It all started a couple of months ago while arguing with my Let's Get Sciencey brother in arms, Marco. The subject? How many Eiffel Towers deep is the ocean?
Of course, we Googled and "mathed" our way to the answer.
After that, we kept looking for more random science facts to feed our awkward personalities that rely only on weird bits of trivia when put in the awful situation of attending a party.
The hardest thing for us was to find at least one genuine scientific source to back up the facts we found, so, after filtering all our information, arguing like two bitter old ladies, and continuously raising our standards, we gathered 100 weird science facts.
However, ain't nobody got time to read 100 facts. So we selected our favorite 29 and illustrated them, just to prove how freaking ridiculous they are.
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The Aspidocelis Uniparens lizards are all females. There are no males as they don't need them for reproduction.
I've heard about them and just checked some more facts on wikipedia. Just as I remembered, these lizards still need a stimulus - "pseudo-copulation", i.e. one female humps anther. An interesting fact that I didn't know is that they're triploid - they don't have two (like pretty much any other animal), but three sets of chromosomes. Which explains why they don't reproduce sexually. Normally, a zygote gets half of the total number of chromosome sets from each of the parents. But you can't really do that with three sets, you'd either get gametes with a different number of sets, meaning the offspring might be di-, tri-,or tetraploid (which doesn't work within one animal species), or both gametes would only get half of one of the sets - that would be even worse.
Some Northern Cardinals are half female, half male, with their bodies colored half red on the male side and brown on the female side.
There's a volcano in Guatemala that erupts every hour. It's been doing so for over a century.
Hyenas are closer related to cats than dogs.
Beta Mandrils gain bigger testicles, more colors on their face, and the ability to reproduce only after winning a fight.
You can make whiskey out of diabetic person's urine. That's how much sugar it contains.
Phobias are caused by memories passed down genetically from our ancestors.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/genetic-memory-how-we-know-things-we-never-learned/?redirect=1. There is also proof that trauma is passed down genetically and has negative affects on the offspring of victims. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977074/
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Who knew? Apparently one of my caveman ancestors was terrorised by a clown.
That's interesting. It also explains the people who have an irrational fear of something, but can't explain where or why it came from.
When my son was around four months old, there was an intense thunderstorm and there was a bolt of lightning right overhead followed by a very loud crack of thunder only about a second later. The baby was on a rug on the floor and I was sitting on the sofa. Looking down on him I realized that he was staring at my face in order to learn how to react to this. I am absolutely certain that he would have had to deal with a lifelong phobia of lightning and thunder if I had shown signs of being afraid. I was of course startled, but not afraid. So keep your cool around your little ones.
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Bogus. Only mutations that affect the reproductive cells can be passed on to the next generations. Memories are not mutations and does not affect the reproductive cells. There is a part of the brain that exists specifically to spot snakes. That's why many people are instinctively afraid of snakes. It has nothing to do with memories from our ancestors. If a child sees a parent being afraid of bees or dirt there is a chance that the phobia is passed on because a child's cognitive brain is easy to affect.
Did something happen to my ancestor(s) that makes me afraid of thunder and lighting? Or that I'm afraid of heights? Dogs that I'm not familiar with? Does that also explain why I'm afraid of strangers? (I'm not afraid of small children I don't know, it's the grown people that I don't know that I worry about)
Some common phobias like fear of snakes and spiders, perhaps also heights or closed spaces and such are theorized to be evolved traits that helped our ancestors survive in the wild but other phobias are clearly not. At best, they are a hijacking of our inherited survival mechanisms, but I don't think clowns were common predators for humans.
Wow. This particular type of Stupid hurts in every direction. Biological determinism is about the most uneducated c**p that there is. HINT; Real phobias come from real trauma; Not ancestral, genetic "memories."
You can have all kinds of phobias... including phobias of balloons, dolls, needles... I have a reeeaaally hard time believing this fact; maybe a misunderstanding from the most common phobias being not exactly wrong fears in essence, just far too extreme? "Understandable" fears aren't based on memory either, though, it's just that if you have a natural , partly genetic fear of something dangerous (i.e. a "useful phobia"), you are more likely to survive AND pass that down to your descendants.
Did someone like, repeatedly stab my ancestors with a needle or...?
Love that blanket statement that phobias are genetic memories. I suggest the authors read the entirety of the article from the NCBI and learn just what DNA methylation is. Or is their other job writing for the National inquirer and the Daily Mail? At no time does the article state that memories are passed down but only that trauma *may* cause transgenerational changes by DNA methylation.
If someone has a fear of dying alone and not ever having progeny then how can they pass this on?
That’s part of the social and sexual reproduction system giving you those feelings.
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So my genes now contain the pathological, but completely rational, fear of chickens? (There was an incident in my childhood, long story!) Cool! Sorry kids...
But think of it this way: it was evolutionarily advantageous to avoid spiders, snakes, heights, , because they could cause death.
I think "memories" is a bad word choice, but I can't think of a better one. Phobias tend to be things that we are afraid of for survival reasons, such as arachnophobia would theoretically prevent you from being bitten by a venomous spider because you'd be a mile away before it noticed you. This is not to say however that some of these phobias aren't cultural (we learn to be afraid of things because our parents are afraid of them, see my cousins and their fear of any animal in the world because of their mother. We had to hide the guinea pig when they came over because he might suddenly gain a 5ft vertical leap and go straight for the jugular) and some are due to psychological issues (fear of balloons, fear of your own limbs, etc.).
Scientists don't really talk about "proving" things. When the science supports/negates a theory, they write about it. Then other people write about it, and eventually it gets spun in ways that aren't "provable" necessarily.
One word.Epigenetics. my friends studying genetics never shut up about it. I'm not sure if this is factually accurate. Epigenetics change how your genes are read causing certain traits to be displayed base on familial background. A classic example is if your grandmother was in a famine...your probably going to be on average skinnier or shorter than someone whose grandmother wasn't. Not sure if this applies to phobias but I could see it.
Your one-sentence-summary of epigenetics is correct, but in the example, the offspring has more weight - famine leads to epigenetic changes that make the metabolism more efficient and improve the ability to form fat reserves. Traumatic experiences with e.g. animals CAN affect the offspring, but only in really general terms like increased likelihood for depression. But as the scientific "fact" is stated here, it would have to be something exact like someone having a traumatic experience with a dog and their offspring instinctively being afraid of dogs - for genetic reasons, not because the parent teaches them that fear. And that doesn't work, you can't pass on the memory of an exact object.
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Yeah, my idiot ex-husband is scared of spiders and has passed this fear onto my son...
lol, how that supposed happen when our ancestor die fisrt before "biological" thingy 😂
well in this case my ancestor(s) must be really brave person or live at really save place ...since I am not scared of any animal instead of hornet :D I don't why but this is only animal thanks to which I start running :D
The world's fasted land animal ever recorded was a cheetah named ... Sarah.
The also taught her to fetch. Thats why the area is named Sarah-getty.
Songbirds are into voyeurism.
Raccoons see with their hands. Actually, they use their sense of touch to locate their food and are able to differentiate between objects at night only with their paws.
A man called Charles Osborne spent 68 years of his life hiccuping. He died one year after they stopped.
Sometimes Komodo dragon females mate with their male offsprings. They're also capable of reproducing without males.
Well, considering the the bacterial load in their mouths, it must be hard to get a mate. Talk about dragon breath...
Peanuts are legumes, not nuts. So technically speaking, people that are allergic to peanuts are actually allergic to legumes, not nuts.
Apples float because they're 23% air.
The country with the most tornadoes per square mile is ... the United Kingdom.
Naked mole rats live in colonies with a single queen giving birth to all the workers.
Violin bows are only made from horse hair.
Fruit flies use poop to attract their mates.
The orange existed for 200 years before the color orange.
Polar bears are cannibals.
Considering their lack of resources and how it continues to dwindle, this doesn't surprise me. It's all about survival.
There's a species of horned screeching birds called ... the horned screamers. They're as terrifying as they sound.
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong littered the moon's surface with over 100 pieces of trash.
The Alps formed after the dinosaurs went extinct.
The meteorite landed just off the coast of Mexico. If it had hit deep water or land, the dinosaurs would not have been wiped out and the earth would still be the land of the dinosaurs.
The ocean is eleven Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other deep (3,682.2 meters).
not all parts of the ocean are that freakin' deep, so which one do you mean?!
Great apes are incapable of telling the difference between musical genres.
Lobsters and jellyfish are immune to the passing of time. Sadly, they're not protected from disease of injury.
This is technically incorrect, Lobsters can repair their own DNA (by regrowing the materials that maintain it called telomerase ) there is a lot of research into it, HOWEVER nature prevents immortal crustaceans in a rather cruel way. While they can theoretically get larger and larger as time passes assuming they avoid danger and disease, eventually they get so big that to shed their old shell for the newer one to accommodate their size they aren't able to physically ingest the energy required and either die crushed in their own shell, or via the variety of issues arising from being unable to make the change due to dietary limitations. (at one point their stomach not allowing enough food to convert to the energy required to shed etc) - most however do not live to be large enough for this to be an issue due to fishing and dangers of being so large. Largest one recorded weighed: 51.5 lbs (23.36 kg)
and was caught in Maine, USA in 1926. Largest-Lo...294772.jpg 
The most dangerous animal in the world is ... the common house fly.
I'd be curious to see the citations for this, I've been told and seen research showing mosquitoes are the most dangerous.
there are some cool facts, but some I just do not believe in because there is no possible way for humans to know certain things.
¨Nothing is impossible, but that doesn´t mean it´ll happen.¨
Load More Replies... I LOVE THESE! Pawesome! I love science facts, and as a nerd, I could say that some were off, but overall, HOLY SUICUNE! That was great!
Thanks you :D Which ones did you think were off, we appreciate the feedback and are willing to perfect our work
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That’s a load of house fly c**p. Not even a single one so called “fact” has it source. And some are just wrong.
Hi there, which ones did you find wrong? You can find the sources here - https://letsgetsciencey.com/weird-science-facts
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there are some cool facts, but some I just do not believe in because there is no possible way for humans to know certain things.
¨Nothing is impossible, but that doesn´t mean it´ll happen.¨
Load More Replies... I LOVE THESE! Pawesome! I love science facts, and as a nerd, I could say that some were off, but overall, HOLY SUICUNE! That was great!
Thanks you :D Which ones did you think were off, we appreciate the feedback and are willing to perfect our work
Load More Replies... That’s a load of house fly c**p. Not even a single one so called “fact” has it source. And some are just wrong.
Hi there, which ones did you find wrong? You can find the sources here - https://letsgetsciencey.com/weird-science-facts
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