Animals

Our random animal facts are a both fun and a little bit weird but they will keep you entertained for days!

WTF Fun Fact 12673 – What’s In A (Cat’s) Name?

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In unsurprising news, there’s more evidence that cats don’t care about something.

Japanese researchers did a small study (which is really all you can do when cats get involved) and found that cats seem to recognize the names of their feline housemates. However, they still don’t give any indication of recognizing their own. Whether it’s because they just don’t care is something we’ve yet to figure out.

Why should we even care what words cats recognize? Well, IFL Science put it in context the best: “Birds with vocal cords that can imitate our own can learn a variety of human words, and it’s argued some know the meaning, rather than merely mimicking. Apes taught sign language also understand the meaning of words, and more recently dogs have been found to be able to learn up to 12 toys’ names in a week – but what about cats?”

In other words, we do all of this behavioral research on animals and find these fascinating signs that, in some sense, they can organize the world in ways similar to our own. So why not take a look at these abilities in some of the most common pets?

The research was conducted by Saho Takagi, a PhD student at Kyoto University who published the results in the journal Scientific Reports. The research team tried an experiment with domestic cats living in a 3+ cat home as well as residents of Japan’s famous cat cafes.

The study does rely on one important assumption (but if you know anything about science, you know that this is often the case since that’s where we start in order to help prove things). The assumption is that like other animals, cats stare longer than normal when they are surprised by something. In this case, hearing a name they recognize.

So the team spoke to the cats and said the names of their fellow resident cats to see if they would get a reaction. And they did, at least when the cats didn’t just run off in the middle of the experiment (and one did).

But what’s interesting is that this only happened in households, not in cat cafes. And in cat cafes there tends to be a lot of turnover from adoptions (and a lot more names to remember). So it may be that the cats in those cafes never hear a name enough time to have it ring a bell.

Apparently, the cats only reacted to the spoken names. Seeing their feline roomies’ photos on a laptop didn’t have any effect. Also, hearing their own names had no effect.

There were only 19 cats involved in the study, so it’s right to be skeptical. But that’s where we often start in science. The study still showed there was statistical significance to the results, and that’s typically a sign that further research can continue until there’s enough evidence to constitute some kind of “proof.”

In the meantime, just take it as a sign that your cat ignoring its name is not necessarily them blowing you off. They may just not be able to recognize that a name belongs to them. Or they just don’t care.

IFL Science explains this is not Takagi’s first cat study: “Last year she was first author on a paper exploring the feline capacity to map the spatial location of their person or a familiar cat. Takagi and co-authors reported the cats showed surprise when speakers broadcast the voice of the person who feeds them, despite that person’s absence. The same reaction did not apply to recordings of familiar cats’ vocalizations or unrelated sounds. Previously she studied cats’ understanding of the law of physics.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Cats Can Learn Each Other’s Names, Not Just Their Own, Study Claims” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12672 – Beware the “Sharkcano”

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Your mother probably warned you not to swim around acidic shark-infested volcanoes, but in case she didn’t, we’re telling you now not to try it!

Only once have scientists been able to explore the Kavachi volcano in the Solomon Islands. It’s a submarine (aka underwater) volcano and it actually erupts almost constantly. But in 2015, it took a break, giving researchers the chance to check it out.

And boy did they find some stuff! It’s no surprise that they found high levels of sulfur (because it is a volcano, after all), but they were surprised to see that despite extremely acidic conditions, some creatures have managed to thrive in the craters.

There are microbial species that are common in sulfuric environments. There are also “gelatinous animals and small fish.” Oh, and a whole bunch of angry sharks.

According to IFL Science, oceanographic researchers said this is “raising new questions about the ecology of active submarine volcanoes and the extreme environments in which large marine animals can exist.”

And while that’s really cool, we’re more interested in the phenomenon they dubbed “sharkcano.” The researchers wrote: “Two species of shark, the scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini and the silky shark Carcharhinus falciformis, approached the baited camera multiple times in an aggressive pattern; in some cases, sharks appeared to be swimming from greater depths inside the crater.”

Now, before you picture thousands of sharks spewing out from the depths of the ocean floor (which is the first thing we pictured), it’s definitely not going to be that wild if this volcano has a major eruption. It will, however, be a really bad time to go swimming in that area.

NASA images showed a plume developing in late May, so we may be in for a sharkcano eruption sometime soon and we’ll be able to see precisely what that entails. –  WTF fun fact

If you want to learn more:

Source: “NASA Warns Acidic “Sharkcano” Is Starting To Erupt” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12655 – Alexander the Great and His Horse

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King Alexander the Great spent his entire adult life trying to conquer the world on behalf of Macedonia, and by his side, nearly the entire time was his horse, Bucephalus.

The ancient writer Plutarch wrote much of what we know about the life of Alexander, including the story about how the 12-year-old future king won his noble steed.

A horse dealer tried charging Alexander’s father a very high sum for the horse (to be fair, his father was King Philip II of Macedon). No one had seemed it a good deal since the horse could not be tamed. But young Alexander saw some potential and made a deal with the horse seller – if he could tame it, he could keep it. If not, he would pay the high sum.

Of course, we know where this story goes – Alexander subdued the horse and then rode it into nearly every battle for decades until the horse died during a campaign in India.

As someone who felt he had the right to conquer the world, Alexander left his name all over it, including over 70 cities named Alexandria.

But he loved his horse Bucephalus so much that when it died in 326 BCE, he named a city Bucephala.

The ancient writer Pliny the Elder also wrote about the event:

King Alexander had also a very remarkable horse; it was called Bucephalus, either on account of the fierceness of its aspect, or because it had the figure of a bull’s head marked on its shoulder. It is said, that he was struck with its beauty when he was only a boy, and that it was purchased from the stud of Philonicus, the Pharsalian, for thirteen talents. When it was equipped with the royal trappings, it would suffer no one except Alexander to mount it, although at other times it would allow anyone to do so. A memorable circumstance connected with it in battle is recorded of this horse; it is said that when it was wounded in the attack upon Thebes, it would not allow Alexander to mount any other horse. Many other circumstances, also, of a similar nature, occurred respecting it; so that when it died, the king duly performed its obsequies, and built around its tomb a city, which he named after it” The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2, translation by John Bostock, Henry Thomas Riley.

– WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Bucephalus: The Horse of Alexander the Great” — ThoughtCo.

WTF Fun Fact 12654 – Tinder For Orangutans

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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

Source: “Tinder for orangutans’: Dutch zoo to let female choose mate on a tablet” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12651 – The Military Researchers Who Turned a Cat Into a Phone

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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

Source: “The Cat Telephone” — Mudd Manuscript Library Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12644 – The Parrot Who Saved a Dead Language

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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

Source: “The Parrot That Kept A Language Alive” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Facts12637 – Cow Burps Seen From Space

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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

Source: “Planet-warming emissions from cow burps have been seen from space” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12636 – A Medical Device That’ll Make You Squirm

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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

Source: “Leeches and Maggots Are FDA-Approved and Still Used in Modern Medicine” — Discover Magazine

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 12628 – Mr. Goxx, the Crypto Trading Hamster

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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 BBC explained:

“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

Source: “Mr Goxx, the cryptocurrency-trading hamster, dies” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12620 – Home Alone’s Spider Guest Star

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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.

Stern told the story in a long Facebook post that read:

“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:

– WTF fun facts

Source: “The Famous ‘Home Alone’ Tarantula Scene Included a Real, Venomous Spider Named Barry, Says Daniel Stern” — CheatSheet

WTF Fun Fact 12618 – Pauline, The Presidential Cow

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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

Source: “Pauline Wayne, President Taft’s Famous Cow” — Presidential Pet Museum

WTF Fun Fact 12613 – Frogs Barf Their Guts Out

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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

Source: “Frog Vomit: Everything There is to Know” — Toads N Frogs

WTF Fun Fact 12612 – The Cowbird’s Secret Password

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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

Source: “Neural basis for parasitic cowbird’s secret password identified by researchers” — Science Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12610 – The Rules Of the Aquatic Road

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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

Source: “8 things you didn’t know about manatees” — PBS

WTF Fun Fact 12609 – Unexpected Tenants Cause a Buzz

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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

Source: “After noticing honey dripping down their walls, couple discover bee problem” — TODAY

WTF Fun Fact 12606 – Octopuses Getting Punchy

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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:

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.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Octopuses Punch Fish, Sometimes For No Apparent Reason” — NPR

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