It's time to stop spreading these popular myths about animals

The animal kingdom is home to one remarkable fact after another.

To name a few: Sperm whales can hold their breath for an hour, the most venomous animal on Earth is a snail, and tiny freshwater hydras can live so long they may as well be immortal.

But for each surprisingly true assertion about animals, there's invariably another that's exaggerated, misguided, or just plain wrong.

Here are a handful of the most popular myths about animals and the truth behind them — or the closest thing we have to it.

Have any favorites we missed? Send them to science@businessinsider.com.

Jennifer Welsh, Sarah Kramer, and Sean Kane contributed to this post.

SEE ALSO: 49 'facts' about health we often believe that are misleading, inaccurate, or totally false

DON'T MISS: 17 'facts' about space and Earth that you thought were true — but have been debunked by science

MYTH: Beaver butt secretions are in your vanilla ice cream and other foods.

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: Humans evolved from chimpanzees.

Chimps and humans share uncanny similarities, not the least of which is our DNA — about 98.8% is identical.

However, evolution works as incremental genetic changes add up through many generations. Chimps and humans did share a common ancestor between 6 and 8 million years ago but a lot has changed since then.

Modern chimps evolved into a separate (though close) branch of the ape family tree.

Sources: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History