Ankles that spin backwards, nuts buried as decoys, and a memory good enough to grow woodland. Squirrels are far cannier than my Year 4 class expects, and they expect a lot.

They sing songs you cannot hear, squeeze through a pencil-width gap, and out-breed almost anything. Mice are stranger than their reputation suggests.

Rats can laugh, free their trapped friends, and slip through a gap the size of a coin. Not bad for an animal most of us try very hard not to think about.

A class hamster taught my Year 4s more than I expected. Cheek pouches to the hips, one 1930 ancestor, and a wild cousin most people never meet.

The hedgehog that turned up in my Bristol garden taught me more than any textbook. Thousands of spines, a strange spitting ritual, and a proper winter sleep.

My Year 4 class thinks bats are flying mice. They are not even close. Meet the animals that hunt in the dark, hang by their toes, and keep summer nights bite-free.

Kangaroos hop everywhere, cannot go backwards, and can pause a pregnancy until the weather improves. Here is what my Year 4 class never believes until I show them.

Koalas are not bears, they nap most of the day, and their diet is basically a plate of poison. Here is how they get away with it.

The bird that got its name from a geography mix-up, changes colour when it feels something, and came back from the brink. Turkeys, properly.

Everything my Year 4 class gets wrong about horses, sorted out: why they doze on their feet, why they cannot be sick, and why they run on one big toe.

A collarbone that connects to nothing, ears run by 32 muscles, and a tongue that cannot taste sugar. The ordinary house cat is stranger than it lets on.

Dogs have lived alongside us for tens of thousands of years, and we are still catching up on what they already know about us.