Strange But True

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

• What does a cooper’s hawk do after it catches dinner? It gives it a big squeeze. Unlike most raptors that kill with a bite from their beaks, Coops dispatch prey by clamping down on it — over and over if needed — with their needle-sharp talons.
• Cedar waxwings sometimes eat overripe berries that have fermented and begun to produce alcohol. The alcohol makes the birds tipsy, which can cause them to drop drunkenly from the sky.
• Short-tailed shrews use venomous spit to paralyze prey. Although they typically eat insects, worms, and snails, each shrew contains enough toxic slobber to kill nearly 200 mice.
• Now you see me. Now you don’t. In the span of a few seconds, gray treefrogs can turn from bark-brown to leaf-green to match the color of their surroundings.
• Many woodpeckers have crazy-long tongues that they use to probe inside hammered-out holes. The tongues also are needlesharp — perfect for skewering bugs — and barbed at their tips so dinner can’t slide off.
• The alligator gar is North America’s second largest freshwater fish. Named for their toothy smiles and alligator-like snouts, these finned freaks can grow longer than your sofa and weigh more than 300 pounds!
• Your parents probably warned you never to eat yellow snow. Well, don’t eat other-colored snow, either. Cottontail rabbits can tinkle pink, red, orange, or brown pee. The off-colored urine is caused by pigments in plants the rabbit has eaten.
• A raccoon’s paw has 10 times more nerve endings than a human’s hand. Raccoons use their supersensitive digits to feel for food in murky water, unzip backpacks, and open picnic baskets.