Games "useless" knowledge

[I Me & Myself]

I've been researching fun facts to share with people nearly every day. Here is a small taste of what's to come:

- A Zebra's stripe pattern is completely unique, like a fingerprint

- Korean kings had historians follow them 24/7 and write down everything they do

- In Central Africa, there is a frog with claws dubbed the "wolverine frog"

- The Cox-Zucker mashine is from a paper published by Mr. Cox and Mr. Zucker, who only collaborated to make the name combination in a paper

- A physician once completed a paper alone, but didn't realise the publishing medium only allows papers with co authors. So he added his cat as a co author: F.D.C. Felis Domesticus Chester.

- Past German Chancellour once said in full seriousness "The internet is new territory for all of us". In 2013.

- German youth votes for a "youth word" of the year every year. Examples include : "das crazy" "aura" and "Ehrenmann / Ehrenfrau" (man of honor)

- There is an alternate alphabet for English called Sharian, developed specifically for the English language (unlike the latin alphabet)

- Some frogs turn blue during mating season

- On average across species, female frogs are bigger than male frogs

- Some frogs have been around longer than wooly mammoths

- The egyptian word for cat was "Mau" which is the sound a cat makes

- Things produced in occopied Japan used to be worth something as collectibles


I will add new facts when I find and share them (nearly every day, let's see how long I keep it up), feel free to add your own curious knowledge!

 

[stopMotionSickness]

About 2.5 to 3.4 billion years ago, the oceans might have looked purple because of bacteria using a simpler purple pigment instead of the more complicated green chlorophyll pigment.

 

[itsoverforme303]

Stripes thing is actually pretty interesting. It's not just limited to zebras. All animals with any kind of patterns (external stripes or internal ones like the pattern of blood vessels on our retina) are randomly generated. This doesn't "ensure" uniqueness but given the amount of randomness, it practically is impossible for two members of a species to be the same. That is why even twins have different finger prints.

External stripes arise usually from which gene got activated, which can depend either or chemical reactions or sometimes be determined by the which of the two chromosomes were activated.

For examples, in female mammals, in each cell, there are two X chromosomes but only one is activated, the other becoming a shrivelled "Barr body". This process is completely random and usually happens at the 8 cell stage of an embryo. Then, the cell will clone itself, leading to a formation of "stripes". This is the reason Calico cats are always female. Human females are "striped" this way too, but for us there is no external difference between the two types of cells.

 

[Frxtagooox]

The earth might be not flat.

 

[Forever Sleep]

If all the humans in the world were on one set of scales and all the insects on another- it's estimated all the insects combined would weigh double or more. The ant population alone is estimated to weigh one fifth of the all the humans. (According to Google.)

Animals experience time differently to humans. Cats experience time slightly faster- making their reflexes even more impressive. Dogs- slower. Supposedly- 60 minutes feels more like 75 minutes to them. Cold blooded animals experience time according to their temperature.

Some animals (including frogs) naturally produce a kind of anti- freeze to allow them to cope with freezing temperatures. Some animals can cope with 70% or more of their bodily fluids freezing. Wood frogs can freeze, stop breathing, have no detectable heartbeat for weeks before thawing out in the Spring. (Again- all quoted from Google- so hopefully it's accurate but, I don't know for sure.)

 

[Spite]

Lemmings do not commit mass suicide, it is a myth that was popularised by the 1958 documentary White Wilderness.

 

[princexhhn]

related to og post, the mandarin for cat is 猫, pronounced māo !! similar, lets all just meow if we want to say "cat" XP

 

[I Me & Myself]

Lemmings do not commit mass suicide, it is a myth that was popularised by the 1958 documentary White Wilderness.

Oooh I've also got lots of fake history ones

For example: The idea that Beethoven was black was popular due to people describing him as "fair skinned" but that just meant he was not pale white. We actually know Beethoven's ancestors pretty well because someone was able to sample his DNA! All of his family is from Europe.