Fun facts!

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A lot of animal facts I’ve gathered over the years are fascinating

Tarsiers are tiny monkeys that easily get stressed out and kill themselves if someone does something like take a picture of them with flash.

For thousands of years no one knew how eels gave birth. Turns out that they go through a global migration and have a metamorphosis changing like 7 different times. All the eel speciation was actually different stages of its life cycle.

Gorillas were only confirmed to exist in 1902. There were prior reports and descriptions.

Sharks can give birth by laying eggs or live birth depending on the species. There have even been cases of virgin birth as well.

Fire ants are an invasive species they form Super colonies making it so they are peaceful between mounds. In the early 2000 the giant supercolony in North America fractured now the east and west cost are in a form of insectoid civil war.
 
Tiny Tim may have been a capable singer who could hit the both tenor and baritone notes but apparently he had terrible sense of rhythm, it was such a challenge for the band to back him in musical accompaniment.
 
Peter Jackson's (yes, THAT Peter Jackson) Meet the Feebles a.k.a. that incredibly fucked-up Muppets parody that's not actually supposed to be parodying the Muppets is canon in the Disney universe.

This was revealed in 2023 when the show, The Muppets Mayhem, directly mentioned the Feebles by name, and that the characters in it are all now either in witness protection, or jail.
 
There is an official "Waffle House Index" used to determine the severity of storms, used by FEMA for the past 14+ years. Its main purpose is a half-serious way to determine how much help would be needed in the aftermath of a storm. Since the index was originally named because the chain stayed open during the mile-wide, hour-long Joplin tornado, it was thought that observing whether the chain was struggling in an area or not would help estimate how much assistance the area needed in the aftermath.
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Additionally, there exists a less-official "Big Mac Index", which first debuted in 1986, published by The Economist as a layman-friendly way to communicate purchasing power across the world. A less fun fact is how it's changed over the years.
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(original from 1986 on the left, 2022 edition on the right. Can't find the 2024 edition in an image and I'm not paying The Economist to access it in table format.)
 
Devo 2.0 (also known as DEV2.O) was a pop group quintet, created for Walt Disney Records (with the participation of Devo), of child actors who sing, dance, and (in their music videos and photo shoots) mime playing instruments along to songs re-recorded by some of the original members of Devo.
 
There is a folk cure of snake bites in the Ratnagirl district of West India that involves sacrificing a lot of chickens, as described in Kubab 1928:

Having no antivenene available, I applied an indigenous treatment which is much in vogue in the Ratnagiri district. The fang marks were well incised and chickens, one after the other, with their anuses well stretched were applied to the site of the bite. The first few chickens dropped down dead within a few minutes. From the 42nd chicken onwards, the patient stated that he could distinctly feel the aspirating action of the chickens. In all 74 chickens died, 12 more were half-dead but recovered in about six hours, and the last 6 lost consciousness but recovered speedily; in all 96 chickens were used.... The strongest suckers were hens in their prime. Hens which has laid eggs were quite useless, and young cocks unsatisfactory.​
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Don't try it at home; don't even lance snake bite wounds.
 
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Positron said:
There is a folk cure of snake bites in the Ratnagirl district of West India that involves sacrificing a lot of chickens, as described by Kubab 1928:

Having no antivenene available, I applied an indigenous treatment which is much in vogue in the Ratnagiri district. The fang marks were well incised and chickens, one after the other, with their anuses well stretched were applied to the site of the bite. The first few chickens dropped down dead within a few minutes. From the 42nd chicken onwards, the patient stated that he could distinctly feel the aspirating action of the chickens. In all 74 chickens died, 12 more were half-dead but recovered in about six hours, and the last 6 lost consciousness but recovered speedily; in all 96 chickens were used.... The strongest suckers were hens in their prime. Hens which has laid eggs were quite useless, and young cocks unsatisfactory.​
​
Don't try it at home; don't even lance snake bite wounds.
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This goes even further back. During the Black Plague a cure for buboes was to pluck the feathers from the butt of a chicken, tie it against the bubo until it died, and repeat.
 
sycophant /sĭk′ə-fənt, sī′kə-/

noun​

  1. A person who attempts to gain advantage by flattering influential people or behaving in a servile manner.
I learned this new word from the Sonic movies. Thanks Jim Carrey.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
42 is an unlucky number in Japan, because it can be pronounced "shi ni" which sounds like 死に ("to die" or "in death"). Meanwhile in the West, 42 is just some meme number.

Over in Mexico, 41 can be a taboo number, for a rather wat reason.

The number 13 is commonly considered unlucky, but in Mexico, the number 41 has been seen as taboo and avoided-at one point the Army left the number out of battalions, hotel and hospital rooms didn't use it and some even skipped their 41st birthday altogether. The reason has to do with a party held in a secret location in Mexico on November 17, 1901.​
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On that night 41-possibly 42-men gathered under the cover of night to dance together. Though some may not consider this scandalous by today's standards, fallout from "The Dance of the 41," as it was called by the press, was controversial enough to change the landscape of sexuality in Mexico.​

- 41 Has a Secret Meaning in Mexico, Thanks to a Queer Underground Ball | HISTORY (ad blocker advised)
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The number 4 is unlucky in China for the exact same reason. There’s often no fourth floor in Chinese buildings.
 
After about half a century, we have found the top quark. This video was made before then, but the first 15-20 minutes should get you a good grasp on what this means. Otherwise if you want to sit for the whole thing, it’s a very interesting story.

Edit: this discovery, I believe, finishes the hunt for quarks.

 
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Bunny Tracks said:
Peter Jackson's (yes, THAT Peter Jackson) Meet the Feebles a.k.a. that incredibly fucked-up Muppets parody that's not actually supposed to be parodying the Muppets is canon in the Disney universe.

This was revealed in 2023 when the show, The Muppets Mayhem, directly mentioned the Feebles by name, and that the characters in it are all now either in witness protection, or jail.
Click to expand...
Reminded me of the factoid that many of the orc extras in LOTR were zombies in Braindead.
 
The name gorilla comes from the Gorillai, an ancient African tribe described in an account of a 5th century BC Carthaginian navigator named Hanno.
Hanno sailed past the Strait of Gibraltar, then south along the African coast, probably landing somewhere in present-day Cameroon. There, he encountered a tribe of hairy, savage humanoids. His interpreters called them the Gorillai. Hanno managed to capture three females, but when they proved to be too violent to control, he put them down and skinned them.
The skins were brought back to Carthage where Pliny the Elder tells us they were kept until 146 BC when Rome plundered and leveled Carthage. The skins were lost, but the account of Hanno's journey lived on, and the name was given to the Gorillas when the species was first identified (through bone remains) in 1847.
 
The Ebola virus can persist in the semen of survivors for more than one year. 75% of male survivors carry the virus in their semen 6 months after the disease.
 
Earwigs are one of the only insects we know about that display maternal instincts for their young, and they look like dopey jellybeans.
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DickMain said:
Earwigs are one of the only insects we know about that display maternal instincts for their young, and they look like dopey jellybeans.
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Parental care are quite common among beetles (even though earwigs aren't beetles). On the top of my mind I can think of burying beetles, some dung scarabs, and bess beetles. Some true bugs display maternal care, and some potter wasps continue provide their larvae with insect as food, instead of simply laying an egg on a paralyzed insect and leave.
 
The year is 540 and Byzantium is at war with Persia. Emperor Justinian I is busy trying to reclaim Italy for the Empire while his realm is being ravaged by the first known outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. His rival, Shah Khosrow I is pillaging the eastern provinces of Byzantium.
Not content with extracting huge amounts of cash from the border towns, when Khosrow reached Antioch on the Orontes, the third largest city of the Empire, he decided to dab on Justinian: he sieged Antioch, took it, sent architects to copy the city layout to the tiniest minutiae, then sacked it and enslaved large parts of the populace. Then, he had his architects build a replica of Antioch back home in Persia and populated it with the prisoners of war. He named it Weh Antiok Khosrow, lit. Better than Antioch, built by Khosrow, and even threw mock chariot races (the most popular sport of the era) where he bribed the charioteer of Justinian's favorite team to lose every race just to fuck with his rival's ego.
 
To follow the above, wanna know the reason why Islam spread like a plague among Arabs and their neighbors?

Both the Byzantines and Persians levied gigantic taxes on their provinces. People living around the Arab Peninsula were told they could rebel agains those assholes who trade and pillage their land between themselves in their constant wars and join this weird guy Mohammed, who promises everyone less taxes or even none.
 
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