The call of the humpback whale is louder than Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.

The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (metres per second – that is equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).

Without its lining of mucus your stomach would digest itself.

The short-nosed Bandicoot has a gestation period of only 12 days.

If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and the Earth would be as small as a pea.

The mortality rate if bitten by a Black Mamba snake is over 95%.

Astronauts cannot belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

Our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930s have already travelled past 100,000 stars.