Humans do weird stuff. Sometimes, we don’t even realize our behaviors are strange until we really stop to look at ourselves objectively. Then, it’s only natural to wonder why we do that weird stuff. So in the spirit of analyzing ourselves, here are some of the odd things we do every day and the leading explanations for why we do them.

10Not Replacing The Toilet Paper Roll

On the scale of difficult things to do, replacing the toilet paper roll lands way down near the bottom of the list. Still, for some reason, many of us have a difficult time completing this simple task with any level of consistency. Why is that? The reason for our TP sloppiness, according to a pair of psychologists from the University of New York, isn’t really due to laziness but because replacing the roll isn’t the slightest bit stimulating and offers virtually no intrinsic reward (except to the anal retentive).

Similar chores like taking out the trash or doing the dishes are equally boring and unmotivating, but at least they give us the satisfaction of keeping things stink- and rodent-free. Properly loading the toilet paper might make things look a little better, but so what?

The NYU psychologists, Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, say that for humans to be truly motivated to do anything, the task must meet three psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. The chore should be challenging enough to make us feel competent when we complete it. It should make us feel like we have some sort of control over what we’re doing. And it should give us the sense that we’re enhancing our relationships with loved ones. This theory is known as the self-determination theory. Replacing the TP falls far short of meeting those three criteria. The only one it might fulfill is relatedness—that is, if you live in a very “we’re all in this together and we all pitch in with the chores” type of household.

Thus, getting a spouse or roommate to always properly replace the toilet paper or to do any other mundane task is probably a lost cause. Unless you can psychologically convince them that doing so takes a certain level of proficiency, that they’re by no means a “slave” to forever doing the chore, and that it will make them more connected to others. Now that’s a difficult task.

9Desire To Bite Cute Things

Any time there’s a baby around, someone invariably tells the baby (in the obligatory cutesy voice) that they’re “gonna eat them up” or “bite their toes” or eat some other body part. Similar conversations happen when puppies are around, and you may have even seen someone (or caught yourself) pretend-chomping on a puppy’s paw. What’s the deal with this? Why do we have the urge to jokingly munch on cute things?

Scientists have two main theories for this phenomenon. The first idea is that somehow our pleasure-sensing wires are getting crossed in the brain. When people (women in particular) catch a whiff of a newborn baby, we get a rush of dopamine similar to what happens when eating delicious food. It’s thought that we relate cuteness to this dopamine-inducing scent, which also reminds us of food. This overlap in senses unconsciously gives us the desire to put cute things in our mouths.

The other explanation is that it’s a form of play biting, which is common in many mammals and is a behavior from our animalistic sides. Many animals nip, pseudo-bite, and wrestle in a friendly, playful manner. It’s not entirely clear whether this is done to hone fighting skills, boost motor skills, or simply for fun, but the behavior usually happens between trusted allies. It takes a lot of trust to put your hand in someone’s mouth and let them bite down. So, if for nothing else, play biting is used to increase social bonds, and that could explain why we unconsciously do it when we feel the urge to get emotionally close to something cute.

8Inappropriate Laughing

Most of us are guilty of laughing inappropriately at one time or another, such as when we see someone fall down and get hurt or when we’re relaying bad news. And although we know there’s nothing funny about Grandma’s death, we may still find ourselves trying to hold back fits of laughter at her funeral. Laughing in these types of situations isn’t necessarily okay by social standards, but it’s apparently fairly common, and there’s a good reason for it.

When we laugh in a solemn circumstance, it doesn’t mean we’re cold-hearted or disrespectful. In fact, it’s likely a sign that we’re under a great deal of emotional stress and our body is using laughter as a way to relieve some of the discomfort or tension. Similarly, chuckling when someone falls down or otherwise gets hurt is believed to be an evolutionary function letting the tribe know that, although the person might be embarrassed or slightly injured, he’s not gravely wounded, and there’s no need for alarm.

Laughing, in general, is rarely a response to something being legitimately funny. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott explains it’s used most often as a method of social bonding—to let people know that we like them, we agree with them, or we’re in the same group. Knowing that, we shouldn’t feel so horrified if our neighbor lets out a chuckle while explaining how he ran over our dog. It’s possible he simply feels really uncomfortable and is instinctively trying to connect with us during an awkward situation.

7Fascination With Psychopaths

A good size of the population has a fascination with the macabre and specifically psychopaths. Nightly entertainment is chock-full of crazy, psychotic killers, and for some reason, we can’t get enough of them. What might our insatiable interest in the vilest of humans say about us as a people? There are three main theories floating around to explain this obsession.

The first idea is that watching or hearing about psychos allows us to temporarily step out of our conscientious, law-abiding shoes and vicariously step into the shoes of someone who only thinks about himself. He doesn’t do any of the things we automatically do every day, like worrying about others’ feelings or being fair. Imagining ourselves as that person (even unconsciously) temporarily liberates us from these obligations without actually causing any harm.

In contrast, forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy says that psychopaths are a type of predator, and hearing about them connects us with our primal existence of constantly being both the hunter and the hunted. Entertaining ourselves with the stories of human predators allows us to relate with our primal, animalistic selves without experiencing the real danger of the natural world.

Finally, psychiatrist and Harvard professor Ron Schouten says that our draw to psychopaths is similar to our attraction to horror movies or roller coasters. Sometimes we just like to be frightened, and tales of psycho killers can definitely fulfill that need. This is because being frightened sends a rush of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, which evokes feelings of pleasure. In an entertainment setting where there’s no real danger, our fear doesn’t last long. On top of the dopamine-induced pleasure, we usually leave the theater or turn off the TV feeling a sense of well-being or justice (depending on how the film or show ends). This type of satisfaction keeps us coming back for more.

6Pretending To Know Stuff

Most of us have probably been in the situation where someone casually asks, “Hey, have you heard of such and such?” And almost unthinkingly, we respond, “Yeah,” even though if we took time to genuinely think about it, we’d realize we don’t actually know what they’re talking about. Similarly, some folks habitually feign knowledge when they’re well aware they know nothing about the topic at hand. Whether we purposefully pretend to know stuff or if we just sort of do it accidentally, scientists say there’s an explanation for this behavior.

Cornell professor David Dunning has researched this psychological quirk and explains that most people fake it out of convenience or to reaffirm their identity. He says that many of us don’t have a very clear understanding of what we do or don’t know and might unconsciously fake knowledge. This is because in the instant when someone asks us if we know about something, our brains start to infer, assume, and invent explanations for things. In that moment, we may say that we know something (even if we don’t) partly because we don’t want to bog the conversation down with questions and partly because our brains think we should know something about the topic. In short, the feeling of knowing is more of a sensation than it is actually sifting through our brains’ stores of information and coming up with a conclusion.

Another, perhaps more obvious, reason people pretend to know stuff is because they like feeling like a know-it-all. But why?

Neurologist Robert A. Burton explains that our society glorifies knowledge, and to have an awareness of something is a notch on the social belt—especially if you came from know-it-all parents. Being a know-it-all can become kind of an addiction. In fact, the same area of the brain lights up and the same reward pathways shoot dopamine whether we’re rewarded with a right answer or if we’re taking drugs or gambling. Thus, pretending to be the person who knows everything can be a hard habit to break.

5Crying

Crying seems like an ordinary enough experience and something we don’t really think of as strange. Yet if we really stop to contemplate what’s happening—salt water dripping out of our eyes during emotional moments—it seems a little bizarre. What do tears, eyes, and emotions have to do with each other?

One of the prevailing theories to explain human crying is put forth by Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets. He argues that crying is largely a social sign that has its evolutionary roots in distress signals. Most young animals emit some type of distress sound to alert others that they need help. It’s thought that crying started as a way for humans to signify their distress (through tears) without making a predator-alerting scream or other noise. Although human babies usually have audible cries, adults often shed tears with little noise. Evolutionarily, this could have been an advantageous response, since another member of the tribe would only need to glance at the crier to see he was in trouble. Interestingly, humans are the only species to emit emotional tears. Most other animals stop making distress calls after reaching adulthood.

Further evidence that crying may have originated as a response to danger or trouble is that it also works in conjunction with our sympathetic nervous system (or the fight or flight system). For example, in addition to shedding tears, crying speeds up the heart rate, increases sweating, and slows breathing. Emotional tears even contain a natural painkiller, leucine enkephalin, which could partially explain why we sometimes feel better after a good cry.

So, although we can nowadays cry when alone or during harmless, sappy movies, the act may have started as a method of protection.

4Twitch When Falling Asleep

As much as 70 percent of people twitch or have an involuntary jerk, or hypnagogic jerk, when falling asleep. Other than amusing awake onlookers, it seems there must be an explanation for a behavior that’s apparently so common. Unfortunately, scientists aren’t entirely sure why we have the spasms, but of course, there are some educated hypotheses.

Some scientists believe it’s nothing more than an accidental reaction that happens when our nerves misfire while transitioning from alertness to sleep. This is because our bodies don’t have a definitive on/off switch, where “on” is awake and “off” is asleep. Instead we gradually transition between the state where our reticular activating system (which governs basic physiological processes) is in full force and when the ventrolateral system (which drives sleepiness and influences sleep cycles) is in charge. We can be in the middle of the two states, such as when feeling sleepy, and there can be a bit of a struggle as we firmly position ourselves into one state or another. This back-and-forth struggle is thought to cause the misfiring, and the twitches are the last fights of wakefulness.

In contrast, others believe it’s an evolutionary response left over from our tree-dwelling days, and the jerks are a primate reflex that keeps us from getting too relaxed and falling from branches.

Other types of spasms while sleeping aren’t quite the same as a hypnagogic jerk. Dreaming of falling, for instance, and then jerking oneself awake is more of an example of dream incorporation where the brain intermixes real life and the dream state.

3Gossiping

Women usually get pegged as the biggest gossips out of the two sexes, but men are guilty of this social offense as well. At least one study says men gossip 32 percent more than women per day. No matter which sex has the biggest blabbermouths, hurtful gossip can come back to bite us, yet it seems we can’t help ourselves when it comes to dishing a little dirt.

The reason for this is that most of us have an inherent desire to bond with those immediately around us—an urge that can overpower any moral obligations we might feel to mind our own business. We want to form social connections to people in our vicinity, and gossiping not only gives us something to talk about, it immediately creates a sense of trust, since the act of gossiping signals that we’re letting the other person in our confidence. In turn, the other person shares secrets, and a rapport is established. As we all know, it also gives us a feeling of superiority, is good for a laugh, and spices up boring situations.

Curiously, gossiping about people’s successes (if there is such a thing) doesn’t have the same effect. Studies show that connecting over shared dislikes creates stronger bonds than discussing shared positives.

Although gossiping means we’re throwing someone else under the bus for the sake of an immediate relationship or gratification, it might not be an entirely bad thing. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar says that gossip partly drove the evolutionary development of our brains. He argues that language first developed out of our desire to share gossip, and it enables us to talk about those who aren’t present while indirectly teaching others how to properly relate to the group.

About 60 percent of conversations between adults are about someone who’s not present. Thus, there’s no need to be paranoid that your friends are talking about you when you’re not around, as it’s almost certainly a fact.

2Liking Sad Movies

Enough grief, misfortune, and other nonsense happens to us on a daily basis that it seems ridiculous that we would want to spend our entertainment hours subjecting ourselves to more sadness. Despite this, we still regularly find ourselves sitting down to watch a guaranteed tearjerker. While it may seem counterintuitive, one reason for this is that watching tragedies actually makes us feel happier in the short term and therefore boosts our enjoyment of the movie.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that watching sad movies causes people to think about their own close relationships, which makes them feel appreciative and satisfied with their lives. Seeing tragedies on the screen causes folks to examine their own lives and count their blessings. However, the researchers point out that this reaction is not the same as those who watch a tragic movie and think something along the lines of, “Sheesh, at least I don’t have it as bad as that guy.” Those viewers have selfish thinking, are more focused on themselves instead of others, and don’t experience any boost in happiness after watching the film.

Also, according to Dr. Paul Zak, seeing movies or hearing stories about others causes us to feel empathy and prompts our brains to release oxytocin, which increases our feelings of caring. Zak even refers to oxytocin as the “moral molecule” because of how it makes us more trustworthy, generous, and compassionate. Right after a sad movie and the ensuing rush of oxytocin, we feel more connected to the people around us and overall more satisfied—even if we are shedding some tears. This feeling keeps us coming back for even more depressing flicks.

1Thinking Silence Is Awkward

Regardless of whether there is anything of value to say, many of us feel a burning desire to fill every silent moment with some type of conversation. What’s so bad about just sitting quietly with someone, and why does prolonged silence make us feel so awkward?

Like many of our behaviors, it all comes down to our primal desire to belong and fit in with the group. According to psychologist Namkje Koudenburg, when the dance of conversation doesn’t follow the traditional ebb and flow, we start to worry that something might not be right. We may wonder if we’re uninteresting or not relevant, which makes us worry about our position in the group. On the other hand, when the dialogue is bouncing back and forth as expected, we feel socially validated.

That said, not all cultures experience awkward silence in the same ways as Americans and others. For example, in Japan, a long pause can be a sign of respect, especially when considering a serious question. Cross-culture businesspeople are even trained on this etiquette, so they don’t assume a silent Japanese colleague is unsatisfied with the negotiation or whatever else the conversation is about.

The Finnish, Australian Aboriginals, and those in many Asian countries are also known for long, silent pauses in their talk and don’t see them as a sign that the conversation has broken down. Rather, it’s not uncommon for people from these countries to think Americans talk too much and dominate conversations.

Incidentally, for those of us where nonstop talking is the norm, researchers say it only takes four seconds of silence for things to get awkward.

Content and copywriter by day and list writer by night, S. Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S. Grant here.

Earth’s magical ecosystems might be on their way out, but they’re still full of awesome surprises — like these ten animal behaviors, each of which is so totally opposite to what you’d expect that they’re practically oxymoronic.

10. Flying squid

Often mistaken for flying fish, there are at least six known species of flying squid and possibly dozens more. But as seeing them in action is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of sight there’s not much for scientists to go on. Most reports come from sailors who find them on deck in the morning. 

Marine biologist Silvia Maciá, however, got lucky. On holiday in 2001, she saw a torpedo-shaped Caribbean reef squid — alarmed by the noise of her boat — shoot out the water and arc through the air. Maciá estimated it reached a height of two meters and covered a distance of ten meters (50 times its own length). But this wasn’t just a jump. The squid “extended its fins and flared its tentacles in a radial pattern while airborne,” guiding its flight like an inside-out bird. As she and her husband later wrote in a paper with other biologists, “gliding” is too passive a term for it; “‘flight’ is more fitting because it implies something active.” One of Maciá’s co-authors even claimed to have seen squid flapping their fins as though wings. They also shoot water jets for extra propulsion, sometimes with enough force to keep up with boats. Sometimes they’re even seen flying in flocks.

We don’t know for sure why squid took to flying, but it probably saves them energy while escaping from predators.

9. Walking bats

Although mammals, bats have adapted so thoroughly to flight that their “legs” don’t allow them to walk. In most species, they’re little more than “attachment points for the surface of their wings.” Even crawling on the ground is an effort.

Of the 1,110 species of bat, only two have a true walking gait: the vampire bat and the lesser short-tailed burrowing bat. For the vampire bat, walking is vital. After landing near its sleeping prey, it has to stealthily creep over to feed on its blood. One type of vampire bat can even run, using its wings for additional thrust.

Less well known is the burrowing bat of New Zealand, whose adaptations for walking include grooves on the soles of its feet, clawed toes, and even pockets for keeping the wings in. In fact, this species is so well adapted for walking, it spends 40 percent of its time foraging on the ground. But it can still fly just as well as any other bat — unlike birds that are adapted for walking.

8. Bat-catching snakes

Since (most) bats can’t walk and snakes can’t fly, you’d think they’d have little to do with each other. But some snakes have actually taken to the air — at least in a manner of speaking. 

In a cave in the Yucatan rainforest, a population of yellow-red rat snakes has established itself in ceiling cracks, dangling to catch bats in their mouths. Given the density of the bat swarms that issue nightly from the “Bat Cave”, as it’s known to locals, it’s a behavior that makes perfect sense.

And, interestingly, they’re not the only species to have filled this creepy niche. 1,000 kilometers away, across the Caribbean Sea, boas grab fruit bats from the air, likewise striking from the ceilings of caves. But even more surprisingly, they do so in packs — coordinating positions to boost their chance of a mouthful.

7. Fish-eating spiders

Although some spiders are known to eat frogs, rodents, and birds, what kind of spider eats fish?

According to a review of the existing literature, it’s not as unusual as it sounds. Species from as many as five genera, and every continent but Antarctica, are listed. In North America, semi-aquatic spiders catch small freshwater mosquito fish by anchoring their hind legs to a stone or plant and “fishing” with its front legs on the surface of the water. 

After dragging a catch onto land, feeding often takes several hours. Why does it take so long? Because, on average, spiders catch fish at least twice as long as themselves.

6. Hornet-cooking bees

Stinging isn’t the only suicide attack deployed by nature’s boddhisattvas, the bees. When a hornet attacks a nest, hundreds of worker bees swarm into a ball around the intruder to roast it alive with their body heat. Surprisingly, this behavior, known as “hot defensive bee balls,” wasn’t documented until 1995 when it was studied in detail in Japan.

By rapidly vibrating their wing muscles for upwards of half an hour, bees are able to reach temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius, which is enough to kill the captive hornet. But while it’s just under bee-roasting point, it does seem to lower bees’ lifespan. It also seems to disinhibit them neurologically, making them more likely to join balls in the future than bees that were never involved.

Some bee species might also deploy non-heated balls to suffocate invaders, or else dance in waves to reflect shimmering signals that warn off would-be attackers. They have to act fast, though, whatever they do. Given time, hornets release pheromones to attract back-up.

5. Sea-faring spiders

You’d think spiders would be wary of water. But many species live close to and even in it. The so-called diving bell spider, for instance, lives underwater in a silken base filled, bubble by bubble, with air from the surface. Once established, oxygen levels remain stable thanks to diffusion from aquatic plants nearby. 

More surprisingly, coastal spiders (Amaurobioides) are able to travel by sea — which explains how they reached South Africa from South America in the Miocene. They also got to Australia and New Zealand. Using their legs as sails and silk as an anchor, coastal spiders can travel the world. 

First described in 2015, this behavior explains the mystery, noted by Darwin, of spiders blowing onto ships even miles away from the shore.

4. Immaculately-conceiving Komodo’s

In 2006 a strange report in the biology journal Nature described two cases where female komodo dragons — both captive at zoos in England — reproduced without mating a male. One laid 11 eggs, eight of which were developing normally, while the other laid 22, four of which hatched. Because the second dragon had actually mated two and a half years previously, researchers initially assumed she’d simply held onto the sperm, as some reptiles can. However, genetic analysis revealed that her offspring was identical to her, only male. The other dragon, meanwhile, had never mated. 

Known as parthenogenesis, asexual reproduction is extremely rare. In the absence of sperm to provide the other half of her offspring’s chromosomes, the mother just doubles up her own. Only 0.1 percent of vertebrates are capable of this feat. The reason komodo dragons are among them is thought to be their isolated habitat, the islands of Indonesia — since parthenogenesis allows (at least in principle) females washed up on an island to found a new colony on their own.

Unfortunately, however, the offspring produced in this way are, being genetically less diverse, more prone to disease. They’re also exclusively male, since, unlike in humans, two of the same chromosomes in komodo dragons (namely ZZ) produces a male. So parthenogenesis isn’t really an advantage for this endangered species of monitor lizard.

3. Bird-catching fish

Sharks aside, the relationship between birds and fish is pretty much always top-down. Fish don’t pluck birds from the air. 

Or do they? In 2014, a group of researchers in South Africa saw a tigerfish leap from a lake and catch a swallow in flight. It all happened so fast, they weren’t sure at first what they’d seen. As it turned out, it was the first ever confirmed sighting of a freshwater fish preying on a bird in mid-air. And it wasn’t their last. Before they left, the team saw as many as 20 such strikes every day. The anecdotal reports were correct: fish preying on birds is common in the region, it’s just not all that well studied.

It happens elsewhere too. Another bird-catching species is the silver arowana, a flying fish that preys not only on birds, but also bats and even mice in what’s left of the Amazon rainforest.

2. Land-stalking fish

Birds aren’t even safe from fish on dry land. On the River Tarn in Albi, France, there’s a small island where pigeons come to preen — and where catfish come to hunt them. 

The European catfish is actually pretty formidable. Usually measuring between 1 and 1.5 meters long but with outlier specimens known to reach 3 meters, they’re the continent’s biggest freshwater fish. And, despite their relatively “primitive” state of evolution, their great adaptability keeps them at the top of their food chain. 

To stalk the pigeons on land, catfish swim nearby, detecting vibrations with their upper jaw barbels (or “whiskers”).Then they flop out of the water and onto the island, grabbing any pigeon that moves before retreating into the depths. The whole thing takes less than four seconds. 

1. Tree-climbing fish

Further making a mockery of the old saying “a fish out of water,” some species actually prefer it. By holding bubbles of water in their gill chambers, Asian mudskippers are able to breathe on dry land for up to two days, taking oxygen not only through their gills but also through their skin — as long as its wet. Specially adapted fins allow them to walk (or hop) along the ground and even their eyesight is better on land.

But humans have known this for a while. A more recent discovery by scientists catching up with local knowledge is that some can also climb trees. The dusky-gilled and slender mudskippers are two of the tree-climbing species. According to researchers, they use a combination of suction, friction, and slug-like secretions, as well as their fins, to make their way vertically up tree trunks.

Even more surprising, though, was their movement across water. Recordings of the dusky-gilled mudskipper in Java revealed it hopping off vertical inclines, such as mangrove roots, onto water, then from the water to another vertical incline on land. Using its body for propulsion, it reached speeds of 1.7 meters per second.

It seems like every day you stumble across some new animal fact on the internet or news, and that’s because there actually are more facts every day. At any given time, there are thousands of ethologists- the biologists who study animal behavior- carrying out thousands of studies and experiments, helping to fill in our knowledge gaps on the natural world. And sometimes, what they find is downright terrifying. With millions of animals species all vying for survival in an unforgiving world, many have developed some brutal strategies for coping. Some are for hunting, some are for defense, and some are just plain mysterious, but all of these are enough to make your next stroll through nature a bit more guarded. Here are ten of the creepiest animal behaviors caught on film… yet.

10 Mass Suicide

As crazy as it is, this behavior doesn’t just occur in one species. We know many species to commit mass suicides (though not in lemmings, as is popularly believed). The range of species known to kill themselves en masse is staggering—everything from insects to birds to amphibians to mammals and more. And we rarely have any good idea why.

When asked why cetaceans, the group that includes whales and dolphins, so commonly strand themselves on shore to die (known as beaching), the ethologist Darlene Ketten once said, “I often use the analogy of a car crash, because a lot of things can go wrong but you get the same result. Statistically, we are only able to determine the cause of a stranding in about 50 percent of all cases worldwide.” In the case of beaching, the most common causes are diseases, red tides, injuries, and human habitat disruption, but conclusive answers are few and far between. Usually, all we are left with are piles of animal corpses and mysteries.

9 Torture Your Food

Speaking of cetaceans, they don’t just harm themselves. Before they kill their prey, they have a habit of torturing it, too. For fun. Orcas, for example, are known to ‘toy’ with their prey, grabbing them and releasing them again and again. They’ve also been recorded submerging their helpless prey (often air-breathing seals) in their jaws briefly, just to bring them back up and back down over and over. Though they could easily drown their prey or simply eat them quickly, some seem to prefer to watch the hope rise and fall in their prey’s helpless little eyes.

Dolphins, too, have been seen causing seemingly needless harm to their prey. Like orcas, they have repeatedly been seen batting injured prey back and forth with their tails like a grotesque marine version of badminton.

8 Spartan Eagles

Golden eagles are one of the largest eagle species, and eagles are some of the largest birds of prey. But unlike the few larger species, which are mainly vultures and condors, eagles obtain the majority of their food from active hunting, not scavenging. This typically means rabbits and mid-sized rodents but can include essentially anything that eagles can reasonably takedown—including mountain goats, which they sometimes kill by throwing them off cliffs.

There are a few occasions where researchers have witness golden eagles going after mountain goats- which are much heavier than the eagle- with the ingenious strategy of simply knocking them off the cliff they’re perched on. As the goats are too heavy to lift, the eagles have developed this new strategy, which is both clever and horrifying.

7 Storm Hunter

Perhaps it’s better to say that this behavior is more metal than creepy. But if you’re a wild deer in this situation, there’s little difference. Tigers have been seen using thunderstorms as camouflage for their hunts.

As the dark grey clouds that signify a thunderstorm accumulate, tigers begin to hunt. The darkness of the clouds helps hide their form as it slinks through the tall grass. The steady, rumbling thunder rolls help mask the already muted noise from their feet. As tigers already know to be downwind, that doesn’t leave any of their prey’s senses operative enough to detect the feline predator before the pounce. (And if you’re close enough to a tiger to taste or touch it, it’s too late).

6 Venomous Armpits

Slow lorises are an internet favorite for their cute and somewhat derpy appearance. And one behavior, in particular, has made for sharable video fodder again and again. When “tickled,” Lorises tend to raise their arms straight up, which has caused many to assume that they simply love being tickled. In reality, the Lorises feel threatened by the touch and are revealing the deadly venom glands in their armpits.

It’s true: lorises are one of the few mammals- and the only primate- to produce venom, and they do so in glands in their armpits. The venom is deadly to humans and curiously seems to have evolved as part of a strategy by which lorises mimic cobras. When threatened, lorises raise their arms, sometimes clasping them atop their heads and hissing, possibly mimicking venomous cobras. They take this one step farther by licking venom from their armpits, which then makes their bite as deadly as a cobra’s, as well.

5 The Taste of Human Flesh

Herbivores eat meat, too, and it can be terrifying. Thought to be due to nutritional deficiencies, a whole range of herbivores have been spotted turning to carnivory from time to time. Due to how common they are, this most often happens with deer. Usually, they feast on small woodland critters, but it was human flesh in at least one instance. At a body farm in Texas, a deer was caught on film “gnawing on a (human) rib bone.”

I have personally witnessed this first hand. It gave me nightmares. I once saw a deer in my parent’s backyard bent over the corpse of a rabbit. It bit into the body, crunching its bones, and when it raised its head to chew the meat, its muzzle was soaked in blood. Absolutely demonic-looking.

4 Stronger Than Steel

You may have heard the dubious claim that some spider silk is stronger than steel. Well, that’s actually true. Though only some spiders make webs, all of them produce silk, which they use in several ways (or don’t use at all). There are, therefore, many different types of silk, and some, like “dragline silk,” are indeed scary strong.

Regarding straight-up tensile strength, dragline silk is stronger than most steels and comparable to the rest. In extensibility, however, there’s no comparison. Some silk can be stretched five times its length without breaking. When you combine tensile strength and extensibility, you get the measure known as toughness, in which silk absolutely dominates. The silks are unbeatable by all but the most cutting-edge (and expensive and difficult to produce) synthetic materials. When you consider that some spiders used to be up to two feet long, it makes for some creepy what-if scenarios.

3 Power Punch

It’s a well-known fun fact that mantis shrimps are impossible alien monsters. For one thing, they have 16 photoreceptors (compared to our three), so can see potentially millions of more colors than we can. But the creepiest thing about mantis shrimp is their punch.

The shrimp can punch with their front limbs at speeds of 75 feet/second. That’s about as fast as a .22 caliber bullet. That can smash through the shells of clams, crabs, and most other creatures they encounter. It is, in fact, the strongest strike of any animal. People who have been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of the hit will attest to its power.

2 Organ Bombs

There is a behavior known to biologists as autotomy, in which an animal deliberately sheds part of its body for self-defense. The most famous example is lizards shedding their tails to escape predators. But sea cucumbers take the strategy to a whole new level.

When threatened, some sea cucumbers will contract their body walls and forcibly shoot their internal organs out of their body. Their anus, intestines, tentacles, muscles, parts of their respiratory tract, and even parts of their reproductive organs- all of them are shot out of the body, potentially entangling predators in the sticky, adhesive mess.

1 Dead Body Camouflage

Normal assassin bugs are creepy enough. They feed on their prey by stabbing it with their proboscis, injecting it with a paralyzing agent, then injecting it with proteins that dissolve it from the inside out (while still alive and paralyzed), and lastly, sucking out the gooey innards. But one species, Acanthaspis petax, is even worse.

The creepy crawly uses the bodies of its victims as camouflage. After killing its prey, usually ants, it rubs an adhesive on them and sticks them onto its back. And it keeps doing this, body after body, until it has a giant ball of dead ants atop its back. The stack of ant bodies potentially masks the assassin bug’s scent with the ants’ scent and also makes the bug look larger than it truly is- seemingly protecting it from discouraged predators.

Animal behavior is a classic example of a topic most of us believe to be more knowledgeable about than we really are. Often, we turn out to be wrong because we should have checked our sources. However, it could also be because humans have a tendency to try to find their own habits in other species or because we have outdated information that has been disproven since our parents and teachers first mentioned a particular animal.

Here are 10 animal behaviors that humans think they may know… but might be surprised to find they’re all wrong.

10 Opossums Don’t “Play” Dead

Some people think opossums are adorable, while others hate them. But most people make two false assumptions about them: first, that English speakers are allowed to drop the first “o” when talking about them, and second, that trapped opossums feign death to scare off would-be predators. Indeed, the fuzzy creatures will fall down, tongues lolling out, discharging their bowels; they’ll lay—seemingly dead—for minutes to hours on end, making them not only appear dead but also smell too bad for most animals to eat. Humans have mistakenly assumed that this behavior was intentional for so long that “playing opossum” (or, colloquially, “playing ‘possum”) is a commonly used English expression for playing dead.

The sad truth is that the little animals involuntarily enter a catatonic state when taken by surprise. The phenomenon is closer to them being nearly scared to death. They can’t control it, and—what’s worse—they cannot get out of this state which lasts from several minutes to several hours, no matter what’s being done to them. Though their smell might dissuade most predators, opossums become incapable of defending themselves from being moved, injured, or killed.^[1]

9 Raccoons Don’t Wash Their Food

Raccoons look adorable when they take their food to a water source and “wash” it. However, they aren’t actually fussy eaters who worry about germs. What they are, in fact, are extremely tactile animals. They have four to five times the number of nerve endings in their paws that most mammals have. Therefore, they glean a lot of information from touching things. And it turns out that wetting their paws improves the nervous response to tactile input. That is why raccoons “wash their food.”^[2]

8 Not All Fireflies Are Looking to Mate

Fireflies, the common name for members of the Lampyridae family, light up our summer skies. Incredibly, there are more than two thousand species of the little beetles. They may all look the same to us, but there sure are distinctions and variations among them. We tend to assume that they light up in order to find mates, and predictably, that is the case for many of them.

However, not all fireflies are on the prowl in the same sense at night. Some of them use their phosphorescent lighting abilities to hunt. And some even use it to attract lightning bugs of a different species in a fake mating call. The unknowing bug will then fly over to them, only to get trapped and eaten.^[3]

7 Ostriches Don’t Stick Their Heads in the Sand

We all know the expression, “Don’t stick your head in the sand!” It is often associated with the idea of running away from one’s problems. In an extremely bizarre example of anthropomorphism, humans have thought ostriches literally stick their heads in the sand when scared.

Aside from the fact that they would not be able to breathe with their heads in the ground, ostriches aren’t actually dumb enough to think that not seeing danger would actually make it disappear. No potential prey animal that survived that long could possibly have such terrible instincts!

In reality, what looks like ostriches sticking their heads in the ground, is just them putting their beaks into their nests to turn their eggs a few times a day.^[4]

6 Lemmings Do Not Commit Mass Suicide

We all know the sweet—albeit disturbing—image of one lemming jumping off a cliff and the rest of the group following. Much like ostriches, lemmings don’t actually have bad survival instincts. They do, however, migrate when their population density becomes too great.

In the case of migrations, they’ve been known to try to cross a body of water that turns out to be too large for their endurance capacity, in which case many of them will drown. They’ve also been known to accidentally fall off the edge of a cliff.

For the longest time, their behavior and the resulting lemming corpses were inexplicable to humans, causing false theories about lemmings falling out of the sky, exploding, swimming into the ocean until they drowned, and jumping off cliffs.

Most notably, perhaps, these misconceptions were reinforced by the 1958 Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness.^[5]

5 Skunks Do Not Spray Every Time They’re Scared

Under the impression that skunks always spray larger animals, most people panic when they encounter one. In reality, skunks spray as rarely as possible. Indeed they try to avoid using their glands whenever they can because the liquid they secrete is limited and will fully empty itself out before getting replenished. Depending on the skunk, they can spray up to six times before they need to wait two weeks for their glands to recharge. In those two weeks, they are, of course, extra vulnerable. So skunks do, in fact, employ any other method to get away from predators before they resort to spraying.

On an interesting side note, skunks warn us that they are about to spray by doing what looks like a very specific little dance. It involves stomping on the ground and handstands, depending on the species of skunk—though, of course, what we see as a “warning dance” is, in reality, a way to attempt to scare us away. And it will work on any knowledgeable human!^[6]

4 Cats Always Land on Their Feet

Cats are extremely good at jumping, balancing, and righting themselves during a fall. Among other things, their whiskers (which do not only exist on their faces but also on the backs of their legs) help them orient themselves and keep their balance.

However, they do not always land on their feet. It’s a great evolutionary tool, but it isn’t magic. If a cat falls from too short a distance and can’t course correct or if it’s overweight, it might very well have a bad fall and injure itself or die. If you are an apartment-dwelling cat owner, keep your windows closed…^[7]

3 Cats Don’t Play with Their Prey

Another common misconception about cats is that they play with their prey. For instance, when domesticated cats have been observed hunting mice, they toss them around in much the same way as they do one of their toys. In truth, though, it is the opposite: they treat their toys the same way they treat their prey; for many predators, playtime is hunting practice time.

So why do they toss their food around instead of just killing and eating it? Simply put, all cats are highly specialized predators. They are incredibly well-built killing machines from their prey’s perspective, but if anything goes wrong, they can quickly get injured and die. Therefore, they have to be very careful in their hunting technique and avoid any risk of getting scratched or bit back.

Cat owners will, for instance, notice that the mice their pets bring home never die from a bite but almost always from a broken spine, where the cat tossed the mouse with a strong flick of its paw instead of risking getting its face too close to the little rodent.^[8]

2 The Alpha Wolf Doesn’t Beat Down the Pack

We used to believe that wolves (and, by extension, dogs) fought for dominance and that the most dominant male or female of the species became their leader. However, more recent research has disproven this theory.

Indeed, it would seem that the pack leader is no more than the most prolific breeder, who consequently has the most children in the pack, and that wolves and dogs very much just know that “father/mother knows best” and follow their parents’ guidance.

What’s even more interesting is that most wolf “packs” actually turn out to simply be singular wolf families. In that case, the supposed alpha doesn’t even need to outbreed anyone. They are simply pack leader by the fact of being the parent.^[9]

1 Pandas Excel at Mating—in the Wild

Giant pandas are famously kept in captivity in an effort to save the species from extinction. They’re adorable, have the most useless eating habits (they almost exclusively eat bamboo, which has such poor nutritional value to them that they need to eat up to eighty-four pounds of it a day), and have been branded as inept at surviving.

In an incredible twist of irony, though, it turns out that giant pandas barely mate in captivity. The females are only fertile for a very brief period of time. When set up in a scientific context, neither the males nor the females seem particularly interested in copulating. The funny (and very sad) fact is that, in the wild, pandas have no libido problems at all. In fact, it’s hard to put delicately just how much sex they have…

Now that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t die out if left alone. But it sure says a lot about humans that we think any male and female of a species will reproduce if we just lock them up together…^[10]