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WTF Fun Fact 12718 – Crickets Can Tell You The Temperature

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Let’s get one thing out of the way up front. While we call the method of measuring temperature using cricket chirps “Dolbear’s law,” the idea was first laid out in 1881 by Margarette W. Brooks. Her report “Influence of temperature on the chirp of the cricket” was published in Popular Science Monthly, it just wasn’t noticed until after Amos Dolbear published an 1897 article called “The Cricket as a Thermometer” 16 years later.

Regardless, it’s known as Dolber’s law, and it states that there is a connection between the air temperature and the rate at which crickets chirp. And it’s accurate for the field cricket within about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

It’s kind of like counting the seconds between lightning strikes and thunder, except way more inconvenient.

However, it is true that crickets chirp more speedily as the weather warms up. Dolbear realized this because crickets chirp consistently – that makes it possible to use the numbers in an equation.

In the original paper, Dolbear said you can get the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit based on the times a cricket chirps in 1 minute – but you have to do some more math.

T_{F}=50+\left({\frac {N_{{60}}-40}{4}}\right).
In other words, T = 50+[(N-40)/4]
T = temperature
N = number of chirps per minute

If you want a shortcut for Celcius, you can use the number of chirps in 8 seconds and add 5.

Of course, there are many types of crickets, and Dolbear realized they each had a different rate of chirping. So he created new equations for other species. The problem for us is that we have to know which type of cricket we’re dealing with.

In fact, the common field cricket really isn’t the best cricket to use since its age, and whether it’s mating season can also affect the speed at which they chirp (so they’re not entirely consistent). But they’re probably good enough for a quick experiment. –WTF fun facts

Source: “How to Use Crickets to Calculate Temperature” — Thought Co.

WTF Fun Fact 12713 – da Vinci’s “Helicopter”

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It’s hard to put into words the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. You have to look beyond his paintings and into his notebooks to see just how masterfully his brain worked. It’s like he understood the secrets of nature in a way no one else could (either then or now).

For example, in the 1480s, he was already imagining ways to create flying machines. And some might call his “aerial screw” the forerunner of the helicopter. That’s an innovation that it took us 400 more years to actually create!

(It’s only fair to mention that de Vinci’s drawing is not the first-ever of a helicopter-type vehicle. In 400 BCE, Chinese Taoist scholar Ge Hong described a “vertical flying machine” made of bamboo in the Baopuzi, though he was referring to a spinning toy. And since Chinese manuscripts made their way to Europe during the Renaissance, da Vinci was possibly influenced by this. It certainly influenced future helicopter inventors.)

Today, we even call the Renaissance artist’s invention “da Vinci’s helicopter” these days, and he wrote an entire treatise on flight. Just look at a page to see what he was capable of:

From: https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/codex/codex.cfm#page-20-21

In the modern world, companies still bicker over who invented the first real helicopter, so it’s just more fun to give credit to da Vinci.

Of course, the aerial screw isn’t the same helicopter we have today. It’s not like he built a gas engine or anything, but he did conceive of a blade that would lift a vehicle vertically off the ground. His blades were not flat but shaped like a screw or helix.

As physicist Tom Hartsfield described in Big Think:

“What da Vinci lacked was the modern materials necessary to construct a lightweight and durable blade. He described the helical screw as being made of linen, with the pores stopped up by starch.

He also lacked the continuous motive power for such a machine. Men turning cranks could never dream of flying: they are far too heavy and too weak to produce enough power to lift themselves…Cognizant of this limitation, da Vinci envisioned aspring, wound by the crank turners, building up and storing energy. That built-up energy could be released in a quick unwinding burst, spinning the screw rotor. But as far as we know, such a device was never built.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “15th-century futurism: Leonardo da Vinci’s famous helicopter design finally takes flight” — Big Think

WTF Fun Fact 12709 – The Josh Fight

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It all started with a guy named Josh Swain who found a bunch of other Josh Swains on social media. Then it grew to encompass all Joshes. Now, anyone with a pool noodle and a good sense of humor can show up.

It’s The Josh Fight.

The Josh Fight is a now-annual event held in Lincoln, Nebraska (since that’s where the coordinates that the first Josh randomly picked out led people). The whole city is now in on the fun and the second annual The Josh Fight in 2022 had food trucks, games, and the traditional pool noodle fight. (Only soft, flexible pool noodles are allowed.)

Instead of getting out of hand in a bad way, the Joshes of the world really stepped up, crowning 5-year-old Josh Vinson Jr. as the Ultimate Josh. He returned to successfully defend his title.

According to Complex: “The event isn’t just for fun. With the pool noodle fight, the group raised almost $21K for Omaha’s Children’s Hospital and Medical Center. Some of those funds will be given to the Joshua Collinsworth Memorial Foundation. The Josh Cellars wine label also said it will match the same funds.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Hundreds of People Named Josh Once Again Gathered in Nebraska for Pool Noodle Fight to Select the No. 1 Josh” — Complex

WTF Fun Facts 12706 – Oxygen From The Ocean

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It’s easy to think all our oxygen comes from trees on land – and a LOT of it does (especially rainforests, which there are lots of, and which need protection). But, in fact, most of it comes from the oceans.

That’s a bit harder to believe, but that doesn’t make it less true.

Plankton, specifically phytoplankton, produce most of the Earth’s oxygen. It also serves as food for sea creatures, but they don’t do much else that makes them interesting to most people. They just float around, completely at the mercy of the currents. They’re green and cruddy and you might even look at them and think “eww.”

And that’s fine since they also can’t be offended.

Here’s the deal: even though oceanic phytoplankton isn’t nearly as pretty as trees, it does similar work for us. These little organisms mostly float along the surface of the water or the upper part of the ocean where light still penetrates. They require sunlight to live and grow and produce food for other ocean creatures. They contain chlorophyll to capture the sunlight. If you remember back to grade school science, you probably see where this is going – photosynthesis.

Our oceanic phytoplankton turns the energy from sunlight, as well as carbon dioxide, and mineral salts partly into oxygen. There’s a lot of other stuff going on there too (other byproducts of photosynthesis, like the sugar they feed on), but oxygen is the byproduct we care about at the moment since we need it to breathe.

The cool thing is that even if you don’t live anywhere near an ocean, you still get the benefits because of the way the planet works. Oxygen is great because it just fills the atmosphere and doesn’t need to be shipped via trucks and planes to far-off destinations.

Scientists estimate that 50-80% of the oxygen production that takes place on Earth comes from the ocean. That’s a big range, but even if you go with the more conservative number, it’s clear that we can’t live without them. However, a lot of that oxygen also goes back into the ocean for other ocean life that needs it.

Don’t get us wrong, we love rainforests and regular trees too. But phytoplankton is doing more work than other flora when it comes to keeping breathing creatures alive.

We can do things like track plankton and get some readings off them, but it’s hard to know exact numbers of what they’re producing at any given time. The amount of oxygen they give off can change with the time of day or the time of year. It can also change depending on how healthy the oceans are.

One problem is that things like dead and decaying plants and animals in the ocean also consume oxygen when they decompose. That’s just one reason why killing off aquatic life (such as coral reefs) can be bad for us.

But if you remember one thing, it should be that these tiny, single-celled creatures do a lot of work for us by not only producing oxygen but by absorbing some of the CO2 we emit.

Some people call them “the lungs of the sea.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “How much oxygen comes from the ocean?” — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

WTF Fun Fact 12697 – Sharks Are Older Than Trees

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Everything on Earth has evolved over millions of years to take its current form. So, in some sense, it can be hard to look back and make a firm division between a day when trees and sharks did and didn’t exist.

Still, there’s just really no comparison when you look at ever the more conservative numbers. Even if we go back to the species Archaeopteris, commonly considered the first species of “tree,” whose remains have been found in the Sahara desert, the now-extinct species “only” goes back 350 million years.

The numbers get kind of mind-blowing when you’re talking about evolution.

Sharks, on the other hand? Well, they go back 400 million years. And while that may seem like only a slight difference in number, 50 million years is A LOT of time (more than humans are really capable of conceiving).

We’re not sure which we would have guessed had come first – trees just seem older for some reason, but all evidence points to life starting in the oceans and not on the planet’s surface.

Sharks and trees aren’t something we compare very often, but both species have survived mass extinction events and hold secrets to the past that we can only dream of discovering.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Respect: Sharks are Older than Trees” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12693 – Fun Calendar Facts

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This year (2022), May began on a Sunday and June will begin on a Wednesday. That means no other months this year will begin on those days. In addition, May 31st is a Tuesday, meaning no other month will end on a Tuesday.

Sure, it’s a bit of a useless piece of trivia, but it’s a fun numbers game for those who like those sorts of puzzles.

Some international and national U.S. highlights to plan for this June include:
June 2: National Rocky Road Day and National Rotisserie Chicken Day
June 4: National Cheese Day
June 7: Chocolate Ice Cream Day
June 10: National Iced Tea Day
June 12: National Peanut Butter Cookie Day
June 15: Global Wind Day
June 18: International Sushi Day
June 21: Go Skateboarding Day
June 26: World Refrigeration Day

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Some facts about the month of June” — WYTV News

WTF Fun Fact 12685 – A Pristine Forest In A Sinkhole

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But there are 30 giant sinkholes throughout China, and explorers who rappelled down into one of them in May of 2022 discovered that nature was hiding something from us – a pristine, ancient forest. In fact, we know so little about this ecosystem that it would very well harbor wildlife we’re never seen before!

The sinkhole is 630 feet deep, 1,004 feet long, and 492 feet wide. Some of the trees inside the sinkhole are 130 feet tall!

While he was not involved in the expedition, George Veni, the executive director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI) in the U.S, told Live Science more about these features:

“The discovery is no surprise, Veni told Live Science, because southern China is home to karst topography, a landscape prone to dramatic sinkholes and otherworldly caves. Karst landscapes are formed primarily by the dissolution of bedrock, Veni said. Rainwater, which is slightly acidic, picks upcarbon dioxideas it runs through the soil, becoming more acidic. It then trickles, rushes and flows through cracks in the bedrock, slowly widening them into tunnels and voids. Over time, if a cave chamber gets large enough, the ceiling can gradually collapse, opening up huge sinkholes.”

He also said China was an ideal place to find sinkholes with something worthwhile inside: “So in China you have this incredibly visually spectacular karst with enormous sinkholes and giant cave entrances and so forth. In other parts of the world you walk out on the karst and you really don’t notice anything. Sinkholes might be quite subdued, only a meter or two in diameter. Cave entrances might be very small, so you have to squeeze your way into them.”

The sinkhole is located in a UNESCO world heritage location in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, near Ping’e village in the county of Leye.

While we don’t usually think of sinkholes as harboring anything special, this one surely did. These giant sinkholes are called a “tiankeng” in Mandarin, meaning “heavenly pit.” –WTF fun fact

Source: “Giant sinkhole with a forest inside found in China” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12684 – Pushed Into a Fortune

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Some people come into our lives and make them richer. Other people barrel through our lives just because they’re rude and we’re in their way. For LaQuedra Edwards, it only took one person to do both.

In April of 2022, the Southern California woman was buying her weekly lottery ticket at a grocery store in Tarzana when “some rude person” (as she described them) bumped into her and didn’t even stop to say excuse me. That ended up pushing her into the machine as she was about to hit the button for the ticket she wanted. Except her finger veered off course due to the surprise and landed on the button for a $30 scratch-off.

She had already bought some other tickets and went out to her car, unhappy with the overall investment. But as many lottery players know, sometimes those cards end up paying for themselves.

Ms. Edwards $30 scratch-off DID pay for itself – and then some! She scratched it off to find she had won the lotto’s biggest prize, a whopping $10 million!

“I didn’t really believe it at first, but I got on the 405 freeway and kept looking down at [the ticket], and I almost crashed my car,” she said in a statement to the California Lottery. “I pulled over, looked at it again and again, scanned it with my app, and I just kept thinking this can’t be right.”

The odds of winning $10 million in that particular scratch-off game were 1 in 3 million! And while there are plenty of rude people out there who just keep on barreling through the lives of other folks, we almost have to wonder if this wasn’t some sort of “guardian angel.” (Or at least a fairy godmother in a rush.) –  WTF fun fact

Source: “An accidental encounter with a ‘rude person’ made this woman $10 million richer” — Fortune

WTF Fun Fact 12683 – From New Hampshire to Norway

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Right before the pandemic closed schools, students at New Hampshire’s Rye Junior High School were working on a science project to launch a boat into the ocean with GPS attached to see where it would end up and what route it would take.

According to NPR: “Rye Junior High and the nonprofit Educational Passages — which says it aims to connect students around the world to the ocean and one another — started working together on the project in 2018, according to a release. The organization provided students with an assembly kit in 2020, though the construction and launch were complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.”

They thought it was lost when GPS stopped transmitting for a while, but eventually, it pinged again from a little uninhabited island off the coast of Norway. They just needed someone to retrieve it. Enter local sixth-grader, Karel Nuncic, who took a boat with his parents and puppy out to the island (which they could see from their coastal home) to recover the vessel. It wasn’t in great shape, but the hull containing artwork from the students who launched it was intact and dry.

In a Facebook post, the school said:

“RJH’s miniboat made it across the Atlantic! Our students put together a 5 foot drifter and had it launched into the middle of the Gulf Stream current on Oct. 25, 2020. Which way did it go? The onboard GPS recorded its location, most of the time. Then it went silent for a while. On Sunday, it pinged again and its location was on a small island off of Norway! Stayed tuned for more of the story! Here are the before and after photos of our miniboat and a map of its path. (Thanks to Educational Passages and The Clipper Foundation!)”

–  WTF fun fact

Source: “A Norwegian student found a boat launched by New Hampshire middle-schoolers in 2020” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12682 – France’s Water Cures

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Want a prescription to spend 3 weeks at a spa as part of your free healthcare? Become a French citizen! (Ok, that’s no easy task for most of us.)

The New Yorker just published an article that made us long for a doctor’s visit that ended in a “spa cure.” They say:

“Let’s say that you suffer from arthritis, arthritis, bronchitis, bursitis, colitis, diverticulitis, endometriosis, laryngitis, osteoporosis, rhinitis, sinusitis, tendonitis, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Raynaud’s disease, multiple sclerosis, angina, asthma, sciatica, kidney stones, sore throat, dizziness, spasms, migraines, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, back pain, earaches, vaginal dryness, menstrual cramps, itching, bloating, swelling, constipation, gout, obesity, gum disease, dry mouth, psoriasis, acne, eczema, frostbite, hives, rosacea, scarring, stretch marks, or varicose veins, or that you are depressed, trying to quit smoking, or simply dealing with a lot of stress. You also, crucially, live in France. You go see the doctor. She writes you a prescription for a thermal cure, indicating to which of the country’s hundred and thirteen accredited thermal spas you will be sent. Then you fill out a simple form and submit it, along with the prescription, to the national healthcare service. Your application is approved—it almost always is—and you’re off to take the waters.“

Ok, first of all, we have a hard enough time getting our medical care approved by our insurance company, we’d love to see their response to a thermal spa receipt for a sore throat. (Seriously, we mean that – we want it on camera.)

Yes, yes, the tax money. Of course. This is not an economic fun fact, because none of that discussion is fun. This is about notions of health and well-being – and you can call them kooky or brilliant, but it’s hard to deny that it’s also fascinating that these treatments – which date all the way back to the ancient world – are still practiced (and paid for) as part of mainstream(ish) medicine. Frankly, it dovetails nicely with much of what we know about the effects of stress and poor mental health on our physical health.

And wait, there’s more:

“The French government introduced “social thermalism” for the masses in 1947, proclaiming that “every man, whatever his social condition, has a right to a thermal cure if the state of his health demands it.” The full cure, consisting of treatments that use mineral water, mud, and steam from naturally occurring hot springs, lasts twenty-one days—six days of treatments with Sundays off, over three consecutive weeks. In 2019, around six hundred thousand French people undertook cures, targeting specific pathologies and subsidized by the state at sixty-five percent. Around three million more visited thermal spas as paying customers.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Seeking a Cure in France’s Waters” — The New Yorker

WTF Fun Fact 12681 – What Lies Beneath Stonehenge

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Stonehenge has long been a mystery to us. The stones are too big for us to understand how they were moved to their location. They are clearly from a location far away (no, not outer space far ) from the site. We still don’t know if it was built as a burial site, a ceremonial site, a place for religious pilgrimages, or a memorial (or something entirely different).
(In case you’re in the dark entirely about Stonehenge, here’s a good primer.)

Humans began building it 5000 years ago and added the rest of the stones 2500 years ago. We know there are burial mounds surrounding the site (some of which seem to date back 8500 years). But, now, we have another mystery to add – thousands of pits dug nearby.

Oh, and the oldest of these appear to be around 10,000 years old. Others were constructed long after Stonehenge was completed.

Some seem pretty straightforward – they were used to trap animals that would fall into the pit and provide food for hunters and their families. But others don’t seem to have been dug for the same reason.

Using an algorithm, archaeologists have identified 415 locations likely to hold large pits (over 7.9 feet) and over 3000 smaller pits. They’ve excavated 9 of the large pits and found hunting tools and the like in a few while others seem to be dug in a way that would relate to some kind of ceremonial purpose.

All we can say is the mystery continues! –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thousands of prehistoric pits discovered around Stonehenge” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12679 – OutHorse Your E-Mail

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Visit Iceland recently got a weird idea. They’ve launched an out-of-office email service called “OutHorse Your Email” so you can outsource to a horse.

So, apparently, you can get a horse to write your OOO emails.

This was all brought about by a survey that found that 55% of vacationers check their email at least once and 60% said their bosses expected a response. (Of course, we’re not sure how bosses respond to horse emails, but that’s a survey for the future.)

Check this out:

It seems like a joke, right? Well, there’s a website and all you need to do is select a horse and put in your email information to generate your email.

According to IFL Science:

“The huge typing platform is then placed outside with the stunning backdrop of Iceland to complement the tip-tapping of typing horses writing the OOO emails of lazy humans. You can get your own emails written via the Visit Iceland website where Litla Stjarna Star from Hvítárholt, Hrímnir from Hvammi and Hekla from Þorkellshó are waiting to assist you.”

We’re sure your boss will be pleased. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “In Iceland, Horses Will Write Your “Out Of Office” Emails For You” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12667 – America’s Oldest Park Ranger

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Betty Reid Soskin retired from a full-time job with the National Park Service just months after celebrating her 100th birthday.

Joining the Park Service at age 85, she started working for them full time in 2011, at age 89 at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. There, she shared her own experiences working on the WWII homefront.

“To be a part of helping to mark the place where that dramatic trajectory of my own life, combined with others of my generation, will influence the future by the footprints we’ve left behind has been incredible,” Soskin said in the NPS’s statement.

According to CNN: “As a park ranger, Soskin led public programs with visitors and shared her own personal experiences of World War II. And she worked to highlight the untold stories of African Americans and other people of color during the war. “Being a primary source in the sharing of  that history — my history — and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” said Soskin. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”

Soskin founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, Reid’s Records, with her husband, which was in business for 75 years, before joining the NPS. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “America’s oldest national park ranger retires at age 100” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12666 – Unearthing An Ancient Underground City

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In the Midyat district of Mardin, Turkey, there is an archaeological site tunneling beneath the residents. The older residents have long been told of the city underneath, but archaeologists still had no idea what they were in for when they discovered a hidden entrance to a cave a few years ago.

The cave led to a series of corridors and rooms. But further excavation found that there was an entire subterranean city down there. And it wasn’t a city lost to time as sand and dirt piled on top of it – this city had ALWAYS been underground!

In fact, the site is so big that they will never be able to uncover all of it (partly so as not to disturb the residents living above). (You can see more of this in the video at the bottom of the page.)

Historians have found evidence in archival material that the modern city of Midyat got its name from the word Matiate, meaning “City of Caves.” Matiate’s name is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions from the 9th century BCE.

But this underground city isn’t just some dusty old tunnels. There are places of worship, water wells, and other community necessities within them, indicating that people lived in this underground city much like that would have above land.

While other underground cities have been found throughout the Anatolian region, Midyat’s is different. There is evidence that it was used to house people for nearly 1,900 years straight.

Gani Tarkan, the head of excavation for the site, explained:

“Matiate has been used uninterruptedly for 1,900 years. It was first built as a hiding place or escape area. As it is known, Christianity was not an official religion in the second century. Families and groups who accepted Christianity generally took shelter in underground cities to escape the persecution of Rome or formed an underground city. Possibly, the underground city of Midyat was one of the living spaces built for this purpose. It is an area where we estimate that at least 60-70,000 people lived underground.”

He continued:

“There was no a life above the underground cities in Nevşehir and Kayseri. But he stated that all the structures above the Midyat underground city were registered.”

“Underneath is a different history, a different period, and above it is a different date. While the houses on the top are dated to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there is a completely different city underneath. That city is 1900 years old.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The excavation, which started in a cave in Turkey’s Mardin, turned into a huge underground city” — Arkeonews

WTF Fun Fact 12657 – Daniel Gossett’s Hair Story

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On August 1, 2018, pitcher Daniel Gossett of the Oakland A’s shaved his head following Tommy John surgery. The recovery after this kind of surgery is very lengthy, and Gossett knew his arm would be immobile for a while.

“I was in an arm brace for however many weeks,” Gossett told MassLive. “I was like, ‘Man, I can’t do anything with this hair.’ So I cut it all off.”

However, as baseball players (especially pitchers) are known for their rituals and superstitions, Gossett has decided not to cut it again. At least not for a while.

He was released by the A’s in 2020, but seeing his promise, another team snatched him up. In 2021, he was signed by the Boston Red Sox and played in their minor league system. Pitchers have to work their way back up to the major league teams.

It was at that time that Gossett made the decision not to cut his hair until he was back on a major league team – no matter how long it took.

And it’s taking a while!

The Red Sox released him as well (at the end of 2021). But he didn’t spend long as a free agent. In 2022, the Minnesota Twins signed him to their minor league team.

Now, we’ll have to wait and see how long it takes for him to work his way up, but his hair is still growing – many inches down his back, in fact.

Luckily, it’s healthy, beautiful blond hair and he’s promised to donate it when the time comes.

 – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Meet Daniel Gossett: Boston Red Sox depth starter lives in RV, won’t cut long hair until he returns to big leagues or he can donate it” — MassLive

WTF Fun Fact 12632 – The Oldest Tattoo Artist

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Buscalan Village, Kalinga, is in the north of the Philippines, and despite having no cell or internet service, it’s an incredibly popular tourist destination. That’s because people make pilgrimages of a sort to see a 105-year-old tattoo artist named Fang-od Oggay. She’s been practicing her native province’s tribal tattooing method.

According to Atlas Obscura, “She is known worldwide as a living legend and the last tribal tattoo artist to hold the title of Mambabatok—the name given to traditional tattooists by the Kalinga ethnic group for thousands of years.”

Oggay is the master of the technique, an art that used to belong only to men. But seeing her talent at an early age, her father taught her the technique at age 15, and she’s been tattooing ever since. She’s at the head of a movement to keep the Butbut tribe’s tradition of hand-tap tattooing alive. And all of her apprentices are females.

Oggay uses citrus thorned to prick the skin. They come from either calamansi or a pomelo tree branch and get threaded into a bamboo reed. The ink is made of charcoal and water and wiped onto the thorn, which is tapped into the skin using a 12-inch bamboo hammer.

That’s pretty hardcore.

But the tattoos used to be for Butbut tribal head-hunters and male warriors as a symbol of their bravery. The more tattoos, the more heads you had taken in war, so a warrior’s goal would often be to have their entire bodies tattooed. The last warrior to get such a tattoo got his in 2002. Times have changed.

But Oggay is still tattooing. Head-hunting might not be a socially acceptable behavior anymore, but that doesn’t mean the tattoo art should fade away. But the tradition will be carried on by women.

Atlas Obscura says: “Oggay was the first female tattoo artist in Kalinga. But she may not be the last Mambabatok. Over time there has been a shift, with young women taking up the ancient tradition. Through tattooing, they are economically supporting the whole village.”

–WTF fun facts

Source: “A 105-Year-Old Tattoo Artist Is Teaching Girls to Ink for Independence” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12631 – Killer Friendships

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It’s not so easy to monitor giant sea creatures like killer whales close enough to know about their social lives. But thanks to drone footage, we’ve recently learned that killer whales are a lot more social than most people give them credit for.

By tracking a pod of 22 killer whales for ten days, marine researchers noticed patterns in behavior that resembled complex relationships among some pod members that they think relate to the species in general.

While killer whales live their entire lives in the same pod, they’re not equally close to all members. Just like a group of humans, they let relationships come and go over time, getting close to some members, but then growing into other relationships over time.

More specifically, researchers noticed that the whales showed a preference for another specific group member. They would surface together and touch each other more often than they would other pod members.

These behaviors signal a desire to cooperate and be social with one other whale – a “best friend,” if you will. Adding to the hypothesis is the observation that these “besties” tended to be of the same sex and age.

According to an interview by ScienceAlert with behavioral ecologist Darren Croft from the University of Exeter:

“In many species, including humans, physical contact tends to be a soothing, stress-relieving activity that reinforces social connection. We also examined occasions when whales surfaced together – as acting in unison is a sign of social ties in many species.”

Apparently, the older the whale, the more anti-social they tend to be. That’s a behavior mirrored in humans as well. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Drone Footage Shows Even Killer Whales Have Close ‘Friends'” — Science Alert

WTF Fun Fact 12602 – Lopburi’s Monkey Buffet

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Lopburi, Thailand, is the kind of place that no one needs to be convinced to visit. It’s one of the country’s oldest cities, holds the oldest ruins, and is just generally stunning to look at overall. The only issue for most people is that it’s a little hard to get there. And what usually seals the deal is the fact that long-tailed macaque monkeys roam the streets and serve as entertainment.

In order to thank the monkeys, the residents of Lopburi hold an annual banquet for them at the site of a 13th-century temple known to house many macaques.

The macaques probably don’t care much about the dancers and other forms of entertainment on offer. Like most of us primates, they’re there for the food. And residents deliver in the form of piles of delicious fruits, vegetables, and sticky rice.

The locals believe that celebrating the monkeys brings them good luck and more tourists. But we imagine it’s also pretty fun to watch since monkeys go a little wild around piles of food. We’ve always wanted to see a monkey food fight, and the festival reportedly has plenty.

The festival itself draws tourists, but it may not be the best time to go since the macaques are pretty riled up. If you’ve ever been in a place where monkeys roam the streets you know they can be mischievous little thieves. They like to snatch phones, sunglasses, and purses, and there’s not much you can do once a monkey has your stuff.

If you’re willing to risk it anyway, the festival typically occurs at the end of November, and Lopburi is about a 3-hour drive from Bangkok. And there are food stands for the human attendees because you do NOT want to try and take a monkey’s feast. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Everything You Need To Know About The Lopburi Monkey Festival” — Culture Trip