Which animal is stubborn

If someone says you're crying crocodile tears tears, they don't mean you're sad. They mean you're faking it. You're crying, or pretending to cry, when you're really not sad at all. In fact, you may be quite gleeful. This saying arose out of the belief that crocodiles cry as they devour their prey. Since crocs enjoy their meals, they must therefore be feigning sadness about taking another creature's life. Crocodiles do shed tears as do alligators , meaning they have lachrymal glands that produce tears, which lubricate their eyes.

And yes, they do sometimes shed these tears while they eat. Researchers at the University of Florida believe the animals get so excited when they're chowing down that air gets blown up through their sinuses and forces tears back up into the eye.

Yet while there's no sadness behind their tears, there's no emotion, fake or otherwise, behind them either. Their tears are merely a physiological response, like sweating when you're nervous.

A more obscure expression, "the bee's knees" means something is excellent. Top shelf. But do bees have knees, and if so, are they great? Like all insects, bees have six sections to their legs.

Each segment connects to the next by a joint. One of the six sections could be considered more knee-like than the others, but in reality bees do not have knees in the way we think of them. Some posit that since bees have sacs on the back of their leg segments to carry pollen, "the bee's knees" was a reference to the fact that pollen was a good, or excellent, thing. However, when the phrase became popular in s America , there were other similarly silly animal expressions being bandied about, like "the cat's pajamas" and "the sardine's whiskers.

And it couldn't hurt that "bees" and "knees" rhymed, making it fun to utter [source: McCabe ]. When you hear this phrase, a picture probably pops into your mind -- someone trying to drag a mule forward by a rope while the mule resists, digging its hooves into the dirt and refusing to budge.

Or maybe you're picturing a donkey. If so, are both animals stubborn? For starters, let's discuss their differences. A mule is not an animal species, like a horse or donkey. It's a hybrid, or the product of two other species -- in this case, the pairing of a male donkey with a female horse. Donkeys have 62 chromosomes and horses have 64; mules are born with This odd number of chromosomes means they can't reproduce [source: Lucky Three Ranch ].

Donkeys and mules both have reputations as animals with, um, mulish personalities. They're widely seen as stubborn. Obstinate, even. Guess what? They aren't. A study done by Canterbury Christ Church University and Devon's The Donkey Sanctuary showed that when it came to showing flexibility toward solving a problem learning to learn , mules came out on top, followed by donkeys, with horses and dogs bringing up the rear.

So why the common misperception? Mules -- and donkeys -- are smart. Really smart. They also have a deep-seated tendency toward self-preservation. So they won't let owners overwork them, nor will they typically put themselves in danger. She was strong and stubborn enough to walk away from him.

The truth is, being stubborn can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you use it. Wielded mindfully, stubbornness can be a powerful tool: It is being doggedly determined to meet your goals. It is persistence and tenacity. They can survive on a starch-rich diet. Dogs are certainly are one of the most adorable animals that start with D. Dolphins are highly-intelligent aquatic mammals within the infra-order Odontoceti, which include Killer whales.

The Dingo is an amazing wild dog native to Australia found in light ginger and tan, black and tan or whitish cream colors. Dingos are considered more of a feral animal than a wild one. These fluffy , possessive dogs are often compared to cats for their meticulous grooming skills. Similar to Afghan Hounds, Chow Chows need plenty of space. Again, building trust is key to successfully instilling commands in your Chow—as is consistency.

This toy breed prefers to be in charge. Pekingese see themselves as your equal , so they must respect you if you are to train them adequately. Whoever they pick as their favorite and they will should be in charge of training. These lovable, playful sled dogs have independent spirits and are known for their aversion to training.

While smart and friendly, all they really want to do is run , according to The Siberian Husky Club of America. They can also be easily distracted by small animals. Unsurprising for canines bred to be racing pack dogs. This Will Be the Amazon Coat of Does Hand Sanitizer Work?

We Ask Hamptons Chicago San Francisco. Connect With Us. Are you sure you want to remove this item from your Recipe Box? Create a Password Forgot your password? Enter your registered email below! To Save to My Recipe Box. Log In Never created a password? You are not currently subscribed. It appears your Facebook email address is not subscribed to PureWow. Please indicate how you like to proceed:. To put it in terms you might understand, that's like a pound person moving 80 tons.

They're also tiny astronomers. Scientists observing beetle behavior in South Africa now think these little poo rollers find their way back and forth to nest by using the Milky Way to navigate.

Being one of our closest living animal relatives, the gorilla, which is largest of the four so-called "great apes" possesses a formidable mix of strength and smarts. These are very social animals, with large families, sophisticated systems of communication, and an ability to make and use tools. None of which makes them tough, only formidable. What's tough is that gorillas are the bodybuilders of the animal kingdom.

Science can't seem to agree on the precise number — for one thing, it's a hard metric to measure — but an adult silverback is at least 6 times and perhaps as much as 20 times stronger than a human. Here's the world's biggest snake, by weight, and a fearsome predator that can eat basically anything it can overpower, including livestock that happens to wander too close to a river where an anaconda is lurking. Anacondas aren't poisonous, which is kind of a relief.

Instead, they kill by constricting. Contrary to popular belief, though, an anaconda doesn't crush its prey. Instead, its not-very-tender embrace cuts off blood flow to the prey's critical organs, causing the animal to pass out and eventually die due to lack of oxygen.

Neither a tarantula nor a hawk, this giant flying insect is actually a wasp that hunts spiders. If that last phrase didn't terrify you, consider this: the tarantula hawk is one of two insects to score a 4 the "Schmidt sting pain index," developed by entomologist Justin Schmidt to measure the severity of bug bites on a scale of 1 to 4.

Here's what a biologist told Wired about some advice he'd read on how to treat a sting. You're likely to just run off and hurt yourself. So just lie down and start yelling. If we're going to salute the Tarantula Hawk, we have to also include the bullet ant, the only other insect to score a 4 on Justin Schmidt's pain scale. The bullet ant roams the floors of Central and South American rain forests and is named for the feeling of its sting — which, apparently, is so incredibly painful that you feel like you've been shot.

Schmidt himself has described it as "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel. One tribe in Brazil uses the ants in a rite of passage ritual. When boys reach a certain age, they must put their hands into a set of gloves made from leaves that have been filled with hundreds of bullet ants and keep them inside for as long as they can stand it. To complete the initiation, they must complete this act 20 times, which is insane and means that if we ever do a list of the 25 toughest groups of humans, these boys are definitely making the list.

The planet's third largest feline, after the tiger and lion, the jaguar aka panther is South and Central America's most capable hunter.

Jaguars are solitary animals, and hunt via stealth, surprising prey and then overcoming whatever's being stalked with a rare mix of speed and power.

Jaguars have the greatest bite force of any large cat, the strength to pull a pound deer up into a tree while climbing, and are excellent swimmers. Black jaguars, by the way, are the same species—the lack of markings is due to a mutation that occurs in approximately 6 percent of the wild population.

There are five types of rhinos, three in Africa and two in Asia, and all of them are tough. Rhinos weigh at least 2, and sometimes as much as 4, pounds, have a thick almost armored skin, and a large horn that's capable of goring any animal that makes the unwise decision of mounting an attack. For those reasons, adult rhinos have no real natural predators—except, sadly, humans.

Due to demand for those horns in Asia, rhinos are among the most endangered animals on earth, with the African varieties vanishing at an especially rapid rate, and if we can't solve the problem fast, they won't be around to make this list in a decade. Technically, crocodiles are aquatic animals, and thus ineligible for our list, but they spend a good chunk of time on land—and often prey on land animals—so that's plenty good enough for us after all this entire list is purely subjective.

Whether they're tough is unquestionable. Saltwater crocs are the largest living predator on land and in non-ocean environments, growing up to 17 feet and 2, pounds, and possessing the most powerful bite ever measured in a laboratory—strong enough to crush a cow's skull in one chomp. Being huge and aggressive and native to places with large, crowded human environments like India, China, Bangladesh and Malaysia , saltwater crocodiles will sometimes target people as prey, though the number of actual deaths per year is still very low.

If this were a list of adorable things that you should actually be terrified of, hippos would probably be number one. Not because hippos are innately angry or aggressive—though they can be both—but because they kill more humans in Africa than any other animal.