The animal kingdom is host to a nearly endless supply of oddities.
Yet for every shockingly true fact about animals, there's another one that's exaggerated, misguided, or just plain wrong.
It's time to put an end to these myths and misconceptions passed down through the ages.
To help the cause, Tech Insider has rounded up and corrected some of the zanier animal "facts" that just aren't true.
Have any favorites we missed? Send them to science@techinsider.io.
Jennifer Welsh and Sarah Kramer contributed to this post.
MYTH: Beaver butt secretions are in your vanilla ice cream.
You've probably heard that a secretion called castoreum, isolated from the anal gland of a beaver, is used in flavorings and perfumes.
But castoreum is so expensive, at up to $70 per pound of anal gland (the cost to humanely milk castoreum from a beaver is likely even higher), that it's unlikely to show up in anything you eat.
In 2011, the Vegetarian Resource Group wrote to five major companies that produce vanilla flavoring and asked if they use castoreum. The answer: According to the Federal Code of Regulations, they can't. (The FDA highly regulates what goes into vanilla flavoring and extracts.)
It's equally unlikely you'll find castoreum in mass-marketed goods, either.
Sources: Business Insider, Vegetarian Resource Group, FDA, NY Trappers Forum
MYTH: Dogs and cats are colorblind.
Dogs and cats have much better color vision than we thought.
Both dogs and cats can see in blue and green, and they also have more rods — the light-sensing cells in the eye — than humans do, so they can see better in low-light situations.
This myth probably comes about because each animal sees colors differently than humans.
Reds and pinks may appear more green to cats, while purple may look like another shade of blue. Dogs, meanwhile, have fewer cones — the color-sensing cells in the eye — so scientists estimated that their color vision is only about 1/7th as vibrant as ours.
Sources: Today I Found Out, Business Insider
MYTH: This dinosaur is called a Brontosaurus.
Many people would call this dinosaur a Brontosaurus — even Michael Crichton did in "Jurassic Park."
It is actually called the Apatosaurus. The myth emerged some 130 years ago during a feud between two paleontologists.
Source: NPR
See the rest of the story at Business Insider