order. So let's just settle for what we believe to be "quite possibly the rarest cat breed in the world" and be happy with that.
Read MoreScience has managed to answer most of mankind's questions about dogs. But what about the big questions? The ones that keep us up at night? Why, one is forced to ask, shaking their fist to the heavens, do dogs kick up grass after dropping a deuce? And why should we give a poop?
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