Facts That Will Scar You For Life

There are lots of shocking facts in the world that will stay embedded into your brain after hearing them. Here are some shocking facts you should know!

February 17, 2023・

10 min read

Have you ever wondered how many bacteria you swapped with the last person you kissed, or how snails eat? The answers to questions like these can be more shocking than you’d expect. With some facts, once you’ve learned their secrets, you’ll wish you never did! Here's a selection of scary and shocking facts that will scar you for life!

20. Bacterial Bodies

Most of us never stop to think about just how many microscopic beings we share our bodies with. But research carried out for the Belly Button Biodiversity project found there to be around 70 species of bacteria in the average person’s belly button alone!

They even found bacteria normally used to make cheese chilling in there. What’s more, if you were able to remove all the bacteria from your body, it would weigh as much as 7 ounces! And if exchanging phone numbers isn’t enough for you, every time two people kiss, they exchange between 10 million and 1 billion bacteria.

In a healthy individual, of the 100,000 billion bacteria living in the gut, 85% of them are beneficial; and they’re vital for keeping us alive. At least now you’ll never be lonely.

19. Silent Sadness

Here’s a disturbing visual for you: babies in the womb have been known to cry when startled. Only, their lungs and airways are filled with amniotic fluid until birth, meaning there’s no way for them to produce sound. That means frightened babies in-utero are constantly inconsolably, silently screaming and sobbing.

18. Dead Serious

Cotard’s Syndrome is a rare condition whereby sufferers become convinced that they (or parts of their bodies) are dead. It’s thought to be caused by malfunctions in the facial recognition centers of the brain, meaning the person becomes unable to associate emotions with their own body and no longer recognizes themselves as a living being.

Some convince themselves that they have been condemned to eternal damnation on Earth, while others are just extremely confused. Cotard’s Syndrome is usually caused by head trauma; so wear a helmet 24/7 to be safe.

17. Take A Breath

In 2007, biologists analyzed air samples taken from a number of New York City subway platforms and found that 15% of the matter gathered was human skin. With every step, itch, or sneeze, particles of skin are released and spun up by the constant movement of the subway.

Most of the skin we breathe comes from the heels or heads of passengers, but researchers also found skin from other areas such as belly buttons, ear canals, armpits and even rear ends.

16. Get An Early Night

Lack of sleep can kill and one disease can make sure of this. Fatal Familial Insomnia is a rare disease resulting from malfunctioning proteins in the brain that totally prevents sleep. This results in weight loss, mental deterioration and eventually death. It occurs rarely, seemingly randomly, but all previous attempts to treat sufferers' sleep have failed.

15. Cute Little Monsters

I’ve yet to meet a dog that doesn’t love a squeaky toy. That’s because, even after years of evolution and breeding, their toys’ annoying squeaks tap into an age-old instinct. In the wild, small prey animals, such as rabbits and rats, squealed in agony when hunted down and caught by hungry dogs, confirming it was dinner time.

So, when your dog is playing adorably, he’s really imagining ripping the flesh and crushing the bones of a tiny, defenseless animal. Sure, it’s only natural, but some of these seem a little less adorable now.

14. Salty Yellow Tears

Some facts are made to be dropped into a pause in a conversation, such as the fact that lobsters pee out of their faces. It’s true, lobsters have urine-squirting nozzles right under their eyes.

While lobster urine does release toxins, it also contains pheromones. Males aggressively pee at each other in fights, and females favor the victor. Females use their own pee to not only attract a male, but also to get him in the mood.

13. Whole Lotta Dyin’

Worldwide death rates are best not thought about too often. Roughly 55.3 million people die every year. That’s 151,500 people a day; 6,312 an hour; and 105 a minute. So, in the time it took me to share this info, two or three people, somewhere in the world, almost certainly, died.

12. The Scythe’s A-Comin’

Spoiler alert: unfortunately, you will die, and it could happen anytime. One Tsunami can take out hundreds of thousands of people and, in fact, according to the World Health Organization drowning alone takes hundreds of thousands of lives every single year.

For every 5000 cyclists on the road, one will be killed in a fatal accident, and 1,000 people die each year from electrocution. Almost 40,000 Americans die every year as a result of a road traffic accident, while 1 in 5 people will die of cancer and 1 in 4 die of heart disease.

With a one in 119 chance of dying simply by falling over, the incredibly diverse ways to die can cause despair. So, remember: learn to swim, wear a seatbelt and just be careful, I don’t want to lose you.

11. The Bystander Effect

If you’re in a public place right now and you find this list of facts too shocking to handle, unfortunately, you’re unlikely to get any assistance. Due to a shocking phenomenon known as the Bystander Effect, the probability of a person in need getting help may actually decrease the higher the number of people in the vicinity.

One case study is the death of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered in 1964 in front of her apartment. Despite the public location and her pleas, countless neighbors neglected to help or call the police, as every single one assumed someone else would do it.

Similar cases have cropped up again and again, but here’s a potentially life-saving tip for you: research suggests pointing directly at someone and telling them to help is the best way to ensure assistance.

10. Double-Barrel Serpents

Snakes may not have two legs, but they do have two eyes, and – indeed – two penises. The benefit of having a hemipenis is that it lets snakes mate from either side of females.

This comes in handy, as up to one hundred males may ball themselves around a single female in a mating frenzy. Honestly, I’m glad I’m not invited to that party.

9. Who’s Laughing Now?

Despite looking like it, the unusual appendages on female hyenas aren’t actually penises. The imposter-penis comes complete with its very own fake scrotum, which is actually fused labia.

Females are often more well-endowed than males; they also tend to be more aggressive and actually produce more testosterone. Needless to say, mating is a delicate process that can involve a couple of months of practice by males to get it right.

With this clitoris that grows 7 inches outside of her body, the female hyena urinates, mates and births her children. The latter is incredibly painful and results in 60% of cubs suffocating to death on the way out. With all this weirdness, even zoos can struggle to tell the difference between males and females and one zoo in Japan spent four years trying to mate a couple of dudes.

8. Sibling Rivalry

If being born wasn’t hard enough for hyenas, newborn siblings also regularly try to kill each other. This is thought to be an extreme instinct developed to ensure prioritized parental treatment and access to resources. We all fight with our siblings, but that sounds a little extra selfish.

7. Duck Eat Duck World

While ducks are cute, they’re also surprisingly inclined towards cannibalism, especially when raised in captivity. When their diet lacks nutrition, their surroundings aren’t well-ventilated enough, or even if they’re bored, they’ll occasionally entertain themselves by pecking chunks off their neighbors, or even offspring, sometimes to death.

The problem is so prevalent that special beak-trimming machines are often used by duck breeders. Researchers note that it’s more prevalent in corn-fed birds, and has also been noted in chickens. Worst of all, this aggressive behavior can spread if left unchecked, and experts note that this contagious cannibal culture can wipe out up to a quarter of the flock in extreme cases.

6. Sharp-Tongued Snails

This terrifying sight – surprisingly – wasn’t designed by H.R. Geiger for the next Alien movie. It’s actually a radula: a sawblade-like ribbon in a snail’s mouth that it drags across food, ripping off chunks to eat. A typical radula may have around 12,000-20,000 teeth arranged in rows; 100 times more than most sharks!

5. Picture Perfect

In Victorian times, photographic technology was in its infancy, meaning the exposure time required to take a photograph was very long. People would have to wait perfectly still for about a minute to prevent blurring, which was understandably difficult.

But movement isn’t a problem for the dead. Because of this, whenever you see a perfectly clear subject in an otherwise blurry photo from this time, the chances are you’re looking at a corpse.

At the time, dead people, especially children, were laid out in their finery and photographed, often lifted from behind. Their photo made a perfect keepsake or gift in an age where death was often merely an infection away.

4. Hacker’s Delight

We’ve all seen or been the victim of some kind of hack. You know, like the ‘OMG! Click this link and see what Stacey said about you’ type of messages that get sent to everyone on a person’s friends list.

But small businesses or other sites are even more at risk of malicious attacks, with 30,000 websites being hacked into every day. These hacks often add unsavory content, steal data, impair functionality or even add malicious code to harm a business’s reach or reputation.

Worst of all, there’s little that can be done to prevent a hack, but you can start by ignoring those shady spam messages. Good luck explaining that to your Aunt Barbara, though.

3. Ticking Time Bombs

One in fifty of us is walking around, right now, with a brain aneurysm. You don’t know about it, because it hasn’t ruptured yet. These bulges in weakened blood vessels can develop anywhere in the body, usually have no symptoms and can erupt at any time.

40% of brain aneurysm rupture victims die. 66% of those who do survive will suffer some sort of permanent brain injury. Fun facts, right?

2. Koala Doctor

Between 2001 and 2008 nearly half the urban Koala population in Australia died out. Researchers found that koalas’ own-brand chlamydia was the culprit, which often results in infertility, blindness, inflammation and eventually death.

In koalas, the disease can be found in as high as 100% of members of certain populations, and is spread easily through mating, fighting, birthing and eating ‘pap’. ‘Pap’ is, rather disgustingly, a nutritional type of feces which mothers feed their children to help them digest food.

Worst of all, koala chlamydia can easily be passed on to humans through urine. So, at all costs, avoid being peed on by a scared koala! In fact, you’re best off avoiding them in general. But I know, they’re so darn cute.

1. Contagious Stupidity

Have you ever felt like your intelligence is being drained around stupid people? It may be a more biological process than you think. While intelligence is governed by many factors, not all of them are programed into our DNA from birth.

In fact, in 2014, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medical School discovered that a virus named ATCV-1 was present in the bodies of 44% of their test subjects. Those harboring the virus, as well as mice who were infected with the virus, performed notably worse on tests of their attention and the speed and accuracy of their visual processing.

Though the exact mechanisms responsible are not yet known, the virus appears to change the function of certain genes in the brain. If the report’s findings are representative, not only does this mean you really can catch stupid, but also around 40% of us may already have it!

I bet you wish you could unread these scary facts that would scar you for life. Thanks for reading!