The aye-aye isn’t a particularly adorable creature, but it is the largest nocturnal animal on Earth. It spends its entire life in the trees, but the aye-aye is also an animal unfairly labeled as a “demon primate” by some Madagascar locals.
What makes aye-ayes so creepy?
Aye-ayes were originally thought to be rodents because of their pointy snouts and rat-like front teeth. However, they’re actually a type of lemur.
These primates live exclusively in Madagascar, but locals tend not to be fans. Not only do the small creatures look a bit spooky, they have one long, witch-like middle finger that they use to tap into trees to look for food.
According to CGNT News (cited below): “The reason why this small animal, the size of a cat, is a “demon animal” to the locals might be because of its appearance. Its round yellow eyes in the dark along with its bony long fingers tapping on tree branches continuously resembles a cat that might have been bitten by a vampire.”
That’s certainly one way to put it! And it explains why people don’t always treat the animals kindly when they run across them. It’s believed that when an aye-aye points its middle finger at you, you’re marked for death. This leads some people to try and kill them on sight.
Why is the animal called an aye-aye?
The aye-aye’s name is also something of a mystery. CGNT posits that “One explanation of aye-aye’s name is that it derives from the Malagasy phrase ‘heh-heh,’ which means ‘I don’t know.’ If this is true, it could be that Malagasy people used ‘heh heh’ to avoid saying the name of a feared, magical animal.”
“Evil” and endangered
Because aye-ayes are considered “demons,” they’ve suffered from killings as well as the deforestation that affects other animals in Madagascar. Now, they’re an endangered species.
Of course, they’re a bit of a hard sell to help save because they’re not so cute and cuddly.
We’ve all seen orcas (aka Orcinus orca and “killer whales”) in photos, theme parks, or films (Free Willy, for example). They’re big, they’re black and white, and they are generally represented as friendly to humans (despite their name). And, to be fair, despite recent orca attacks, the vast majority of orcas have long been friendly – or at least tolerant – towards humans.
What’s up with the orca attacks?
Two summers ago, in 2020, a group of orcas off the coast of Portugal got agitated and started attacking boats. We don’t know why; we just know that it scared a lot of people to have a humungous animal try to nip at the bottom of their boats to the point of nearly sinking them.
Unfortunately, we can’t get the whales’ side of the story.
But we do know that behavior continued and that boaters of the coasts of both Spain and Portugal have continued to have their boats attacked from below by groups of orcas. And it’s gotten so common and so dangerous that some leisure boaters (the tourists, for the most part) are being asked not to go out into the waters for their own good.
The warnings are generally directed at nighttime boaters, who might sorely want to see the beautiful lights of Porto from the sea on a whimsical sailboat, but who would be putting themselves and rescuers in danger if they needed to be saved from capsizing when it’s dark.
Ok, but they are called “killer whales,” right?
Of course, there’s lots of speculation about why the whales are behaving this way, but most of it is just guessing, which isn’t very helpful (because most of it is uninformed and comes from people who don’t know much about the creatures’ behavior).
Some want to blame humans’ disrespect for the sea. And while you might want to make that case and even have some cold-hard facts to back it up, the whales aren’t down there reading our climate and pollution reports (thankfully). And they have no opinion on yachts or rich people who can afford to go to Portugal and rent a sailboat.
And despite the name “killer whales,” they have no real history of hurting humans (in other words, they don’t eat us). The nickname comes from sailors long ago who saw them preying on other whales and even sharks. After all, they’re pretty enormous (weighing in sometimes at 6 tons – or over 12,000 pounds), and they need big meals.
So-called “killer whales” are apex predators. In other words, nothing preys on them – they’re at the top (or apex) of the food chain. They do kill, they just aren’t known for killing humans.
So, what’s the deal?
In one case, investigators found that two of the orca attacks were “perpetrated” by whales that were injured. Whether or not they were injured by boats and seeking to defend themselves is unclear. It could be the case that they were looking to eradicate what they thought was the source of their pain.
But it doesn’t seem like every orca that has attacked a boat is injured.
In some cases, the whales are also young. So it may be that they have a different and more destructive notion of “play time.”
Whatever the issue is, marine biologists agree that there’s nothing premeditated about the attacks. But they are happening and whatever is going on out there (which is under investigation by professionals), it’s much wiser to cancel the pleasure cruises for now and give them a chance to calm down.
Taking preventative measures is a lot smarter than risking getting rammed by a whale (of any kind). – WTF fun facts
You have to be of a certain age to remember Steve Martin’s LAND SHARK! But when we think of walking sharks, this is where our mind goes. Anything else is simply too terrifying.
Of course, you don’t have to worry about a shark walking down the street. They walk underwater. For now…
Are there really walking sharks?
So, yes, there is a shark that can “walk.” But it’s rare, it’s small, and it’s not out to get you. Sorry to ruin the surprise so early in the explanation.
You may have seen the shark on social media since some guy saw one on a trip somewhere in Indonesia, hadn’t watched enough Shark Week, and then posted a video insisting he discovered a new type of shark. Of course, once marine biologists saw the footage they all said “Yeah, duh, that’s so 2006.” They’ve known about these sharks for a while, discovering them in 2006 in the Bird’s Head Seascape of West Papua, Indonesia.
Conservation International’s Mark Erdmann and his team currently study the walking sharks and their evolutionary origin. (Remember, if humans originated in the wet slime and eventually learned to walk on land, seeing a shark evolve to do the same is extra interesting!). And it turns out there are about 9 species of little sharks that can use their fins to both walk and swim.
So, what’s the real deal with these walking sharks?
According to Conservation News (cited below), these bottom-dwelling sharks “walk” using pectoral and pelvic fins. This allows them to traipse around coral reefs and stick their heads under rocks to look for more food.
Another cool fact about the sharks is that shark geneticists (which is definitely not a job we ever heard about during Career Day) have used genetic samples from shark fins to look at the genomes of these sharks, comparing them to older species to see when each branched off into a new species. In case you didn’t know, sharks are actually older than dinosaurs by about 200 million years. But according to these genetic analyses, walking sharks are only about 9 million years old.
If you’re still more freaked out than fascinated, just not that all 9 species “are found exclusively in a ring around Northern Australia, New Guinea and the satellite islands of Raja Ampat, Aru, and Halmahera in Indonesia.”
If you want to see the walking shark in all its glory, check out the video below:
Well, it may not be a big difference, but it is one worth mentioning. It turns out cows with names produce more milk. But they need more than a name – they also like a little one-on-one attention.
Researching cows with names
According to LiveScience (cited below), a UK study of 516 dairy cows conducted by researchers Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University found that “on farms where each cow was called by her name the overall milk yield was higher than on farms where the cattle were herded as a group.” But it was just 3.4% higher.
We don’t really know how cows feel about their names, but it’s the personal touch that seems to do the trick.
Happy cows
LiveScience quotes one of the researchers (Douglas) as saying: “Just as people respond better to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one-to-one attention. By placing more importance on the individual, such as calling a cow by her name or interacting with the animal more as it grows up, we can not only improve the animal’s welfare and her perception of humans, but also increase milk production.”
Frankly, we think that makes perfect sense. Animals seem to know when their well-being is a priority. And it may even be the case that the farmers who name their cows tend to spend more time caring for them or even value them more (though the study didn’t explore that).
Other things to know about the study include:
46% of farmers in the study called their cows by name.
66% said they “knew all the cows in the herd.”
48% said they believed human contact was more likely to produce cows with a “good milking temperament.”
Fewer than 10% of farmers felt that cows who fear humans had poor milking temperaments.
We never really thought about tickling a rat, but apparently, it makes them pretty happy. And other than primates, they’re the only other creatures that seem to be able to be tickled.
Rat tickling
Some people hate to be tickled but rats seem to enjoy it to some extent.
According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), the little creatures “…break down in supersonic ‘giggles’ and ‘joy jumps’ when you gently ruffle their fur—but only if they’re in the mood.”
Now, you probably want to know how we know this. Here’s how:
“For a new study published today in the journal Science, a group of German scientists had the pleasure of tickling some rats to find out that—like humans—these rodents’ responses to tickles are mood-dependent. Stressful situations stifled the rats’ otherwise impulsive laughter, while a more relaxed atmosphere made for uninhibited giggles. The new research, led by animal physiologist Shimpei Ishiyama at Humboldt University in Berlin, offers a new insight into where exactly in the brain this ticklish laughter appears to come from.”
If rats are ticklish, why don’t we hear them laugh?
It turns out that few of us will ever get the pleasure of hearing a rat laugh.
Smithsonian notes that “Tickled rats emit high-pitched chirping and squeaking sounds, which are only audible through a special microphone. Researchers were able to observe this laughter by using the microphones, as well as by measuring behavior and neuron activity of rats that they tickled and gently touched in various regions of the body, including the back and belly.”
It sounds like you’re going to need some specialized equipment.
And if you’re wondering where to tickle a rat in order to make it happy – the answer is the belly. – WTF fun facts
Apparently, thousands of people look up “how to lobsters communicate” – and we’re guessing it’s because they’ve heard the truth and it’s hard to believe.
When we heard that lobsters communicate with their bladders and that they can make things known to other lobsters by urinating at them, we thought it was a grossly creative form of expression. But it gets even better.
While it might not be the most exact description of what’s happening, no less an institution than the New England Aquarium has informed lobster learners that the creatures actually “pee out of their faces.”
Say what?
Ok, so let’s break this down a bit. First of all, lobsters use scent to communicate (as do humans, to be fair). You’ve heard of pheromones, right? The scented hormone we secrete?
Because this factoid ran rampant around the internet with such gusto, Snopes to it upon themselves to get the details (gotta love those professional fact-checkers!). They describe the scented face-peeing this way:
“Found within a lobster’s pee are a fair number of pheromones, which they disperse through their nephropore rosette glands. The bladder of a lobster is located under its brain, and the rosette glands are connected to the urinary tract.”
Ok, so the key here seems to be the anatomy – the bladder is right under their brain. There’s only so much room in a lobster, and those of us who have eaten them should probably be grateful that we don’t have to pick their bladders out of their tails.
As for the urine stream comes out of their face, Snopes explains further:
“Once these pheromones are produced, they are introduced into the urine stream. In the case of the American lobster, scientific name Homarus americanus, this pheromone-rich pee is released from nephropores at the base of the lobster’s large antennae and then injected into its gill current. According to the NEAQ, it has been determined that this urine stream can reach a length of seven times the lobster’s body.”
Wait, so how do lobsters communicate this way?
You probably still have some questions. Like, what’s a gill current? Well, according to The American Lobster:
“Water passes up through openings between the lobster’s legs, over the gills, and up towards the head. Every few minutes this current of water is reversed the other way so that debris can be flushed out of the chambers. An important part of this “gill current” is that when it is flowing forward towards the head, it can project urine forward. It is thought that the urine of the lobster contains important information about the sex of the lobster and its physiological state.”
Now that we know how lobsters pee out of their faces, we still need to know how and why it works this way. So, back to Snopes (which is cited below and which also has further reading at the bottom of the page for all your legit lobster urine research needs).
When male lobsters want to attract a mate, the females tend to come to him. But he needs to be in a defensive position. As Snopes says: “Their claws are located at the front, which enables the lobster to back into a shelter and face outward toward the entrance, setting up a first line of defense — and attracting a mate.”
Territorial lobster communication
Snopes also cites the conservation organization Oceana, which reports that a male lobster tends to dominate one piece of territory and females wait outside the den to mate with him. To let him know they’re out there, they pee in his direction out of the nozzles on their face.
Hey, who are we to judge?
Of course, the urine contains the pheromones that signal she’s ready to reproduce. So – and here’s another fun fact – she takes off her exoskeleton (basically stripping naked) once she gets into his den to mate. We are seriously not making this up.
Other lobster communication-by-urine tactics
Ok, so there’s one mating ritual out of the way. But females aren’t the only ones who urinate out of their faces to send a message. When males fight, the winner will do the same to signal to any nearby females that he’s the winner and ready to pass on his superior genes to any females nearby. “It’s thought that the winner of a match will also contain more serotonin and happy hormones, making him even more attractive to a would-be match.”
Snopes caps us off with yet another fun fact:
“How does a female return the favor? By peeing in his face, of course. Pheromones released in a female’s urine are thought to reduce the aggression of an embattled male and he’ll often allow the female to enter his burrow, where she might stay for up to two weeks. While the two shack up, the cohabitating female will also be urinating to ward off other ladies in the area — until it’s their turn.”
We often use “lemming” as an insult towards people who seem to just go with the flow, even if that means following everyone off the edge of a cliff. It comes from the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide in some unthinking way.
And that’s a load of bunk.
Why do we think lemmings jump off cliffs?
There are a lot of weird myths about lemmings (such as the myth that they explode when angry). But the most popular myth is the one that lemmings will follow each other off the side of a cliff.
And we tend to believe this because it comes with the explanation that people have seen piles of dead lemming bodies.
But it’s just not true.
The lemming legend
According to Britannica (and science, in general): “…one myth that has held on tenaciously: Every few years, herds of lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off seaside cliffs. Instinct, it is said, drives them to kill themselves whenever their population becomes unsustainably large.”
Why we believe, Part 1 – The behavior of some lemmings
Ok, so lemmings do not have any suicidal behavior, They do not follow each other off cliffs or commit any other act of mass suicide. But it may be the case that the myth originates with a few dead lemmings.
The creatures often have population booms. This is bad because too many lemmings in one place means there’s less food and other resources for everyone. As a result, lemmings tend to separate, with a large group heading off to find a better environment.
Of course, they don’t always make it. And while they can swim, crossing bodies of water can be deadly for any group of animals. Seeing some dead lemmings in the water (just because a handful out of hundreds drown) may have led people to believe in the suicide myth.
Why we believe, Part 2
We know a lot about animal behavior, so that raises the question: why do we still believe this even though we could easily look it up and find out it’s not true?
Well, that’s because we find it too believable to question. Or, as Britannica notes: “…it provides an irresistible metaphor for human behavior. Someone who blindly follows a crowd—maybe even toward catastrophe—is called a lemming. Over the past century, the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture.”
In other words, we want to believe. It’s too good of an insult to pass up.
Why we believe, Part 3 – The lemming lie
Let’s give ourselves some credit here though. If this myth hadn’t been repeated as fact so many times in so many places, more of us may have questioned it. It’s not a great excuse, but there is some truth to it.
And, apparently, the big lie about lemmings comes from a Disney nature film.
The worst part is that a giant lemming suicide was staged in order to provide fodder for the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, when “filmmakers eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras were rolling.”
This fraud led thousands of people who saw the film to say they had seen such a moment in what they thought was a documentary. But it was all a lie. – WTF fun facts
Source: “Do Lemmings Really Commit Mass Suicide?” — Britannica
Jonathan the tortoise is the oldest known land animal. And in order to fact-check that (since we feel like it would be an easy claim for people to make without much proof), we turned to Snopes.
An 1886 photo of Jonathan the Tortoise
The rumors about a 100+-year-old tortoise actually started in early 2022 when a website called MajesticAnimals.net posted a photo from what they said was the early 1900s claiming to show a tortoise named Jonathan who is still alive.
The photo was credited to the director of an NGO on Saint Helena Island where old tortoises are known to live.
Says Snopes: “Jonathan has been misidentified in viral photographs before. We have reached out to the government of Saint Helena Island, where the tortoise lives, to confirm the authenticity of the image.”
The image is real – but the site got one thing wrong. It’s actually OLDER than they claimed, and therefore so is Jonathan!
Jonathan is pushing 200!
One of the photos is from 1886! And Jonathan is already full grown. He’s been on Saint Helena for a very long time, and his age is estimated to be somewhere around 190 years old!
As you might imagine, he’s quite a tourist attraction. So if you’re ever in the South Atlantic, off the coast of Namibia, you can visit Jonathan at the governor’s residence “where he gets hand-fed fruit and vegetables and ‘frolics’ with female tortoises, according to an AFP News Agency video profile, even though he has lost his sight due to cataracts.”
It’s doubtful Jonathan would still be alive without human intervention at this point since a blind tortoise wouldn’t fare well out in the wild.
And the latest rumor about Jonathan is that he is also gay and has a male lover. Apparently, he was partnered with a tortoise named Fredrica back in 1991, and when the caretakers wondered why they weren’t producing any offspring despite their frequent mating, they realized she was a he.
Want one more fun fact to top you off? Saint Helena is the island where Napoleon died after his exile. His body is now in Paris, but you can still visit his original grave after you go to see Jonathan. – WTF fun facts
We don’t exactly get the warm fuzzies from tarantulas, but we know there are some spider fans out there who think the leggy creatures get a bad rap. And we’re open to reconsidering some of our terror. Especially when we find out cool things about them – like the tarantula-pet frog connection.
Communalism and “pet” frogs
According to a University of Michigan press release, a “team of biologists has documented 15 rare and disturbing predator-prey interactions in the Amazon rainforest including keep-you-up-at-night images of a dinner plate-size tarantula dragging a young opossum across the forest floor.”
Ok. That’s not the endearing part. But they continue…
…”the researchers also report on lethal parasite infections in lowland Amazonian frogs and commensal relationships between spiders and frogs. A commensal relationship is one in which one organism benefits and the other is not harmed.”
So, it turns out the circle of life takes a little side trip when it comes to these tiny frogs.
Now, other research shows that tarantulas tend to form communal relationships with frogs that just downright taste bad to them, so they could be why they don’t eat them. But one also has to wonder why they even let them hang around.
Does the tarantula keep frogs as pets or housekeepers?
The nature website Roaring Earth (cited below) gives us some more insight into the frogs:
“Measuring hardly more than half an inch in length, microhylids might seem like a pretty insignificant family of frogs. But they’ve crossed onto scientific radars in a big way. Many of these tiny, narrow-mouthed frogs have been observed in Sri Lanka, Peru, and India living in close proximity to tarantulas.”
Now, when species have commensal symbiosis, that means one creature doesn’t get anything out of the interaction. But it’s possible that this relationship could be described as mutualism instead. In that case, both species would benefit.
And how do the spiders get anything out of this (besides a cute, slimy pet?). Well, some researchers have postulated that “the frogs may eat the small invertebrates attracted to the spider’s prey remains.” So frogs get a bodyguard while spiders get a housekeeper.
Tarantula – pet frogs, or tarantula – frog friendship?
Better yet, the small invertebrates that the tarantulas eat are the ones that may target a spider’s eggs. So, frankly, it seems like the spiders get more out of this than the frogs, but tarantulas probably have a hard time finding friends, so maybe it does all even out in the end!
What do you think about the tarantula-pet frog theory? – WTF fun facts
