Whether you’re traveling or hosting family, the holiday season can be stressful. Even on the best years, when post-election agita isn’t at an all-time high, seeing that many friendly faces all at once can take it out of you. The next time Uncle So-and-so brings up politics, just hit him with one of these conversation-starting tidbits.
1. Female Turkeys can fertilize their own egg
Female turkeys can produce a fertilized egg without the help of a male turkey. Known as parthenogenesis, it’s a form of asexual reproduction frequently observed in insects, crustaceans, and mollusks – but it’s incredibly rare to find in vertebrates. The offspring are always male, and are indistinguishable from the turkey toms born the ol’ fashioned way.
2. Lobsters are NOT biologically immortal
The myth that lobsters are immortal has been circulating the web, but it’s far from truth. Lobsters can live an estimated 100 years, but the oldest recorded was a nearly 80-year-old female. The crustaceans molt every time they increase in size, but the shedding of shells doesn’t equate to immortality. Scientists estimate that 15% of lobsters meet their end during the energy-intensive process, finding themselves too exhausted to carry on.
3. Dolphins don’t hold the record for Mammalian breath holding
Our seafaring mammal cousins might call the ocean home, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best at holding their breath. Instead, it’s the sloth who claims Poseidon’s crown. Because the sloth has one of nature’s slowest heart rates, the Amazonian beastie can hold its breath for 40 minutes! Dolphins, on the other fin, have a maximum of 15.
4. Space is a natural adhesive for metal
In the vacuum of space, metals can fuse without adhesive – but only to an extent. They have to be similar in composition, and cold welding works best if both have surfaces have a flat edge. In space, there is no air to form a barrier between the atoms so they can share electrons and fuse permanently! Astronauts use rubber-coated tools to prevent anything from sticking to their much-needed devices, though theoretically, the oxidized layer of Earth-made tools would keep them from fusing to the things around them.
5. It’s incredibly hard to shuffle a 52-card deck the same way twice
Cards have a factorial of 52, which means taking 51 and multiplying it by every number below it to get the number of possible combinations. The answer is a mind-boggling unvigintillion! That’s 8×10^ 66, which comes out to 8 with 67 zeros following behind. That means that there is a real possibility that when grandma shuffled for Rummy, it was a shuffle never seen before, and one that will never be seen again.
6. Cheetahs aren’t big cats, they’re just very large small cats
Big cats, or Pantherinae, have evolved a floating hyoid bone and a special larynx that allows them to let loose those spine-tingling roars. Cheetahs, on the other hand, can’t roar. Instead, they chirp and purr like a house cat! They aren’t the only ones shut out of the Big Cat Club. Their closest feline cousin, the cougar (or mountain lion), is right beside them in the lonely sub-family Felinae. The Snow Leopard, believed to be the link between big and small cats, is shut out of both.
7. Trees aren’t the oldest from of life on the planet
That honor goes to sharks. Sharks have been an apex predator since before trees even existed. They’ve been around for 450 million years. Trees only appeared around 385 million years ago. The critters are even older than the rings of Saturn, which only formed around 100 million years ago!
8. The fax machine is really old
Alexander Bain patented the fax machine in 1843. That same year the first large caravan, composed of about 1000 settlers, left Missouri to pound the Oregon Trail. One in 10 settlers perished on the journey, but at least they had an easy way to tell their loved ones back East they made it safely.
9. The difference between a million and a billion is actually crazy
A million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is 31. 5 years. Here’s another way to think about it: for every dollar a millionaire has, a billionaire has 1,000. If you were to lay a billion dollars end to end, the 96,900-mile line would wrap around the world nearly four times.
10. The Scottish Highlands and the Appalachian mountains used to touch
Before central Pangea broke apart, the Scottish Highlands, the North American Appalachian and Ouachita Mountains, and the Little Atlas of Morocco were all one mountain range. The supposedly haunted rock formations found in these mountains are older than trees (but not older than sharks).
11. Man’s best friend is incredibly deadly
People may fear shark attacks, but the aquatic creature is one of the least likely animals to hurt a human – domesticated dogs are far more lethal. The loveable household pets kill an estimated 100,000 people per year.
12. Humans can’t feel wetness
Humans can’t detect wetness independently. While our skin can sense temperature and pain, we don’t have a sensor for wet. Instead, our brains use a host of other senses to deduce wetness through a combination of temperature and context clues.
13. You’re more bacteria than human
It’s nearly impossible to accurately assess how many cells a human has due to our wild variations in size, but one study revealed that males between 20 and 30 years of age are more bacteria than man. Bacteria cells overwhelmed the “human microbiome” in the adult body, which on average consists of around 30 trillion human cells to 38 trillion bacteria cells.
14. Space is closer than you think
The edge of space, called the Kármán Line, rests around 62 miles (100 Km) above our heads. If we didn’t have all this pesky gravity and air resistance, it would only take around an hour to drive to the edge.
15.The world gets less beautiful as you age
Color isn’t a physical attribute, instead, it’s the color of light reflected off an object that gives it the beautiful trait. As we age, our eyes loose the ability to see and distinguish colors, and many of us suffer from a yellowing of our eye lenses. It dampens colors, prevents us from differentiating yellow from green or blue from purple, and makes most colors look faded.
17. Squirrels are omnivores
Those adorable acorn-eating rodents aren’t as sweet as they look. The little guys eat anything they can get their hands on, and have even been known to hunt injured birds or crunch down on unattended eggs for some minerals and vitamins.
18. Jupiter is Earth’s protective big sibling
Scientists believe that Jupiter has been absorbing or deflecting space junk away from our solar system since the beginning. The gas giant is 11 times the diameter of Earth, and gets hit by meteors 2000 times more frequently than our little planet. It’s a double edged sword, however, as Jupiter’s incredible size might mean its gravitational pull is sucking more debris our way.
19. There is a frequency that causes fear
Just below a human’s audible perception of 20 Hz, there is an infrasound that causes us to feel dread. At 19 Hz, humans feel the hair on their neck stand on end, get cold sweats, and even hallucinate — though they can’t hear the sound. The good news is that there is a frequency that helps us relax, too. 432 Hz, which is close to the natural human frequency, can help relax listeners and dispel anxiety.
20. The animal with the most teeth is smaller than your hand
Snails have more teeth than any other creature on Earth. The snail has a flexible, tooth-coated tongue-like ribbon called a radula instead of a jaw. The band goes all the way down its throat and shreds its food into tiny pieces. The Common Garden Snail has an average of 14,000 teeth, but some species can have up to 20,000! Not only that, but the aquatic Limpet Snail has the strongest teeth of any animal on Earth.
Published: Nov 25, 2024 05:13 pm