random funny fact

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

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”

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 12670 – Thieves Return Plundered Temple Artifacts

In May 2022, thieves unwisely stole 16 statues of Lord Balaji (an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu). And if you know anything about Vishnu, you’d know that was a particularly bad idea. Vishnu is known as the preserver and protector of the universe, and it is said that he will return to earth in troubled times to restore the balance of good and evil.

However, the belief is that Vishnu has been incarnated 9 times already and his 10th reincarnation will signal the end of the world. So, seriously, do not make him come down here!

Lucky for the rest of us, the thieves got some personal punishment rather than triggering the apocalypse.

Most of the statues were returned a week later to the temple in the Chitrakoot district in Uttar Pradesh, India along with a confession, apology, and plea for forgiveness. It turns out the thieves had been plagued with such terrible nightmares and bad luck during the time they held the statues that they felt they had no choice but to return them and come clean.

“We have been suffering from nightmares since we committed the theft and have not been able to sleep, eat and live peacefully,” the thieves said in the accompanying letter, the Times of India reported (in translation). “We are fed up with the scary dreams and are returning your ‘amaanat’ (valuables).”

Returning stolen temple items is actually somewhat common because of feelings of guilt and misfortune – but, somehow, they still justified keeping two of the stolen items!

Sweet dreams! –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thieves Return Stolen Treasure To Temple After Being Haunted By Nightmares” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12669 – The World’s Oldest Rose Bush

The world’s oldest rose bush is a bit more untamed than what we’re used to seeing – but it’s earned the right to grow as it pleases. After all, it survived being bombed during WWII.

The Rose of Hildesheim, aka the Thousand-Year Rose, is believed to be the oldest living rose specimen on the planet (though, of course, we can’t know for sure if some other rose bush lurks out there hidden away from human eyes).

You can find it growing up the column Hildesheim Cathedral, in Germany, where it has been since the early 800s when it was planted. The 9th-century plant still blooms each year, around May. Its flowers are a delicate pink.

According to Atlas Obscura, it’s survival has been beyond unlikely:

“While the rose bush looks as though it’s big enough to have been growing for a thousand years, the plant has been nearly destroyed a number of times throughout its history. Most notably the bush was nearly completely razed during the Second World War when Allied bombs annihilated the cathedral. Every bit of the plant above ground was destroyed, but from the rubble, new branches grew from the root that survived.

Today the base of the Thousand-Year Rose is protected by a squat iron fence and each of the central roots is named and catalogued to protect one of the oldest pieces of natural beauty one is lucky to find.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The Thousand-Year Rose” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12666 – Unearthing An Ancient Underground City

In the Midyat district of Mardin, Turkey, there is an archaeological site tunneling beneath the residents. The older residents have long been told of the city underneath, but archaeologists still had no idea what they were in for when they discovered a hidden entrance to a cave a few years ago.

The cave led to a series of corridors and rooms. But further excavation found that there was an entire subterranean city down there. And it wasn’t a city lost to time as sand and dirt piled on top of it – this city had ALWAYS been underground!

In fact, the site is so big that they will never be able to uncover all of it (partly so as not to disturb the residents living above). (You can see more of this in the video at the bottom of the page.)

Historians have found evidence in archival material that the modern city of Midyat got its name from the word Matiate, meaning “City of Caves.” Matiate’s name is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions from the 9th century BCE.

But this underground city isn’t just some dusty old tunnels. There are places of worship, water wells, and other community necessities within them, indicating that people lived in this underground city much like that would have above land.

While other underground cities have been found throughout the Anatolian region, Midyat’s is different. There is evidence that it was used to house people for nearly 1,900 years straight.

Gani Tarkan, the head of excavation for the site, explained:

“Matiate has been used uninterruptedly for 1,900 years. It was first built as a hiding place or escape area. As it is known, Christianity was not an official religion in the second century. Families and groups who accepted Christianity generally took shelter in underground cities to escape the persecution of Rome or formed an underground city. Possibly, the underground city of Midyat was one of the living spaces built for this purpose. It is an area where we estimate that at least 60-70,000 people lived underground.”

He continued:

“There was no a life above the underground cities in Nevşehir and Kayseri. But he stated that all the structures above the Midyat underground city were registered.”

“Underneath is a different history, a different period, and above it is a different date. While the houses on the top are dated to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there is a completely different city underneath. That city is 1900 years old.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The excavation, which started in a cave in Turkey’s Mardin, turned into a huge underground city” — Arkeonews

WTF Fun Fact 12665 – The Initials On the Moon

Eugene Cernan walked on the moon twice, during the Apollo 10 and Apollo 17 missions. The Apollo 17 mission, which took place from December 7–19, 1972 was NASA’s final Apollo mission and the last time a human was on the moon. Cernan boarded last, making him the last man to set foot on the moon’s surface.

During Apollo 17, Cernan and his fellow astronaut, Harrison Schmitt spent 22 hours and 6 minutes outside, and they still hold the record for the longest extravehicular activity on the moon.

Cernan then drove the lunar rover about a mile away from the takeoff site so it could photograph the ship’s take-off the following day. Before he walked back to the lunar lander, he wrote in his autobiography that he knelt by the rover and drew his daughter Tracy’s initials into the moon dust.

Cernan spoke these words as he climbed into the lunar lander and left the moon:

“As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

The crew returned safely to Earth on Dec. 19, 1972. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Eugene Cernan: Last Man on the Moon” — Space.com

WTF Fun Fact 12664 – Mushrooms Talk To One Another

A study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal suggests that mushrooms are pretty chatty. In fact, the electrical signals fungi emit toward one another when they encounter food or danger bear a striking resemblance to human speech, at least in terms of the patterns they use.

Andrew Adamatzky of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at the University of the West of England noticed that fungi electrical signals spiked in certain situations.

Now, you can’t hear mushrooms speak, of course. Many mushrooms grow as part of a network with tiny roots and filaments connecting them underground, called hyphae – and that’s where the signals are passed.

Adamatzky admits that his experiment is a far cry from finding a secret “mushroom language,” but making the comparison allows us to understand the possible purpose of these electrical signals. In the end, they may mean nothing, but the fact that we can distinguish patterns of electrical activity in certain situations would suggest something interesting is going on.

The article reminds us:

“This is indeed quite a primitive classification akin to interpreting binary words only by sums of their bits and not exact configurations of 1s and 0s. That said, we should not expect quick results: we are yet to decipher language of cats and dogs despite living with them for centuries, and research into electrical communication of fungi is in its pure infant stage.” 

– WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12662 – Cleopatra Was Not An Egyptian By Birth

Some think of Cleopatra as the quintessential Egyptian. After all, she ruled for 21 years, and both her skills of seduction and political prowess on behalf of her territory were known throughout the world.

However, Egypt belonged to the empire created by Alexander the Great (who, incidentally, had a sister named Cleopatra) and was subsequently ruled by a family called the Ptolemys. The Ptolemaic dynasty was Macedonian, so while Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she likely had no Egyptian blood.

In the end, her ethnicity makes very little difference other than to note that the Egyptians were not being ruled by their own people at the time. There is at least some slight chance that because the ethnicity of mothers was not recorded after the time of her great-grandfather, Cleopatra could have conceivable had some Egyptian blood in her if she had been born of a concubine to the king. But we will never know for sure. The recorded wives of Macedonian kings were all of Macedonian descent.

Among the many amazing things about the powerful ruler is that Cleopatra was the only ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty ever to bother to learn the Egyptian language.

Cleopatra herself did not maintain the Macedonian bloodline since her children were fathered by two famous Romans, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Egypt became part of the Roman Empire shortly after Cleopatra’s death. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Cleopatra’s true racial background (and does it really matter?)” — Oxford University Press Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12661 – The Beatles Refuse To Play In Segregated Florida Stadium

The Beatles had it written into their contract in the 1960s that they would never play in segregated stadiums.

The first time they encountered the problem was in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 when they found out that their 32,0000-seat show at the Gator Bowl was going to be race-segregated. They said they’d rather lose the money than play for a segregated audience, forcing the city to back off the policy. It was the height of Beatlemania, and the band agreed to play once they desegregated the stadium.

“We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now,” said John Lennon. “I’d sooner lose our appearance money.”

But The Beatles didn’t want to have to back out of contracts with the possibility of losing money anymore, so they had it written into their contract that a crowd had to be desegregated for them to play a show and that they would still be paid if they found out at the last minute that the city hadn’t heeded this obligation. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “The Beatles banned segregated audiences, contract shows” — BBC News