WTF • Fun • Fact    ( /dʌb(ə)lˌju/  /ti/   /ef/ • /fʌn/ • /fækt/ )

     1. noun  A random, interesting, and overall fun fact that makes you scratch your head and think what the...

WTF Fun Fact 12821 – Lemmings Don’t Commit Mass Suicide

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

WTF Fun Fact 12820 – Do We Only Use 10% of Our Brains? No.

For some reason, Hollywood writers and purveyors of pseudoscience really love to say humans only use 10% of their brains. Why? Well, because it opens the door to making us think there’s a wealth of unlocked potential if only we could [insert Hollywood storyline] or buy some junk supplement to unlock the rest.

But it’s just not true. What an evolutionary waste that would be if it had any basis in fact!

Myth becomes “fact”

According to Britannica (and many, many scientific sources and fact-checking websites): “It’s one of Hollywood’s favorite bits of pseudoscience: human beings use only 10 percent of their brain, and awakening the remaining 90 percent—supposedly dormant—allows otherwise ordinary human beings to display extraordinary mental abilities. In Phenomenon (1996), John Travolta gains the ability to predict earthquakes and instantly learns foreign languages. Scarlett Johansson becomes a superpowered martial-arts master in Lucy (2014). And in Limitless (2011) Bradley Cooper writes a novel overnight.”

We don’t blame Hollywood – they make stuff up to sell movies all the time. It’s the fact that we started believing the plots of films that’s truly disturbing. In fact, Britannica reports that “65 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, ‘People only use 10 percent of their brain on a daily basis.'”

Yikes.

Why do we believe we only use 10% of our brains?

Let’s not look to place blame on anyone but ourselves. Most of us repeat interesting things we hear without ever investigating whether or not they’re true.

But next time you hear someone spout off this garbage “fun fact,” you can hit back with some actual science.

For starters:

  • If only 10% of our brains were functional, why does nearly every brain injury affect our lives in some way? If we only used 10%, we could damage the rest with no repercussions.
  • Why would humans have evolved our most unique characteristic – the very thing that makes us human – to be 90% useless? It makes no evolutionary sense. That space could be used for more useful things if it were just empty grey matter.
  • Positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans show that there is activity in far more than 10% of our brain. In fact, there is no part of the brain that lacks some sort of electrical activity (even if we don’t yet know precisely what it does).

The origins of the 10% myth

So, the 10% myth is just complete bull. But It likely has its origins in the American self-help industry.

People like to blame 19th-century psychologist William James (or even Albert Einstein) for implying that there is unlocked potential in the human brain. And while they may be true, that doesn’t indicate inactive brain matter. It just means we could think harder if we really tried.

Britannica also states that one early claim that the self-help industry glommed onto appeared in the preface to Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Since then, “The idea that we have harnessed only a fraction of our brain’s full potential has been a staple for motivational gurus, New Age hucksters, and uninspired screenwriters ever since.”

But it’s a load of bologna. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Do We Really Use Only 10 Percent of Our Brain?” — Britannica

WTF Fun Fact 12819 – Jonathan the Tortoise

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

Source: “Yes, Jonathan the Tortoise Is the Oldest Known Land Animal” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 12818 – Does Viagra Make Flowers Last Longer?

It might not be the most cost-efficient use of the medication, but the answer to “does viagra make flowers last longer?” is yes. It also makes the stand up straight.

How does viagra make flowers last longer?

According to a study in the British Medical Journal (cited below): “Viagra (sildenafil citrate) is good not only for treating male impotence. Israeli and Australian researchers have discovered that small concentrations of the drug dissolved in a vase of water can also double the shelf life of cut flowers, making them stand up straight for as long as a week beyond their natural life span.”

In fact, “1 mg of the drug (compared with 50 mg in one pill taken by impotent men) in a solution was enough to prevent two vases of cut flowers from wilting for as much as a week longer than might be expected.”

How does it work? Well, according to the study “Viagra increases the vase life of flowers by retarding the breakdown of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) (the production of which is mediated by nitric oxide).”

Basically, that means flower wilting and erectile dysfunction involve the same enzyme, and Viagra helps slow down the breakdown of that enzyme. In men, this allows blood vessels to stay open longer, and in plants, it does the same to their vascular tissues.

No more flaccid flowers

Of course, you may not want to go through the trouble of getting a Viagra prescription (or raid anyone’s medicine cabinet) for the sake of your centerpieces. There are other ways of getting some flowers to spring to attention. For example, putting a few old pennies (that still have some copper component) in a vase of tulips will also make them stand up straight.

While all of this news came out in 1999, the Viagra method of flower preservation started trending again on TikTok in 2021. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Viagra makes flowers stand up straight” — BMJ

WTF Fun Fact 12817 – The Nurdle

The word nurdle is used in a few different ways. But today we’re going to look at its use to describe the squirt of toothpaste that you squeeze out onto your toothbrush.

How did “nurdle” come to be?

According to “verbal branding pro” Nancy Friedman’s blog Fritinancy (cited below): “The word, of unknown origin but possibly related to nodule, was reportedly coined by the American Dental Association in the 1990s to educate the public about proper brushing technique. The word is spelled “nerdle” in an August 19, 1996, St. Louis Post-Dispatch article quoted in Double-Tongued Dictionary, but the spelling has since been standardized as ‘nurdle.'”

But the word really came to the fore in 2011 when GlaxoSmithKline (which makes Aquafresh “Triple Protection” toothpaste) and Procter & Gamble (which makes Colgate) reached a settlement over its use in their marketing campaigns, with specific reference to the tri-colored nurdle that’s depicted on their boxes.

Both companies have invested money in the depiction and use of the word. Aquafresh used to have a site for children called Nurdle World, and Aquafresh ran a site called The Nurdle Shmurdle – though both have been taken down.

Other uses of the word

Friedman’s blog also describes another use of the word: “Nurdle is also used in the plastics industry to describe pea-size plastic resin pellets. When released from inland factories, the pellets often make their way into coastal waterways and even the deeper oceans, where they pose an ongoing threat to marine animals that mistake the pellets for food. According to a 2001 study of Orange County (California) beaches, nurdles made up 98 percent of ocean debris. See, for example, this 2007 article about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

We’ll be honest. We’ve never heard of a nurdle, and the blob on our toothbrush doesn’t look nearly as nice and nurdle-y as the one depicted on any toothpaste box. Still, we’ll never be able to brush our teeth without thinking of a nurdle again. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Word of the Week: Nurdle” — Fritinancy

WTF Fun Fact 12817 – The 3-Year-Old Mayor

In 2012, Dorset, Minnesota had a 3-year-old mayor. He even “won” reelection the following year. And no doubt the townspeople were relieved since he ran on a no-nonsense platform of “Be nice and no poopy talk.” If only other politicians could take a page from his campaign strategy.

How does a town get a 3-year-old mayor?

According to TODAY (back in 2015): “James became the ceremonial head of this northern Minnesota tourist town of about 22 people this month as his name was drawn from the ballot bucket at the annual Taste of Dorset food festival. It cost $1 for each vote cast.”

James is not the only pint-sized mayor the town has ever seen. TODAY also reported: “He hit the campaign trail running, with an experienced political adviser close at hand. His 6-year-old brother, Robert, who made national headlines when he served two terms as mayor at ages 3 and 4, taught him how to shake hands and look voters in the eye.”

A ceremonial position

Of course, the position is ceremonial. The tiny town is run by a small group of business owners.

But that doesn’t mean the mini-mayors don’t take their jobs seriously. According to ABC 7 News (cited below): “Both James and Robert Tufts have long been contributing members of their community, even at their young ages. The two often volunteer their time to help the Salvation Army, plant gardens, and raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.”

Robert said of James: “He doesn’t do too much mean stuff, and I taught him how to be nice.”

According to their mother, they “take it all in stride.” And neither has plans to go into politics long-term. Both boys wanted to be fishermen when they grow up last time they were asked.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “3-year-old James Tufts elected mayor of Minnesota town” — ABC 7 News

WTF Fun Fact 12816 – Peas Are the Oldest Cultivated Vegetable

No matter how you feel about peas on your plate, it’s hard to deny that they’re one of the most important vegetables in mankind’s history. If we want to make the case that civilization starts when humans settle down to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers, then peas are a major part of that story. Peas are the oldest vegetable – or one of the oldest – mankind has cultivated.

Stone Age peas

Peas have been found in Stone Age settlements roughly 8000 years old, but it’s likely that in some parts of the world (namely the Middle East – and Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically) they’re older than that.

But we doubt Stone Age kids had the ability to push away their peas and refuse to eat dinner.

Of course, peas would have looked and tasted different thousands of years ago. As we cultivate vegetables, we tend to choose the ones that match either our taste buds or our ability to grow lots of them (preferably both).

Genetic analysis indicates that kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts were all cultivated from the same plant between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Ancient fruits vs vegetables

Fruits are a different story. Yes, they’ve changed a lot from their ancient and even prehistoric counterparts, but we can find evidence of dates, plums, and of course apples, dating back 30,0000 to 40,0000 years.

So, while we don’t know if the so-called “Caveman” (aka Neandertals) ate exactly what the “caveman diet” says they did, we do know they had a bit of a sweet tooth.

According to Slate: “They definitely ate fruit. Last year, paleoanthropologists found bits of date stuck in the teeth of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal. There’s evidence that several of the fruits we enjoy eating today have been around for millennia in much the same form. For example, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of 780,000-year-old figs at a site in Northern Israel, as well as olives, plums, and pears from the paleolithic era. Researchers have also dug up grapes that appear to be 7 million years old in northeastern Tennessee (although, oddly, the grapes are morphologically more similar to today’s Asian varieties than the modern grapes considered native to North America). Apple trees blanketed Kazakhstan 30,000 years ago, oranges were common in China, and wild berries grew in Europe. None of these fruits were identical to the modern varieties, but they would have been perfectly edible.”

But veggies are another story. Turns out those needed more work before people liked them.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Peas” — Encyclopedia.com

WTF Fun Fact 12815 – Is A Hammer Used When a Pope Dies?

The death of the pope is a pretty big deal to the 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. But there’s lots of mystery surrounding the traditions that take place when the pope dies. One common belief is that Vatican staff bumps him on the head three times with a silver hammer to ensure he’s dead and not just taking a really solid nap. But is it true?

Is it really such a strange question?

Ok, first let’s dispense with the joke of it all. While it may seem silly, the Catholic church has many millennia-old rituals that they carry on simply for the sake of tradition.

At the start of the papacy, it’s not totally out of the question that there would be some sort of way to guarantee a man that important was truly dead.

And, frankly, we wouldn’t put it past some papal dynasties (we’re looking at you, Borgias) to use the hammer to *ahem* ENSURE someone was dead (even if they didn’t start out that way).

All we’re saying is that who knows what people were doing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages? But this doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.

Do we know what happens when the pope dies?

So, we’re not surprised that there’s a ritual to ensure the pope is truly dead. But what is it?

These days, we’re pretty sure technology is employed to make sure there is no brain activity in the body. That’s what we do for almost everyone else.

Even Snopes – the revered fact-checkers and rumor-killers – took on the task of trying to find out if this is all bologna or not. And they couldn’t make a determination.

Investigating the legend

According to Snopes (cited below): “Disagreement exists as to whether such a procedure is part of the parting process. We do know that once a Pope appears to have left this world, a pronouncement is made in Latin that he is dead, with this news certified by a physician. The camerlengo (chamberlain) calls out the pontiff’s baptismal name three times over the corpse in an effort to prompt a response. Failing to get one, he defaces with a silver hammer that particular Bishop of Rome’s Pescatorio (Ring of the Fisherman), along with the dies used to make lead seals for apostolic letters. The pope’s quarters are then sealed, and funeral arrangements are begun by the camerlengo.”

Ok, so here’s where we get the silver hammer part. The ring and his seals are destroyed to avoid any fraud on behalf of the dead pope. That makes sense, even if there are now better ways to render these pieces of metal unusable.

The rumor that the hammer then meets the forehead appears to have been popularized by Stephen Bates, a journalist who wrote an article in The Guardian on rituals associated with the pope’s death.

But here’s the kicker. There’s only one source that fully denies the rumor is true. It’s a correction from The Guardian a few weeks later, stating:

Yet The Guardian ran the following correction a few weeks later:

“The article below included the assertion that the corpse of a Pope is ritually struck on the head with a silver hammer to ascertain that there is no sign of life. According to the Vatican, this is a myth.”

There’s no identification of the source at all.

Since the so-called denial, which is impossible to check, there have been more articles asserting that the ritual is real. Or, at the very least, it was up until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

But who knows? The Vatican isn’t one to share its secrets – that’s why people keep writing books about them. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Is a Deceased Pope Tapped with a Silver Hammer to Verify He’s Dead?” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 12814 – The Tarantula-Pet Frog Theory

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

Source: “Giant Taranzulas and Tiny Frogs Are Friends with Benefits” — Roaring Eart