50 Fun Facts About Animal Science

Which object do farmers feed to cattle so that swallowed nails and wire cannot pierce the stomach wall?

A magnet about the size of a finger settles in the reticulum for life and holds stray metal in place. Vets call the injury it prevents hardware disease.

Which everyday phrase for a social ranking comes from a Norwegian zoologist's studies of chickens?

Pecking order was first described by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who had watched hens since he was a boy and noted which birds could peck others without retaliation.

Which feature of a hen usually predicts whether her eggs will have white or brown shells?

Earlobes are the usual guide: breeds with white lobes generally lay white eggs and red-lobed breeds lay brown. Shell colour is cosmetic, with no effect on quality or taste.

Which amphibian shares its name with the V-shaped, rubbery pad on the underside of a horse's hoof?

The frog acts as a shock absorber and also works like a pump, pushing blood back up the leg toward the heart each time the hoof bears weight.

Which greenhouse gas do cattle release mainly by belching, as microbes in the rumen break down grass?

Methane is made in the rumen by microbes called methanogens and leaves through the mouth, at roughly 100 kg per cow each year.

In which country was Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, created and born?

The Roslin Institute in Scotland, near Edinburgh, grew Dolly from a mammary gland cell, which is why she was named after the singer Dolly Parton.

Which silky fibre comes from the fleece of the Angora goat, not from the rabbit that shares its name?

Mohair comes only from the Angora goat, which is shorn twice a year, in spring and autumn. The fluffy yarn sold as angora is rabbit fur.

Which autistic Colorado State University professor designed curved corrals to calm cattle on the way to slaughter?

Temple Grandin was one of the first scientists to report that cattle balk at shadows, dangling chains and other small details that most people never notice.

Which usually sterile farm animal, bred from a male donkey and a female horse, has 63 chromosomes?

A mule inherits 32 chromosomes from the horse and 31 from the donkey, and that odd total usually leaves it infertile. Swap the parents and the foal is a hinny.

Which three-beat horse gait is traditionally said to be named after an English cathedral city?

Canter is traditionally traced to Canterbury, from the easy speed of medieval pilgrims riding to the shrine there. A gallop is the same gait run faster, in four beats.

Which organ, found in both cattle and humans, is entirely missing from the body of a horse?

The gallbladder, which stores bile in cattle and humans, is absent in horses, yet they still tolerate a surprisingly high amount of fat in the diet.

Which term for a castrated male sheep survives in the word for a flock leader that wears a bell?

Wether gave English the word bellwether: shepherds hung a bell on the lead wether so they could follow the flock by ear, even when it was out of sight.

Which term for a young cow that has not yet calved also names a charity that gives livestock to poor families?

Heifer International began after Indiana farmer Dan West, ladling out milk to refugee children in the Spanish Civil War, decided they needed a cow of their own.

Which term for a young female pig that has not yet had a litter is spelled like a thin coating of gold?

Gilt is the stockman's word for a female pig until she has produced a litter, or two by some local usage, after which she is called a sow.

Which thick first milk, rich in antibodies, must a newborn calf drink within hours of birth to fight off infection?

Colostrum matters more to calves than to babies: human infants receive antibodies through the placenta before birth, while newborn ruminants get theirs only from this first milk.

What do cattle, sheep and giraffes all bring back up from the stomach to chew for a second time?

Cud returns to the mouth because ruminants cannot make the enzymes that break down cellulose, so long chewing and saliva help the stomach's microbes do the job instead.

Which of a cow's four stomach compartments is called the true stomach because it works much like a human's?

The abomasum is the fourth and final compartment, lined with glands that release acid and digestive enzymes. It also secretes rennet, the extract cheesemakers use to curdle milk.

Which muscular organ lets a toothless chicken grind its grain, helped by the grit it swallows?

The gizzard has thick muscular walls and does the chewing that a beak cannot. Birds can hold food in the crop first, then pass it on to be ground.

Which wax, secreted by a sheep's skin glands and washed out of raw wool, is used in lip balms?

Lanolin takes its name from the Latin for wool and oil, and its waterproofing helps sheep shed rain from their coats. Sailors even smear it on propellers to keep barnacles off.

Which word is the highest USDA quality grade for beef, earned by only a small percentage of carcasses?

Prime sits at the top of eight USDA beef grades that run down to Cutter and Canner. In 2009 only about 2.9 percent of carcasses earned it.

What term do meat graders use for the flecks of fat within lean beef that largely decide its USDA quality grade?

Marbling is intramuscular fat, and graders weigh it alongside the animal's maturity. Fat laid down near the muscle fibres adds flavour, juiciness and tenderness.

Which tough cut from a beef animal's lower chest is the classic choice for corned beef and pastrami?

Brisket is one of the nine primal cuts of beef, and Montreal's Jewish community turns it into the city's famous smoked meat, a close relative of pastrami.

Which black-and-white breed, built on Dutch stock, is the choice of most dairy farmers worldwide?

Holstein has one of the biggest gene pools of any dairy breed, which has let breeders improve it faster than its rivals. In Britain the commoner name is Friesian, counted there as a separate but very similar breed.

Which red beef breed with a distinctive white face takes its name from an English county in the West Midlands?

Hereford cattle were once wholly red, much like their Sussex cousins. The white face only became fixed in the breed by the end of the 18th century.

Which heat-tolerant beef breed was developed in the United States from humped zebu cattle originating in India?

Brahman cattle shrug off heat, sunlight, humidity and parasites, and they have passed that toughness on to newer crosses such as the Brangus.

Which reddish-brown American pig breed is said to take its name from a stallion kept in New York state?

Duroc is said to honour a stallion owned by Harry Kelsey in the 1820s. By one account the racehorse had itself been named after an aide of Napoleon.

Which fine-wooled sheep was once a Spanish monopoly so strict that exporting one risked the death penalty?

Merino flocks stayed locked inside Spain for centuries. Once they spread, the breed built Australia's wool trade, which had nearly 2 million sheep by 1830.

Which white-egg laying chicken breed takes its English name from the old name for the Italian port of Livorno?

Leghorn is the traditional English name for Livorno, the Tuscan port from which the first birds were shipped to North America. Americans at first called them simply Italians.

Which racing breed traces every modern pedigree back to just three stallions imported into England centuries ago?

Thoroughbred pedigrees all lead back to three foundation sires, the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, crossed with a larger number of mostly English mares.

Which meat goat breed from South Africa is recognised by its white body and red-brown head?

Boer goats were bred in the Eastern Cape from about 1920 for meat and for surviving on thorny scrub, and have since been exported to improve other breeds.

Which illness of cattle became only the second disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated worldwide?

Rinderpest was confirmed gone in May 2011. Its virus is the closest relative of measles, which may have split off from it around the 6th century BC.

Against which disease did Louis Pasteur's team vaccinate sheep in a public trial at Pouilly-le-Fort?

Anthrax was the target of the 1881 trial, in which half the animals were vaccinated before all were injected with live bacteria. A crowd of spectators gathered to see the result.

Which infectious agent, containing no DNA or RNA, causes both mad cow disease and scrapie in sheep?

A prion is a misfolded form of a normal body protein. The same kind of agent lies behind chronic wasting disease in deer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

Which udder infection is both the most common and the most costly disease of dairy cattle worldwide?

Mastitis sets in when white blood cells flood the mammary gland, usually because bacteria have invaded through the teat canal.

Milk fever strikes dairy cows just after calving when their blood runs short of which mineral?

Calcium is drained by the sudden demand of milk production faster than an older cow can pull it from her bones. The name misleads: there is usually no fever at all.

Which mineral is routinely injected on intensive pig farms because a sow's milk contains too little of it?

Iron comes by needle for indoor pigs, whose only food at first is milk that is low in it. Vitamin D supplements likewise make up for the lack of sunlight.

Which trace mineral, needed in small amounts, builds up in a sheep's liver as a cumulative poison?

Copper is excreted very slowly by sheep, leaving them far more vulnerable than other livestock. Certain plants can make the liver dump its store at once, causing sudden death.

Which livestock illness led Britain to slaughter over six million cows and sheep in 2001?

Foot-and-mouth affects cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and other even-toed animals, and the 2001 outbreak caused a crisis in British tourism as well as farming.

Which hormone, which also makes the uterus contract during birth, triggers milk letdown in a suckled cow?

Oxytocin acts on the mammary glands so that milk is let down into the ducts. Its power to make the uterus contract was discovered in 1906, a few years before its milk role.

What is the name for a female calf born twin to a bull and left infertile by exposure to his hormones?

A freemartin always has a male twin, as the physician John Hunter found in the 18th century. The pair's placentas join, and she picks up his cells and hormones in the womb.

Which extinct wild animal, last recorded in a Polish forest in 1627, was the ancestor of domestic cattle?

The aurochs is thought to have died out in the Jaktorów forest, though some reports suggest it clung on for up to another century in southeastern Europe.

Which wild bird of South and Southeast Asian forests is the main ancestor of the domestic chicken?

Red junglefowl gave rise to a bird now raised worldwide in the tens of billions. Three other junglefowl species, the grey, Sri Lankan and green, added smaller shares of its genes.

Which 18th-century Leicestershire farmer was the first to apply systematic selective breeding to livestock?

Robert Bakewell founded the Dishley Society in 1783 to spread his methods, and the selective breeding he pioneered later helped inspire Charles Darwin.

Which law signed by Abraham Lincoln gave states public land to fund agricultural and mechanical colleges?

The Morrill Act handed each state scrip for 30,000 acres per member of Congress, and selling it launched the land-grant colleges where animal science is still taught.

What do breeders call the edge in growth and fertility that crossbred animals show over purebred parents?

Hybrid vigor, known to geneticists as heterosis, is the improved function of a crossbred offspring. Two rival genetic explanations for it have been debated since the early 1900s.

Which word describes cattle or sheep that are naturally hornless, a trait selected for in some breeds?

Polled animals lack horns in a species that normally grows them. The word also covers horned stock that were disbudded when young.

What is the term for a sow giving birth to her litter, which also names the crate sows are moved into beforehand?

Farrowing crates give a sow room to stand up and lie down, with an attached area for her piglets, a design meant to stop her lying on them.

Which livestock feed is made by packing chopped green crops airtight so that they ferment until sour?

Silage keeps because fermentation acidifies the crop, in effect pickling it. The process is called ensiling, and American dairy farmers took to it early for green maize.

In which pouch at the start of the large intestine do a horse's gut microbes ferment the fibre in its feed?

The cecum was called the water gut in old textbooks. Its microbes ferment cellulose into fatty acids that the horse can absorb and use.

Which component of milk does the Babcock test measure, a method devised to catch farmers who watered milk down?

Butterfat is all that survives when sulfuric acid is added to a milk sample. Heating and spinning the bottle then float the fat to the top in a clear layer.