8) Lets talk about Lemmings When you hear the word “lemmings” you
might think of two things: This video game and some sort of small creature
that suicidally leap off cliffs when its population grows too large. In case you didn’t know lemmings are real
and adorable and not suicidal. The origin of this myth is a bit unclear but
the video game lemmings may have done a lot more to convince a younger generation that
lemmings are willfully suicidal – and extremely frustrating to micromanage thus deserving
of mass extermination. 7) Daddly Longlegs These wispy-looking things have earned the
reputation as the most poisonous of any spider. But they’re also pretty common so, you might
wonder why more people don’t die from daddy longlegs bites every year. Like a good conspiracy theory, this myth,
covers its own tracks by also saying that their fangs are too small to penetrate human
skin. You could score one for team human except
that this misconception is a triple whammy of wrongness: 1) Daddy Longlegs don’t have fangs because 2) They don’t produce venom because 3) They aren’t even spiders 6) Ostriches Let’s review the properties of these flightless
birds, shall we? They’re up to nine feet tall, up to 340
pounds, aggressive, with sharp beaks and long claws. Essentially an ostrich is the closest thing
to a living raptor you’re ever going to see. (That is our genetic engineering technology
gets better – common dinopocapolipse!). Anyway, keeping these facts in mind, if you
decide to threaten an ostrich do you really think it’s going to stick it’s head in
the sand and wait to die? No, of course not, if you’re lucky it will
run away at 40 miles an hour and if you’re not, it’s fatality time for you. Ostriches have no reason to hide and especially
not in the stupidest way ever. If they did they would have survived about
as long and another species of flightless bird. While we’re talking about flightless birds, 5) Baby Birds A mother bird won’t abandon her baby because
you’ve touched it any more than a human mother would abandon her baby if a bird touched
it. If you find a baby bird and can easily reach
the nest, it’s perfectly fine to put it back. 4) Goldfish Memory Goldfish do have memories longer than three
seconds or seven seconds or whatever other made up number always accompanies this fact. They can actually be trained and will remember
what they learned for months. Which is more than can be said for many humans. On an unrelated note, Goldfish are also delicious. 3) Dog Vision Poor dogs, forever living in their sad, monochrome
worlds. Except, they don’t. Dogs do see color, but not quite like us. Most humans see three primary colors, red
blue and green, but dogs are limited to two: they can see blues, but the rest of the color
spectrum they can’t tell apart. Which they don’t mind, until you buy them
a red toy and throw it into the green grass and act like they’re stupid for not finding
it. It’s easy for you to see because your ancestors
spent several million years foraging for red objects on a green background and so got quite
good at it – unless they didn’t which in that case they died – but canine eyes
are not monkey eyes and to your dog, if it isn’t blue it’s all the same color. So next time you’re at the pet store, get
rover a blue toy. And, while we’re talking about vision lets
talk about 2) Bats Which, if you’ve ever looked at one, it
should be immediately obvious they’re not blind because they look right back and you
– with their eyes – that they use to see things. But they do one better by having an additional
sense called echolocation that allows them to navigate the world in complete darkness,
something you can’t do. So from the bat’s perspective you’re the
blind one. 1) You Can Boil a Frog to Death if you do
it very slowly This one is true… sort of. Friedrich Goltz, demonstrated that a frog
will remain blithely in a pot of water brought to boil if the temperature is raised slowly
enough. However, the rather salient fact that is often
left out of the retelling is that Goltz cut out the frogs’ brains before placing them
in the pot. Which rather puts them at a disadvantage. Goltz also showed that if you don’t lobotomize
the frog first then – surprise – it jumps out of the pot. It seems likely – but please don’t try
this at home – that removing the brain of any animal would rather hinder their instinct
of self preservation. And also make them more gullible about common
misconceptions.
Weird. My dog only plays with his green toys.