Strangest Evolutionary Traits of Animals

13 - All in one
Okapi have a few key evolutionary traits that are worth mentioning. This cross giraffe / zebra is from the DRC and there, there are always predators like leopard’s waiting for the chance to feast on an okapi. To avoid being a leopard’s supper, okapi use infrasonic calls to communicate with their calves, so that predators cannot hear them and they can escape quickly. They also secrete a sticky substance from their feet, which marks their territory and their tongues are so long, they can wash their eyes and ears with them!

12 - Playing Dead
The White-Tailed deer fawn are extremely good at faking their own death so authentically that potential predators leave them alone! Their heart rate drops so low that they go into a state of tonic immobility. Along with that, the animal will involuntarily urinate and defecate and that is just not appealing to any predator!

11 - Heads or Tails
Most geckos have the crazy ability to grow their tails to look like heads! Geckos drop their tails if they’re scared or if their tails get grabbed. The tail then twitches, confusing the predator and this gives the gecko chance to get away. Often the tail regrows looking like the head of the gecko, confusing the predator in the hope it will grab the end that can be dropped.

10 - Stick around
The lizards that were endemic to the lower branches of trees in Florida were in for a rude awakening when the brown lizards decided to invade their space. Evolution had to quickly lend a hand or otherwise the lizards would have faced extinction. With time, the green lizards’ toepads became bigger and stickier, giving the lizard the ability to scale the higher, thinner branches. This shift happened within 20-years!

9 - And the Oscar goes to
It’s no secret that opossums also play dead, and like the white-tailed fawn deer, it’s completely involuntary. It happens when the animal is feeling intense fear and while they’re out of it, they release the most awful smelling odor that keeps the predators away!

8 - Adapt to Survive
Climate change is influencing our environment in a huge way, and many animals have to adapt just to survive. The tawny owl in Finland usually comes in brown and grey. The grey owls do well in winter, where they can camouflage themselves easily. As the winters have started getting warmer, researchers have noted that there are not as many grey owls anymore, and brown owls are thriving as they can hide in the brown branches easily.

7 - Meat Lover
This is a bit disturbing, but it’s been noted that if certain animals, like a cow for example, doesn’t get the right nutrients from the grass its eating, they’ll look for it somewhere else. Many, usually herbivorous animals, have been known to eat small prey like birds to supplement their diet.

6 - Save the date
For years you could almost set your clocks with the salmon migration, but due to climate change, those dates are changing. It’s noted that the salmon are migrating to the river to spawn roughly 2-weeks earlier than they were 40-years ago.

5 - That’s not funny
Lovely for a fish tank, just don’t think the clown loach is as unassuming as it looks. There are retractable spines just below their eyes, and if they feel threatened, they will shoot them out and stab their predators.

4 - Mouse Trap
This is bad news for those who don’t like mice, because there is now a poison resistant house mouse. Warfarin is a mouse poison that works on most mice but doesn’t work on the Algerian mouse. The common house mouse and the Algerian mouse have become a hybrid thanks to human travel and this hybrid is cropping up all over Germany. It’s more a hybridization-as-evolution example, and this new trait means its immune to mouse poison. Oh dear.
3 - Dog Days Are Over
There is a serious stray dog problem in Moscow that for every 300 people there is one stray dog. Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution has been studying these strays and has divided them into 4 categories. He claims that one type of dog has evolved to the point where it can decipher which humans will or will not give him food. He’s labeled it the “beggar dog” and they’ve also evolved to ride the subway!

2 - Milk It
A strange evolutionary trait for humans is drinking milk as adults. Humans are the only species who carry on drinking milk after infancy. A large portion of the population are lactose intolerant because as we grow older, we stop producing lactose used to break down the lactose in milk. 7,500-years ago, a mutation occurred in humans making it possible for many to still digest milk as adults.

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