Why do alpacas spit? The strangest animal questions on Google

Of all the themes in GuessTheSearch, animals are the one where the internet sounds most like a curious eight-year-old. The questions about countries and companies are full of worry and complaint. The animal questions are full of wonder: why do they do that, why don’t they do this, are they secretly something else? And because autocomplete ranks what people are unsure about, the animal lists double as a map of our most common misconceptions.

Below are real completions captured in September 2026 (US English, filtered, in Google’s order), each followed by the best answer science can give. Where researchers don’t agree, we say so. For how these lists are built, see how Google autocomplete works.

Pandas: the carnivore that went vegetarian

This is one of the best questions in the whole dataset, because the premise is so strange. Giant pandas belong to the order Carnivora and have the short gut of a meat-eater, yet bamboo makes up almost their entire diet. When the panda genome was sequenced, researchers found that the gene for the umami taste receptor — the one that makes meat taste savoury — no longer works. That is thought to be part of the story, although pandas do occasionally eat small animals or carrion when they get the chance.

Items two to four are really one question. Pandas do reproduce, but a female is fertile for only a couple of days a year, which made captive breeding notoriously difficult for decades. Conservation programmes have become far better at it, and wild numbers have recovered enough that the species is now listed as Vulnerable rather than Endangered.

“Is it secretly something else?”

The “are …” shape produces the richest crop of category confusion. The internet wants to know what things are.

Three of the four completions ask the same thing, and the answer is no. Hyenas look like dogs and hunt in packs, but they belong to the cat-like branch of carnivores. Their closest relatives are mongooses and civets, and after that, cats. It is a textbook case of convergent evolution: similar lifestyles producing similar bodies.

The same pattern runs through the theme. “Are crabs ___” is led by arachnids, with the right answer, crustaceans, in last place. “Are tigers ___” includes in africa: wild tigers live only in Asia. “Are bees ___” opens with going extinct, which deserves a careful answer — the managed honeybee is not close to extinction, but many wild bee species are declining, and those are the pollinators scientists worry about most. And “are owls ___” starts with nocturnal: most are, but not all; burrowing owls, for example, are often active in daylight.

Pets: the questions we ask about the animals on our sofa

Pet owners are, above all, practical. Two of the top three questions here are about droppings, and they share an answer. Guinea pigs digest tough plant fibre by fermenting it in the hindgut, which happens after the part of the gut that absorbs most nutrients. To get those nutrients — including B vitamins made by gut microbes — they produce special soft droppings and eat them. It sounds unpleasant, but it is essential; rabbits do the same thing.

“Popcorn” is owner slang for the sudden vertical hops guinea pigs make, usually read as excitement or play, especially in young animals. Teeth chattering, by contrast, is generally a warning: back off. Purring is harder to read, because the same sound can accompany contentment or irritation, and owners judge it by context and pitch.

Cats and dogs

Nobody has a definitive answer to the first one, and some cats — the Turkish Van breed is the famous example — seem to enjoy water. The explanations usually offered are that domestic cats descend from the African wildcat, a species of dry habitats, and that a soaked coat is heavy, cold and slow to dry. Both are plausible; neither has been proven.

The third question has a better-supported answer. Adult cats rarely meow at one another. Kittens meow to their mothers, and domestic cats seem to have kept that signal for talking to the large, food-providing animals they live with: us. As for cats and dogs getting along, plenty do, particularly when they meet young. A commonly cited source of friction is body language — a wagging tail means something very different to a dog and a cat — though that explanation is more folk wisdom than settled science.

Dog owners mostly ask about appetite and energy. Dogs are descended from opportunistic hunters and scavengers, animals for whom eating whenever food appears was a survival strategy. In Labradors and flat-coated retrievers there is also a genetic twist: researchers at the University of Cambridge found that many carry a variant of a gene called POMC that is linked to stronger food motivation. Panting is simpler: dogs sweat only a little, mainly through their paw pads, so they cool down by evaporating moisture from their mouth and airways.

Two questions we didn’t capture

You might expect “why do cats knead” and “why do dogs tilt their heads” here. Our September capture didn’t include the “why do” lists for cats or dogs, so we can’t tell you where those rank — and we won’t guess. The science is worth a line anyway. Kneading starts in kittens, who press on their mother to stimulate milk flow, and adult cats keep doing it when relaxed. Head tilting in dogs is genuinely unresolved: ideas range from adjusting the ears to locate a sound to seeing past their own muzzle, and a 2022 study found that dogs good at learning toy names tilted their heads more when hearing those names. None of these is established.

Axolotls: the salamander that stays a teenager

The #1 hides a misconception: axolotls already are salamanders. What makes them unusual is that they normally never finish growing up. They keep the feathery external gills — the “frills” in item three — and stay aquatic for their whole lives, a condition called neoteny. Metamorphosis into a land-dwelling adult can happen, typically when thyroid hormone levels change, but it is rare and is widely reported to be hard on the animal. The permanent “smile” is just the shape of the mouth. Sadly, in the wild axolotls survive only in the canal system of Xochimilco in Mexico City, and they are critically endangered there.

Birds: pigeons, crows and ducks

City birds generate questions from daily life. “Why don’t pigeons ___” is led by migrate, and includes sit in trees and build nests. The answer to all three runs through their ancestry: feral pigeons descend from rock doves, which live year-round on sea cliffs and nest on ledges. To a pigeon, a building is a cliff, and a window ledge is a perfectly good home. They do build nests, just famously flimsy ones.

“Why are pigeons always ___” includes missing toes, and here the cause is sadly us. Hair, string and fishing line get wrapped around their feet and cut off circulation, a problem so common that rescuers call it “stringfoot”.

Crows are always around me, in my yard and at cemeteries, according to the list, and people who feel watched may not be imagining it. Research at the University of Washington showed that crows recognise individual human faces, remember people who threatened them, and can pass that wariness on to other crows.

Ducks prompt “why do ducks ___” questions about standing on one leg and flying in a V. The leading explanation for the first is heat: bare legs lose warmth, so tucking one up saves energy. For the V, a 2014 study of migrating ibises found birds positioning themselves to catch the rising air behind the wingtips of the bird ahead, which saves effort. Ducks haven’t been measured as carefully, but the same physics is assumed to apply.

The wild ones

• Why do alpacas spit? Mostly at each other, over food or rank. Humans get caught in the crossfire far more often than they are targeted. The #3 completion, hum, is a soft contact call that can signal anything from curiosity to stress.
• Why do cheetahs meow and purr, and why don’t they roar? Roaring is limited to a few big cats — lions, tigers, jaguars and leopards — whose voice box is built differently. Cheetahs chirp, purr and yelp instead. As for “why don’t cheetahs attack humans”, they are lightly built sprinters that avoid fights, and routinely give up kills to lions and hyenas rather than risk injury.
• Why don’t wasps die after stinging? Their stinger is smooth and can be used repeatedly. Worker honeybees have a barbed stinger that lodges in skin and tears away, which is why they die.
• Why don’t seahorses have stomachs? They really don’t have a true stomach: food passes through quickly, so seahorses feed almost constantly. The other seahorse completion, lay eggs, rests on a false premise: seahorses do lay eggs, but the female deposits them in the male’s pouch, and he is the one who gives birth.
• Why do whales beach themselves? Honestly, nobody fully knows. Illness, disorientation, strong social bonds that lead a whole pod to follow one animal ashore, and loud underwater noise have all been linked to strandings, and different events likely have different causes.
• Why are koalas always sleeping? Eucalyptus leaves are low in energy and hard to digest, so koalas rest for most of the day. The drunk completion is a myth: the leaves don’t intoxicate them.

History lessons from “used to be”

The “used to be” shape shows what people half-remember. Hippos used to be whales is the #1 for hippos, and it is a garbled version of something true: whales’ closest living relatives are hippos, but neither descends from the other. Lions used to be in europe is correct — cave lions roamed Ice Age Europe, and ancient Greek writers described lions in the Balkans. Cheetahs used to be domesticated is almost right: cheetahs were tamed and used for hunting by nobles in ancient Egypt, Persia and Mughal India, but never domesticated in the genetic sense. And butterflies used to be called flutterbys is a charming story with no evidence behind it; the true origin of “butterfly” is uncertain.

What the animal questions tell us

Put the lists together and a picture emerges. We ask the most about the animals we meet — pets, pigeons, mosquitoes (which are always attracted to me, the list says, and some people really are consistently more attractive to them, likely because of skin chemistry) — and our questions are shaped by our own point of view. Unlike the searches about people, which we examine in where stereotypes come from and autocomplete and bias, these are almost entirely good-natured.

If you prefer grumbling to wonder, the gadgets are next door: why the internet thinks printers are always broken. For a lighter look at the Stereotypes theme, try what Google thinks of every star sign. You can replay earlier animal puzzles in the archive, test yourself against a friend in a live duel, or read the rules. Our editorial standards explain how we capture and filter these lists.

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