Certainly, there are WTF facts all around us. And if you're a curious person, you know first-hand that the more you learn, the weirder things get. But even so, who could resist knowing as much as possible about all the craziest, weirdest, grossest things our world has to offer.
From unbelievable history trivia to fascinating science, these are the WTF facts that will make you raise an eyebrow. Get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew.
Butterflies will drink your blood, sweat, and tears.
If given the chance, even the loveliest butterfly would drink your bodily fluids. Butterflies do something called "mud-puddling," wherein they hover over pools of liquid (in many cases mud, blood, feces, and other fun stuff) to determine if it has nutrients they want. And spoiler: Human blood has a ton of valuable nutrients. Don't get too scared, though; butterflies won't bite you like a vampire (though there is a species of moth that will).
You probably only breathe out of one nostril.
Eighty-five percent of people only breathe out of one nostril at a time. And if you're exclusively breathing out of your nose, your automatic nervous system will naturally switch which nostril you use several times a day. Even crazier: The nostril you're using can actually affect some of your body's processes, from the production of blood glucose and oxygen to which side of your brain is most active.
LEGO is the world's largest (tiny) tire manufacturer.
Everyone's favorite toy brand, LEGO, produces more tires per year than any other tire manufacturer in the world—by a lot. Sure, they may be toys, but Lego manufactures over 318 million tires per year, which means more than 870,000 tires per day. By comparison, the second largest tire manufacturer, Bridgestone, makes just 190 million tires per year. And lucky for us, there's don't hurt so much if you accidentally step on one.
Most mammals take the same amount of time to pee.
From elephants to cats to human toddlers, most mammals take about 21 seconds to pee. Researchers say this is because the urethra is scaled to be a "flow-enhancing device." Mammal anatomy is built on a ratio; while an elephant has a much larger bladder, it has a long urethra to match. There are exceptions for mammals less than 6.6 ounces, such as rats.
There are mites that live on human faces—and you have some on yours right now.
Yep, there are tiny beings that live on your face. Microscopic follicle mites called Demodex make their homes in human eyelashes, eyebrows, pores, and hair follicles, writes the BBC. Demodex are minuscule, eight-legged, worm-like creatures that are totally harmless. Still, there are definitely some things to know about them that will make you shudder. Yes, they do lay eggs in your pores. No, they don't poop—at least while they're alive. Instead, they hold their waste inside their bodies and flush it out onto your skin upon their death. Seriously, WTF.
That "wasabi" you get with your sushi order isn't actually wasabi.
You know that little green ball of spicy deliciousness that comes with your favorite sushi roll? It's probably not really wasabi. In the U.S., 99 percent of sushi restaurants actually serve a horse-radish based concoction that is injected with green food coloring, writes the Washington Post. True wasabi is actually pretty rare, even in Japan.
Corn Flakes were invented to prevent masturbation.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was extremely prudish and believed sex was a heinous sin—he didn't even sleep with his own wife. But in Kellogg's book, masturbation was even worse. His solution? Give people a healthy breakfast option. He believed that certain foods, such as meat, increased sexual desire, while cereal and nuts had the power to temper it.
There's a jellyfish whose sting will inflict you with a sense of impending doom.
The Irukandji is a species of one-inch-long jellyfish, whose stings will overcome victims with a sense of impending doom. Some patients have been so certain they are going to die that they've even asked their doctors to kill them. Irukandji stings also invoke vomiting, headaches, anxiety, and cramping. While they're not fatal when given the proper medical attention, these stings are certainly no picnic.
Most cruise ships have their own morgue.
Along with swimming pools, golf courses, and jaw-dropping theaters, most cruise ships are also equipped with a morgue. If any passenger dies while aboard, the ship's crew has to be able to tend to the body and store it until they arrive in port. An estimated 200 people die on cruise ships every year. Just think about that next time you sign up to sail away to paradise.
All Froot Loops are the same flavor.
You might have thought that pink loops were strawberry-flavored, orange loops orange-flavored, etc. but the only non-negligible difference is the color, discovered Time. If you thought you had a favorite, you thought wrong.
All human beings share 99.9 percent of the same genetic makeup.
Speaking of things being the all same, each human shares 99.9% percent of the same DNA. That means you're just 0.1 percent different than the person you hate the most. On the other hand, this WTF fact means you're also just 0.1 percentage point away from being Oprah.
The word for the color "blue" is a relatively modern invention.
Through studying literature, researchers determined that many of the ancient civilizations—including the Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrews—didn't have a word in their language to describe the color blue. In fact, the ancient Egyptians are the only people to exhibit evidence of perceiving the color. It makes you wonder which colors we have yet to discover. Be careful, you might be stuck thinking about it for the rest of your life.
In 1939, Hitler was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yes, that Hitler. The same year that World War II began, Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently, the member of Swedish parliament who nominated him intended the nomination as a satiric criticism in response to the nomination of then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. However, his satire wasn't well received. And fortunately, the nomination was withdrawn. A WTF fact from history if there ever was one.
Frogs use their eyeballs to swallow.
Mother Nature gives us some serious WTF facts. If you've ever seen a frog close its eyes after it eats, it's not just blinking. After researchers used X-rays to observe frogs while they ate, they found that when swallowing, a frog will retract its eyeballs down to its esophagus to push the food down. Don't try that at home.
The current U.S. flag was designed by a 17-year-old for a school project.
In his junior year of high school, teenager Bob Heft designed a 50-star flag for a class project. At the time, the U.S. only had 48 states, and Heft got a B minus for his work. But his prediction that two more states would soon be added to the union turned out to be true. Two years later, after Heft wrote 21 letters and made 18 calls to the White House, President Eisenhower called the boy to tell him the country would be adopting his design. They made it official on July 4, 1960.
Bald eagles don't sound like you think they do.
Time to ruin another patriotic symbol for you. When you think of a bald eagle, you probably think of a majestic creature with a mighty call. But the piercing cry that most people associate with the bird is actually the sound made by the red-tailed hawk, used ubiquitously by Hollywood because it has a grander effect. Real bald eagles actually make more of a chirping noise. Not quite as inspiring.
Dead people can still get erections.
It's so common for dead bodies to get erections, there's actually a term for it: "angel lust." This is most likely to happen after a sudden death in a vertical or face-down position. But that's not all. The muscle contractions that occur as rigor mortis sets in can even cause ejaculation. That could make for an awkward funeral.
Your cell phone has more germs than your toilet seat.
Next time you put your phone up to your face, just imagine you're laying cheek right on the porcelain throne. Scientists have found that cell phones carry more than 10 times the bacteria of a toilet seat. Once you stop to think about all the places your phone has been, it makes a lot of sense. But never was there better motivation to wipe down your phone every night.
The "D" in "D-Day" stands for "day."
You may have thought the "D" in "D-Day" stood for "death," "doom," or any number of menacing words. But the truth is not quite as auspicious. The "D" is actually just a designation for the date on any important military operation. So, by some interpretations, D-Day literally means "Day-Day."
Bearcat urine smells like buttered popcorn.
The next time you walk into a movie theater and your mouth starts to water, you should know that you're smelling the exact same scent as bearcat urine. These Southeast Asian mammals cover their feet and tails in their unique-smelling urine to let other bearcats know their presence. That urine contains the same compound, 2-AP, that is found in buttered popcorn. Delicious.
Abraham Lincoln's dog was also assassinated.
President Abraham Lincoln had a yellow, mixed-breed dog named Fido. (Which, by the way, some researchers say is why the name is so popular.) A year after the president's assassination, Fido was also killed. The dog reportedly jumped onto a drunken man sitting on a curb. In an intoxicated rage, the man stabbed the poor pup.
Wombats poop in cubes.
Nature has many marvels, and among them are the amazing cubic poops of wombats. This adorable animal deposits its feces in perfect cube shapes. The reasoning isn't (as some might suspect) because their buttholes are shaped like squares, but rather because of their long and slow digestive process. You never know, cube-shaped poops could be the next big trend.
The traditional shape of the heart was inspired by an ancient form of birth control.
Obviously, the hearts we cut out for Valentine's Day cards are not anatomically correct. One theory about the shape's origin is that it came from silphium, a type of fennel that the ancient Greeks and Romans used for medicine, food-flavoring, and most popularly, birth control. In fact, the plant is extinct now because they were using so much of it. Silphium seeds were shaped like our modern day heart, and the city of Cyrene even put the shape on its money.
A cockroach can live for weeks after its head has been cut off.
It probably makes you shudder to think about, but cockroaches are ridiculously resilient. Because cockroaches have an open circulatory system, when a roach's head is cut off its body simply seals at the wound. As for breathing, they use tiny holes throughout their body called spiracles to breathe directly into the tissue, Plus, cockroaches require much less food than we do, so they would be able to last for weeks before starving.
All cereal box mascots are looking down.
The next time you go to the cereal aisle in your grocery store, pay attention to the eyes on the boxes. You won't be able to un-notice that every mascot is looking down. The reason? So they can make eye contact with children. By doing this, they grab kids' attention and establish feelings of trust, making children more likely to ask their parents to buy a box of cereal. A brilliant marketing strategy, or mind control? You decide where this WTF fact falls.
Jelly beans are coated with insect secretions.
Most jelly beans (as well as candy corn) are coated with shellac, a substance made out of the secretions of the female kerria lacca, an insect from Thailand. Often, you'll see shellac billed as "confectioner's glaze" in the ingredients list. It's what makes jelly beans so shiny. Just keep that in mind next time you reach for the candy jar.
Humanity has farted approximately 17 quadrillion times over the course of human history.
The average human being farts 14 times a day. So, Deadspin took that statistic one step further and calculated that there have been approximately 17 quadrillion human farts over the course of history. Next time you let one rip, you'll be adding to the tally.
In Victorian England, people used to take photographs with their loved ones' dead bodies.
In the 19th century, mourning was fashionable and photography was becoming increasingly affordable. Those factors combined led to the morbid practice of death photography. People saw it as their final chance to have the likeness of the deceased preserved, writes the BBC. In these unsettling photos, the bodies often just look like they're sleeping or happened to blink.
One kiss transfers more than 80 million germs.
That's right, one study published in the journal Microbiome found that in one 10-second French kiss, more than 80 million microbes are transferred between partners. How romantic! But before you get too alarmed, scientists actually think kissing might be designed to boost the immune system by sharing bacteria. So go ahead, smooch to your heart's content, this one's a WTF fact that's totally harmless.
Bookstores give some people the urge to poop.
One Japanese expression called the Mariko Aoki phenomenon theorizes that walking into a bookstore ignites the urge to defecate. The condition is named after a woman who mentioned it in a magazine article in 1985. Science has yet to uncover a clear reason as to why this happens. But if you've ever experienced the Mariko Aoki phenomenon, know that you're not alone.
Scientists used to believe there were little people inside sperm.
Fortunately, this idea has since been debunked, but the mental image will stay with you forever. Back in the 1600s, "preformationism" was a popular idea: the theory that living beings grow from smaller versions of themselves, writes Popular Science. Per this theory, people believed that there were fully formed humans curled up in sperm cells (or, depending on who you were talking to, egg cells). They also believed that every person carried all of their future offspring with them, and that those offspring carried their future offspring with them, and so on. It's the Russian-nesting-doll scenario from your worst nightmare.
Walt Disney almost named the seven dwarves Chesty, Tubby, Burpy, Deafy, Hickey, Wheezy, and Awful.
No, that's not a list of symptoms. Those are the names Walt Disney considered naming the characters of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Can you imagine the lovely Snow White dancing merrily with Burpy and Hickey? It may have been a whole other kind of movie.
When you see a shooting star, it could just be astronaut poop.
When astronaut poop is released into space, it burns up with an effect much like a shooting star. This means that some of the amazing phenomena you've seen in the night sky could just be astronauts dumping their waste. Do wishes made on flying poop still come true? Let's hope so.
Starfish eat with their stomachs inside out.
Starfish, also known as sea stars, mostly eat bivalves, like clams and mussels. When a starfish catches its food, the creature wraps its arms around its prey's shell and squeezes until the shell is slightly open. Then, the starfish pushes its stomach up out of its mouth (which is located on its underside) and into the prey's shell. After it digests the animal inside the shell, the starfish slides its stomach back into its body. We're pretty sure this never happened to Patrick from Spongebob.
The U.S. Navy uses military dolphins to help defend the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
The fate of the world is in the hands (er, fins) of dolphins. Naval Base Kitsap is a marine base 20 miles from Seattle which houses nearly a quarter of the country's nuclear weapons. It's high security, which is why the U.S. Navy has trained dolphins to defend the waters around the base. The animals are trained in San Diego at a program called The Navy Marine Mammal Program at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), which trains dolphins and sea lions for service in the U.S. Navy.
Fear can actually make your blood curdle.
You've likely heard of a "bloodcurdling scream," but it's more than just an expression. In an experiment, scientists found that watching a horror movie increased the coagulant in subjects' blood. This increases the blood's ability to clot, which is likely a defense mechanism in anticipation of an attack.
The universe is officially colored "Cosmic Latte."
In 2002, scientists determined that all light in the universe averages to be a slightly beige color they've coined as "Cosmic Latte." If you're thinking the name sounds like it should be a Starbucks drink, you're right; astronomer Peter Drum came up with the name as he was sitting in a Starbucks reading an article about the experiment and realized that the color was strikingly similar to that of his latte.
Bees make honey by regurgitating nectar.
Some people think that honey is bee vomit, which isn't exactly the case. Instead, the sweet treat is created through the regurgitation of nectar. After a bee sucks the nectar from a plant, it stores it in its stomach. Then, it regurgitates it into another bee's mouth, repeating the process until the nectar is ultimately deposited in a honeycomb. Bees then fan the honeycomb with their wings to speed up the process of evaporation. Then, they seal the comb with a secretion from their abdomen until it hardens into beeswax. This WTF fact is sweet enough to eat.
Turtles breathe out of their butts.
It's true, some freshwater turtles can breathe out of their butts. This is an anatomical tactic turtles use to conserve energy while they're hibernating in winters You gotta do what you gotta do.
A head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tons.
Your hair is stronger than you think. A single strand of hair can hold 30 ounces, and a whole head of hair can support 12 tons (which is roughly the size of two elephants.) Next time you go to the zoo, see if they'll let you try it out.
