Beastly Beats

The world's oldest known breed of domesticated dog dates back to 329 BC.
Dogs are well known for being man's best friend, and it turns out that's a relationship that goes back longer than you might expect. According to Guinness World Records, the oldest known breed of domesticated dog goes all the way back to 329 BC. "Saluki dogs were revered in ancient Egypt, being kept as royal pets and being mummified after death," they note. "There are carvings found in Sumer (present-day southern Iraq) which represent a dog, closely resembling a saluki, which date back to 7000 BC."

Narwhal tusks are really an "inside out" tooth.
Narwhals are unlike most other whales because they have what appears to be a giant tusk. But that's not actually a tusk at all—what you're seeing is a tooth. Harvard University's Martin Nweeia told the BBC that the "tooth is almost like a piece of skin in the sense that it has all these sensory nerve endings," adding that it's "essentially built inside out."

And the oldest evidence of domesticated cats dates back 9,500 years.
Cats have also been hanging around humans for thousands of years. Guinness World Records reports that we've been domesticating cats for 9,500 years. Proof of this came in 2004 when the "bones of a cat were discovered in the neolithic village of Shillourokambos on Cyprus. The position of the cat in the ground was next to the bones of a human, whose similar state of preservation strongly suggests they were buried together."

Capuchin monkeys wash their hands and feet in urine.Monkeys are undeniably cute. They can also be pretty darn gross. Capuchin monkeys, for example, urinate on their hands and feet when they're feeling "randy." "We think the alpha males might use urine-washing to convey warm, fuzzy feelings to females, that their solicitation is working and that there's no need to run away," primatologist Kimran Miller told NBC News. "Or they could be doing it because they're excited." Either way, ew!

Bottlenose dolphins are even more right-handed than humans.
"Most humans (say 70 percent to 95 percent) are right-handed, a minority (say 5 percent to 30 percent) are left-handed," according to Scientific American. And the same holds true for bottlenose dolphins. In fact, the savvy swimmers are even more right-handed than we are. A team led by Florida's Dolphin Communication Project took a look at the feeding behavior of bottlenose dolphins and found that the animals were turning to their left side 99.44 percent of the time, which "actually suggests a right-side bias," according to IFL Science. "It places the dolphin's right side and right eye close to the ocean floor as it hunts."

Octopuses can taste with their arms.
And yes, they are called arms, not tentacles. According to the Library of Congress, the animals can taste and grab with the suckers on their arms. Even more impressive? Octopuses are capable of moving at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.