Dutch zookeepers staged an experiment they affectionately called “Tinder for orangutans” in order to help the mating process at Apenheul Primate Park in Apeldoornat. Their female orangutan, Samboja, got to choose her mate from photos on a tablet. And researches hope that gauging her reactions to the photos will help them choose a good mate and teach them something about mating choices in general.
But they’ll have to give it a second try because when the 11-year-old’s mother, Sandy (also known as Demolition Woman) got ahold of the tablet, she smashed it up pretty good.
The experiment also has economic consequences for the primate park since Samboja’s mate will come from an international breeding program and may have to be shipped from as far away as Singapore.
Thomas Bionda, a behavioral specialist at the zoo told The Guardian: “Often, animals have to be taken back to the zoo they came from without mating. Things don’t always go well when a male and a female first meet.”
The Guardian explained:
“The research is part of a broader programme looking at the role of emotions in animal relationships, the biologist said. “Emotion is of huge evolutionary importance. If you don’t interpret an emotion correctly in the wild, it can be the end of you.”
Evy van Berlo, an evolutionary psychologist, told local paper Tubantia that earlier tablet tests with bonobos – who, along with chimpanzees, are the closest living relatives to humans – had shown they demonstrated heightened interest in photos containing “positive stimuli”, such as other bonobos mating or grooming one another.”– WTF Fun Facts
Have you ever wanted to turn a cat into a telephone? We haven’t either. But in 1929, two Princeton University researchers gave it a go anyway. Apparently, they weren’t cat lovers.
Professor Ernest Glen Wever and his research assistant Charles William Bray performed the experiment that involved a live but unconscious (thankfully!) cat in order to see how the auditory nerve perceives sound.
That’s a fancy way of saying they sedated a cat, opened its skull, accessed its auditory nerve, and attached a telephone wire to it. The other end of the wire was connected to a telephone receiver.
While many of us may turn up our noses at the thought of animal research, it has saved and improved many human lives. Bray and Wever weren’t even interested in making a cat into a telephone for any practical purpose (not that we could even think of one anyway). Instead, they were interested in the research methods used to run the tests, which paved the way for more sophisticated research on human hearing and made contributions to devices called cochlear implants that convert sound vibrations into electrical signals in the brain for deaf people.
Despite not caring much about creating a cat phone, the experiment did work, and Bray was able to speak into the cat’s ears while Wever listened through the receiver 50 feet away in a soundproof room.
Princeton’s Mudd Manuscript Library wrote a blog describing it in more detail. They say:
“The common notion during this time was that the frequency of the response of a sensory nerve is correlated to the intensity of the stimulus. In the case of the auditory nerve, as a sound becomes louder, the frequency or pitch of the sound received by the ear should be higher. When Bray made a sound with a certain frequency, Wever heard the sound from the receiver at the same frequency. As Bray increased the pitch of the sound, the frequency of the sound Wever heard also increased. This experiment proved that the frequency of the response in the auditory nerve is correlated to the frequency of the sound.”
Wever and Bray received the first Howard Crosby Warren Medal of Society by the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1936 for the experiment.
Later, both men entered military research. Bray became the Associate Research Director of the U.S. Air Force Human Resources Research and then served on the civilian psychological research team for the National Defense Research Council and the Navy. Wever became a consultant to the National Research Council on anti-submarine warfare.
And cats worldwide likely rejoiced that they found other things to do. –WTF fun facts
German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt embarked on a 5-year exploration of North and South America in 1799. His trip was successful, and when he returned home in 1804, he had an extensive collection of plant and animal specimens
Humboldt also took voluminous notes, including some interesting jottings from a trip through Venezuela in 1800 where he spent some time chatting with a local parrot.
According to Mental Floss:
“According to legend, during his exploration of the Orinoco River, Humboldt met and stayed with a local indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures. The tribe, so the story goes, had a number of tame parrots kept in cages around the village, many of which had been taught to speak—although one, Humboldt noted, sounded noticeably different from the rest. When he asked the locals why this parrot sounded so unusual, he was told that it had belonged to a neighboring tribe, who had been the Caribs’ enemies.”
In other words, the parrot was speaking a different language than the rest. And sadly, the parrot was the only speaker left. The rest of the tribe had been wiped out, and not a single native speaker remained. Just the parrot. It was the last vestige of their linguistic culture.
Being the keen observer and recorder, Humboldt wrote down what the parrot sounded like, transcribing the sounds phonetically and coming out with about 40 words from the parrot’s (and the lost tribe’s) vocabulary.
We’ll never know how accurate the language is, but the notebook holds the last of what we have.
Interestingly, in 1997, an artist taught two more parrots to speak the language based on Humboldt’s notebook.
Some think the parrot’s story is mere legend, but Humboldt recounted his trip down the Orinoco river in his Equinoctial Regions of America in great detail and accurately described the Atures tribe that the parrot spoke the language of. – WTF fun facts
While it may be kind of funny, it’s really not a good thing that the methane emissions from cow burps can be viewed from space. That methane actually gets trapped in the earth’s atmosphere and contributes to climate change.
These emissions were detected by an environmental data company called GHGSat. Their high-resolution satellites saw the emissions in February, but it took until April to confirm their suspicions.
The burping cattle reside on a feedlot in California’s Joaquin Valley. According to CNN: “If these emissions were sustained for just one year, enough gas would be released ‘to power 15,402 homes,’ the company said.”
Farm cattle contribute to 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity around the world. In California alone, there are 650,000 beef cows.
This marks the first time that scientists have been able to use satellite imagery to pinpoint methane emissions from cattle farming.
CNN explained the process:
“The company has three high-resolution satellites in orbit, which it has previously used to measure emissions from open-pit coal mines. Each satellite is just the size of a microwave oven, says GHGSat. “This is really pushing the envelope of our capabilities,” said Wight. “What’s unique about us is we can really kind of get to the source” of emissions, focusing in on specific feedlots. Each satellite flies over a designated location for just about 20 seconds, taking a quick “snapshot” of emissions, Wight said. Over time, regular monitoring with these satellites could create a “temporal picture” showing the change in emissions over time, allowing farmers to, for instance, test out the impact of different diets on cows’ methane emissions.” – WTF fun facts
Sure, it sounds gross. It is gross. But so is a lot of the creative stuff doctors do to keep us alive.
As it turns out, the resurgence of therapies that use maggots and leeches has saved thousands of lives. Doctors can use them because they are FDA-approved as medical devices, despite being living creatures.
Now, no one heads to the local community garden or dumpster to get medicinal leeches and maggots. They are created in labs within very specific parameters.
So, let’s start with maggots. How can they possibly be medicinal?
The maggots used in medicine are the larvae of bottle-green blowflies. Because maggots only eat dead skin and not living skin, they’re actually perfect for cleaning infected wounds. Instead of having some first-year resident scrubbing out your open wound, maggots are even more gentle by comparison. In fact, since they’re eating dead tissue that’s already numb, you don’t feel the chomping at all. And they do a darn thorough job!
Leeches, on the other hand, are known as blood drinkers. Both of these creatures have been used in medicine for thousands of years, but are just making a comeback. However, leeches weren’t always applied in helpful ways in the past. Now, they’re used to clean up pooled blood in the body.
According to Discover Magazine: “When blood starts pooling instead of circulating, the area swells, and the lack of fresh, oxygenated blood causes skin tissues to die. Leeches can prevent that from happening.”
In the 1980s, as more wounds became resistant to antibiotics, a few doctors wanted to try maggots again and got some men at the VA hospital to agree. After the trials worked, the doctor in charge realized that in order to share the maggots with colleagues, he had to file paperwork with the FDA, and they turned out to be hard to regulate. But it was possible and in 2003, the FDA approved maggots as a medical device. Six months later, leeches were approved as well.
Obviously, not all hospitals are keen to use them (and patients aren’t generally big fans of the idea either). – WTF fun facts
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
Not only did a hamster named Mr. Goxx have more success at trading crypto than most people, but he also had 18,000 Twitter followers at the time of his death in November of 2021.
Owned by two friends in Germany, Mr. Goxx used his cage to make “predictions” about cryptocurrency.
“The business-minded rodent has a trading office attached to his regular cage. Every day, when he enters the office, a livestream starts on Twitch, andhis Twitter accountlets followers know: Mr Goxx has started a trading session.
By running in his “intention wheel”, he selects which cryptocurrency he’d like to trade, as the wheel spins through the different options. His office floor has two tunnels nearby: one for buy, one for sell.
Every time he runs through a tunnel, the electronics wired to his office complete a trade according to Mr Goxx’s desires.”
His handlers would stream him live on Twitch, where thousands would watch him make his moves.
Considering he only began his career on June 12, 2021, he was pretty successful. Though with the current crypto downturn, we’re not sure how his former portfolio is looking these days.
But he taught us what his owners set out to teach, which is that a hamster making random choices still makes better choices than most cryptocurrency investors. –WTF fun facts
There have been some famous and controversial guest stars in the Home Alone movies, but this one takes the cake.
We know it came out a long time ago (1990, to be exact), but perhaps you’ve seen the original Home Alone movie recently. And if you have, you likely remember the scene when bad-guy Marv, played by Daniel Stern, gets caught up in Kevin McAllister’s (Macauley Caulkin) set of booby traps. In one particularly cringe-worthy scene, he ends up with a tarantula on his face.
Now, tarantulas are venomous, but that venom doesn’t do humans any real harm. The worst that can happen is that they bite you and it hurts. Still, most of us want to avoid that.
Normally, a life-like tarantula would be created by a props department for use in a movie. And Home Alone’s propmasters did, indeed, make a spider for the scene. It’s just not the one that ended up on David Stern’s face. That one was real. And his name was Barry.
“I’ve talked about the stunt guys doing crazy things, I’ve talked about my love of doing physical comedy, but one of the most surreal moments of the film was the scene with the tarantula crawling across my face. People who meet me are always curious if the tarantula was real, if my scream was real, and if I was scared, crazy or both. The answer to all three of those questions is “Yes.”
My memory might be off and I will happily stand corrected if anybody has better info but here is how I remember it:
When I first read the script and talked to Chris Columbus, I thought the tarantula in the scene was going to be a mechanical one and when I showed up on set, sure enough the incredible crew in the prop department had made a very life-like spider replica which could move a bit, as well as a version that didn’t move. I told them I thought I could help sell it, with my great acting abilities and all… They were polite but not convinced. To insure that the “gag” was going to work, they brought in a different crew member, this one from the animal wrangling department. He had a cage and in this cage was an exact replica of the replica that the prop department had made. But you could definitely see by the way it moved that this was no fake, but a creature of royalty in the natural world. I was a little intimidated for the first time in the movie. The wrangler introduced me to “Barry the Tarantula” (possibly mis-remembering his name, apologies). They had Barry crawl around on my hand and head. I asked if Barry was trained and was told they had been working with him for a few days but tarantulas are kind of tough to train. I asked if his poison had been removed, and was told that if the poison was removed, Barry would die. I said, “Right, but if the poison isn’t removed, then I’m gonna die. See where I’m going here?!” “Just don’t make any sudden, threatening moves and you’ll be fine.” “But I’m going to be screaming in Barry’s face. Do you think he’ll feel threatened by that?!” “Barry doesn’t have ears. He can’t hear. Relax. “
I think I made one last feeble attempt to honor the hard work of the prop department and use the replica, but once the director saw Barry in action, the Barry Action Figure was put on the sidelines. I remember Barry crawling around my face. I remember trying not to piss off Barry. Once I got used to him and what he was doing, he turned out to be a great scene partner. I think I felt comfortable enough to have let out that scream right at him in the scene, but there’s another legend that says I only mimed it and added in the scream later. (I would love for the powers-that-be at 20th Century Fox to release the original footage to see if I screamed or mimed, so we can settle this “controversy” once and for all – and the world can finally be at peace.) Either way, the scream came out pretty good and was an homage to the shower scene in “Psycho”. I then had to beat Joe Pesci with a crowbar. And we all know that even though it was pretend and funny and a fake crowbar, it’s a thousand times more dangerous pissing off Joe Pesci than pissing off a venomous spider that’s crawling on your face.
Here’s to Barry! The greatest tarantula I have ever acted with!”
Want to revisit the scene now that you know that’s a real spider? Here you go:
Until the late 19th century, presidents brought their own cows to the White House to provide milk. There was no dairy delivery in Washington DC at the time.
When President William Howard Taft’s cow Mooly Wooly died in 1909, it was replaced by Pauline Wayne, a 1500-pound Holstein-Friesian. She was a gift to the Taft family from the farm of Senator Isaac Stephenson of Wisconsin.
The 4-year-old black and white bovine was the last presidential cow, but by far the most famous. The media appears to have been obsessed with her. Her arrival was covered by The New York Times, and her exploits appeared in publications from The Evening Independent in St. Petersburg, Florida, to The Milwaukee Sentinel.
One particular bit of drama was covered far and wide. Pauline was visiting the International Dairymen’s Exposition in Milwaukee in 1911 (with her milk sold in souvenir bottles for 50 cents each). But on the trip home, she went missing.
We always figured it would be hard to lose a cow, especially the President’s cow. But it happened.
It turned out Pauline’s private car was accidentally hooked up to a train carrying cows to slaughter at the Chicago stockyards. Can you imagine the scandal?!
Luckily, after a series of frantic telegraphs from the dairy show, train attendants ended up locating Pauline’s car as newspapers reported how she “narrowly escaped death.” – WTF fun facts
When we saw a webpage titled “Frog Vomit: Everything There is to Know,” we knew there would be something great to share with you. And by “great,” we mean we hope your stomach has already committed to holding down your breakfast because we’re going to talk about barf. (Emetophobics – that is, people who have a fear of vomit – turn back now.)
Ok, so most frogs have a unique way of tossing their cookies, so to speak. The little creatures can’t just hurl the way the rest of us do.
When we vomit, it’s because of signals in our brain that contract all of our major muscle groups – diaphragm, chest wall, abdominal muscles – put so much pressure on our stomachs that the contents are then forced up through our throats and through our mouths. You probably know the feeling. But next time you have to heave, just be glad your stomach is staying where it is because that’s not the case for most frogs.
No matter what you think of vomiting, we must be able to do it because it can keep us safe from anything toxic being absorbed into our bloodstream and killing us. So frogs are lucky, too, because they CAN vomit. It’s just a bit more of a production.
Frogs expel the contents of their stomach via a full gastric eversion. And while your worst hangover might have felt like that, it wasn’t. A full gastric eversion is when a body doesn’t just eject vomit, it ejects the entire stomach organ.
When frogs puke, they actually see their stomachs outside of their bodies. Of course, it doesn’t freak them out because that’s just how their species rolls. But what we find fascinating is that their stomach can just be out there, all like “hello, world!” and then go back in without much drama.
According to the experts, frogs can even give their stomachs a bit of a dust-off while they’re at it, wiping their bellies clean of whatever might be stuck in there causing a problem. Seriously, they’ll use their little froggy hands to wipe it right off, using the front, right hand (obvs). (Ok, we also didn’t know this, but the front, right hand of a frog is the closest to their expelled stomach due to the way the stomach is positioned in their bodies.)
If you’re wondering what happens next, it’s all relatively routine after that. They just pick their expelled organ up, plop it back in their mouths, and swallow it. After all, it’s the only way back in!
And there’s no chance of them biting it either since frog teeth (which, we’ll admit, we never really thought about) are only used to keep food in, not for chewing.
Frogs vomit for many of the same reasons we do – because there’s something in their stomach that is toxic, inedible, or simply too big (buffet-lovers, you know what we mean). Frogs can even vomit due to motion sickness!
Now, if something very unnatural happens in their environments and they cannot re-swallow their stomach for some reason, the frogs will suffocate and die. So if you see the little guys (and gals) in a rough situation, give them a minute to swallow before you interfere.
If you got this far, we know what you’re thinking. So there’s a video below where you can see a frog barf its stomach out. You’re welcome. (Oh, and if the pedant in you wants to point out that this is a toad, please note the fun fact that a toad is a type of a frog and that there is no official scientific distinction between the two creatures.) –WTF fun facts
Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) have an interesting way of parenting.
Females (known as “brood parasites”) use all their energy to produce eggs and can even lay around three dozen each summer. It seems like a lot of babies, right? But they’d never know because they abandon them all to whatever feathery foster parents they can find. They lay their eggs in the nest of other birds and expect those birds to raise their young. They’ll even lay their eggs in a nest with other chicks already in it and expect the resident birds to evict their own young in favor of the newcomers!
Even more interesting is that they don’t choose other cowbirds – the babies are raised by completely different species of birds. There are at least 220 other species of bird that could find cowbird eggs in their nest one day, but individual females tend to choose one species with which to leave all of their eggs.
Cowbirds have been a challenge for scientists to understand because it’s hard to follow and get to know birds that don’t build nests. But we’ve had more luck in recent years as their habitats have become smaller, and they’ve moved closer to humans (although that’s not really a good thing for the birds).
So, you may wonder how cowbirds learn to become cowbirds if they are raised by other species. And that’s where the really interesting fact comes in.
Cowbirds eventually find their own kind and spend the rest of their lives associating with other cowbirds. They reunite with their species as juveniles, even though there’s no reason they should have the skills to recognize that they aren’t like their foster parents. (Bird brains aren’t that big.)
So how do cowbirds come to recognize one another? They have a password or “secret handshake” deal going on. Technically, it’s a very specialized chatter call. No matter their age, they can take to the trees, make their calls, and other cowbirds will come and find them. – WTF fun facts
Manatees are often called “sea cows” because they’re big, slow, and gentle. And perhaps other animals have just learned to respect them for it.
We were surprised to find out that not only do manatees native to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea migrate to Florida each year for winter, but they become a well-respected part of the aquatic ecosystem.
In fact, even alligators will treat them like guests and give them the right of way if they swim through each other’s paths. There have been no recorded attacks on manatees by alligators, even though manatees can get a bit pushy when they don’t get their way. They’ll even swim up to and “bop” an alligator that does not yield.
While the alligators don’t know this, their gesture is helping save the endangered creatures, who have died in droves over the last decade.
And even Florida politicians seem to respect the manatees. In 1979, Florida Governor Bob Graham designated November as Manatee Awareness Month. Every governor has renewed the proclamation during their tenure.
If you’d like to see how well these creatures get along, check out the video below – WTF fun facts
Justin and Andrea Isabell never had plans to invite tenants into their 100-year-old Perkasie, Pennsylvania home. But nature finds a way.
The couple went viral in 2020 after Tropical Storm Fay rolled through and left them with a mysterious substance running down the walls of their mudroom. Justin decided that the best way to solve the mystery was to taste the substance which (lucky for him) was honey.
“After the recent tropical rainstorm soaked our area, we walked in the house through the backdoor and were faced with a stream of something coming down the walls,” Andrea told TODAY. “I was afraid it was water damage, but my husband made a closer inspection to discover it was honey. We were pretty surprised and didn’t understand how that could happen.”
Only after the discovery did they see the bees swarming around their rooftop. They had never spotted nor heard that creatures before that.
“I was pretty overwhelmed imagining what a mess this would be to clean up combined with the costs of repair to the house after the bees were removed,” Isabell said.
The clean-up only involved removing the honey and the comb. It turns out the bees had largely given up on their squatting rights after the rainstorm damaged the honeycomb.
“The comb was damaged from the rainstorm and they’re too smart to stay and have that happen again,” Isabell said. “We will still be having the comb removed and see if we can determine how long we had unknown guests.”
The couple’s Facebook photos went viral, and even show Justin licking the wall.
In their final update, they told those following the story:
“FINAL UPDATE: Bees naturally swarmed off due to the damage to their hive that caused the honey leak the Sunday/Monday after all of this hit the internet. They were found 2 days later as a massive swarm in a neighbor’s tree. The beekeeper, from Yerkes Farm, collected all bees and queen and re-hived them at his location. The bees survived. My house has not been opened up yet as the bees aren’t an issue any longer… when I open the wall, I will take pictures if hive is significant.” – WTF fun facts
Octopuses are incredibly smart. In fact, we’re only just now starting to learn how their complex brains work.
Take this factoid, for example. Octopuses need so much intellectual stimulation that those in captivity require games and puzzles to keep them from eating off their own arms out of boredom!
But did you know octopuses also have a bit of a mean streak?
Researchers have observed the creatures punching fish in the past – everything from a warning “boop” to a “curl up and let ’em have it” punch. Punching is pretty rare, but in many cases, the researchers could ascertain some reason for the punch. Usually, the octopus was trying to keep the fish from spoiling its meal.
However, sometimes octopuses punch fish for revenge. And revenge isn’t something we usually think of as relevant to underwater creatures.
More recently, Eduardo Sampaio recorded the underwater action. He also concluded that some octopuses seem to haul off and punch their hunting partners for no reason at all. That is, they don’t stand to benefit in any way from punching the fish.
Sampaio even posted a video to Twitter to illustrate the punching action:
Our new paper is out on @ESAEcology, showing that octos express this behavior during collaborative hunting with other fishes. This was probably the most fun I had writing a paper. Ever! (small 🧵)https://t.co/Vwg9BoaSUopic.twitter.com/PIYuVXpM9t
So, apparently, “throwing a sucker punch” is yet another factoid we can add to humanity’s ever-growing list of things we know about but can’t explain when it comes to octopuses.
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
Did you know that cattle can be potty trained with less instruction than toddlers? Some say it’s “easier” or “faster,” but that’s really going to depend on your access to and familiarity with each. Still, we didn’t realize cows would have the inclination to do it at all!
Researchers and cattle ranchers have worked together in Germany to train cattle not to pee out in the open. And it’s not a matter of cleanliness; it’s a matter of survival. OUR survival.
There are around 1 billion cattle in the world. Each pees about 10 liters (or 5 gallons) a day. It’s a lot. But we all pee, so what’s the problem?
Well, there are a couple of issues here: 1. When cows release all that urine in barns, it mixes with poop on the floor and creates ammonia, leading to air pollution for nearby people. 2. When they pee in pastures, it leeches into local waterways. And while most places are equipped with treatment facilities, not all of that infrastructure is in great shape and can be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of potential pollutants in the water. 3. Cow urine also contains nitrous oxide. This substance gets trapped in the earth’s atmosphere and can prevent heat from escaping into space, increasing our planet’s average temperature.
So, if we can prevent all this, why wouldn’t we? And we can’t stop cows from peeing, so scientists want to see if they can capture the urine in a way that allows them to control it so that it causes less harm.
Potty training cows sounds ridiculous, but so does letting them pollute our atmosphere while we do nothing. (And let’s face it, we’re not getting rid of cows any time soon.)
Of course, they had to call it “MooLoo training,” so some of this remains pretty silly. The experiment also involved a “cow psychologist,” which is not something we ever heard about at career day.
Ok, so what does cow potty training actually look like? It’s not quite as bizarre as it sounds. It’s just a special pen with astroturf that cows can be trained to pee in. The floor is created in a way that allows the urine to be captured underneath. And some of it can even be used to make fertilizer.
Cows are pretty smart, but they’re also encouraged by food – so it didn’t take them long to realize they got a snack after using the “restroom,” making it much easier to train them.
The first experiment involved 16 cattle and the researchers had 11 of them trained after about 10 days.
Now that we know “MooLoo training” works, the goal will be to automate it so it can be adopted by farmers with much larger herds.
If you’re really eager to see a cow use the bathroom, there’s a video below!
There is only one venomous primate in the world, and it’s not exactly a fierce-looking creature. The slow loris is the poison primate in question, and they’re native to Indonesia. Unfortunately, they’re also going extinct because they are thought to contain medicines and spiritual properties.
We don’t know about any of that, be we do know they pack a poisonous sac in their elbow.
It sounds like something out of a Marvel comic – a character that can deliver a striking blow with a sharp elbow to the face. But they don’t attack with their elbows.
Instead, they suck out the poison, swish it around in their mouths a little, and then deliver the venom through a bite.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t save them. They’re treated pretty brutally, and if someone plans to catch one, they typically remove its teeth. And the slow loris gets its name in part because it can’t outrun predators, especially humans.
Animals rescuers are trying to save them from their brutal fates, but studying them is hard because they’re nocturnal, secretive (and not super keen on humans who have a habit of dismembering and cooking them over fires). Go figure.
Lorises don’t typically attack other species with their poison bites – they’re far more likely to attack other lorises, which certainly doesn’t help those sustainability numbers.
While the loris is the only venomous primate, there are other venomous mammals: vampire bats, two species of shrew, platypuses, and solenodons.
But loris venom is truly gruesome causing necrosis causes necrosis (or tissue death), so victims can lose the limb affected.
This is just one more piece of proof that you can’t just blindly trust a cute face. – WTF fun facts
It may sound like just another day at the office for some mothers used to giving their all to their children, but some spider moms really do make the ultimate sacrifice for their young.
It’s called matriphagy, the act of eating one’s mother, and it’s rare. But it happens in a spider species called Stegodyphus lineatus.
These spiders only have one group of babies throughout their lives. And when these spider babies are born, they are entirely dependent on their mothers to regurgitate food and feed it to them so they can grow up.
And what does she get in return?
Well, to be fair, the moms don’t put up a fight. After about two weeks of motherhood, they allow their children to consume them, leaving behind only an exoskeleton.
The spiders are native to Israel, and research into matriphagy in this species showed another interesting thing. Females that had given birth actually started to digest their own tissues before their gruesome deaths. Now, that might be a sign that the species just wasn’t designed to survive motherhood. However, Dr. Mor Salomon, a postdoctoral fellow in entomology at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food & Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also found that the ovaries and the heart were the last organs to degenerate.
It also seems that spider mothers know their time is limited because they stop maintaining their web after their babies begin to grow.
Please don’t assume that females who don’t give birth have it any easier. They also tend to sacrifice themselves when a member of the colony has babies. Researchers are still looking into whether this is conditioned behavior or part of the species’ biology. – WTF fun facts
