funfact.wiki
AboutGuidelinesTermsPrivacyContact

Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

An elephant's tusks are not molars but massively overgrow... | funfact.wiki | funfact.wiki
An elephant's tusks are not molars but massively overgrown upper incisors — front teeth. The Chinese characters for ivory use the character for "molar," adding to the misconception, but anatomically tusks grow from the front of the jaw.
  • Elephant
  • Ivory
  • Animal
  • Incisor
0
DiscussionHistory

Related Cards

Honeybees can understand that zero is smaller than 1, 2, 3, or 4.
  • Honeybee
  • Bee
  • Zero
  • Animal
  • Biology
0
If more cells mean higher cancer risk, whales and elephants should constantly get cancer. Yet they rarely do—less often than smaller animals. This contradictory phenomenon is called "Peto's paradox."
  • Cancer
  • Whale
  • Elephant
  • Cell
  • Contradiction
  • Paradox
0
Sheep and goats diverged only about 4 million years ago—more recently than humans and chimpanzees split apart.
  • Sheep
  • Goat
  • Evolution
  • Animal
0
Newborn horses don't have hard hooves. A jelly-like covering called "foal slippers" wraps around their hooves, protecting the mother during pregnancy and birth. These coverings naturally fall off once the foal begins to stand and walk.
  • Horse
  • Animal
  • Hoof
0
Walking with same-side arm and leg moving together (lateral walk) is actually the most common gait among mammals — dogs, cats, elephants, and deer all walk this way. In Edo-period Japan, people also walked this way, using a style called "nanba."
  • Mammal
  • Japan
  • Animal
  • Walking
0