Some Weird & Wonderful Water Facts

Water covers around 70% of the earth’s surface and makes up around the same amount of a human’s body weight. We need it for drinking as we need to maintain the balance of our bodily fluids in order to stay hydrated and healthy.

Water is also used for personal hygiene, food preparation, manufacturing, watering the garden, agriculture, energy and various other uses, but water is also very interesting for a number of other reasons.

Here are a few interesting and pertinent water facts:

90% of an iceberg is underwater
A Dolphin can hear sounds underwater from 24km away
A hippopotamus is born under water
A Pacific tsunami wave is typically 6 – 9 metres high
Armadillos can walk underwater
Aspirin was the first drug that was sold as a water soluble tablet in 1900
Bottle nosed whales can dive to a depth of 915 metres in a mere 2 minutes
Camels can drink 94 litres of water in under 3 minutes
Elephant’s trunks can hold over 5 litres of water
Gorillas can’t swim
Hot water freezes quicker than cold water does
Human blood is 6 times thicker than water
Niagara Falls could fill 4,000 bathtubs every second
Porcupines can float in water
Rainwater contains vitamin B12, and raindrops are not tear-shaped as is generally depicted but resemble a tiny hamburger bun
Rats and giraffes can last longer without water than camels can
Rice is grown in flooded paddies so that the weeds surrounding the young seedlings are drowned, but it can grow just as well in well-drained areas
Sheep will not drink from running water
Snakes can’t bite in rivers or swamps because they would drown if they did
Sound travels 5 times faster underwater than in the air
Sponges will hold more cold water than hot water
The average human drinks over 60,566 litres of water in a lifetime
The WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacer
Water expands by 9% when it freezes
Water is formed when hydrogen burns in the air