Nature

WTF Fun Fact 12965 – The New Moon

Have you ever heard that there was a new Moon only to look up at the sky and see no moon at all? Well, that’s because the Moon cycle is starting all over again.

Types of Moons

We obviously only have one Moon, but it goes through lots of phases. A “new” Moon is the opposite of a full Moon. During a full Moon, the sun is fully illuminating one side of the big ball. That’s what makes it glow so brightly in the night sky.

During the time when the Moon is “new,” we are seeing the side that is not illuminated by the sun. The Moon is still up there, but without the sun shining on it, we can’t see it in the night sky.

According to Farmer’s Almanac (cited below) “When the Moon is “new,” it’s located between the Earth and the Sun. In other words, the Moon is in line with the Sun, and the Sun and Earth are on opposite sides of the Moon. (Note that when the Moon is perfectly aligned in front of the Sun, it blocks out the Sun, giving us a solar eclipse.)”

Lunar cycles and the new Moon

The new Moon is the beginning of the lunar cycle. This lasts 29.5 days, and it’s the amount of time it takes for the moon to orbit the Earth.

The Moon cycle used to be used to measure months (each new moon signaled a new month).

Another fun fact: the new Moon always rises close to the time of sunrise.

And according to The Farmer’s Almanac:

“As the new Moon crosses the sky during the day, rising and setting around the same time as the Sun, it’s lost in the solar glare…The new Moon is also lit up from behind, showing us its dark side. It’s doubly invisible. New Moons generally can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

About a day (maybe two) after a new lunar cycle begins, you’ll be able to look up at the night sky and see a slim crescent off to the West after the sun sets. These crescent moons are often very bright. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Learn All About the New Moon” — Almanac

WTF Fun Fact 12963 – The Autumn Equinox

Solstice, equinox – what’s the difference? We know these things meant more to people in agricultural societies, but they still dictate the way we do things today to some extent. The 2022 autumn equinox will begin on September 22 at 9:03 pm.

Why is the autumn equinox so specific?

This is a natural phenomenon that influences culture, not the other way around. So while you might start shopping for your autumn decor in August, fall doesn’t really begin until the solar system says so.

The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun is nearest to the equatorial plane (the imaginary extension of the equator), giving us a day with equal amounts of sunlight and darkness. It lasts a few days, and as soon as it’s over, the days start to get shorter.

Spring also has an equinox. When it’s over, the days start to get longer.

Winter and summer, on the other hand, have solstices.

What’s the difference between an equinox and a solstice?

The summer and winter solstices occur when the sun is farthest from the equatorial plane. They are the day when the daylight is longest (spring) or shortest (winter).

So while the solstices and equinoxes each usher in a new season, each only applies to two seasons and represents a different phenomenon. (And all of the seasons are the opposite in each hemisphere – we’re only talking about the northern hemisphere here!)

What’s so fun about the autumnal solstice?

If you like fall weather (and live in the northern hemisphere), you’re probably pretty excited about its official start.

Historically, the equinox signaled the end of the outdoor working season or harvest season. It was a time to celebrate all of the hard work nature had done for humans and that humans did to reap the benefits and survive through winter. It’s traditionally a time to give thanks and take stock of all of nature’s bounty a community had received.

In many places, it was a time of harvest festivals, feasting (at least on the things that might not be preserved over the winter), and thanking the gods of the harvest. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Spiritual Meaning of the Autumn Equinox” — Spirituality & Health

WTF Fun Fact 12191 – The Prevalence of Thunderstorms

At any given moment, there are around 2,000 thunderstorms taking place on the planet. Each year, 16 million thunderstorms take place on Earth.

What are thunderstorms?

A thunderstorm is simply a rain shower during which you can hear thunder. They are the result of moisture being lifted from the ground and into the air via a phenomenon called convection.

According to NOAA (cited below): “Three basic ingredients are required for a thunderstorm to form: moisture, rising unstable air (air that keeps rising when given a nudge), and a lifting mechanism to provide the ‘nudge.’ The sun heats the surface of the earth, which warms the air above it. If this warm surface air is forced to rise—hills or mountains, or areas where warm/cold or wet/dry air bump together can cause rising motion—it will continue to rise as long as it weighs less and stays warmer than the air around it. As the air rises, it transfers heat from the surface of the earth to the upper levels of the atmosphere (the process of convection). The water vapor it contains begins to cool, releases the heat, condenses and forms a cloud. The cloud eventually grows upward into areas where the temperature is below freezing. As a storm rises into freezing air, different types of ice particles can be created from freezing liquid drops. The ice particles can grow by condensing vapor (like frost) and by collecting smaller liquid drops that haven’t frozen yet (a state called ‘supercooled’). When two ice particles collide, they usually bounce off each other, but one particle can rip off a little bit of ice from the other one and grab some electric charge. Lots of these collisions build up big regions of electric charges to cause a bolt of lightning, which creates the sound waves we hear as thunder.”

A thunderstorm usually starts without rain and does not need to contain lightning.

Facts about thunderstorms

Each year, there are an estimated 16 million thunderstorms on the planet and 10,000 in the U.S. alone. However, only 10% of these reach the “severe” thunderstorm category in which wind, rain, and lightning can do damage.

While spring and summer are the most common time for thunderstorms, they can occur year-round.

Thunderstorms might seem innocent, but they can be deadly. NOAA notes that “Many hazardous weather events are associated with thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, rainfall from thunderstorms causes flash flooding, killing more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes or lightning. Lightning is responsible for many fires around the world each year, and causes fatalities. Hail up to the size of softballs damages cars and windows, and kills livestock caught out in the open. Strong (up to more than 120 mph) straight-line winds associated with thunderstorms knock down trees, power lines and mobile homes. Tornadoes (with winds up to about 300 mph) can destroy all but the best-built man-made structures.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Severe Weather 101” — NOAA

WTF Fun Fact 12385 – Ladybugs are Cannibals

Do you remember being told as a kid that having a ladybug land of you is good luck? Well, that might be the case for humans, but in the ladybug world, these creatures have to watch their backs. Ladybugs have some interesting behaviors – like cannibalism.

Are ladybugs cannibals?

Yes, ladybugs (also called ladybirds – another thing we didn’t know) will eat their own kind. But not just for fun – they have to be in the right situation. Still, if you check out ladybug habitats, you can find pieces of half-eaten bugs all over the place.

According to The Laidback Gardener (cited below): “Some species lay a mixture of fertile and infertile eggs. When the larva, which does not resemble the adult ladybug at all, but looks vaguely like a small alligator, is born and if it finds no other prey nearby (aphids, scale insects, mites, whiteflies, etc.), it will first eat an infertile egg to gain strength. Then, if the other larvae don’t disperse rapidly, it will eat them too. Even adults will readily eat larvae or even other adults when they have the opportunity.”

Small alligators? Rampant cannibalism? We’ll never look at ladybugs the same way again!

Other interesting facts about ladybugs

You may have also noticed that ladybugs smell pretty bad. It’s definitely the case when you squish them (which isn’t advisable, though they can infest houses – especially windowsills – in the summer). They also emit an odor when they’re just “disturbed.”

To top it off, humans are especially sensitive to the chemical compounds emitted by ladybugs, so they’re especially stinky to us – even when they emit low levels of their odors.

If you happen to have a ladybug invasion, yellow ladybugs are safer to pester than orange ones. Orange ladybugs are the stinkiest of all.  – WTF fun facts

Source: “Gentle Ladybugs are Actually Cannibals” — Laidback Gardener

WTF Fun Fact 12834 – Horned Lizards Can Shoot Blood From Their Eyes

Have you ever seen a horned lizard shooting blood from its eyes? We’d rather not, but there’s no denying it’s a thing they’re able to do.

The North American Horned Lizard

These lizards have blood-filled sinuses in the eye sockets that they can cause to swell and rupture in self-defense. And, to be fair, we’d probably back away from any animal that shoots blood at us out of anywhere, much less its eyes.

Who wants to mess with that?!

Shooting blood in self-defense

According to AskNature (cited below), “North American desert horned lizards have a wide range of predators within their habitat. One unusual defense mechanism involves the flooding of their ocular sinuses, tissues found below their eye, with blood. When a horned lizard feels threatened by a predator, its final defense response is to shoot blood from these flooded sinuses and out its eye sockets. As a result, the predator is often frightened and flees. The lizard also uses this mechanism to remove foreign particles from the surface of its eyes.”

Neat trick!

How does lizard blood shooting work?

To be more precise, the horned lizard has major veins around its eyes that are surrounded by two muscles. They can make these muscles contract to cut off blood flow, trapping blood in the head and preventing it from moving down to the heart.

Eventually, this blood fills their ocular sinuses. And if they continue to contract the muscles, they can create enough pressure to make the blood flow (or spew) right out of their eyes. This process is called auto-hemorrhaging.

While it sounds like it might be the last gasp of a terrified creature, the horned lizard can actually shoot blood this way multiple times in a short period. And we don’t quite understand precisely how they so rapidly recover from this blood loss – only that they do. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Blood-filled sinuses within the eye sockets of horned lizards squirt blood in self-defense by swelling and rupturing” — AskNature

WTF Fun Fact 12830 – Tourists Fined for Visiting Hyperion

According to conservationists and no less an authority than the mighty Guinness World Records, a redwood called “Hyperion” is the oldest living tree on Earth. Of course, that only makes people want to visit it, and it’s very hard to get to. As a result of the damage done, by tourists are now being fined for visiting Hyperion.

More about the “world’s largest tree”

The mighty Hyperion is located in California’s majestic Redwood National Park. According to CNN (cited below): “The coast redwood Ssequoia sempervirens) tree is 115.92 meters (380 feet) tall, and its name is derived from Greek mythology — Hyperion was one of the Titans and the father of sun god Helios and moon goddess Selene.” Its trunk diameter is 13 feet around!

While it had long been photographed from above, it has long remained hidden from hikers on the ground.

There are no trails to the tree. In fact, getting there basically requires you to bring a machete and hack away at the surrounding foliage.

But in 2006, a pair of naturalists did find the tree – and you can imagine what happened after that.

To their credit, the park never gave out directions and never made a path so people could reach Hyperion. It has always required people to take the risk of going off the trail and potentially getting lost or hurt. There’s spotty service for phones and GPS, so anyone trying to reach the tree not only takes their own life into their hands but risks the safety of rescuers (if they’re even able to contact them) as well.

But, of course, some people need that Instagram shot. So they do it anyway.

Visiting Hyperion now comes with fines

The California park recently issued a statement threatening thrill-seekers with up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. After all, they’re risking the life of an ancient landmark as well as the lives of those who have to help them get out of the forest.

The statement reads, in part:

“Hyperion is located off trail through dense vegetation and requires heavy ‘bushwhacking’ in order to reach the tree…Despite the difficult journey, increased popularity due to bloggers, travel writers, and websites of this off-trail tree has resulted in the devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion…As a visitor, you must decide if you will be part of the preservation of this unique landscape – or will you be part of its destruction?”

Do we really need to read a blog about the tree so much that we’d risk it being destroyed? Clearly, people have different answers to that question.

And the damage caused so far by tourists includes erosion at the base of the tree, bushwacked paths away from its base so people could use the bathroom nearby, leaving human waste behind and toilet paper, and just plain old trash around the site.

Clearly, it’s not just nature-lovers who are hacking their way to Hyperion. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Visitors to the world’s tallest tree face $5,000 fines” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12829 – Orca Attacks

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

Source: “Orcas Attack So Many Boats Sailors Are Being Told To Stay in Port at Night” — Newsweek

WTF Fun Fact 12828 – Walking Sharks

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:

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Discovery afoot: New study cracks mystery of how ‘walking’ sharks split” — Conservation.org

WTF Fun Fact 12826 – The Problem With Preferring Trees Over Grasslands

Apparently, we’re tree snobs. Unfortunately, preferring trees over grasslands actually ends up hurting the environment because grasslands are complex and much-needed ecosystems.

Still, we have to admit we love trees.

Why do we love forests?

In a recent article for The Atlantic, writer Julia Rosen pointed out a painful truth:

“Grasslands rank among the most imperiled and least protected biomes on Earth. They are disappearing even faster than forests, and much of what remains has suffered varying degrees of damage. Their decline threatens a huge chunk of the planet’s biodiversity, the livelihoods of roughly 1 billion people, and countless ecological services such as carbon and water storage. Yet these losses don’t register with the same force as deforestation. Perhaps because we do not notice, or perhaps because we do not care.”

We had no idea. Still, we find ourselves thinking that trees are just more helpful – but apparently, that’s wrong (or at least misguided).

Preferring trees over grasslands is “arboreal chauvinism”

Ok, we’re not fond of the term, but it does some interesting linguistic work when you think about it. A lot of us really do think of grasslands as flat and boring and…beige.

Of course, no one who is advocating for grasslands, such as prairies, is against trees. They’re just trying to raise our awareness and change our perspective so we can appreciate the need to value and conserve them.

In other words, it’s time to stop looking at prairie land as “deforested” area or proto-forests that simply aren’t fertile enough to grow trees – in fact, grasslands are their own special thing.

What’s the big deal with grasslands?

Well, for starters, the problem with disregarding grasslands in favor of trees and forests keeps prairie, savannah, and other grassland plants and animals off of conservation lists and open to extinction.

Check out this not-so-fun fact from The Atlantic: “Just 1 percent of Texas’s prairies remain intact. (Nationally, about half of native grasslands have already been converted to cropland or consumed by development, and millions more acres are lost each year.)”

To appreciate just some of what grasslands have to offer, consider this:

“Despite their apparent simplicity, grasslands are bastions of biodiversity. They support everything from large, charismatic megafauna (think lions and elephants) to humble pollinators and rare wildflowers. The Cerrado, for instance, is home to more than 12,000 plant species, a third of which occur nowhere else on Earth. And a mountain grassland in Argentina holds the world record for the most plant species found within a square meter of land: 89.”

That’s a lot of biodiversity to give up if we don’t remember that forests aren’t the only type of ecosystems we need to preserve.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Trees Are Overrated” — The Atlantic