Page 177 - Animal Facts

In 1903, a German chocolate company produced a phonograph that played records made of chocolate.

Made by the Stollwerck Chocolate company in Germany, the phonographs were powered by a tiny clock motor made by Junghans, a clock company that is still around to this day. As you would expect, a chocolate record player did not produce music of a very high quality. In addition to poor sound quality, the motor was said to be annoyingly loud. To boot, these machines were too fragile to be handled extensively by children - which would clearly be the target audience for such a product! On the bright side, once all these flaws became too much for a customer, they could always eat their record collection!
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The fear of spiders can develop before birth.

Scientists put pregnant crickets into terrariums containing a wolf spider. The spiders' fangs were covered with wax so the spiders could stalk but not kill the pregnant crickets. After the crickets laid their eggs, the researchers compared the behavior of the offspring with offspring whose mothers had not been exposed to spiders.

The newborn crickets whose mothers had been exposed to a spider were more likely to seek shelter and stay there. They were also more likely to freeze when they encountered spider silk or feces - a behavior that could help prevent them from being detected by a nearby spider. Overall, these newborns had better survival rates than other newborn crickets, which were eaten by the spiders for the sake of science.
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Madagascar has a "forest" that is made entirely of stone.

Well, it's not actually a forest per se...but it's really cool! Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar contains a gigantic limestone formation (called the tsingy) which is like nothing you have ever seen. Ninety percent of the animals that inhabit this 600-square-mile refuge are species that can be found no where else on Earth!

A large reason for this is because so much of the tsingy is difficult to access. Most of the limestone has dissolved into jagged rock formations quite dangerous for humans to traverse. This unique topography has protected its animals from human interference over the centuries, and even now previously unknown species are being discovered within the tsingy!

Check out this photo gallery from National Geographic to see the unusual rock formations and wildlife that can be found in the "stone forest". (source)

More than 400 billion Lego bricks have been produced.

That's enough for each person on Earth to have approximately 62 bricks! The company began producing the ultra-popular building toy in 1958. They now produce about 19 million new bricks annually - that's 36,000 every minute!
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Some exceptionally polite Japanese thieves wrote a thank-you note to a bank after they robbed it.

After the biggest bank robbery in Japan's history, a heist of $5.4 million, the robbers sent a letter to the Fukutoku Bank:

"Thank you very much for the bonus. We can live on this loot for life."

(source)