Random Fun Facts That Will Amaze You - Part 12

To find out how the BBC baffled a nation with the myth of spaghetti growing on trees plus a whole host of other jaw-dropping facts, just read on as we investigate some of the most amazing facts around!

The King of Sweden Had His Pet Lion Taxidermized by Someone Who Had Never Seen a Lion

As the story goes, King Frederick 1st received a lion as a gift from one of the “Beys of Algiers,” who were basically the governors of Algeria, in 1731 as for the secure free passage of their ships. It was one of the first lions in Sweden, and the king was instantly enamored with the animal.

When the lion eventually died, the King was so heartbroken that he decided to have it stuffed and mounted as a memento. The only trouble was that, for whatever reason, the taxidermist was only given the pelt and the bones of the beast to work from. And, without the modern conveniences of Wikipedia or Google Images, the poor taxidermist had no idea what a lion actually looked like.

This was the 1700s after all, and lions were hardly commonplace in Sweden. He did his best, but it’s safe to say the final result missed the mark slightly. With a goofy smile, lolling tongue, tiny ears and round eyes that almost meet in the center of its round face, the poor creature looks more like a child’s drawing of a lion come to life.

For some reason, the lion doesn’t look so bad when viewed from the side, so it’s possible that the unnamed taxidermist spent most of his time figuring out the side-profile without considering what a lion actually looked like head on. We may never know exactly what happened to King Frederick’s lion, but I would’ve loved to see his reaction when he received it!

If You Find a Dinosaur in Your Backyard, It’s Yours to Keep

There are all sorts of scenarios you’ve never thought about becoming reality, like “what happens if I find a dinosaur in my backyard?”. Here’s the good news: it’s yours to keep, as long as it’s definitely dead, and you live in the U.S.

Unlike many countries that carefully control dinosaur fossils found on both public and private lands, America only restricts the collecting of fossils on public lands. Fossils found on private land are basically subject to an age-old law: “finders keepers”.

If you happen to dig up part of a dino, you can mount it on your wall, give it to a museum or, as many choose to do, put it up for auction instead. When two fossilized dinosaurs were discovered on a private ranch in the Hell Creek formation back in 2013, their remains became locked in a deadly battle of ownership.

The fossils dated back to the Cretaceous period, the last major era of the dinosaurs, and seemed to be the preserved skeletons of two previously unknown species. As you can imagine, scientists were quite keen to get their hands on them. But, thanks to the laws of the land, the discoverers opted to sell them at auction instead. Unless you have millions to shell out at to make sure you out-bid the rest, Americas laws around dinosaur discoveries mean countless fossils have ended up in private hands.

Why Do We Sometimes “Shock” Ourselves Awake?

You’re sleeping soundly when suddenly you find yourself plummeting off a cliff in your dreams. Seconds before you hit the ground, you jolt yourself awake in cold sweats. But why?

This phenomenon actually has a name, a “hypnic jerk” or “sleep start”, and it’s actually part of our normal sleep processes. Many doctors believe it is just the body “twitching” as it slowly shuts down to rest, but sleep doctor and clinical psychologist Michael Breus has another theory.

According to Breus, we shock ourselves awake when the body goes through the first sleep stage too quickly because it’s so exhausted. During this initial stage, which only lasts a few minutes, your breathing and heart rate slows down, and your sleep is still very light.

But if the body speeds through this stage and “shuts down” too fast, it might trigger the brain to think that your vitals are actually failing, which explains why it jerks the body awake in response.

Because it’s so hard to study, there’s no definitive answer to the visual component of falling off cliffs or downstairs, but this may be the easiest way for the brain to interpret the rush of the feeling of falling asleep too soon. Next time it happens to you, just remember, your brain probably thought you were dead for a hot minute!

There is a Caterpillar That Uses its Old Heads to Make a Hat

This image below might look like one of those online Photoshop challenges, but this funky caterpillar really does exist, and that fashionable headgear isn’t just for show.

This is the Uraba lugens AKA the "mad hatterpillar", which sheds its exoskeleton only to stack its old, molted heads precariously on top of each other, rather than throwing them out. It sounds kind of gross, but there’s method behind the madness.

The little critter, which is found in Australia and New Zealand, molts up to 13 times while still in the caterpillar phase and starts to build the tower of heads around the fourth molt. As the caterpillar grows, each empty head is bigger than the last, meaning it can be stacked and carried around easily. Aside from being a fashion icon of the insect world, the function of the head-hat is to protect the caterpillar from predators.

It might seem that the tapered tower of skullcaps would only make them more visible to birds, but birds aren’t their only worries, they also have to deal with parasitic wasps and other predatory bugs. In these cases, the heads can actually act as false targets, prolonging the time it takes for the predators to get a clear shot. Pretty clever, right?

Why Does Stepping on LEGO Hurt So Much?

The world is full of things that hurt, but nothing compares to the searing pain of stepping on a single LEGO brick. There are actually organized events called "LEGO walks" where people deliberately walk over a path of LEGOs. Those who have completed one have admitted that LEGOs hurt way more than hot coals or broken glass. But how is that possible?

Lego Walking with UK Firewalk by ukfirewalk

Fire walking involves walking on the embers of logs that have burned for about an hour. According to seasoned fire walker Scott Bell, although the temperature registers “between 930 to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit” that’s not actually what you feel when you walk across it.

Walking on broken glass is a similar story because the broken pieces are spread evenly over a surface. As you walk across them, your foot distributes weight which flattens the glass. No single piece of glass pierces the skin or even pokes it hard enough to set off any pain receptors in your foot.

LEGO, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Lest we forget, these bricks are built to withstand the wrath of an angry toddler. In fact, a single 2-by-2 brick can withstand up to 4,240 Newtons or 950 lb of pressure! So, when your foot lands on one, all that force is redirected right back. The soles of each foot contains up to 200,000 sensory receptors, so imagine every single one screaming in harmony.

It actually hurts less to step on multiple LEGOs at once, because the impact is spread across the foot. So, if you must leave LEGO scattered around the floor, at least make sure it’s not just one!

Penguins Shoot “Poop Bombs”

Penguins are adorable, but when they poop, they poop hard. In fact, these flightless birds can squirt arching jets of poop to distances nearly twice their own body length.

Penguins Might be Cute, but They're Also Super Gross | Seven Worlds, One Planet | BBC Earth by BBC Earth

Over a decade ago, scientists explored the pressure needed for chinstrap and Adélie penguins to expel poop along a mostly horizontal path, but a new study in July 2020 decided to analyze a different fecal trajectory in Humboldt penguins. This time, with poop in a descending arc away from their nests on higher ground.

The new study considered various important factors like internal pressures inside the penguin’s gut and rectum, viscosity of the poop itself and air resistance along an arcing trajectory. Their calculations led them to one realization: the forces at work were even more extreme than previously suggested.

Although Humboldt penguins stand only 28-inches tall, the scientists discovered that the tubby birds could generate enough poo-propelling energy to send the fecal “bombs” flying at speeds of almost 5 mph, landing up to 53-inches away. For some perspective, that’s about the same as an adult human shooting their poop to a distance of more than 10 feet!

Although blasting poop jets helps the penguins keep their nests tidy, these “poop bombs” also pose an occupational hazard for caregivers in zoos and aquariums. The study authors hope their findings will help wildlife experts and zookeepers keep well out of range of the birds’ explosive bathroom breaks.

Before Divorce was Allowed, Victorian Men Sold Their Unwanted Wives

Divorce isn’t easy. Besides the emotional toll, it’s a notoriously lengthy and expensive process that can get messy fast. But if you were a man in Victorian Britain you needn’t worry about going through that whole rigmarole, you could just sell your wife instead!

Divorce wasn’t allowed in England until the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, so wife-selling became a legitimate way to get out of an unwanted marriage which continued well into the 19th century, particularly in rural Britain.

According to research by Lauren Padgett from Leeds Trinity University, wife sales could happen in public or in private, and would often involve the husband putting some kind of lead or rope on his unwanted wife before traipsing her into the town square. Most times she would be sold for cash, while others were traded for horses or valuable possessions. In 1862, one wife in Selby even sold for a pint of beer.

It all seems pretty bleak, but here’s the catch: for most unhappy wives, being sold was the best thing that could happen. Research from the economics department of George Mason University discovered that almost every wife went on sale of her own will and held a veto over where she went next. Being sold gave many of the women a way out of a bad situation and allowed them to trade up into a marriage where they were more valued; it’s a win-win!

Cockroaches Can Make Group Decisions

Of course, cockroaches, one of the most repulsive creatures on Earth, would be the sole survivors of a nuclear apocalypse, but now they’re intelligent too?

In a study from 2006, researchers found that when 50 cockroaches are presented with 3 shelters that are only big enough to house 40 bugs each, they’ll split into two groups of 25, leaving the third shelter empty. The fact that they’re so able to split themselves equally in such a democratic fashion suggests that collaboration comes naturally to them.

When the study was repeated with a shelter that could hold more than 50, they all moved into it; showing that they possessed rationality and reasoning. According to experts, there is no hierarchy in cockroach groups. Cockroaches are "gregarious" insects meaning they benefit from group living, so decision making is more simplified. What’s even more interesting is that cockroaches don’t make sounds, so they must communicate without vocalizing.

According to researcher Dr José Halloy, cockroaches communicate using chemical and tactile means, as well as their vision. When they encounter each other, they recognize if they belong to the same colony thanks to their antennae, which are sophisticated and extremely sensitive olfactory organs. We may hate them, but these are some smart bugs!

The BBC Once Convinced People That Spaghetti Grew on Trees

Back in 1957, the BBC hatched one of the most legendary April Fools’ Day pranks of all time. Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger came up with the plan after recalling a memory from his school years in Austria. The teacher had said that his classmates were so stupid that if they were told spaghetti grew on trees, they’d believe it. Jaeger wanted to put that theory to the test, but it wasn’t just his class he’d be fooling, it was the British public.

Surprisingly, the BBC ran with the idea, and commissioned a 3-minute broadcast which became known as the “spaghetti harvest broadcast”. The film claimed to show a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family “spaghetti tree”, and an estimated 8-million people tuned in to watch it.

BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino | Switzerland Tourism by MySwitzerland

The narrator describes the Swiss spaghetti harvest as a “family affair” and talks about how the disappearance of the so-called “spaghetti weevil” has resulted in a particularly fruitful crop. According to the film, once the spaghetti is picked it is laid out to dry in the “warm alpine sun”, before the family celebrate with a ceremonial dish of the stuff.

Nowadays, the broadcast would instantly be recognized as a spoof, but spaghetti was still relatively unknown in the U.K., so no one really had a clue that it was made from wheat flour and water.

The day after the broadcast, the BBC received hundreds of phone calls asking for more information about spaghetti cultivation. Apparently, they responded by telling people to place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.

Roosters Have Built-in “Ear Plugs”

Have you ever been rudely woken up to the sound of a rooster crowing? Roosters have no such worries because they’ve got their own built-in “ear plugs”. A team of researchers from Antwerp and the University of Ghent in Belgium recorded roosters crowing at around 100 decibels, which is roughly the same noise-level as running a chainsaw. People who regularly use chainsaws without ear protection go deaf over time thanks to damage to the tiny hair cells in the inner ear.

Because chickens have the same hair cells as humans, the team set out to discover why the birds didn’t go deaf too, thanks to their own crowing. Through micro-computerized tomography scans, they discovered why roosters can make so much noise without going deaf: their ears are blocked when they crow.

When the birds tilt back their heads and open their beaks fully to crow, their external auditory canals are completely closed off by a small bit of noise-dampening soft tissue. Unlike humans, roosters can also re-grow damaged hair cells, ensuring they never go deaf. So next time you hear a rooster crowing away, just know that it can’t even hear itself!

A Russian Scientist Once Created a Two-Headed Dog

Calling Soviet doctor Vladimir Demikhov a “mad scientist” would be underestimating his contributions to the world of medicine just a smidge, but his fixation with canine experiments definitely fits the bill.

Demikhov was actually a pioneer in ‘transplantology’ having successfully transplanted a number of vital organs between dogs, but he wanted to take things further. One day, he thought to himself “I wonder if I could graft the head of one dog onto the body of another, fully intact dog?”.

Starting in 1954, Demikhov and his associates set about performing this freaky surgery some 23 times, each time with varying degrees of success. The 24th time was not the most successful time, but it was the most publicized, and images of the attempt appeared in Life Magazine under the headline “Russia’s Two-Headed Dog”.

For this particular surgery, Demikhov chose two subjects: one large stray German shepherd that he had nicknamed Brodyaga, meaning Tramp, and a smaller dog named Shavka. Brodyaga would be the host dog, and Shavka would provide the secondary head and neck.

The operation took a mere three and a half hours, and the two-headed dog could hear, see, smell and swallow. Although Shavka’s transplanted head could drink, she was not connected to Brodyaga’s head, so anything she drank flowed through an external tube and onto the floor.

In the end, the two-headed dog lived for just four days, far less than Demikhov’s longest living two-headed dog, which survived 29 days. It’s no surprise that head transplants still aren’t commonplace in modern medicine, as Demikhov might have hoped.

Who was Mercedes Jellinek, the Girl Behind the Car?

These days Mercedes-Benz is world-renowned, but like all good businesses it all started with humble beginnings. In fact, the name itself wasn’t dreamed up in a board meeting: it once belonged to a little girl named Mercedes Jellinek.

Born September 16th, 1889, Mercedes Adrienne Ramona Manuela Jellinek was the daughter of Austrian entrepreneur Emil Jellinek and his first wife Rachel Goggmann Cenrobert. Emil was fascinated by the fast-growing automotive industry and believed that Mercedes bought the family good luck.

In 1896, he saw an ad for the car manufacturer Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and traveled to Cannstatt, Germany to see the factory. He purchased one of the automobiles and decided to start selling them.

Emil was also an avid racer and entered his DMG car in the Nice race in 1899. His race team was named Mercedes after his beloved child. The following year, Emil had already sold 30 automobiles, a pretty big deal at the time.

Eventually, he introduced DMG engineers to the idea of creating their own sportscar and promised to buy 36 cars if they were named after his daughter. In 1901, when Mercedes herself was just 11, the new ‘Mercedes 35 HP’ wowed the world and dominated races.

Ironically, Mercedes was no petrol-head and never owned an automobile herself. She lived in Vienna and had two failed marriages and two kids. In fact, she was a pauper for most of her life and died of bone cancer in 1939 aged 39, 3 years after DMG merged with engineer Karl Benz’s company to create Mercedes-Benz. No one said history was pretty!

Pigeon Wings Hide Secrets You Never Knew About

Check the video clip below:

UV Fluorescent Pigeon Wings - Viral Video Explained! by Adam Archer Pigeons

If this video isn’t further proof that pigeons are just machines designed by the government to spy on us, I don’t know what is! Don’t get all up in arms just yet, there’s a perfectly rational explanation for this secret code. Believe it or not, pigeon racing is actually a pretty big deal in places like Taiwan.

In case you weren’t aware, pigeon racing is the sport of releasing specially trained racing pigeons which then return to their homes over a carefully measured distance. The time it takes the bird to cover the specific distance is measured and the rate of travel is calculated and compared with the other pigeons in the race to determine which one returned fastest.

Taiwan to the world of Racing Pigeon by Pigeon Hobby

Sometimes, the referee stamps the pigeons wings with these special symbols, which glow under UV light, as a method of identifying them before they are released. That way, there can be no mistake about which pigeon belongs to who when the birds return, which also eliminates the possibility of any sneaky underhand tactics.

Taiwan has more pigeon racing events than any other country in the world, nearly 500,000 people race pigeons on the island, and each year the prize money for races reaches the billions of New Taiwan Dollars. Although pigeon feathers are naturally iridescent, you won’t find markings like these on any old pigeon off the street!

Sloths Move So Slowly That Algae Grows on Their Coats

Sloths are renowned for how slow moving they are. In fact, they only cover about two meters per day can sleep for up to 20 hours daily, which sounds like luxury to most of us. Recently, researchers from the University of Helsinki found that these chilled-out creatures actually move at such a leisurely pace that algae has enough time to grow on their long coats.

Researchers studied the fur and algae at a molecular level to examine this relationship. They discovered that the type of algae that grows on the majority of the six species of sloth is called Trichopilus Welckeri, a species not found anywhere else.

According to lead researcher Milla Suutari, the algae is passed from mother to child by the time the offspring is just a few weeks old. Sloths are said to be able to absorb water from their food or environment quickly, which provides the perfect environment for the algae to grow.

But instead of just washing the algae away, the sloths have come up with clever ways to use it to their advantage. Firstly, the algae doubles-up as an effective green camouflage for the tree-dwelling creatures, who would have a pretty hard time outrunning any predators.

When it’s not being used as an invisibility cloak, they also use it to feed their young. Next time you complain about what’s for dinner, spare a thought for the sloth babies being served up algae from their mom’s coats!

Dolphins Have Bromances

Dolphins have already been shown to be incredibly intelligent animals, but they might be more like us than we think. This just in: they totally have bromances too. In 2013, a study by biologists at the University of North Florida discovered that dolphins form long term alliances in which two males pair up for at least 15 years. Experts tracked a population of bottlenose dolphins by boat or plane for two periods of 100 days and observed that the pairs were basically joined at the hip.

Just like with any good bromance, the animals act as each other’s “wingman” as they help herd fertile females and even team up with other male pairs to keep females from mating with other males.

According to Dr. Quincy Gibson, an assistant professor of Coastal Behavioral Biology at the University of North Florida, this type of behavior hasn’t been shown in any other animals besides humans, so it’s a huge finding. If dolphins get any more like us, they’re gonna need their own dating site!

I hope you were amazed at these weird and wonderful trivia facts. If you want to find out more interesting facts, you might want to take a look at our whole fun facts series. Thanks for reading.