The bat is the only flying mammal. The beaver is North America’s largest rodent. The opossum is the only marsupial native to North America. The raccoon has flexible fingers and can turn handles and open doors. Adult owls swallow their prey whole, head first. The ruby-throated hummingbird’s wings beat up to 200 times a minute during courtship, in contrast to the normal 90 times a minute. The ruby-throated hummingbird has the fewest number of feathers ever counted on any other bird. Every species of grasshopper has a different “song”. The longest recorded flight of a monarch butterfly was over 3,000 miles          While migrating, the monarch can reach speeds up to 11 miles per hour. Butterflies taste with their feet. Honey bees use dances to tell other bees where to find nectar. There are 10 million billion ants in the world, more than all the rest of the insects put together. Most fireflies’ lives are so short they don’t eat. The bull frog is the largest frog in the United States. Snapping turtles sometimes let other turtles bask on their backs. With its front teeth a beaver can chop down a tree in three minutes. A full grown oak tree could produce up to 50,000 acorns each season, weighing half a ton. An ant can carry five times its own weight making it the strongest animal for its size.