---
title: "50 Facts You Probably Didn't Want to Know"
description: "The world is full of fun and interesting facts, the kinds of things that you learn and look forward to sharing with your friends. Today's article isn't about any of that. Instead, we'll be looking at 50 fascinating bits of information that you were probably going to be a lot happier not having known.\n\n## Dangerous Painkillers\n\nThere are a lot of painkillers that are known to carry with them a certain amount of risk. Opioids and opiates likely top this list for most people, but there is one much more common drug that poses a potentially undue risk to people: acetaminophen. It's been approved for prescription use by the FDA since 1950 and for over the counter use since 1955, but it's been argued that if the drug were discovered today with our stricter standards in place, it would not be given FDA approval even for prescription use. Acetaminophen has the potential to cause serious liver damage, especially when combined with alcohol. While some level of risk exists with all medications, however mild that risk might be, one of the key problems with acetaminophen, aside from overuse, is the small margin between the typical therapeutic dose and the toxic dose. These concerns have been discussed for over 50 years, including in a 1970s editorial in the prestigious medical journal *The Lancet*. Although the drug is considered safe when used as directed, and millions of people take it every day, there are still tens of thousands of Americans hospitalized every year and about 150 deaths resulting from accidental acetaminophen toxicity.\n\n## The Fig/Wasp Lifecycle\n\nThe last time you bit into a fig, or possibly a Fig Newton, you probably didn't give a lot of consideration to where the fig came from. After all, they grow on trees like many other fruits, and we all have at least a basic understanding of how this process works. However, figs aren't actually fruit. What we eat is known as an inflorescence, which is essentially just a bloated stem full of flowers that grew inside out. While it's neat that they're technically flowers rather than fruit, it doesn't seem like it would change much. At least not until you consider how these flowers are pollinated. Specialized female wasps have to crawl through a tiny opening in the fig in order to reach the interior. This gap is so small that the female's wings and antennae are torn off in the process, trapping her inside. Once inside the wasp will pollinate the flowers, but its main goal is to lay its eggs. The wasp then dies inside the carnivorous fig, which breaks it down for nutrients. When the eggs hatch, the wingless males mate with their sisters before digging an escape tunnel for them. These males then die and are eaten by the fig while the females fly to another fig to lay their eggs and repeat the process again. Commercially cultivated figs use a special variety of tree that doesn't need to be pollinated to produce its \"fruit\", but other figs you eat may contain wasp eggs or bits of wasps inside them, depending on where in the lifecycle it was when it was picked.\n\n## Cheese Addiction\n\nIn 2015, the internet was shocked when headlines compared cheese to cocaine in light of a new research paper. Others then went on the offensive, attempting to refute the eye-catching claims. The 2015 paper used self-reported data about how foods made people feel and their level of craving for that food, and it wasn't trying to create any specific, scientific claims about the addictive nature of cheese as it related to our brain chemistry. However, in 2021, a new research paper was published that sought to do just that. The study showed that cheese contains a protein called casein, which the body breaks down into peptides called casomorphins. The paper referred to these casomorphins as \"food-derived opioids\", because they latch onto our bodies' opioid receptors and provide similar effects to other opioids like heroin and morphine. Although the effects of cheese are not nearly as intense as dangerous pharmaceuticals, cheese consumption still causes a release of dopamine that could be addictive.\n\n## Chlorinated Water is Odorless\n\nThe scent of chlorinated water is an unmistakable sign that summer has finally arrived. If you've ever been in a pool, you can almost certainly recall the unique scent of the water with ease. Unfortunately, it turns out you weren't smelling what you thought you were. By itself, chlorinated water is almost entirely odorless. There may be a very faint chemical smell, but it's nothing like the pool scent that you're familiar with. That scent is caused not by chlorine, but by chloramines. Chloramines are created when the chlorine reacts with ammonia, stripping away the ammonia's hydrogen atoms and replacing them with chlorine. Of course, since people aren't dumping ammonia in their chlorinated pools, that just raises the question of how it got into the pools in the first place. Naturally, the ammonia came from people. It comes from sweat, body oils, and most abundantly urine. Yes, that means the distinctive pool smell that so many people have fond memories of is actually just the scent of people pissing in the pool. And if the odor is particularly strong, it's best to stay out of the water entirely. Chlorine is added to pool water to kill germs, but when it combines with ammonia to form chloramines it can no longer perform its intended task. As such, the stronger the pool scent is, the less free chlorine is in the water to fight off germs that could cause infection for swimmers. And of course the more pee is in the pool as well.\n\n## Eyelash Mites\n\nIt's well known that your body is covered and filled with bacteria. The average human body is roughly 50% bacteria cells, many of which have a symbiotic relationship with our bodies. Although this fact can sometimes be mildly unsettling, it's easy not to think about microscopic creatures that exist in numbers too large to properly comprehend. So instead, let's talk about other organisms living on your body that are about 400 times larger than a bacteria, about 0.3 millimeters. And instead of a number so large as to seem abstract, there are roughly 1,000-2,000 of these living on you. They're called demodex mites, and they're eight-legged parasites that live on your eyelashes, near the follicles. The mites survive on a diet of dead skin cells and oils, and are considered to be mostly beneficial. As long as there's only a couple thousand of these parasites on your eyelashes everything should be fine, but if their population grows too much it can cause an infection of the eye known as demodicosis. And if the mere presence of these mites wasn't enough to make you uncomfortable, you may be happy to know they are officially categorized as arachnids.\n\n## You're Never Too Old to Die\n\nAt time of writing, it's approaching allergy season here in the northern hemisphere, which is a time of itchy eyes, runny noses, coughing, sneezing, and other uncomfortable symptoms. Allergies are an abnormal immune system response to various substances that are normally harmless to humans. These frequently develop in children, especially food allergies, but it's not uncommon for adults to develop new allergies as well. In fact, while new allergies are generally less common at advanced ages, there is no age at which a person is free from the possibility of developing new allergies, including extremely deadly ones. For adults, this often means developing new allergies to medications or insect venom, like bee stings. However, one of the most common allergies for adults to develop is latex. The risk of developing a latex allergy increases based on the level of exposure, and many hospitals have moved away from using latex gloves because doctors and nurses kept developing allergies from repeated and prolonged use. Of course, gloves aren't the only latex product that people use, and it's quite possible that the only reason you were born was because an adult developed a latex allergy from excessive exposure.\n\n## You're Never Too Young to Die\n\nYou're probably familiar with the warning signs that you or someone else is having a stroke. The person may have trouble speaking or may be speaking nonsense (even if they think they're talking normally), they might have trouble with balance, and parts of their body like their face may go numb. However, despite the common belief, there is no evidence that smelling burning toast is a warning sign of a stroke, so if that happens please go check your toaster. Anyway, a stroke occurs when blood flow to part of the brain is severely reduced or stopped entirely. The most common causes of this are either a blood clot or a hemorrhage, and strokes are generally associated with older people. However, while age is one of many risk factors for strokes, it is not a requirement. Any person, regardless of how young or healthy they are, can have a stroke at any time.\n\n## We're Running Out of Antibiotics\n\nAntibiotics have been in use for less than a century, and we're already in danger of running out in the foreseeable future. We won't run out of the antibiotics themselves, the ones that exist will just stop being effective as antibiotic resistance continues to develop in bacteria. According to the World Health Organization, every year nearly 5 million people die as a result of antibiotic resistant infections. By 2050, that number is expected to double. Furthermore, experts have warned that we aren't developing new antibiotics fast enough to combat the very real problem this poses. It would be one thing if these resilient strains of bacteria were mutations that remained highly localized, but they are able to spread out extreme distances. Recent studies have found antibiotic resistant bacteria in clouds, allowing them to literally rain down on people thousands of km away from where the resistance originated. Shockingly, this isn't even a new problem. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and first approved for commercial use in 1941. The first penicillin resistant strain of staphylococci bacteria was discovered in 1942. But maybe there's an upside to this. Instead of fearing that the future of humanity will be doomed to die from infection, perhaps we can rejoice that we're alive at what may be the brief window of human history where antibiotics were still effective.\n\n## Have Your Pets Spayed or Neutered\n\nHave you ever been so horny that you thought you'd die if you didn't get laid? Hopefully not, because that level of overdramatized desperation is generally unattractive to other humans. But for female ferrets, that is the reality of their mating season. Female ferrets go into heat in early spring and remain in that state until they become pregnant or the breeding season ends towards the end of fall. While in heat, the ferrets produce large quantities of estrogen. The high levels of estrogen can lead to bone marrow suppression, a condition in which they produce a lower count of red and white blood cells than normal. If this continues, the females will suffer from aplastic anemia, an extremely painful and deadly condition resulting from the lack of blood cell production. It's worth noting that the females do not need to successfully get pregnant, but they will literally die without sex. There is no analog of this condition in male ferrets, so it is only the females for whom mating is a matter of life and death. Because of how deadly and painful aplastic anemia is, combined with how difficult and malodorous it is to breed ferrets, it is recommended that all domesticated female ferrets be spayed so that they will not go into heat.\n\n## What A Way To Go\n\nSpeaking of excessively horny animals, let's now travel to Australia where the antechinus live. Antechinus are a genus of marsupials resembling mice, and their breeding season is truly something else. While the female ferrets needed to have sex or they would die, the male antechinus will have sex until they die, a behaviour referred to as \"suicidal reproduction\". This type of reproduction has been observed in plants and some insects and invertebrates, but it is extremely rare in larger animals. Males will begin breeding with every female they can find for a period of one to three weeks, repeatedly mating until they drop dead. At least one species of antechinus will even cannibalize the dead, as they need the energy to continue their intense workouts. The deaths result from rising levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Hormone production increases while the antechinus are breeding, and the increased levels of testosterone inhibit the body's ability to remove the cortisol from the bloodstream. As a result, the males die of systemic organ failure. Breeding season has a near 100% mortality rate for male antechinus, but at least they died doing what they loved.\n\n## Is That a Banana In Your Pocket?\n\nThe proboscis monkey is an endangered monkey endemic to the southeast Asian island of Borneo. The species received its name because, at a glance, the most noticeable feature of the monkey is its large, extended proboscis, or nose. At a second glance, however, there is another noteworthy appendage that would also be extended: the male proboscis monkey sports a perpetual erection. It's pretty hard to miss too, as the penis is bright red. Why these monkeys are always erect remains a mystery, and they are the only primate to feature this characteristic. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be related to their attempts to attract a mate. Female proboscis monkeys appear more interested in the size of a male's nose than the size of his penis.\n\n## Cannibalistic Medicine\n\nBefore germ theory became widespread and ushered in the modern era of medicine, treatments were a total crapshoot. Those that proved effective did so for reasons totally unrelated to what was believed, but far more common were ineffective treatments that may have only served to make the diseases worse. These supposed remedies were often bizarre in nature, and it wasn't uncommon for their ingredients to include human remains. Ground up mummies were popular among the wealthy, and King's Drops were popular throughout the 17th century. King Charles II was on his death bed having suffered from either a seizure or stroke. A few years earlier he had purchased the secret formula for doctor and chemist Jonathan Goddard's \"Goddard's Drops\". The formula included five pounds of ground up human skull, preferably from those that had died in combat or been executed; if someone died of old age or disease, it was believed their skull could bear the same infection that killed the original host. The king took 40 of these drops daily, but unsurprisingly they didn't help. Despite the King's Drops, as they had been renamed, proving ineffective, they still became all the rage among anyone who could get their hand on some skulls. After all, if it was good enough for the king then it was good enough for them…even if it hadn't been good enough to actually save the king.\n\n## It Wasn't Just Bones\n\nThe use of ground up bones in medicine may seem gross, but it could certainly get worse than that. Brains were also used in medicine, because why wouldn't they be. These days we recognize that, even if cannibalism was for some reason an option, you should never eat a human brain. Doing so could result in prion diseases like kuru, the human version of mad cow disease. But 17th century doctors didn't know any of that. One recipe, aptly titled \"Essence of Man's Brains\", was published in 1651 by John French as a cure for epilepsy in his book *The Art of Distillation IV*. The recipe read, \"take the brains of a young man that has died a violent death, together with the membranes, arteries, veins, nerves, all the pith of the back, and bruise these in a stone mortar until they become a kind of pap. Then put as much of the spirit of wine as will cover it three or four fingers breadth… Then digest it half a year in horse dung… A scruple or two of this essence taken in some specifical water once in a day is a most infallible medicine against the falling sickness.\" While there could be some theoretical logic behind brains being used as an ingredient in medicine, it's hard to defend the use of fermented horse dung.\n\n## Beaver Glands\n\nIf you're a fan of musky, leathery colognes and perfumes, you may be surprised to learn where that scent came from. Perfumes frequently use extracted scent oil from plants, fruits, and woods, but none of those are going to get you a rich, leathery scent. For something like that you need to turn to animal secretions. And in the case of this particular odor, one popular source is the castor sacs of beavers, essentially the beavers' anal glands. Castor sacs can be removed from a dead beaver and dried out, but the more common way to extract castoreum is to milk the beaver's anal glands. If that sounds gross to you, just remember that secretions like these are what you're frequently spraying on yourself whenever you use perfume or cologne. While castoreum is almost exclusively used by the perfume industry these days, that's not its only use. It's been a source of artificial vanilla and fruit flavours in things like ice cream, as well as a flavour and odor additive for cigarettes. The time required to milk a bunch of beavers makes this cost prohibitive compared to growing vanilla for mass produced ice creams, but you'll also never know if you wind up eating it; castoreum falls under the blanket of \"natural flavourings\" that don't need to be individually listed on an ingredient label.\n\n## Skeletons Are Fun\n\nWhen Disneyland first opened in California in 1955 it was a big success, and it quickly became a popular vacation destination. Because the park kept drawing larger and larger crowds, it had to expand in size and build new rides to attract repeat customers. One of these rides first that opened in 1967, was The Pirates of the Caribbean. It was decades before the modern movie franchise, and the ride wasn't based on any existing story. The creators had free reign to create pretty much anything they wanted, but there was one thing that was absolutely essential to their vision: skeletons. Pirates are known for the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger, and treasure chests are often depicted surrounded by human skeletons. This spooky aesthetic was deemed essential to the ride, but there was just one problem: artificial skeletons of the day looked fake and stupid. To work around this problem, Disneyland purchased real human remains that had been donated to the University of California with which to entertain children. Over the years the ride underwent renovations multiple times, and it's reported that the real skeletons were phased out in favour of new, higher quality fakes. However, it's widely claimed, including by park employees, that there is still one of the original human skeletons that continues to be used as a decoration on the attraction.\n\n## Lake Superior Never Gives Up Her Dead\n\nAt over 82,000 square km, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world. As a basis of comparison, the lake is slightly larger than the Czech Republic and slightly smaller than Austria. The lake has been an extremely important shipping route for well over a century, and at present day it is used to transport an average of 32 million tonnes of material every year. However, it's also a dangerous shipping route. Lake Superior is notorious for turning deadly, as storms can produce 10 meter waves of freezing water. Many ships have been lost to the bottom of the lake, with over 10,000 people having died in those shipwrecks. But there's an old saying in Michigan: Lake Superior never gives up her dead. While that's not accurate 100% of the time, there is a lot of truth to it. At over 400 meters deep with an average surface temperature of about 40-45 degrees F (4-8 degrees C), Lake Superior is the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes. And it gets colder real fast as you dive underwater, so cold that the bacteria that would normally cause a body to decay, bloat, and rise to the surface aren't able to survive. The cold temperatures also preserve the bodies far longer than they otherwise would, meaning that the floor of Lake Superior is littered with potentially thousands of corpses. The oldest known corpse in the lake, nicknamed \"Old Whitey\", can be found pinned under a staircase in the underwater wreckage of the SS Kamloops, which went down in 1927.\n\n## Zombie Woodpeckers\n\nAs we said earlier, brains are not an effective form of medicine, nor are human brains a good source of food for other humans. However, it turns out that woodpeckers aren't so discerning when it comes to cannibalizing brains. Woodpeckers are the best known of all the drilling birds, and they're common across nearly the entire world, except for Australia and Madagascar. Woodpeckers use their hard beaks to tap along a tree trunk, listening for the sound of a hollow spot that would indicate the presence of insects hiding inside the tree. They then pound their heads against the tree to drill inside, before using their incredibly long, harpoon-like tongues to extract any delicious insects. Their tongues are so long that they have to wrap around the woodpecker's brains; this both gives the bird somewhere to store its grotesque tongue as well as providing extra padding for the brain to prevent concussions while drilling. But what's a woodpecker to do if they're hungry and can't find any insects in trees? You might think they would go look for insects on the ground or on plants like other birds, but that's a waste of a perfectly good drilling beak. Instead, they will find other birds and use their beaks to drill through their skulls, devouring their brains. The victims are usually baby birds in nests who are unable to fight back or fly away, and this behaviour is common among multiple species of woodpeckers.\n\n## Spiders Are Getting Bigger\n\nFor anyone not living in Australia where spiders the size of a person's head are already common, the idea of a sudden increase in the size of the spiders may be a bit disconcerting. However, this is one of many impacts that climate change is having on spiders around the world. Rising temperatures have caused spiders to become larger, more abundant, faster, and more aggressive. Some outlets have also reported that spiders are becoming more venomous, but that's not entirely true. How venomous an individual species of spider is hasn't changed, but rising temperatures have allowed many venomous species that live in tropical climates to be able to spread out well beyond the area that they previously called home. While there have been numerous studies over the past 15 years that have showed spiders increasing in size, it is important to note that each study was focused on a specific species in a relatively localized area. Although these areas ranged from the arctic all the way south to Australian cities, we can't yet say as a blanket statement that all spiders have been getting bigger. But enough of them certainly are.\n\n## Tooth in Eye Surgery\n\nThere have been a lot of bizarre medical procedures throughout history, most of which have been pointless and ineffective. However, in the 1960s, Italian ophthalmic surgeon Benedetto Strampelli had an idea that put these insane ancient remedies to shame. Not only did he intend to pull out someone's tooth and implant it in their eye to restore vision, but the procedure worked and is still in use today. Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, colloquially known as \"tooth in eye surgery\", was the procedure that Strampelli pioneered, and it is effective on patients with severe enough corneal scarring that it would prevent a cornea transplant. To start, the cornea, the inner lining of the eyelid, and any scar tissue are all removed. A layer of tissue from the cheek is then transplanted over the eye. Then a tooth is extracted from the patient (or a donor tooth is used), and a hole is drilled in the center to hold an artificial lens. Once properly shaped, this artificial tooth-lens hybrid is implanted in the patient's cheek for a few months to allow it to grow its own blood supply. The cheek tissue that had been implanted over the eye is then removed, the eye gets hollowed out, and the tooth is implanted in the eye. Yes, this is a real, modern surgery, and yes it is effective at restoring vision.\n\n## A Toothy Grin\n\nYour average child is born with 52 teeth, 20 baby teeth and 32 permanent teeth. As a general rule, there is very little fluctuation in that number. However, in 2019 there was a case of a child with considerably more teeth than that. The 7 year old boy from India had complained to his parents about jaw pain, so he was taken to the dentist for x-rays. His parents had noticed some swelling in his jaw starting when he was about 3, but the boy wouldn't sit still long enough for doctors to examine him, so nothing was done. Once an x-ray was finally taken, it was discovered that in the boy's lower jaw was a sac containing 526 extra teeth of various sizes. It's an extremely rare condition called compound composite odontoma, in which a benign tumor develops in the jaw and begins growing excess teeth. It's well known, albeit gross, that tumors can grow teeth and hair, but the sheer number of teeth in this tumor shattered the record. The previous record was held by a 17 year old boy from India who had 232 teeth removed in 2014; before that the record had only been 37 teeth. Because the condition is so rare, its causes remain completely unknown.\n\n## Keep Your Ducks Entertained\n\nThere are a lot of animals that engage in cannibalistic behaviour for various reasons. Usually it's due to a lack of other food sources. In tadpoles, cannibalism also provides a competitive advantage, as tadpoles that eat other tadpoles grow faster and thus become less appealing to prey than their smaller and more defenseless siblings. But ducklings will engage in cannibalism for a number of different reasons. There's the obvious lack of food, and the less obvious but somewhat understandable overcrowding. However, ducklings will also cannibalize each other out of sheer boredom. This can start at any age, though it is more common to occur once the ducklings have reached four weeks old. Despite their adorable appearance and reputation as being generally friendly and sociable, it turns out that ducks are actually psychotic little assholes. And it doesn't stop with murdering each other out of boredom.\n\n## A Disappointing Evolutionary Trait\n\nIt's relatively common knowledge that duck's have long, corkscrew shaped penises. That's a weird but mildly interesting bit of trivia, but have you ever considered why they would have evolved this way? Male ducks developed these appendages so that their penises could navigate the labyrinthine maze that is a female duck's vagina, full of twists, turns, and dead ends. Unfortunately, that's still only part of the answer. Female ducks developed that odd anatomical trait as a defense mechanism because male ducks are extremely prone to sexual assault. They will do this constantly, even midflight, and so female ducks evolved to try to prevent unwanted pregnancy from forced copulation with males they did not find to be suitable mates. The ducks' penises then evolved to counteract this defense mechanism, increasing their chances of being able to successfully breed with the females without their consent.\n\n## Happy Deathday\n\nThis purported fact actually remains open to debate, as there is not a 100% definitive consensus on the matter. However, many statistical studies show that you are much more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year, with deaths in the week leading up to or following your birthday also being key candidates. The first large scale study used data from 2.7 million Californians who died between 1969 and 1990, and multiple studies of a similar scale have been conducted. Most of these studies showed clear evidence of the \"birthday effect\", though a couple showed no such effect. Though not definitively proven yet, there are a number of explanations for why this might be the case. Birthdays, especially for younger people, are associated with going out and drinking. This can result in deaths from alcohol poisoning and drunk driving, and in the United States the number of people who die on their 21st birthday or the day after is well in excess of the normal distribution. Birthdays are also stressful, and in men there is an increased risk of suicide surrounding a person's birthday. There are also terminally ill patients who may, through sheer force of will, manage to hang on until their birthday, at which point they are comfortable letting go.\n\n## Don't Forget To Buckle Up\n\nThough they don't rank in the top 10 causes of death globally, car crashes are still a major cause of death. About 1.3 million people each year die in fatal car accidents, though what percentage of total deaths that is varies wildly from country to country. In the United States, for example, with an average of about 40,000 fatal car accidents each year, they make up just over 1% of all deaths. This means that, as an American, for every 100 people you have ever known, on average one of them will die in a car accident. There's a similar but much less exact figure going around related to murder as well. According to one study, on average every person in the world will walk past 36 murderers in their life. How accurate that number is varies greatly depending on the country you live in and how often you leave your house and walk past people you've never encountered before, but it doesn't change the fact that there are an awful lot of murderers out there.\n\n## No Anesthesia Needed\n\nFor a long time, it was believed that babies were more susceptible to pain than older children or adults were. However, in the late 19th century this changed entirely. Possibly due to the misinterpretation of new scientific developments, it became considered fact that babies were unable to feel pain. These babies, especially those born prematurely, had nervous systems that were not developed enough yet to perceive pain. And even if they did happen to feel a little pain, they wouldn't grow up with any conscious memory of it and thus it was deemed impossible for there to be any long term consequences. This was a convenient development, as there were rising concerns that giving babies opiates would result in addiction. Instead, they decided that babies simply didn't need anesthesia. This belief persisted until the 1980s when a premature infant, Jeffrey Lawson, underwent open heart surgery with no anesthesia. When his mother, Jill, found out what happened, she started a campaign to raise awareness of the common practice. Since then, new studies have shown that people's first instincts were right all along, and babies do in fact feel more pain than adults do.\n\n## Terrifying Genetics\n\nMost people don't like to think about their parents having sex. We acknowledge that it's the reason we were born, but people prefer to delude themselves into thinking that the conception of them and their siblings are the only times their parents ever had sex. Deep down nobody really believes that, but like we said, it's not something that people want to think about. Unfortunately, there's some potentially unsettling news for fans of dirty casual sex. According to recent studies, scientists now believe that a number of sexual kinks may actually be inherited genetically from our parents. A study in 2014 even identified the DRD4 gene as a likely candidate for the \"BDSM gene\". This gene is also believed to be linked to ADHD. The combination of those two facts may instantly make sense to you, or it might make you see somebody you knew in a different light.\n\n## Koala STDs\n\nSince 2022, koalas in eastern Australia have been listed as an endangered species. But the biggest threat to koalas isn't predators, poachers, or disruption of their natural habitat; it's Chlamydia. It's unclear how the disease was first introduced to the koala population, but today roughly 80% of all wild koalas are infected with Chlamydia. The disease can cause blindness, making it harder for them to climb trees for food and to avoid predators, kidney failure resulting in death, and widespread infertility. What makes the disease so problematic is that koalas' bodies are exceptionally good at detoxification. This is what allows them to eat eucalyptus, a plant that nearly all animals find poisonous, but it also means that their bodies destroy antibiotics before they can have any meaningful impact. The antibiotic dosage required to treat a koala is so high that it winds up killing their microbiome, making them unable to digest eucalyptus and thus starving to death. Chlamydia is passed from one koala to another through sexual contact, as well as contact with contaminated urine or feces of an infected koala. But that last method shouldn't be a big factor in the spread of Chlamydia, right?\n\n## Koala's Eat Poop\n\nAs we said, eucalyptus is extremely toxic to pretty much every living thing. The koala's unique gut microbiome is key to their survival, but they aren't born with the necessary gut bacteria to survive eating their one staple food. Baby koalas need a different food source until their bodies are able to handle the harsh toxins in eucalyptus, and that's where the mothers come in. It's common for mothers in the animal kingdom to feed their young. Some do it by providing milk. Others, like birds, will partially digest food and regurgitate it into their babies' mouths. And if that sounds gross, you won't want to hear how koala's feed their babies. Sure, for the first few months they live in their mothers' pouches and drink milk, but when they're five or six months old it's time for them to start transitioning to solid food. Or at least more solid. When it's time to feed, a young koala will stimulate its mother's cloaca with its mouth. This causes the mother to produce a special type of feces known as pap, which is extra watery and full of partially digested eucalyptus. Not only does it get the children used to the taste of eucalyptus, it helps transfer the necessary gut bacteria (and Chlamydia) from the mother to her offspring.\n\n## Uncanny Valley\n\nEveryone loves robots. They're cool and useful, and one day they'll eventually take over and kill us all. But there's a more interesting side to some of people's fears about robots. The \"uncanny valley\" is an observed hypothesis originating in the field of robotics related to their appearance. As a robot becomes more humanlike, people become more empathetic towards them and have a more positive emotional response interacting with them. Up until a point, anyway. A robot that is humanoid but clearly not real can elicit a positive emotional response, but if it gets too human there is a sudden reversal where people find the robots disturbing and off putting. If they become perfect human replicants, the response then becomes positive again. This area of negative response is referred to as the uncanny valley. What makes this interesting is that the same innate reaction seems to exist in all humans across the world regardless of cultural differences. The ubiquitous presence of such a trait seems to imply that it developed as part of our early evolution, indicating that there was a specific reason prehistoric humans needed to be afraid of something that looked almost human but not quite. The leading theory is this reaction evolved to make people fearful of corpses, the diseased, or other humans who were somehow \"not right\" and could be a possible source of contagion, but the truth behind the uncanny valley remains unknown.\n\n## Broken Arrows\n\nThe 1996 film *Broken Arrow*, starring John Travolta and Christian Slater, centers on the theft of nuclear weapons from the US military. When being briefed on the situation, one of the characters stated, \"I don't know what's scarier: losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.\" For many Americans, this summer blockbuster was the first time they had ever heard the phrase \"broken arrow\" before. But it's a very real phrase, involving the theft, loss, or accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon. More concerning than the phrase simply existing, it really does happen often enough for such a phrase to be necessary. Since 1950, there have been 32 broken arrow incidents, and those are just the ones that are officially confirmed by the US Department of Defense. While not every broken arrow results in nuclear weapons going missing, there are currently six nuclear bombs that are known to have been lost and never recovered.\n\n## Courageous Brain Parasites\n\nDo you have one friend who seems far more courageous and less risk averse than most people you know? Or perhaps you're more open to risk than others, especially in the business world. If that's the case, your courage may be the result of brain parasites. *Toxoplasma gondii* is a parasite that is capable of infecting nearly all warm-blooded animals, and it has a particular affinity for the brain and central nervous system. The main disease vector for this parasite is cats, with the parasite being found in their poop and urine. This is particularly useful for cats, as it acts as a sort of mind control on mice that become infected. The mice that become host to *Toxoplasma gondii* have their brains quickly and permanently altered, removing their sense of fear. This is often cited as removing their fear of cats, but it is an indiscriminate reduction in fear of all manner of things that mice typically avoid. As a result, they will confront cats rather than flee from them, with predictable results. But it's not just cats, and *Toxoplasma gondii* is believed to have infected 2 billion humans worldwide. In the US it's about 11% of the population, while in some countries that number is as high as 60%. Initial research suggests that the parasite affects human brains in a similar way to rodents' brains, making people less fearful in general, sometimes to their detriment.\n\n## Sad Rescue Dogs\n\nWhen it comes to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, there aren't a lot of cheerful facts to discuss. But one depressing aspect from ground zero that is often overlooked is the impact that it had on the over 300 search and rescue dogs that were deployed to help find victims among the rubble. Though the dogs do train for these missions, the reality of the situation was far different from what they had been prepared for. The SAR dogs had to work 12 hour days for weeks on end, much longer than they were used to. But worst of all for the dogs, there weren't many survivors for them to find. Only 20 survivors were found by the dogs, with the last one being discovered only 27 hours after the initial collapse. For weeks the dogs searched through the rubble for survivors, but all they found was dead bodies. It caused them to become so depressed that the dogs' handlers had to perform fake rescue missions to cheer them up, hiding themselves in the rubble and allowing the dogs to find them.\n\n## Ground Currents\n\nThe idea of being struck by lightning is certainly unappealing, but for most people it's not a prevalent fear. Sure, it's a thing that could theoretically happen, but it's so wildly unlikely as to not be worth thinking about. However, you don't actually need to be struck directly by lightning to feel its effects. When lightning hits an object like a tree, the electricity spreads out across the surface of the ground, also referred to as ground current. The rainfall that often accompanies lightning can increase the conductivity of the ground, making this even more dangerous. One of the most notable examples of this danger occurred in 1939 in the Raft River Mountains of Utah. A flock of 850 sheep were sleeping in a canyon between the mountains when lightning struck the ground. A single bolt of lightning killed 835 of the sheep. Another famous but somewhat dubious instance of this phenomenon allegedly occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998. A soccer match between Bena Tshadi and the visiting team Basanga was taking place, and the score was tied 1-1. Lightning struck the pitch, and according to local reports 11 people died with another 30 injured. Later reporting claimed that all 11 players for Bena Tshadi had died while the visiting team was unharmed. The veracity of these claims are difficult to determine, as this was taking place during the Second Congo War so details were difficult to come by. But even if the deaths weren't limited exclusively to one of the teams, it was neither the first nor last report of lightning injuring multiple players during a soccer match, just the most bizarre.\n\n## Cadaver Orgasms\n\nHopefully you've never wondered whether or not it was possible for a dead person to orgasm, but we're going to answer that question for you anyway. And surprisingly, the answer is yes…sort of, anyway. The sacral plexus is a collection of nerves that begins at the base of your spine and extends through your lower body. These nerves control sensory and motor function for much of your lower body and pelvis, which includes your ability to orgasm. Research found that electrical stimulation of the sacral nerves will trigger an orgasm in over 90% of women. For reasons unknown, someone then decided it was important to know if it would work even if the person was dead. If the person is completely dead, then the answer is no, because the nerve needs to be receiving oxygen to work. However, if the person is brain dead and being kept alive with machines, something referred to as a \"beating heart cadaver\", then it absolutely will work. This knowledge has absolutely no practical application to anyone, but if we had to learn about it then so do you.\n\n## Body Farms\n\nWithout being given any hints as to what a body farm is, there are a couple guesses that likely come to mind. It could be some sort of science fiction setting in which human clones are grown. Or maybe it sounds like a modern research facility where scientists are mass producing stem cells in an attempt to successfully create artificial organs. Those are both reasonable guesses, but growing bodies is the exact opposite of what a body farm is used for. The first body farm was created by American anthropologist William Bass in 1981, and it is used to study the decomposition of humans and other animals. Today, there are now seven such body farms at universities across the United States, with more having been established around the world. Though rather grim, by using body farms to study the various stages of human decomposition in a variety of different but controlled settings, it can help advance forensic archaeology and the forensic science used in law enforcement. Among the many discoveries made by studying human decomposition is the precise environment required for a decomposing human body to explode from a buildup of pressurized gases.\n\n## Suffer Like I Did\n\nHarry Harlow was an American psychologist whose work centered around studying maternal bonding. Many of these experiments were questionable at best, such as seeing if a baby monkey would bond with a machine designed to replicate the behaviour of a physically abusive mother. If that was Harry operating at his most ethical, you can only imagine how badly things turned when his wife died of cancer in 1971. Harry became depressed, and he abandoned his research on maternal bonding in favour of research into depression and isolation. Essentially, he was torturing animals just so they would be as miserable as he had become. Perhaps his magnum opus was the vertical chamber apparatus, which Harry insisted on referring to as the \"Pit of Despair\" against the wishes of his colleagues. The device was an inverted metal pyramid with steep, slippery sides that were impossible to climb and a cage over the top. A baby rhesus monkey that had already bonded with its mother was placed at the bottom of the chamber and left alone for ten weeks. Unsurprisingly, it sent the monkeys into a deep depression. According to literary critic Wayne Booth, \"Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in advance: that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties.\"\n\n## Hypothermia Research\n\nHypothermia is extremely dangerous. If a person's core body temperature starts to drop, they can suffer serious consequences and even death if it can't be raised quickly. As such, it's a very difficult condition to effectively research. Inducing hypothermia in a test subject would be too dangerous, and scientists wouldn't see enough cases to be able to determine the best course of action. Not only that, but people would have to rely on whatever was considered best practice at the time, as there was no time for experimentation when presented with a hypothermia victim. But in World War II, it was determined that many naval officers or pilots that were shot down were dying of hypothermia after falling into and being pulled out of the cold ocean waters. This meant that studying hypothermia could be useful to militaries, but there was no ethical way to do so. Of course, it should come as no surprise that ethics wasn't a top priority for Nazi scientists. They conducted numerous experiments on prisoners in which they were deliberately frozen so that different methods of warming the body back up could be experimented with. These Nazi experiments were fatal for most of the prisoners involved and were beyond unethical, but they are also the source of most of our knowledge about hypothermia.\n\n## How About A Little Tongue?\n\nHiding in the ocean is a parasitic isopod known as *Cymothoa exigua*. These are little crustaceans with a rather colourful nickname: the tongue-eating louse. This is technically a misnomer, as the parasite doesn't actually eat the host's tongue. The parasite first attaches to a fish's gills, where it lives until it matures. It then crawls through the gills and up the throat of the fish, into its mouth. Here is where the tongue-eating louse gets its name. Not by eating the tongue, but by severing the blood vessels so that the tongue becomes necrotic and falls off. Once it's gone, the louse attaches its hind legs to the victim and becomes its new tongue. The parasites feed on the fish's blood and mucus, but their presence doesn't seem to actually be detrimental to the fish. Sure, they no longer have a tongue, but the parasite is kindly filling in and performing the actions as a prosthetic tongue. This makes it the only known parasite that functionally replaces a host's organ, even if it is also responsible for removing the organ in the first place. Fortunately these parasites don't affect humans, but if you buy fresh trout or snapper with the head still intact there's a chance you may find one of these parasites where the tongue should have been.\n\n## The Blue Fugates\n\nDeep in the hills near Hazard, Kentucky lived a family known as the Blue Fugates, or the Blue People of Kentucky. The family was formed by Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith who settled in the area around 1820. Of their seven children, four were born with blue skin. The Blue Fugates were so well known to the people of Kentucky that one of their descendants, Luna Stacy, was known for being the bluest of the blue. So what exactly caused this condition? Martin and Elizabeth were both carriers of a recessive gene that causes a rare blood disorder known as methemoglobinemia. If the amount of methemoglobin in the blood exceeds 20% then it can cause serious health problems resulting in death, but if it stays between 10-20% it results in the characteristic blue skin without having any negative side effects. Luna is known to have 13 children and lived 84 years. That explains the origin of the four children born with the condition, but if the genetic condition is the result of a rare, recessive gene, how did it continue to propagate? The answer should be obvious, but the Appalachian region of Kentucky was very sparsely populated. The proliferation of the Blue Fugates was primarily the result of lots and lots of incest.\n\n## Dying for a Bathroom Break\n\nNearly everyone experiences constipation at some point in their life. You know the feeling: bloating, cramps, abdominal pain, and so on. This can usually be managed easily enough without the need for medical intervention. Increasing fiber in the diet or taking laxatives can provide a quick fix, and if the problem doesn't return then that's the end of it. But for people with chronic constipation, the condition can actually be deadly. The two most common problems that result from chronic constipation are rectal prolapse and fecal impaction. Rectal prolapse is when part of the colon escapes out through the butthole. It's not fun and can cause uncontrolled bowel movements, but it is very rarely life threatening. Fecal impaction on the other hand is a very serious condition in which fecal matter that's trapped inside becomes hardened and blocks off the passageway. This can be deadly in multiple different ways, so if you find yourself suffering from severe constipation that doesn't go away with the use of laxatives, it may be best to seek advice from a medical professional. Or don't; it's your ass on the line, not ours.\n\n## WebcamGate\n\nIn 2009, high school students in the Lower Merion School District (consisting of two high schools) in Pennsylvania each received an Apple Macbook for use at school and at home throughout the school year. That was 2,306 students that each received a free laptop, at a cost of about $2.6 million to the school district. Students quickly discovered that the webcams were broken so they couldn't take pictures or video chat with each other, but hey, free laptop! What could possibly go wrong? It turns out that what could go wrong was that the webcams weren't broken, they were just disabled for the users. The cameras worked just fine, and the school had purchased surveillance software that allowed them to remotely access all of the laptops they had purchased. The laptops would take snapshots with the cameras and screenshots of what the computer was being used for, then send those images to a server at the school before deleting the files off the original computer, preventing the users from ever discovering what was happening. All of this was being done without the consent or even knowledge of the students or parents involved. This covert surveillance was revealed quickly when a student was called into administration less than two months into the school year. According to the photos taken by the laptop, they believed that they had caught the student using and/or selling drugs, which would make him subject to disciplinary action. Instead of the student being punished, by revealing that they were spying on the students the school opened itself up to multiple major lawsuits. Unfortunately, the full extent of the surveillance will never be known as the school wiped its server of all the photos and screenshots that had been taken once they realized that they might be in trouble.\n\n## Elephants and You\n\nIt's said that an elephant never forgets, and in a moment you'll wish that was the only fact you ever heard about them. Elephants are massive animals, weighing multiple tons. As such, they need to eat a considerable amount of food to survive. In fact, they can spend up to 18 hours each day eating, consuming as much as 300-600 lbs of food depending on the type of elephant. However, one of the main reasons that elephants have to eat so much isn't their massive size, it's because their digestive tract kind of sucks. Their guts are really inefficient at breaking down the plants they survive on, resulting in a large percentage of what they eat passing through their system completely undigested. What this all means is that an elephant can poop 12-15 times per day, and that their total bowel movements each day exceed the weight of an adult human.\n\n## Gender Reveal Massacre\n\nIf there are two things people love to eat, it's chicken and eggs. Admittedly, surveys show that people prefer the taste of beef, but chicken is far less expensive and is a leaner source of protein. Regardless of taste preferences, the global demand for chicken products is massive. In the United States, the average person consumes 100 lbs of chicken every year and nearly 300 eggs each year. To be fair, those eggs are often used as an ingredient in other dishes rather than being consumed on their own, but it's still an awful lot of eggs. It's why every year tens of billions of chickens are raised and slaughtered, though some survive a lot longer than others. Once the chicks are born they are sexed, with females being used either for egg production or to become delicious fryers and roasters. But what of the male chickens? Roosters can't lay eggs, they don't get as large as hens, and they are generally regarded as not tasting as good as hens either. This means any male chicks are considered redundant and get culled as soon as their sex is determined. And by culled, we mean that every year 7 billion male chicks are tossed into a machine called a macerator that grinds them up at high speeds.\n\n## Just Bring A Thermos\n\nIf you work in an office that has a kitchen area, it may be customary to keep your coffee mug in a cabinet there. However, this is actually a terrible idea. Studies showed that 90% of coffee mugs in office settings contained bacteria, and that 20% of them were covered in fecal matter. Since the office is unlikely to have a dishwasher, the issue comes from having to hand wash the mugs. More specifically, it comes from the sponges and dishrags that are used. While a sensible person would have a sponge for the kitchen sink and a completely separate sponge for the bathroom, this doesn't appear to be a universally accepted practice in office settings. The same sponges and rags are often used in both the office bathroom and office kitchen, resulting in a whole lot of nasty stuff ending up on your supposedly clean coffee mug. If this is a concern for you then there are fortunately multiple alternatives, such as washing your mug at home or bringing a thermos to work, but it may make you question what your past self was drinking from.\n\n## Based on a True Story\n\nOf all the movies you might think were based on a true story, *A Nightmare on Elm Street* is unlikely to top that list. While the psychotic, wisecracking child murderer Freddy Krueger wasn't based on a real person, the manner in which his victims died sadly was. Wes Craven's inspiration came from a series of articles in the *Los Angeles Times* about the Hmong refugees who had fled to the United States from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Once the refugees were in the US, many began suffering from intense nightmares and refused to sleep. On at least three reported occasions, a person who had been staying awake to avoid nightmares finally fell asleep from exhaustion. The nightmares recommenced, and all three of those reported on died in their sleep while screaming out in terror. Newspapers reported on these three incidents individually, but they never linked them together. The victims were believed to have suffered from sudden unexplained death syndrome, and these inexplicable deaths inspired Craven to create a serial killer who murdered people in their dreams.\n\n## Mass Produced Crochet\n\nCrochet has seen a major uptick in popularity in recent years, starting at the beginning of lockdown in 2020. Not only was it a fun DIY activity people could do, it gave them a creative outlet. It's also relatively cheap compared to other hobbies, as the yarn is not terribly expensive. This is especially true if you happen to be a major corporation with the ability to buy things in bulk. While not everyone had the time, patience, or inclination to crochet items themselves, the unique nature of these items resonated with people. From 2020 through 2022, sales of crocheted items increased by 75%. Major retailers like Target even started offering items like crochet sweaters to customers eager to jump on the trend. And at only $35, Target's crochet sweaters were very affordable. In fact, crochet enthusiasts were quick to point out that they were disconcertingly affordable. Though people who never researched or took part in the practice themselves were unlikely to be aware, machines can't crochet. There's no question that someday a machine will be built that is able to crochet properly, but that day is not today. As such, any time you see a store offering a mass produced crochet product, that product can only have been manufactured through the use of slave labour. That, or it's actually knit rather than crocheted, though this was not the case with Target's 2022 sweater offerings.\n\n## Locked-in Syndrome\n\nTraumatic brain injuries are never a good thing, and there are a lot of negative outcomes that can result. One possibility is for a person to fall into a coma, a state in which they are both asleep and unaware of what's going on around them. Another is a persistent vegetative state, in which a person has woken up from a coma but still lacks awareness. They may occasionally open their eyes and demonstrate a sleep cycle, but they have no conscious understanding of what's going on. But there's another option that's far more terrifying, known as locked-in syndrome. This occurs when the lower brain and brainstem are damaged, resulting in almost total paralysis. A person with locked-in syndrome will have no voluntary muscle control, except for the ability to blink and move their eyes. They are prisoners in their own bodies, unable to speak and only able to communicate through eye movement. And that's only if anyone even realizes that they're awake. If a person wakes up from a coma to discover themselves in this locked-in state, it can take months for anyone to notice that they're awake. Unfortunately, there is no treatment and no cure. Patients who suffer from locked-in syndrome can continue to live in that state for extended periods of time, but it is extraordinarily rare to ever recover.\n\n## Enter Sandman\n\nSomnambulism, better known as sleepwalking, is relatively common among children, though most people grow out of it. Studies estimate that up to 29% of children ages 2 through 13 will sleepwalk at least once, but only 4% of adults sleepwalk. On the surface it seems harmless enough, or at least mostly harmless. Most somnambulists will occasionally suffer minor injuries like cuts or bruises, but serious injuries and death from things like falling down the stairs are incredibly rare. For the most part, the sleeping person will just get out of bed and walk around a bit. However, there are other, more complex activities that can take place. The most common of these is sleep eating, in which a person will eat and drink while in their sleepwalking state. This can involve eating normal food or strange combinations of food, but either way they will have no recollection of doing so. But it gets much worse than just eating. There is also sexsomnia, in which the sleeping person engages in sexual acts with themselves or another person. When another person is involved, consent might not be. And of course, there is homicidal somnambulism, which is exactly what it sounds like. Though these parasomnias are extremely rare, sleepwalking has been successfully used as a defense for both murder and sexual assault in the last decade, and the number of cases in which it is being used as a defense has been increasing.\n\n## Misinformation Is Nearly Impossible to Avoid\n\nThe nature of the internet and the instantaneous spread of information have resulted in journalism that rewards outlets for being the first to publish instead of for having accurate information. How damaging the effects of this are range greatly depending on the type of material that you're reading, but there is no corner of the internet that isn't overwhelmed with incorrect data that has been reported as fact more times than it's been corrected. For example, if you're a fan of cursed and uncomfortable facts who consumes lots of information like what has appeared in this article, there may be a number of terrifying lies that you have seen reported as facts frequently. There are claims that the average person eats a credit cards worth of microplastics each day, that over 250,000 deaths each year are caused by medical errors, that 2,500 left-handed people die each year using products intended for right-handed people, that the weight of a mattress doubles in the first 10 years of use from dust mites and dust mite droppings, or that 15% of the air in subways is human skin cells. Those would be some disturbing facts if they were true, but the good news is that they aren't. Unfortunately, because they are so eye-catching, you will find far more sources repeating all of those statements than there are ones trying to debunk them.\n\n## The Most Dangerous Animal in the World\n\nFor our final entry today, we'll leave you with something a little more lighthearted than the rest of the episode. Probably, anyway; there's always the chance it will fill you with the same sort of existential dread as when it was first unveiled to the public. In 1963, the Bronx Zoo in New York unveiled a startling new exhibit titled \"The Most Dangerous Animal in the World\". That title was printed atop a cage inside the Great Ape House, but behind the cage's bars stood only a mirror. The text beneath the cage read, \"You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. It alone of all the animals that ever lived can exterminate (and has) entire species of animals. Now it has the power to wipe out all life on earth.\" In 1968, the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago created a similar exhibit. While this clever and subversive exhibit from the zoo is a fun piece of trivia, it's worth noting that, in the over 60 years since the Bronx Zoo opened their controversial new exhibit to the public, humanity hasn't learned a Goddamn thing.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Acetaminophen, a common painkiller, has a narrow margin between therapeutic and toxic doses.\n- Figs are technically inflorescences, and some may contain wasp eggs or remnants.\n- Cheese contains casomorphins, which can trigger dopamine release and potential addiction.\n- The strong smell of chlorinated pools is actually from chloramines, formed by chlorine and urine.\n- Eyelash mites are arachnids that live on human eyelashes and can cause infections if overpopulated.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is the potential risk associated with acetaminophen?\n\nAcetaminophen has the potential to cause serious liver damage, especially when combined with alcohol. The margin between the typical therapeutic dose and the toxic dose is small, and concerns about its safety have been discussed for over 50 years.\n\n### How are figs pollinated?\n\nFigs are pollinated by specialized female wasps that crawl through a tiny opening in the fig, losing their wings and antennae in the process. The wasp then pollinates the flowers and lays its eggs inside the fig, eventually dying and being broken down for nutrients.\n\n### What is the addictive component in cheese?\n\nCheese contains a protein called casein, which the body breaks down into peptides called casomorphins. These casomorphins act as 'food-derived opioids' and latch onto the body's opioid receptors, providing similar effects to other opioids like heroin and morphine.\n\n### What causes the distinctive smell of chlorinated pools?\n\nThe distinctive smell of chlorinated pools is not caused by chlorine itself, but by chloramines. Chloramines are created when chlorine reacts with ammonia, which comes from sweat, body oils, and urine from people in the pool.\n\n### What are eyelash mites and are they harmful?\n\nEyelash mites, known as demodex mites, are eight-legged parasites that live on your eyelashes. They are mostly beneficial and feed on dead skin cells and oils. However, if their population grows too much, it can cause an infection of the eye known as demodicosis.\n\n### Can adults develop new allergies?\n\nYes, adults can develop new allergies at any age, including extremely deadly ones. Common allergies for adults to develop include medications, insect venom, and latex.\n\n### What is the risk of antibiotic resistance?\n\nAntibiotic resistance is a significant threat, with nearly 5 million people dying annually from antibiotic-resistant infections. By 2050, this number is expected to double. Experts warn that new antibiotics are not being developed fast enough to combat this problem.\n\n### Why is it recommended to spay or neuter female ferrets?\n\nFemale ferrets go into heat in early spring and remain in that state until they become pregnant or the breeding season ends. High levels of estrogen can lead to bone marrow suppression and aplastic anemia, which is extremely painful and deadly. Spaying prevents this condition.\n\n### What is the breeding behavior of male antechinus?\n\nMale antechinus engage in 'suicidal reproduction,' mating repeatedly with every female they can find during a one to three-week breeding season. This behavior results in high levels of cortisol, leading to systemic organ failure and death.\n\n### What is the unusual characteristic of male proboscis monkeys?\n\nMale proboscis monkeys have a perpetual erection, which is a unique characteristic among primates. The reason for this is not fully understood, but it does not seem to be related to attracting mates.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Side Projects video: 50 Facts You Probably Didn't Want to Know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyY0Z_U09mk)\n\n## Related Coverage"
url: https://sideprojects.pub/article/50-facts-you-probably-didnt-want-to-know.md
canonical: https://sideprojects.pub/article/50-facts-you-probably-didnt-want-to-know
datePublished: 2024-04-16
dateModified: 2026-07-28
author:
  - name: Simon Whistler
    url: https://sideprojects.pub/author/simon-whistler
publisher: Side Projects
image: "https://media.sideprojects.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/RyY0Z_U09mk/hero.jpg"
type: NewsArticle
contentHash: 5e2ca214764dc6e0aab8b4d18a59d984216bdc093034cdb8964d373f03ef71c0
tokens: 16473
summaryUrl: https://sideprojects.pub/article/50-facts-you-probably-didnt-want-to-know.md.summary.md
---

<!-- aeo:section start="lede" -->
The world is full of fun and interesting facts, the kinds of things that you learn and look forward to sharing with your friends. Today's article isn't about any of that. Instead, we'll be looking at 50 fascinating bits of information that you were probably going to be a lot happier not having known.

<!-- aeo:section end="lede" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="dangerous-painkillers" -->
## Dangerous Painkillers

There are a lot of painkillers that are known to carry with them a certain amount of risk. Opioids and opiates likely top this list for most people, but there is one much more common drug that poses a potentially undue risk to people: acetaminophen. It's been approved for prescription use by the FDA since 1950 and for over the counter use since 1955, but it's been argued that if the drug were discovered today with our stricter standards in place, it would not be given FDA approval even for prescription use. Acetaminophen has the potential to cause serious liver damage, especially when combined with alcohol. While some level of risk exists with all medications, however mild that risk might be, one of the key problems with acetaminophen, aside from overuse, is the small margin between the typical therapeutic dose and the toxic dose. These concerns have been discussed for over 50 years, including in a 1970s editorial in the prestigious medical journal *The Lancet*. Although the drug is considered safe when used as directed, and millions of people take it every day, there are still tens of thousands of Americans hospitalized every year and about 150 deaths resulting from accidental acetaminophen toxicity.

<!-- aeo:section end="dangerous-painkillers" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-fig-wasp-lifecycle" -->
## The Fig/Wasp Lifecycle

The last time you bit into a fig, or possibly a Fig Newton, you probably didn't give a lot of consideration to where the fig came from. After all, they grow on trees like many other fruits, and we all have at least a basic understanding of how this process works. However, figs aren't actually fruit. What we eat is known as an inflorescence, which is essentially just a bloated stem full of flowers that grew inside out. While it's neat that they're technically flowers rather than fruit, it doesn't seem like it would change much. At least not until you consider how these flowers are pollinated. Specialized female wasps have to crawl through a tiny opening in the fig in order to reach the interior. This gap is so small that the female's wings and antennae are torn off in the process, trapping her inside. Once inside the wasp will pollinate the flowers, but its main goal is to lay its eggs. The wasp then dies inside the carnivorous fig, which breaks it down for nutrients. When the eggs hatch, the wingless males mate with their sisters before digging an escape tunnel for them. These males then die and are eaten by the fig while the females fly to another fig to lay their eggs and repeat the process again. Commercially cultivated figs use a special variety of tree that doesn't need to be pollinated to produce its "fruit", but other figs you eat may contain wasp eggs or bits of wasps inside them, depending on where in the lifecycle it was when it was picked.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-fig-wasp-lifecycle" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="cheese-addiction" -->
## Cheese Addiction

In 2015, the internet was shocked when headlines compared cheese to cocaine in light of a new research paper. Others then went on the offensive, attempting to refute the eye-catching claims. The 2015 paper used self-reported data about how foods made people feel and their level of craving for that food, and it wasn't trying to create any specific, scientific claims about the addictive nature of cheese as it related to our brain chemistry. However, in 2021, a new research paper was published that sought to do just that. The study showed that cheese contains a protein called casein, which the body breaks down into peptides called casomorphins. The paper referred to these casomorphins as "food-derived opioids", because they latch onto our bodies' opioid receptors and provide similar effects to other opioids like heroin and morphine. Although the effects of cheese are not nearly as intense as dangerous pharmaceuticals, cheese consumption still causes a release of dopamine that could be addictive.

<!-- aeo:section end="cheese-addiction" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="chlorinated-water-is-odorless" -->
## Chlorinated Water is Odorless

The scent of chlorinated water is an unmistakable sign that summer has finally arrived. If you've ever been in a pool, you can almost certainly recall the unique scent of the water with ease. Unfortunately, it turns out you weren't smelling what you thought you were. By itself, chlorinated water is almost entirely odorless. There may be a very faint chemical smell, but it's nothing like the pool scent that you're familiar with. That scent is caused not by chlorine, but by chloramines. Chloramines are created when the chlorine reacts with ammonia, stripping away the ammonia's hydrogen atoms and replacing them with chlorine. Of course, since people aren't dumping ammonia in their chlorinated pools, that just raises the question of how it got into the pools in the first place. Naturally, the ammonia came from people. It comes from sweat, body oils, and most abundantly urine. Yes, that means the distinctive pool smell that so many people have fond memories of is actually just the scent of people pissing in the pool. And if the odor is particularly strong, it's best to stay out of the water entirely. Chlorine is added to pool water to kill germs, but when it combines with ammonia to form chloramines it can no longer perform its intended task. As such, the stronger the pool scent is, the less free chlorine is in the water to fight off germs that could cause infection for swimmers. And of course the more pee is in the pool as well.

<!-- aeo:section end="chlorinated-water-is-odorless" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="eyelash-mites" -->
## Eyelash Mites

It's well known that your body is covered and filled with bacteria. The average human body is roughly 50% bacteria cells, many of which have a symbiotic relationship with our bodies. Although this fact can sometimes be mildly unsettling, it's easy not to think about microscopic creatures that exist in numbers too large to properly comprehend. So instead, let's talk about other organisms living on your body that are about 400 times larger than a bacteria, about 0.3 millimeters. And instead of a number so large as to seem abstract, there are roughly 1,000-2,000 of these living on you. They're called demodex mites, and they're eight-legged parasites that live on your eyelashes, near the follicles. The mites survive on a diet of dead skin cells and oils, and are considered to be mostly beneficial. As long as there's only a couple thousand of these parasites on your eyelashes everything should be fine, but if their population grows too much it can cause an infection of the eye known as demodicosis. And if the mere presence of these mites wasn't enough to make you uncomfortable, you may be happy to know they are officially categorized as arachnids.

<!-- aeo:section end="eyelash-mites" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="you-re-never-too-old-to-die" -->
## You're Never Too Old to Die

At time of writing, it's approaching allergy season here in the northern hemisphere, which is a time of itchy eyes, runny noses, coughing, sneezing, and other uncomfortable symptoms. Allergies are an abnormal immune system response to various substances that are normally harmless to humans. These frequently develop in children, especially food allergies, but it's not uncommon for adults to develop new allergies as well. In fact, while new allergies are generally less common at advanced ages, there is no age at which a person is free from the possibility of developing new allergies, including extremely deadly ones. For adults, this often means developing new allergies to medications or insect venom, like bee stings. However, one of the most common allergies for adults to develop is latex. The risk of developing a latex allergy increases based on the level of exposure, and many hospitals have moved away from using latex gloves because doctors and nurses kept developing allergies from repeated and prolonged use. Of course, gloves aren't the only latex product that people use, and it's quite possible that the only reason you were born was because an adult developed a latex allergy from excessive exposure.

<!-- aeo:section end="you-re-never-too-old-to-die" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="you-re-never-too-young-to-die" -->
## You're Never Too Young to Die

You're probably familiar with the warning signs that you or someone else is having a stroke. The person may have trouble speaking or may be speaking nonsense (even if they think they're talking normally), they might have trouble with balance, and parts of their body like their face may go numb. However, despite the common belief, there is no evidence that smelling burning toast is a warning sign of a stroke, so if that happens please go check your toaster. Anyway, a stroke occurs when blood flow to part of the brain is severely reduced or stopped entirely. The most common causes of this are either a blood clot or a hemorrhage, and strokes are generally associated with older people. However, while age is one of many risk factors for strokes, it is not a requirement. Any person, regardless of how young or healthy they are, can have a stroke at any time.

<!-- aeo:section end="you-re-never-too-young-to-die" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="we-re-running-out-of-antibiotics" -->
## We're Running Out of Antibiotics

Antibiotics have been in use for less than a century, and we're already in danger of running out in the foreseeable future. We won't run out of the antibiotics themselves, the ones that exist will just stop being effective as antibiotic resistance continues to develop in bacteria. According to the World Health Organization, every year nearly 5 million people die as a result of antibiotic resistant infections. By 2050, that number is expected to double. Furthermore, experts have warned that we aren't developing new antibiotics fast enough to combat the very real problem this poses. It would be one thing if these resilient strains of bacteria were mutations that remained highly localized, but they are able to spread out extreme distances. Recent studies have found antibiotic resistant bacteria in clouds, allowing them to literally rain down on people thousands of km away from where the resistance originated. Shockingly, this isn't even a new problem. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and first approved for commercial use in 1941. The first penicillin resistant strain of staphylococci bacteria was discovered in 1942. But maybe there's an upside to this. Instead of fearing that the future of humanity will be doomed to die from infection, perhaps we can rejoice that we're alive at what may be the brief window of human history where antibiotics were still effective.

<!-- aeo:section end="we-re-running-out-of-antibiotics" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="have-your-pets-spayed-or-neutered" -->
## Have Your Pets Spayed or Neutered

Have you ever been so horny that you thought you'd die if you didn't get laid? Hopefully not, because that level of overdramatized desperation is generally unattractive to other humans. But for female ferrets, that is the reality of their mating season. Female ferrets go into heat in early spring and remain in that state until they become pregnant or the breeding season ends towards the end of fall. While in heat, the ferrets produce large quantities of estrogen. The high levels of estrogen can lead to bone marrow suppression, a condition in which they produce a lower count of red and white blood cells than normal. If this continues, the females will suffer from aplastic anemia, an extremely painful and deadly condition resulting from the lack of blood cell production. It's worth noting that the females do not need to successfully get pregnant, but they will literally die without sex. There is no analog of this condition in male ferrets, so it is only the females for whom mating is a matter of life and death. Because of how deadly and painful aplastic anemia is, combined with how difficult and malodorous it is to breed ferrets, it is recommended that all domesticated female ferrets be spayed so that they will not go into heat.

<!-- aeo:section end="have-your-pets-spayed-or-neutered" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="what-a-way-to-go" -->
## What A Way To Go

Speaking of excessively horny animals, let's now travel to Australia where the antechinus live. Antechinus are a genus of marsupials resembling mice, and their breeding season is truly something else. While the female ferrets needed to have sex or they would die, the male antechinus will have sex until they die, a behaviour referred to as "suicidal reproduction". This type of reproduction has been observed in plants and some insects and invertebrates, but it is extremely rare in larger animals. Males will begin breeding with every female they can find for a period of one to three weeks, repeatedly mating until they drop dead. At least one species of antechinus will even cannibalize the dead, as they need the energy to continue their intense workouts. The deaths result from rising levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Hormone production increases while the antechinus are breeding, and the increased levels of testosterone inhibit the body's ability to remove the cortisol from the bloodstream. As a result, the males die of systemic organ failure. Breeding season has a near 100% mortality rate for male antechinus, but at least they died doing what they loved.

<!-- aeo:section end="what-a-way-to-go" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="is-that-a-banana-in-your-pocket" -->
## Is That a Banana In Your Pocket?

The proboscis monkey is an endangered monkey endemic to the southeast Asian island of Borneo. The species received its name because, at a glance, the most noticeable feature of the monkey is its large, extended proboscis, or nose. At a second glance, however, there is another noteworthy appendage that would also be extended: the male proboscis monkey sports a perpetual erection. It's pretty hard to miss too, as the penis is bright red. Why these monkeys are always erect remains a mystery, and they are the only primate to feature this characteristic. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be related to their attempts to attract a mate. Female proboscis monkeys appear more interested in the size of a male's nose than the size of his penis.

<!-- aeo:section end="is-that-a-banana-in-your-pocket" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="cannibalistic-medicine" -->
## Cannibalistic Medicine

Before germ theory became widespread and ushered in the modern era of medicine, treatments were a total crapshoot. Those that proved effective did so for reasons totally unrelated to what was believed, but far more common were ineffective treatments that may have only served to make the diseases worse. These supposed remedies were often bizarre in nature, and it wasn't uncommon for their ingredients to include human remains. Ground up mummies were popular among the wealthy, and King's Drops were popular throughout the 17th century. King Charles II was on his death bed having suffered from either a seizure or stroke. A few years earlier he had purchased the secret formula for doctor and chemist Jonathan Goddard's "Goddard's Drops". The formula included five pounds of ground up human skull, preferably from those that had died in combat or been executed; if someone died of old age or disease, it was believed their skull could bear the same infection that killed the original host. The king took 40 of these drops daily, but unsurprisingly they didn't help. Despite the King's Drops, as they had been renamed, proving ineffective, they still became all the rage among anyone who could get their hand on some skulls. After all, if it was good enough for the king then it was good enough for them…even if it hadn't been good enough to actually save the king.

<!-- aeo:section end="cannibalistic-medicine" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="it-wasn-t-just-bones" -->
## It Wasn't Just Bones

The use of ground up bones in medicine may seem gross, but it could certainly get worse than that. Brains were also used in medicine, because why wouldn't they be. These days we recognize that, even if cannibalism was for some reason an option, you should never eat a human brain. Doing so could result in prion diseases like kuru, the human version of mad cow disease. But 17th century doctors didn't know any of that. One recipe, aptly titled "Essence of Man's Brains", was published in 1651 by John French as a cure for epilepsy in his book *The Art of Distillation IV*. The recipe read, "take the brains of a young man that has died a violent death, together with the membranes, arteries, veins, nerves, all the pith of the back, and bruise these in a stone mortar until they become a kind of pap. Then put as much of the spirit of wine as will cover it three or four fingers breadth… Then digest it half a year in horse dung… A scruple or two of this essence taken in some specifical water once in a day is a most infallible medicine against the falling sickness." While there could be some theoretical logic behind brains being used as an ingredient in medicine, it's hard to defend the use of fermented horse dung.

<!-- aeo:section end="it-wasn-t-just-bones" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="beaver-glands" -->
## Beaver Glands

If you're a fan of musky, leathery colognes and perfumes, you may be surprised to learn where that scent came from. Perfumes frequently use extracted scent oil from plants, fruits, and woods, but none of those are going to get you a rich, leathery scent. For something like that you need to turn to animal secretions. And in the case of this particular odor, one popular source is the castor sacs of beavers, essentially the beavers' anal glands. Castor sacs can be removed from a dead beaver and dried out, but the more common way to extract castoreum is to milk the beaver's anal glands. If that sounds gross to you, just remember that secretions like these are what you're frequently spraying on yourself whenever you use perfume or cologne. While castoreum is almost exclusively used by the perfume industry these days, that's not its only use. It's been a source of artificial vanilla and fruit flavours in things like ice cream, as well as a flavour and odor additive for cigarettes. The time required to milk a bunch of beavers makes this cost prohibitive compared to growing vanilla for mass produced ice creams, but you'll also never know if you wind up eating it; castoreum falls under the blanket of "natural flavourings" that don't need to be individually listed on an ingredient label.

<!-- aeo:section end="beaver-glands" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="skeletons-are-fun" -->
## Skeletons Are Fun

When Disneyland first opened in California in 1955 it was a big success, and it quickly became a popular vacation destination. Because the park kept drawing larger and larger crowds, it had to expand in size and build new rides to attract repeat customers. One of these rides first that opened in 1967, was The Pirates of the Caribbean. It was decades before the modern movie franchise, and the ride wasn't based on any existing story. The creators had free reign to create pretty much anything they wanted, but there was one thing that was absolutely essential to their vision: skeletons. Pirates are known for the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger, and treasure chests are often depicted surrounded by human skeletons. This spooky aesthetic was deemed essential to the ride, but there was just one problem: artificial skeletons of the day looked fake and stupid. To work around this problem, Disneyland purchased real human remains that had been donated to the University of California with which to entertain children. Over the years the ride underwent renovations multiple times, and it's reported that the real skeletons were phased out in favour of new, higher quality fakes. However, it's widely claimed, including by park employees, that there is still one of the original human skeletons that continues to be used as a decoration on the attraction.

<!-- aeo:section end="skeletons-are-fun" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="lake-superior-never-gives-up-her-dead" -->
## Lake Superior Never Gives Up Her Dead

At over 82,000 square km, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world. As a basis of comparison, the lake is slightly larger than the Czech Republic and slightly smaller than Austria. The lake has been an extremely important shipping route for well over a century, and at present day it is used to transport an average of 32 million tonnes of material every year. However, it's also a dangerous shipping route. Lake Superior is notorious for turning deadly, as storms can produce 10 meter waves of freezing water. Many ships have been lost to the bottom of the lake, with over 10,000 people having died in those shipwrecks. But there's an old saying in Michigan: Lake Superior never gives up her dead. While that's not accurate 100% of the time, there is a lot of truth to it. At over 400 meters deep with an average surface temperature of about 40-45 degrees F (4-8 degrees C), Lake Superior is the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes. And it gets colder real fast as you dive underwater, so cold that the bacteria that would normally cause a body to decay, bloat, and rise to the surface aren't able to survive. The cold temperatures also preserve the bodies far longer than they otherwise would, meaning that the floor of Lake Superior is littered with potentially thousands of corpses. The oldest known corpse in the lake, nicknamed "Old Whitey", can be found pinned under a staircase in the underwater wreckage of the SS Kamloops, which went down in 1927.

<!-- aeo:section end="lake-superior-never-gives-up-her-dead" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="zombie-woodpeckers" -->
## Zombie Woodpeckers

As we said earlier, brains are not an effective form of medicine, nor are human brains a good source of food for other humans. However, it turns out that woodpeckers aren't so discerning when it comes to cannibalizing brains. Woodpeckers are the best known of all the drilling birds, and they're common across nearly the entire world, except for Australia and Madagascar. Woodpeckers use their hard beaks to tap along a tree trunk, listening for the sound of a hollow spot that would indicate the presence of insects hiding inside the tree. They then pound their heads against the tree to drill inside, before using their incredibly long, harpoon-like tongues to extract any delicious insects. Their tongues are so long that they have to wrap around the woodpecker's brains; this both gives the bird somewhere to store its grotesque tongue as well as providing extra padding for the brain to prevent concussions while drilling. But what's a woodpecker to do if they're hungry and can't find any insects in trees? You might think they would go look for insects on the ground or on plants like other birds, but that's a waste of a perfectly good drilling beak. Instead, they will find other birds and use their beaks to drill through their skulls, devouring their brains. The victims are usually baby birds in nests who are unable to fight back or fly away, and this behaviour is common among multiple species of woodpeckers.

<!-- aeo:section end="zombie-woodpeckers" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="spiders-are-getting-bigger" -->
## Spiders Are Getting Bigger

For anyone not living in Australia where spiders the size of a person's head are already common, the idea of a sudden increase in the size of the spiders may be a bit disconcerting. However, this is one of many impacts that climate change is having on spiders around the world. Rising temperatures have caused spiders to become larger, more abundant, faster, and more aggressive. Some outlets have also reported that spiders are becoming more venomous, but that's not entirely true. How venomous an individual species of spider is hasn't changed, but rising temperatures have allowed many venomous species that live in tropical climates to be able to spread out well beyond the area that they previously called home. While there have been numerous studies over the past 15 years that have showed spiders increasing in size, it is important to note that each study was focused on a specific species in a relatively localized area. Although these areas ranged from the arctic all the way south to Australian cities, we can't yet say as a blanket statement that all spiders have been getting bigger. But enough of them certainly are.

<!-- aeo:section end="spiders-are-getting-bigger" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="tooth-in-eye-surgery" -->
## Tooth in Eye Surgery

There have been a lot of bizarre medical procedures throughout history, most of which have been pointless and ineffective. However, in the 1960s, Italian ophthalmic surgeon Benedetto Strampelli had an idea that put these insane ancient remedies to shame. Not only did he intend to pull out someone's tooth and implant it in their eye to restore vision, but the procedure worked and is still in use today. Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, colloquially known as "tooth in eye surgery", was the procedure that Strampelli pioneered, and it is effective on patients with severe enough corneal scarring that it would prevent a cornea transplant. To start, the cornea, the inner lining of the eyelid, and any scar tissue are all removed. A layer of tissue from the cheek is then transplanted over the eye. Then a tooth is extracted from the patient (or a donor tooth is used), and a hole is drilled in the center to hold an artificial lens. Once properly shaped, this artificial tooth-lens hybrid is implanted in the patient's cheek for a few months to allow it to grow its own blood supply. The cheek tissue that had been implanted over the eye is then removed, the eye gets hollowed out, and the tooth is implanted in the eye. Yes, this is a real, modern surgery, and yes it is effective at restoring vision.

<!-- aeo:section end="tooth-in-eye-surgery" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="a-toothy-grin" -->
## A Toothy Grin

Your average child is born with 52 teeth, 20 baby teeth and 32 permanent teeth. As a general rule, there is very little fluctuation in that number. However, in 2019 there was a case of a child with considerably more teeth than that. The 7 year old boy from India had complained to his parents about jaw pain, so he was taken to the dentist for x-rays. His parents had noticed some swelling in his jaw starting when he was about 3, but the boy wouldn't sit still long enough for doctors to examine him, so nothing was done. Once an x-ray was finally taken, it was discovered that in the boy's lower jaw was a sac containing 526 extra teeth of various sizes. It's an extremely rare condition called compound composite odontoma, in which a benign tumor develops in the jaw and begins growing excess teeth. It's well known, albeit gross, that tumors can grow teeth and hair, but the sheer number of teeth in this tumor shattered the record. The previous record was held by a 17 year old boy from India who had 232 teeth removed in 2014; before that the record had only been 37 teeth. Because the condition is so rare, its causes remain completely unknown.

<!-- aeo:section end="a-toothy-grin" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="keep-your-ducks-entertained" -->
## Keep Your Ducks Entertained

There are a lot of animals that engage in cannibalistic behaviour for various reasons. Usually it's due to a lack of other food sources. In tadpoles, cannibalism also provides a competitive advantage, as tadpoles that eat other tadpoles grow faster and thus become less appealing to prey than their smaller and more defenseless siblings. But ducklings will engage in cannibalism for a number of different reasons. There's the obvious lack of food, and the less obvious but somewhat understandable overcrowding. However, ducklings will also cannibalize each other out of sheer boredom. This can start at any age, though it is more common to occur once the ducklings have reached four weeks old. Despite their adorable appearance and reputation as being generally friendly and sociable, it turns out that ducks are actually psychotic little assholes. And it doesn't stop with murdering each other out of boredom.

<!-- aeo:section end="keep-your-ducks-entertained" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="a-disappointing-evolutionary-trait" -->
## A Disappointing Evolutionary Trait

It's relatively common knowledge that duck's have long, corkscrew shaped penises. That's a weird but mildly interesting bit of trivia, but have you ever considered why they would have evolved this way? Male ducks developed these appendages so that their penises could navigate the labyrinthine maze that is a female duck's vagina, full of twists, turns, and dead ends. Unfortunately, that's still only part of the answer. Female ducks developed that odd anatomical trait as a defense mechanism because male ducks are extremely prone to sexual assault. They will do this constantly, even midflight, and so female ducks evolved to try to prevent unwanted pregnancy from forced copulation with males they did not find to be suitable mates. The ducks' penises then evolved to counteract this defense mechanism, increasing their chances of being able to successfully breed with the females without their consent.

<!-- aeo:section end="a-disappointing-evolutionary-trait" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="happy-deathday" -->
## Happy Deathday

This purported fact actually remains open to debate, as there is not a 100% definitive consensus on the matter. However, many statistical studies show that you are much more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year, with deaths in the week leading up to or following your birthday also being key candidates. The first large scale study used data from 2.7 million Californians who died between 1969 and 1990, and multiple studies of a similar scale have been conducted. Most of these studies showed clear evidence of the "birthday effect", though a couple showed no such effect. Though not definitively proven yet, there are a number of explanations for why this might be the case. Birthdays, especially for younger people, are associated with going out and drinking. This can result in deaths from alcohol poisoning and drunk driving, and in the United States the number of people who die on their 21st birthday or the day after is well in excess of the normal distribution. Birthdays are also stressful, and in men there is an increased risk of suicide surrounding a person's birthday. There are also terminally ill patients who may, through sheer force of will, manage to hang on until their birthday, at which point they are comfortable letting go.

<!-- aeo:section end="happy-deathday" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="don-t-forget-to-buckle-up" -->
## Don't Forget To Buckle Up

Though they don't rank in the top 10 causes of death globally, car crashes are still a major cause of death. About 1.3 million people each year die in fatal car accidents, though what percentage of total deaths that is varies wildly from country to country. In the United States, for example, with an average of about 40,000 fatal car accidents each year, they make up just over 1% of all deaths. This means that, as an American, for every 100 people you have ever known, on average one of them will die in a car accident. There's a similar but much less exact figure going around related to murder as well. According to one study, on average every person in the world will walk past 36 murderers in their life. How accurate that number is varies greatly depending on the country you live in and how often you leave your house and walk past people you've never encountered before, but it doesn't change the fact that there are an awful lot of murderers out there.

<!-- aeo:section end="don-t-forget-to-buckle-up" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="no-anesthesia-needed" -->
## No Anesthesia Needed

For a long time, it was believed that babies were more susceptible to pain than older children or adults were. However, in the late 19th century this changed entirely. Possibly due to the misinterpretation of new scientific developments, it became considered fact that babies were unable to feel pain. These babies, especially those born prematurely, had nervous systems that were not developed enough yet to perceive pain. And even if they did happen to feel a little pain, they wouldn't grow up with any conscious memory of it and thus it was deemed impossible for there to be any long term consequences. This was a convenient development, as there were rising concerns that giving babies opiates would result in addiction. Instead, they decided that babies simply didn't need anesthesia. This belief persisted until the 1980s when a premature infant, Jeffrey Lawson, underwent open heart surgery with no anesthesia. When his mother, Jill, found out what happened, she started a campaign to raise awareness of the common practice. Since then, new studies have shown that people's first instincts were right all along, and babies do in fact feel more pain than adults do.

<!-- aeo:section end="no-anesthesia-needed" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="terrifying-genetics" -->
## Terrifying Genetics

Most people don't like to think about their parents having sex. We acknowledge that it's the reason we were born, but people prefer to delude themselves into thinking that the conception of them and their siblings are the only times their parents ever had sex. Deep down nobody really believes that, but like we said, it's not something that people want to think about. Unfortunately, there's some potentially unsettling news for fans of dirty casual sex. According to recent studies, scientists now believe that a number of sexual kinks may actually be inherited genetically from our parents. A study in 2014 even identified the DRD4 gene as a likely candidate for the "BDSM gene". This gene is also believed to be linked to ADHD. The combination of those two facts may instantly make sense to you, or it might make you see somebody you knew in a different light.

<!-- aeo:section end="terrifying-genetics" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="koala-stds" -->
## Koala STDs

Since 2022, koalas in eastern Australia have been listed as an endangered species. But the biggest threat to koalas isn't predators, poachers, or disruption of their natural habitat; it's Chlamydia. It's unclear how the disease was first introduced to the koala population, but today roughly 80% of all wild koalas are infected with Chlamydia. The disease can cause blindness, making it harder for them to climb trees for food and to avoid predators, kidney failure resulting in death, and widespread infertility. What makes the disease so problematic is that koalas' bodies are exceptionally good at detoxification. This is what allows them to eat eucalyptus, a plant that nearly all animals find poisonous, but it also means that their bodies destroy antibiotics before they can have any meaningful impact. The antibiotic dosage required to treat a koala is so high that it winds up killing their microbiome, making them unable to digest eucalyptus and thus starving to death. Chlamydia is passed from one koala to another through sexual contact, as well as contact with contaminated urine or feces of an infected koala. But that last method shouldn't be a big factor in the spread of Chlamydia, right?

<!-- aeo:section end="koala-stds" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="koala-s-eat-poop" -->
## Koala's Eat Poop

As we said, eucalyptus is extremely toxic to pretty much every living thing. The koala's unique gut microbiome is key to their survival, but they aren't born with the necessary gut bacteria to survive eating their one staple food. Baby koalas need a different food source until their bodies are able to handle the harsh toxins in eucalyptus, and that's where the mothers come in. It's common for mothers in the animal kingdom to feed their young. Some do it by providing milk. Others, like birds, will partially digest food and regurgitate it into their babies' mouths. And if that sounds gross, you won't want to hear how koala's feed their babies. Sure, for the first few months they live in their mothers' pouches and drink milk, but when they're five or six months old it's time for them to start transitioning to solid food. Or at least more solid. When it's time to feed, a young koala will stimulate its mother's cloaca with its mouth. This causes the mother to produce a special type of feces known as pap, which is extra watery and full of partially digested eucalyptus. Not only does it get the children used to the taste of eucalyptus, it helps transfer the necessary gut bacteria (and Chlamydia) from the mother to her offspring.

<!-- aeo:section end="koala-s-eat-poop" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="uncanny-valley" -->
## Uncanny Valley

Everyone loves robots. They're cool and useful, and one day they'll eventually take over and kill us all. But there's a more interesting side to some of people's fears about robots. The "uncanny valley" is an observed hypothesis originating in the field of robotics related to their appearance. As a robot becomes more humanlike, people become more empathetic towards them and have a more positive emotional response interacting with them. Up until a point, anyway. A robot that is humanoid but clearly not real can elicit a positive emotional response, but if it gets too human there is a sudden reversal where people find the robots disturbing and off putting. If they become perfect human replicants, the response then becomes positive again. This area of negative response is referred to as the uncanny valley. What makes this interesting is that the same innate reaction seems to exist in all humans across the world regardless of cultural differences. The ubiquitous presence of such a trait seems to imply that it developed as part of our early evolution, indicating that there was a specific reason prehistoric humans needed to be afraid of something that looked almost human but not quite. The leading theory is this reaction evolved to make people fearful of corpses, the diseased, or other humans who were somehow "not right" and could be a possible source of contagion, but the truth behind the uncanny valley remains unknown.

<!-- aeo:section end="uncanny-valley" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="broken-arrows" -->
## Broken Arrows

The 1996 film *Broken Arrow*, starring John Travolta and Christian Slater, centers on the theft of nuclear weapons from the US military. When being briefed on the situation, one of the characters stated, "I don't know what's scarier: losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it." For many Americans, this summer blockbuster was the first time they had ever heard the phrase "broken arrow" before. But it's a very real phrase, involving the theft, loss, or accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon. More concerning than the phrase simply existing, it really does happen often enough for such a phrase to be necessary. Since 1950, there have been 32 broken arrow incidents, and those are just the ones that are officially confirmed by the US Department of Defense. While not every broken arrow results in nuclear weapons going missing, there are currently six nuclear bombs that are known to have been lost and never recovered.

<!-- aeo:section end="broken-arrows" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="courageous-brain-parasites" -->
## Courageous Brain Parasites

Do you have one friend who seems far more courageous and less risk averse than most people you know? Or perhaps you're more open to risk than others, especially in the business world. If that's the case, your courage may be the result of brain parasites. *Toxoplasma gondii* is a parasite that is capable of infecting nearly all warm-blooded animals, and it has a particular affinity for the brain and central nervous system. The main disease vector for this parasite is cats, with the parasite being found in their poop and urine. This is particularly useful for cats, as it acts as a sort of mind control on mice that become infected. The mice that become host to *Toxoplasma gondii* have their brains quickly and permanently altered, removing their sense of fear. This is often cited as removing their fear of cats, but it is an indiscriminate reduction in fear of all manner of things that mice typically avoid. As a result, they will confront cats rather than flee from them, with predictable results. But it's not just cats, and *Toxoplasma gondii* is believed to have infected 2 billion humans worldwide. In the US it's about 11% of the population, while in some countries that number is as high as 60%. Initial research suggests that the parasite affects human brains in a similar way to rodents' brains, making people less fearful in general, sometimes to their detriment.

<!-- aeo:section end="courageous-brain-parasites" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sad-rescue-dogs" -->
## Sad Rescue Dogs

When it comes to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, there aren't a lot of cheerful facts to discuss. But one depressing aspect from ground zero that is often overlooked is the impact that it had on the over 300 search and rescue dogs that were deployed to help find victims among the rubble. Though the dogs do train for these missions, the reality of the situation was far different from what they had been prepared for. The SAR dogs had to work 12 hour days for weeks on end, much longer than they were used to. But worst of all for the dogs, there weren't many survivors for them to find. Only 20 survivors were found by the dogs, with the last one being discovered only 27 hours after the initial collapse. For weeks the dogs searched through the rubble for survivors, but all they found was dead bodies. It caused them to become so depressed that the dogs' handlers had to perform fake rescue missions to cheer them up, hiding themselves in the rubble and allowing the dogs to find them.

<!-- aeo:section end="sad-rescue-dogs" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="ground-currents" -->
## Ground Currents

The idea of being struck by lightning is certainly unappealing, but for most people it's not a prevalent fear. Sure, it's a thing that could theoretically happen, but it's so wildly unlikely as to not be worth thinking about. However, you don't actually need to be struck directly by lightning to feel its effects. When lightning hits an object like a tree, the electricity spreads out across the surface of the ground, also referred to as ground current. The rainfall that often accompanies lightning can increase the conductivity of the ground, making this even more dangerous. One of the most notable examples of this danger occurred in 1939 in the Raft River Mountains of Utah. A flock of 850 sheep were sleeping in a canyon between the mountains when lightning struck the ground. A single bolt of lightning killed 835 of the sheep. Another famous but somewhat dubious instance of this phenomenon allegedly occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998. A soccer match between Bena Tshadi and the visiting team Basanga was taking place, and the score was tied 1-1. Lightning struck the pitch, and according to local reports 11 people died with another 30 injured. Later reporting claimed that all 11 players for Bena Tshadi had died while the visiting team was unharmed. The veracity of these claims are difficult to determine, as this was taking place during the Second Congo War so details were difficult to come by. But even if the deaths weren't limited exclusively to one of the teams, it was neither the first nor last report of lightning injuring multiple players during a soccer match, just the most bizarre.

<!-- aeo:section end="ground-currents" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="cadaver-orgasms" -->
## Cadaver Orgasms

Hopefully you've never wondered whether or not it was possible for a dead person to orgasm, but we're going to answer that question for you anyway. And surprisingly, the answer is yes…sort of, anyway. The sacral plexus is a collection of nerves that begins at the base of your spine and extends through your lower body. These nerves control sensory and motor function for much of your lower body and pelvis, which includes your ability to orgasm. Research found that electrical stimulation of the sacral nerves will trigger an orgasm in over 90% of women. For reasons unknown, someone then decided it was important to know if it would work even if the person was dead. If the person is completely dead, then the answer is no, because the nerve needs to be receiving oxygen to work. However, if the person is brain dead and being kept alive with machines, something referred to as a "beating heart cadaver", then it absolutely will work. This knowledge has absolutely no practical application to anyone, but if we had to learn about it then so do you.

<!-- aeo:section end="cadaver-orgasms" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="body-farms" -->
## Body Farms

Without being given any hints as to what a body farm is, there are a couple guesses that likely come to mind. It could be some sort of science fiction setting in which human clones are grown. Or maybe it sounds like a modern research facility where scientists are mass producing stem cells in an attempt to successfully create artificial organs. Those are both reasonable guesses, but growing bodies is the exact opposite of what a body farm is used for. The first body farm was created by American anthropologist William Bass in 1981, and it is used to study the decomposition of humans and other animals. Today, there are now seven such body farms at universities across the United States, with more having been established around the world. Though rather grim, by using body farms to study the various stages of human decomposition in a variety of different but controlled settings, it can help advance forensic archaeology and the forensic science used in law enforcement. Among the many discoveries made by studying human decomposition is the precise environment required for a decomposing human body to explode from a buildup of pressurized gases.

<!-- aeo:section end="body-farms" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="suffer-like-i-did" -->
## Suffer Like I Did

Harry Harlow was an American psychologist whose work centered around studying maternal bonding. Many of these experiments were questionable at best, such as seeing if a baby monkey would bond with a machine designed to replicate the behaviour of a physically abusive mother. If that was Harry operating at his most ethical, you can only imagine how badly things turned when his wife died of cancer in 1971. Harry became depressed, and he abandoned his research on maternal bonding in favour of research into depression and isolation. Essentially, he was torturing animals just so they would be as miserable as he had become. Perhaps his magnum opus was the vertical chamber apparatus, which Harry insisted on referring to as the "Pit of Despair" against the wishes of his colleagues. The device was an inverted metal pyramid with steep, slippery sides that were impossible to climb and a cage over the top. A baby rhesus monkey that had already bonded with its mother was placed at the bottom of the chamber and left alone for ten weeks. Unsurprisingly, it sent the monkeys into a deep depression. According to literary critic Wayne Booth, "Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in advance: that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties."

<!-- aeo:section end="suffer-like-i-did" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="hypothermia-research" -->
## Hypothermia Research

Hypothermia is extremely dangerous. If a person's core body temperature starts to drop, they can suffer serious consequences and even death if it can't be raised quickly. As such, it's a very difficult condition to effectively research. Inducing hypothermia in a test subject would be too dangerous, and scientists wouldn't see enough cases to be able to determine the best course of action. Not only that, but people would have to rely on whatever was considered best practice at the time, as there was no time for experimentation when presented with a hypothermia victim. But in World War II, it was determined that many naval officers or pilots that were shot down were dying of hypothermia after falling into and being pulled out of the cold ocean waters. This meant that studying hypothermia could be useful to militaries, but there was no ethical way to do so. Of course, it should come as no surprise that ethics wasn't a top priority for Nazi scientists. They conducted numerous experiments on prisoners in which they were deliberately frozen so that different methods of warming the body back up could be experimented with. These Nazi experiments were fatal for most of the prisoners involved and were beyond unethical, but they are also the source of most of our knowledge about hypothermia.

<!-- aeo:section end="hypothermia-research" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="how-about-a-little-tongue" -->
## How About A Little Tongue?

Hiding in the ocean is a parasitic isopod known as *Cymothoa exigua*. These are little crustaceans with a rather colourful nickname: the tongue-eating louse. This is technically a misnomer, as the parasite doesn't actually eat the host's tongue. The parasite first attaches to a fish's gills, where it lives until it matures. It then crawls through the gills and up the throat of the fish, into its mouth. Here is where the tongue-eating louse gets its name. Not by eating the tongue, but by severing the blood vessels so that the tongue becomes necrotic and falls off. Once it's gone, the louse attaches its hind legs to the victim and becomes its new tongue. The parasites feed on the fish's blood and mucus, but their presence doesn't seem to actually be detrimental to the fish. Sure, they no longer have a tongue, but the parasite is kindly filling in and performing the actions as a prosthetic tongue. This makes it the only known parasite that functionally replaces a host's organ, even if it is also responsible for removing the organ in the first place. Fortunately these parasites don't affect humans, but if you buy fresh trout or snapper with the head still intact there's a chance you may find one of these parasites where the tongue should have been.

<!-- aeo:section end="how-about-a-little-tongue" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-blue-fugates" -->
## The Blue Fugates

Deep in the hills near Hazard, Kentucky lived a family known as the Blue Fugates, or the Blue People of Kentucky. The family was formed by Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith who settled in the area around 1820. Of their seven children, four were born with blue skin. The Blue Fugates were so well known to the people of Kentucky that one of their descendants, Luna Stacy, was known for being the bluest of the blue. So what exactly caused this condition? Martin and Elizabeth were both carriers of a recessive gene that causes a rare blood disorder known as methemoglobinemia. If the amount of methemoglobin in the blood exceeds 20% then it can cause serious health problems resulting in death, but if it stays between 10-20% it results in the characteristic blue skin without having any negative side effects. Luna is known to have 13 children and lived 84 years. That explains the origin of the four children born with the condition, but if the genetic condition is the result of a rare, recessive gene, how did it continue to propagate? The answer should be obvious, but the Appalachian region of Kentucky was very sparsely populated. The proliferation of the Blue Fugates was primarily the result of lots and lots of incest.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-blue-fugates" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="dying-for-a-bathroom-break" -->
## Dying for a Bathroom Break

Nearly everyone experiences constipation at some point in their life. You know the feeling: bloating, cramps, abdominal pain, and so on. This can usually be managed easily enough without the need for medical intervention. Increasing fiber in the diet or taking laxatives can provide a quick fix, and if the problem doesn't return then that's the end of it. But for people with chronic constipation, the condition can actually be deadly. The two most common problems that result from chronic constipation are rectal prolapse and fecal impaction. Rectal prolapse is when part of the colon escapes out through the butthole. It's not fun and can cause uncontrolled bowel movements, but it is very rarely life threatening. Fecal impaction on the other hand is a very serious condition in which fecal matter that's trapped inside becomes hardened and blocks off the passageway. This can be deadly in multiple different ways, so if you find yourself suffering from severe constipation that doesn't go away with the use of laxatives, it may be best to seek advice from a medical professional. Or don't; it's your ass on the line, not ours.

<!-- aeo:section end="dying-for-a-bathroom-break" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="webcamgate" -->
## WebcamGate

In 2009, high school students in the Lower Merion School District (consisting of two high schools) in Pennsylvania each received an Apple Macbook for use at school and at home throughout the school year. That was 2,306 students that each received a free laptop, at a cost of about $2.6 million to the school district. Students quickly discovered that the webcams were broken so they couldn't take pictures or video chat with each other, but hey, free laptop! What could possibly go wrong? It turns out that what could go wrong was that the webcams weren't broken, they were just disabled for the users. The cameras worked just fine, and the school had purchased surveillance software that allowed them to remotely access all of the laptops they had purchased. The laptops would take snapshots with the cameras and screenshots of what the computer was being used for, then send those images to a server at the school before deleting the files off the original computer, preventing the users from ever discovering what was happening. All of this was being done without the consent or even knowledge of the students or parents involved. This covert surveillance was revealed quickly when a student was called into administration less than two months into the school year. According to the photos taken by the laptop, they believed that they had caught the student using and/or selling drugs, which would make him subject to disciplinary action. Instead of the student being punished, by revealing that they were spying on the students the school opened itself up to multiple major lawsuits. Unfortunately, the full extent of the surveillance will never be known as the school wiped its server of all the photos and screenshots that had been taken once they realized that they might be in trouble.

<!-- aeo:section end="webcamgate" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="elephants-and-you" -->
## Elephants and You

It's said that an elephant never forgets, and in a moment you'll wish that was the only fact you ever heard about them. Elephants are massive animals, weighing multiple tons. As such, they need to eat a considerable amount of food to survive. In fact, they can spend up to 18 hours each day eating, consuming as much as 300-600 lbs of food depending on the type of elephant. However, one of the main reasons that elephants have to eat so much isn't their massive size, it's because their digestive tract kind of sucks. Their guts are really inefficient at breaking down the plants they survive on, resulting in a large percentage of what they eat passing through their system completely undigested. What this all means is that an elephant can poop 12-15 times per day, and that their total bowel movements each day exceed the weight of an adult human.

<!-- aeo:section end="elephants-and-you" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="gender-reveal-massacre" -->
## Gender Reveal Massacre

If there are two things people love to eat, it's chicken and eggs. Admittedly, surveys show that people prefer the taste of beef, but chicken is far less expensive and is a leaner source of protein. Regardless of taste preferences, the global demand for chicken products is massive. In the United States, the average person consumes 100 lbs of chicken every year and nearly 300 eggs each year. To be fair, those eggs are often used as an ingredient in other dishes rather than being consumed on their own, but it's still an awful lot of eggs. It's why every year tens of billions of chickens are raised and slaughtered, though some survive a lot longer than others. Once the chicks are born they are sexed, with females being used either for egg production or to become delicious fryers and roasters. But what of the male chickens? Roosters can't lay eggs, they don't get as large as hens, and they are generally regarded as not tasting as good as hens either. This means any male chicks are considered redundant and get culled as soon as their sex is determined. And by culled, we mean that every year 7 billion male chicks are tossed into a machine called a macerator that grinds them up at high speeds.

<!-- aeo:section end="gender-reveal-massacre" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="just-bring-a-thermos" -->
## Just Bring A Thermos

If you work in an office that has a kitchen area, it may be customary to keep your coffee mug in a cabinet there. However, this is actually a terrible idea. Studies showed that 90% of coffee mugs in office settings contained bacteria, and that 20% of them were covered in fecal matter. Since the office is unlikely to have a dishwasher, the issue comes from having to hand wash the mugs. More specifically, it comes from the sponges and dishrags that are used. While a sensible person would have a sponge for the kitchen sink and a completely separate sponge for the bathroom, this doesn't appear to be a universally accepted practice in office settings. The same sponges and rags are often used in both the office bathroom and office kitchen, resulting in a whole lot of nasty stuff ending up on your supposedly clean coffee mug. If this is a concern for you then there are fortunately multiple alternatives, such as washing your mug at home or bringing a thermos to work, but it may make you question what your past self was drinking from.

<!-- aeo:section end="just-bring-a-thermos" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="based-on-a-true-story" -->
## Based on a True Story

Of all the movies you might think were based on a true story, *A Nightmare on Elm Street* is unlikely to top that list. While the psychotic, wisecracking child murderer Freddy Krueger wasn't based on a real person, the manner in which his victims died sadly was. Wes Craven's inspiration came from a series of articles in the *Los Angeles Times* about the Hmong refugees who had fled to the United States from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Once the refugees were in the US, many began suffering from intense nightmares and refused to sleep. On at least three reported occasions, a person who had been staying awake to avoid nightmares finally fell asleep from exhaustion. The nightmares recommenced, and all three of those reported on died in their sleep while screaming out in terror. Newspapers reported on these three incidents individually, but they never linked them together. The victims were believed to have suffered from sudden unexplained death syndrome, and these inexplicable deaths inspired Craven to create a serial killer who murdered people in their dreams.

<!-- aeo:section end="based-on-a-true-story" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="mass-produced-crochet" -->
## Mass Produced Crochet

Crochet has seen a major uptick in popularity in recent years, starting at the beginning of lockdown in 2020. Not only was it a fun DIY activity people could do, it gave them a creative outlet. It's also relatively cheap compared to other hobbies, as the yarn is not terribly expensive. This is especially true if you happen to be a major corporation with the ability to buy things in bulk. While not everyone had the time, patience, or inclination to crochet items themselves, the unique nature of these items resonated with people. From 2020 through 2022, sales of crocheted items increased by 75%. Major retailers like Target even started offering items like crochet sweaters to customers eager to jump on the trend. And at only $35, Target's crochet sweaters were very affordable. In fact, crochet enthusiasts were quick to point out that they were disconcertingly affordable. Though people who never researched or took part in the practice themselves were unlikely to be aware, machines can't crochet. There's no question that someday a machine will be built that is able to crochet properly, but that day is not today. As such, any time you see a store offering a mass produced crochet product, that product can only have been manufactured through the use of slave labour. That, or it's actually knit rather than crocheted, though this was not the case with Target's 2022 sweater offerings.

<!-- aeo:section end="mass-produced-crochet" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="locked-in-syndrome" -->
## Locked-in Syndrome

Traumatic brain injuries are never a good thing, and there are a lot of negative outcomes that can result. One possibility is for a person to fall into a coma, a state in which they are both asleep and unaware of what's going on around them. Another is a persistent vegetative state, in which a person has woken up from a coma but still lacks awareness. They may occasionally open their eyes and demonstrate a sleep cycle, but they have no conscious understanding of what's going on. But there's another option that's far more terrifying, known as locked-in syndrome. This occurs when the lower brain and brainstem are damaged, resulting in almost total paralysis. A person with locked-in syndrome will have no voluntary muscle control, except for the ability to blink and move their eyes. They are prisoners in their own bodies, unable to speak and only able to communicate through eye movement. And that's only if anyone even realizes that they're awake. If a person wakes up from a coma to discover themselves in this locked-in state, it can take months for anyone to notice that they're awake. Unfortunately, there is no treatment and no cure. Patients who suffer from locked-in syndrome can continue to live in that state for extended periods of time, but it is extraordinarily rare to ever recover.

<!-- aeo:section end="locked-in-syndrome" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="enter-sandman" -->
## Enter Sandman

Somnambulism, better known as sleepwalking, is relatively common among children, though most people grow out of it. Studies estimate that up to 29% of children ages 2 through 13 will sleepwalk at least once, but only 4% of adults sleepwalk. On the surface it seems harmless enough, or at least mostly harmless. Most somnambulists will occasionally suffer minor injuries like cuts or bruises, but serious injuries and death from things like falling down the stairs are incredibly rare. For the most part, the sleeping person will just get out of bed and walk around a bit. However, there are other, more complex activities that can take place. The most common of these is sleep eating, in which a person will eat and drink while in their sleepwalking state. This can involve eating normal food or strange combinations of food, but either way they will have no recollection of doing so. But it gets much worse than just eating. There is also sexsomnia, in which the sleeping person engages in sexual acts with themselves or another person. When another person is involved, consent might not be. And of course, there is homicidal somnambulism, which is exactly what it sounds like. Though these parasomnias are extremely rare, sleepwalking has been successfully used as a defense for both murder and sexual assault in the last decade, and the number of cases in which it is being used as a defense has been increasing.

<!-- aeo:section end="enter-sandman" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="misinformation-is-nearly-impossible-to-avoid" -->
## Misinformation Is Nearly Impossible to Avoid

The nature of the internet and the instantaneous spread of information have resulted in journalism that rewards outlets for being the first to publish instead of for having accurate information. How damaging the effects of this are range greatly depending on the type of material that you're reading, but there is no corner of the internet that isn't overwhelmed with incorrect data that has been reported as fact more times than it's been corrected. For example, if you're a fan of cursed and uncomfortable facts who consumes lots of information like what has appeared in this article, there may be a number of terrifying lies that you have seen reported as facts frequently. There are claims that the average person eats a credit cards worth of microplastics each day, that over 250,000 deaths each year are caused by medical errors, that 2,500 left-handed people die each year using products intended for right-handed people, that the weight of a mattress doubles in the first 10 years of use from dust mites and dust mite droppings, or that 15% of the air in subways is human skin cells. Those would be some disturbing facts if they were true, but the good news is that they aren't. Unfortunately, because they are so eye-catching, you will find far more sources repeating all of those statements than there are ones trying to debunk them.

<!-- aeo:section end="misinformation-is-nearly-impossible-to-avoid" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-most-dangerous-animal-in-the-world" -->
## The Most Dangerous Animal in the World

For our final entry today, we'll leave you with something a little more lighthearted than the rest of the episode. Probably, anyway; there's always the chance it will fill you with the same sort of existential dread as when it was first unveiled to the public. In 1963, the Bronx Zoo in New York unveiled a startling new exhibit titled "The Most Dangerous Animal in the World". That title was printed atop a cage inside the Great Ape House, but behind the cage's bars stood only a mirror. The text beneath the cage read, "You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. It alone of all the animals that ever lived can exterminate (and has) entire species of animals. Now it has the power to wipe out all life on earth." In 1968, the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago created a similar exhibit. While this clever and subversive exhibit from the zoo is a fun piece of trivia, it's worth noting that, in the over 60 years since the Bronx Zoo opened their controversial new exhibit to the public, humanity hasn't learned a Goddamn thing.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-most-dangerous-animal-in-the-world" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Acetaminophen, a common painkiller, has a narrow margin between therapeutic and toxic doses.
- Figs are technically inflorescences, and some may contain wasp eggs or remnants.
- Cheese contains casomorphins, which can trigger dopamine release and potential addiction.
- The strong smell of chlorinated pools is actually from chloramines, formed by chlorine and urine.
- Eyelash mites are arachnids that live on human eyelashes and can cause infections if overpopulated.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is the potential risk associated with acetaminophen?

Acetaminophen has the potential to cause serious liver damage, especially when combined with alcohol. The margin between the typical therapeutic dose and the toxic dose is small, and concerns about its safety have been discussed for over 50 years.

### How are figs pollinated?

Figs are pollinated by specialized female wasps that crawl through a tiny opening in the fig, losing their wings and antennae in the process. The wasp then pollinates the flowers and lays its eggs inside the fig, eventually dying and being broken down for nutrients.

### What is the addictive component in cheese?

Cheese contains a protein called casein, which the body breaks down into peptides called casomorphins. These casomorphins act as 'food-derived opioids' and latch onto the body's opioid receptors, providing similar effects to other opioids like heroin and morphine.

### What causes the distinctive smell of chlorinated pools?

The distinctive smell of chlorinated pools is not caused by chlorine itself, but by chloramines. Chloramines are created when chlorine reacts with ammonia, which comes from sweat, body oils, and urine from people in the pool.

### What are eyelash mites and are they harmful?

Eyelash mites, known as demodex mites, are eight-legged parasites that live on your eyelashes. They are mostly beneficial and feed on dead skin cells and oils. However, if their population grows too much, it can cause an infection of the eye known as demodicosis.

### Can adults develop new allergies?

Yes, adults can develop new allergies at any age, including extremely deadly ones. Common allergies for adults to develop include medications, insect venom, and latex.

### What is the risk of antibiotic resistance?

Antibiotic resistance is a significant threat, with nearly 5 million people dying annually from antibiotic-resistant infections. By 2050, this number is expected to double. Experts warn that new antibiotics are not being developed fast enough to combat this problem.

### Why is it recommended to spay or neuter female ferrets?

Female ferrets go into heat in early spring and remain in that state until they become pregnant or the breeding season ends. High levels of estrogen can lead to bone marrow suppression and aplastic anemia, which is extremely painful and deadly. Spaying prevents this condition.

### What is the breeding behavior of male antechinus?

Male antechinus engage in 'suicidal reproduction,' mating repeatedly with every female they can find during a one to three-week breeding season. This behavior results in high levels of cortisol, leading to systemic organ failure and death.

### What is the unusual characteristic of male proboscis monkeys?

Male proboscis monkeys have a perpetual erection, which is a unique characteristic among primates. The reason for this is not fully understood, but it does not seem to be related to attracting mates.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Side Projects video: 50 Facts You Probably Didn't Want to Know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyY0Z_U09mk)

<!-- aeo:section end="sources" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="related-coverage" -->
## Related Coverage
<!-- aeo:section end="related-coverage" -->