funny facts

WTF Fun Fact 13016 – Petting an Animal Reduces Stress

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You’ve probably heard that petting an animal reduces stress. If you’re lucky, you’ve even experienced it firsthand. And if you have the pleasure of consistently getting some hands-on time with a furry companion (or even a pal’s pet), you may not always notice it, but you probably do have less cortisol in your system.

How does petting an animal reduce stress?

One of the most oft-cited studies about the animals reducing our stress comes from a study in the journal of the American Educational Research Assocation (AERA). It was a rigorous study that controlled for multiple other factors, such as overall health of the subjects. And it found that just 10 minutes of petting a cat or dog (many of which happened to come from a shelter and probably benefitted from some socialization) results in measurably smaller levels of cortisol, the hormone that regulates our flight-or-fight response.

The research was done on college students (who often get stressed out around midterms and finals). And one of the best parts was that even brief animal encounters could help reduce stress levels.

The researchers didn’t find the same effect when students viewed photos of pets or saw them in person – the real benefits came from physical contact.

Details of the study

The researchers collected saliva samples from 249 college students who participated in one of four types of animal encounters. (Cortisol levels can be measured using saliva.)

  • 73 students got to pet the cats and dogs
  • 62 watched other people pet the animals
  • 57 watched a slideshow of images of the same animals
  • 57 remained on the waitlist

Saliva samples were collected first thing in the morning and then two more samples were collected 15 and 25 minutes after the animal encounter.

Students with hands-on animal interactions had the lowest cortisol levels, though it didn’t necessarily last throughout the day. Still, even momentary stress relief can help regulate stress.

The researchers hope the knowledge that petting animals reduces stress will help colleges (and others) help people regulate stress before it causes more serious physical and psychological disorders. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Animal Visitation Program (AVP) Reduces Cortisol Levels of University Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial” — AERA Open

WTF Fun Fact 13015 – The Great Wall Sticky Rice Connection

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Walls between countries are more symbolic than anything, and that’s true for the Great Wall of China as well. Still, it’s such an epic structure that it took thousands of years to complete. It’s also not actually one long wall but a series of structures. Oh, and it’s held together by sticky rice.

What’s the story behind the Great Wall?

The first emperor of a unified China Qin Shi Huang Di began building the wall, but like many of his monumental structures, it was unfinished by the time of his death. In fact, it wasn’t until several hundred years later that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty (in the 14th – 17th centuries) took up the project again in earnest, building more sections along with the iconic gates and towers.

These emperors built hundreds of miles of the most famous section of the wall, which China has claimed is over 13,000 miles long – but likely includes sections that no longer exist (Chairman Mao encouraged people to take pieces of it to build their homes, for example). It’s a magnificent structure no matter its exact length, even if it didn’t always keep out invaders.

It is, however, held together with sticky rice.

Why sticky rice?

You might be confused if you’ve only had your rice cooked from the instructions on a package of Uncle Ben’s, but Chinese rice is deliciously sticky. It also helps make great mortar.

But don’t make fun of Chinese cuisine – sticky rice is just one part of the limestone mortar used to hold together this structure. This was discovered by scientists at Zhejiang University in China, and the recipe makes it the first example of composite mortar (something we all benefit from today whether we know it or not).

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), the researchers “found that ‘sticky rice-lime mortar has more stable physical properties, has greater mechanical storage, and is more compatible, which make it a suitable restoration mortar for ancient masonry.’”

That makes sticky rice mortar one of the greatest and most enduring (literally) inventions of an already amazing lineage of governments. It is part of the reason structures built during this period are still around, surviving earthquakes and other tests from the elements.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Sticky Rice Mortar, the View From Space, and More Fun Facts About China’s Great Wall” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13013 – Olesja Schemjakowa and a Snack Snafu

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Olesja Schemjakowa made a very expensive mistake in 2018. She accidentally paid almost $8000 for a coffee and a slice of cake at a bakery in Switzerland. That mistake ended up costing her exactly $7,732.

Olesja Schemjakowa and the expensive snack

It was a mistake anyone could have made. The woman simply entered her PIN code for her credit card by accident when the machine was asking for the tip amount.

We doubt the coffee or cake was that good. But leaving an even worse taste in her mouth was the fact that her credit card company refused to reverse the charges since it was not a fraudulent transaction. It was her mistake, and she would have to live with it.

When Schemjakowa got in touch with the owner of the cafe, things looked like they might work out for the best. He originally agreed to refund her the money. Unfortunately for her, as time went on, she saw nothing was being done. That’s when she found the cafe had shut down and the owner had filed for bankruptcy.

No happy ending

The Russian woman was likely the victim of her own translation error at the New Point cafe. She didn’t speak the language when dining in Zurich. And since tipping customs are different all over the world, she likely didn’t expect to be asked for a tip at all, hence entering her PIN code. Let this be a lesson for us all to start our PIN codes with a zero or two!

Her bill was just $23, meaning she left a 32,000% gratuity.

The Swiss police also refused to intervene since no crime had taken place.

When the news came out in 2021 of the 2018 snafu, Schemjakowa told the Swiss newspaper Blick:

“I just can’t understand how the cafe owner can just keep the money, and I cannot do anything about it. That’s just not fair!” “I’ve been told there may still be a one percent chance that I’ll see my money back.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “A woman accidentally tipped $7,700 for coffee and some cake — and she will probably never get that money back” — Business Insider

WTF Fun Fact 13011 – Facebook and Divorce

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What’s the connection between Facebook and divorce? Well, one clue comes from a study published back in 2013 that found an astonishing 1/3 of divorce papers included a reference to the social media platform.

The relationship between Facebook and divorce

We’d be interested to know where this study stands now and if anyone looked more deeply into the results. What we do know is that in 2011, 1/3rd of all divorce filings contained the word “Facebook,” according to Divorce Online. This was up from 20% just three years earlier. ABC News (cited below) also pointed out that “more than 80 percent of U.S. divorce attorneys say social networking in divorce proceedings is on the rise, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.”

Lawyers have also seen an increase in the number of times Facebook has been used to prove infidelity during divorce cases as well as in child custody hearings.

ABC News also reported that “Despite the increase, the top Facebook mentions were the same: inappropriate messages to “friends” of the opposite sex, and cruel posts or comments between separated spouses. Sometimes, Facebook friends would tattle to one partner in a relationship about bad behavior by the other.”

How Facebook affects relationships

A 2013 study in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networkingalso showed that Facebook was playing an important role in the end of relationships.

While Facebook might have helped some of us forge new relationships, it may not be the best use of our time once we’re in them. In fact, it may be damaging to our romantic relationships, according to Russell Clayton who performed the research and found that “people who use Facebook excessively are far more likely to experience Facebook-related conflict with their romantic partners, which then may cause negative relationship outcomes including emotional and physical cheating, breakup and divorce,” according to a press release.”

By surveying Facebook users ages 18 to 82 years old, the researcher found that high levels of Facebook use among couples “significantly predicted Facebook-related conflict, which then significantly predicted negative relationship outcomes such as cheating, breakup, and divorce.”

When it came to couples in a relationship for three years or less, Facebook proved to be a particularly large problem.

“Previous research has shown that the more a person in a romantic relationship uses Facebook, the more likely they are to monitor their partner’s Facebook activity more stringently, which can lead to feelings of jealousy,” Clayton said. “Facebook-induced jealousy may lead to arguments concerning past partners. Also, our study found that excessive Facebook users are more likely to connect or reconnect with other Facebook users, including previous partners, which may lead to emotional and physical cheating.”

If you want your relationship to last, you may want to consider being more mindful about how and how often you use social media. —WTF fun facts

Source: “Can Facebook Ruin Your Marriage?” — ABC News

WTF Fun Fact 13009 – Cats Domesticated Themselves

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If you’ve ever been owned by a cat (or have been given the honor of being allowed to live alongside one), you know they will do whatever they want to do. So it may come as no surprise that cats domesticated themselves. They just decided to move in with humans – and not much about them has changed since that day.

How do we know cats domesticated themselves?

If you’re skeptical about this and how we know it (or even what it all means), that’s fair.

Here’s the thing – when humans domesticate animals, we choose certain characteristics that we like about them, and the animals that end up allowing this kind of domestication often have certain kind of characteristics (whether it’s size, a tendency to be docile, etc.). Those characteristics are, to some extent, encoded in their genomes. So if we look at the genomes of those animals over thousands of years, we should see changes that indicate the selection of certain traits.

It’s not much different than modern dog breeding – purebred dogs are specifically bred to have specific genes that make them look or act a certain way. Their environment plays a role too, but we can see a lot of characteristics in their genomes.

Cat genomes? Let’s just say they haven’t changed much at all. And we know that because cats have been cherished and worshipped for thousands of years and therefore buried in ways that allow us to collect even their ancient DNA.

What do cat genomes tell us about domestication?

Of course, we can’t go back in time to check our work, but we can do pretty comprehensive studies on cats from all over the world and from different time periods. And that’s what a group of scientists did. They published their study in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution under the not-very-catchy title “The palaeogenetics of cat dispersal in the ancient world.” It doesn’t sound riveting, but it’s pretty cool (especially if someone summarizes it for you).

Our favorite line comes from National Geographic’s write-up on the work (cited below), noting that “[cats’] genes have changed little from those of wildcats, apart from picking up one recent tweak: the distinctive stripes and dots of the tabby cat.”

But here’s the gist of it: The researchers looked at the DNA of over 200 cats. These cats spanned a timeline of 9,000 years, the ancient cats coming from Rome and Egypt. They found that there were two major cat lineages that came together to make modern housecats. Normally, you’d expect to see A LOT more diversity than that.

Early cats likely spread into Europe from southwest Asia around 4400 BCE and hung out with people in early farming communities. Apparently, cats just decided people were largely ok to be around, and people decided cats were ok because they killed rodents that interfered with crops. If anyone tried to do anything more to domesticate cats, they clearly failed.

It was a mutually beneficial relationship. And maybe cats didn’t even like people but just liked the rodent populations we attracted. We’ll never know. But in any case, we all just grew up alongside each other. Humans “let” cats domesticate themselves. (Frankly, our guess is that cats were in charge the whole time.) — WTF fun facts

Source: “Cats Domesticated Themselves, Ancient DNA Shows” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 13006 – Brain Cells Learn To Play Pong

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Fun Fact: Lab-grown human and mouse brain cells living in a petri dish became sentient enough to learn to play the video game Pong.
That’s right – scientists found that brain cells learn to play Pong, the 1970s tennis-type video game.

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In news that we don’t find even remotely comforting, brain cells grown in a petri dish have been shown to become sentient enough to learn to play video games. And we’re not kidding when we say that their next plan is to get the brain cells drunk and see what happens.

Sentient brain cells living in a dish

To be clear, these are cells that are living in a petri dish – not a person. They are human cells derived from stem cells and mouse cells derived from embryonic cells. There are 800,000 cells in total involved in the experiment.

Not only have the cells learned to play the game Pong, but they keep improving. “They played longer rallies and were aced less often,” reported The Guardian (cited below). Of course, Pong is a very simple game, which is why the researchers chose it in the first place.

The study that revealed the experiment was just published in the journal Neuron.

The researchers hail from Cortical Labs, Monash University, the University of Melbourne, and University College London.

How can brain cells learn to play Pong?

According to The Guardian, the researchers out the cells on something called the “DishBrain,” “a multi-electrode array that can sense cell activity and stimulate the cells, then gave the cells feedback on whether the paddle was hitting the ball.”

Within five minutes the cells started to communicate using electrical activity to operate the game. It sounds like sci-fi, but it’s true.

“Now the researchers will see how the cells perform when they are drunk or given medicines. They hope to use the DishBrain to learn more about conditions such as epilepsy and dementia.”

“This is the new way to think about what a neuron is,” a researcher said. — WTF fun facts

Interested? See for yourself:

https://youtu.be/x0NM7iVo9MQ

Source: “Scientists teach brain cells to play video game Pong” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 13003 – The Sean O’Casey Bridge

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Fun Fact: “Dublin’s Sean O’Casey Bridge is a pedestrian bridge over the River Liffey built to open up and allow ships to pass. But it was operated by a remote control that got lost in 2010. It was only in 2014, after building a new remote, that the bridge became operational again.”

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Pro tip: If you build a bridge to help pedestrians cross a waterway and the bridge needs to open up in order to allow ships to pass, make sure you create more than one remote control to operate the bridge. Otherwise, a mobile phone-sized remote could get lost for four years. And that can make things very inconvenient for shipping through the waterway. Just ask Dublin – they know all about it.

The Sean O’Casey Bridge

Irish news site TheJournal.ie (cited below) reported in 2014 that the Sean O’Casey Bridge over the River Liffey in Dublin was once again operational after engineers were able to create a new remote to operate the bridge.

Describing the bridge, the news site said, “The design includes two 44-metre-long arms, capable of swinging open when required. That operation is controlled by a hand-held remote device — but,asTheJournal.iereported last year— that device went missing some years ago, meaning openings were no longer possible.”

The loss presumable occurred when the bureaucrats running the bridge moved offices.

Re-opening the bridge

Years of budget issues prevented a proper engineering review necessary to solve the problem, according to the news site. But in 2014, someone found the money to reprogram a new device.

Financial Advisor to the AuthorityJohn Crawley told TheJournal.ie: “Its not like a Sky box remote control.” The bridge remote required more than just an open and close button; it needed to be a secure system that no one could hack. Special engineers were required in order for it to be done right.

“An Irish-based firm carried out the reprogramming, and that aspect of the work cost around €1,800,” Crawley said. —WTF fun facts

Source: “The Celtic Tiger bridge that wouldn’t open because of a lost remote control” — TheJournal.ie

WTF Fun Fact 13001 – Unhappy Monday

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Fun Fact: A 2011 study found that people tend to be so miserable on Mondays that, on average, they don’t crack a smile until 11:16 am. Do you experience an unhappy Monday?

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If you hate Mondays, you’re not alone. People seem to find it a depressing day of the week. In fact, in 2011, the food company Marmite did a study that found people were so depressed on Monday mornings they typically didn’t smile for the first time until 11:16 am. That’s pretty late in the day for something as small as a smile!

The study by Marmite, the British food spread, also found that half of employees will be late to work, and will only log about three-and-a-half hours of productive work time.

Why are we so bummed on Mondays?

Ok, so there’s the obvious reason to hate Mondays if they signal the end of the weekend to you. That’s probably why some studies found Sunday to be pretty depressing as well.

According to HuffPost (cited below): “Yet other studies have found that it’s Sunday, not Monday, that is the most depressing day of the week. In 2009, a study by researchers at the University of Gothenburg and Institute for the Study of Labor found that Sunday is the darkest day of the week in Germany, where individuals reported the lowest level of subjective well-being.”

Americans also found Sunday to be the most depressing day.

Defeating the unhappy Monday

Well, the bad news is that there’s no magical cure for Mondays (short of winning the lottery, quitting your job, and spending the rest of your days at leisure).

The best the Marmite study could suggest was finding time on Monodays to indulge in activities you enjoy, such as shopping, watching TV, planning a trip, or eating a treat.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Mondays Are More Depressing Than We Thought, Says Study” – HuffPost

WTF Fun Fact 13000 – Valentine’s Day Gifts for Pets

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Fun Fact: U.S. consumers spend over $1 billion annually on Valentine’s Day gifts for pets. In 2020, 27% of people said they were planning on buying Valentine’s Day gifts for their pets.

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It makes sense that you’d want to give a gift to the creature that loves you unconditionally on a holiday meant to celebrate love. But since animals don’t know it’s a holiday, it’s still pretty interesting that 27% of Valentine’s shoppers choose to pick up a gift for their furry (or feathered or scaly) friends. This represented a 10% increase over the last decade.

Why do we buy Valentine’s Day gifts for pets?

“Much of the growth in Valentine’s Day spending over the last decade has been fueled by consumers’ interest in celebrating the other important relationships in their lives — friends, co-workers and, increasingly, pets” This is according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that conducts these surveys with and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

According to FOX13 news in early 2022:

In 2020, $103.6 billion was spent on our pets in the U.S., according to National Pet Owners Survey Statistics — and 70 percent of U.S. households own a pet.”

That’s due in part to the COVID pandemic.

“One in five households acquired a cat or dog at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) said in a survey published last year, on May 21, 2021.”

The Valentine’s Day gift survey

The NRF conducted the survey of 7,728 U.S. adult consumers from January 3-11, 2022, and also found that spending for the holiday increased overall, with people in the U.S. expected to spend $23.9 billion in 2022 (up from $21.8 billion in 2021). 

“Shoppers expect to spend an average of $175.41 per person (per human, that is) on Valentine’s Day gifts, which is up from $164.76 in 2021,” the NRF said.

When it comes to human gifts, people are sticking to tradition. “Candy (56 percent), greeting cards (40 percent), and flowers (37 percent) remain the most popular gift items…“

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Valentine’s Day 2022 pet spending: You won’t believe what we’ll shell out for our dogs and cats” — FOX13 News