Artists sometimes explore unique and unconventional methods in their attempts to create masterpieces. Some take things a bit further and turn to very obscure art forms or even end up creating their own. These artists’ work can either make us go, “Wow!” or cringe in disgust.

Some artists take to painting with unconventional paints made from their own feces or semen. Others turn their own genitalia into brushes. Some media artists also use unexpected programs like Microsoft Excel to create their artworks. Whatever their methodology, every artist on this list has some unique selling point.

10 Tatsuo Horiuchi Draws With Microsoft Excel

When we think of Microsoft Excel, we think of spreadsheets and the occasional graph. But thanks to Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi, we can start thinking of art, too.

Horiuchi uses Excel to draw, which is the last thing most people would consider using it for. Horiuchi started to use Excel to draw at the time he neared retirement. He had never used the program before then but had seen his workmates use it to make spreadsheets and graphs. The colorful graphs were the reason Horiuchi thought Excel would make a good drawing program.

Horiuchi did not consider regular graphic and drawing programs because they were too expensive. Excel also came preinstalled in Windows, which made it sort of free of charge. Horiuchi continues to make unbelievable artworks with Excel, which he says is easier to use than Microsoft Paint.^[1]

9 Tim Patch Paints With His Penis

Tim Patch is an Australian artist who paints with his penis. No joke; he uses his penis as if it were a paintbrush. This is why he calls himself Pricasso, which is obviously a portmanteau of “prick” and “Picasso.”

Patch got the idea to use his member as a drawing tool while attending a Christmas party. He quickly checked the Internet and was glad to discover that no one was doing something similar.

He started off with dipping his penis into regular acrylic paint and rubbing it on canvas, but the canvas was too harsh on his penis. These days, he mixes the paint with petroleum jelly before applying it to the canvas.^[2]

8 Martin Von Ostrowski Paints With Poop And Semen

German artist Martin von Ostrowski paints with his own feces and semen. Ostrowski first made the news when he created a painting of Adolf Hitler using his poop. He later created fecal paintings of Friedrich the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Kaiser Wilhelm II—all of whom had ruled Germany or its predecessor states at some point.

Ostrowski also got the idea to use his semen as paint after observing some oil paintings of ejaculations created by an unnamed artist sometime in 1988. That artist masturbated on his artworks, as the paint didn’t look authentic enough. Ostrowski does not masturbate on his paintings, though. Instead, he masturbates and freezes his semen for later use.

Ostrowski says he had to orgasm over 1,000 times between 2003 and 2008 for his art. A single portrait requires 40 ejaculations. The Gay Museum in Berlin, which exhibited Ostrowski’s work in 2008, claimed that the smell of dried semen set off sexual feelings in people. Nevertheless, Ostrowski says he is just being organic.^[3]

7 Milo Moire Paints With Her Vagina

Milo Moire is a performance artist who paints with her vagina. She calls her art form PlopEgg painting. This is because she inserts small eggs filled with ink and paint into her vagina. Then she stands over a canvas and aims the eggs right at it. The eggs burst as they hit the canvas, creating a splashing effect. The piece pictured above is called The PlopEgg Painting Performance #1—A Birth Of A Picture.

Moire, who is often naked during her performances, says PlopEgg is all about feminism. However, some people do not think so. Jezebel called it “the best advertisement you’ll ever see for Kegel exercises.”^[4]The Guardian was more critical with its words. It called her work “silly” and said it should be considered a “joke.”

The Guardian added that PlopEgg was Moire’s weird but desperate attempt at becoming popular. The writer said that it made no sense, even though many artists thought it did. The Guardian then went on to attack performance art, saying that people who claim to be fascinated by performance art were either lying or likely to fall for dumb ideas.

6 Uwe Max Jensen Also Paints With His Penis

Tim Patch is not the only artist capable of painting with his penis. Danish artist Uwe Max Jensen paints with his genitals as well. Jensen’s most popular penis artwork is a recreation of Kim Kardashian’s famous “Break the Internet” photo where she bared her naked butt to the camera.

Jensen painted the portrait by inserting his penis in acrylic paint and applying it straight on the canvas. In an interview with The Daily Dot, Jensen mentioned that larger penises are better for painting because they can recreate small details which smaller penises cannot. He added that he held his penis and the canvas in his hands until he completed the painting.

Jensen also revealed that the Kim Kardashian portrait was actually the second painting he’d done with his penis. The first was a portrait of a male politician in his native Denmark. He gave the portrait to a friend but sent a picture of it to the politician through Facebook. The politician responded by blocking him.

The two penis artworks add to the list of eccentric things Jensen has done. He has made the news before for destroying the head of a statue of the Little Mermaid as well as for urinating in a water sculpture exhibited in a museum.^[5]

5 Graham Fink Draws With His Eyes

Graham Fink draws using only his eyes and computer software. Fink had a programmer develop a special software program that tracks his eye movement. The setup works with two infrared lights that are directed into his eyes.

A camera tracks the movement of his eyes and sends it to the software. The software straightens the lines Fink makes with his eyes, which soon become visible on his computer. And it continues like that until Fink completes a drawing.

Fink requires lots of concentration to complete a single drawing. He makes the drawing using a single line, since breaking off eye contact would end the portrait. He is also unable to erase anything. Fink says he spends between five minutes and an hour to create a single portrait, depending on his level of concentration.^[6]

4 Ian Sklarsky Draws With A Single Line And Doesn’t Look At His Artwork

Like Fink, Ian Sklarsky draws with just a single line. However, he does not use any software. Instead, he uses his hands. Interestingly, Sklarsky does not look at his artwork until it is completed. This technique is called blind contour drawing—an art form that forbids an artist from looking at his drawing until it is completed.

Sklarsky says he has been making blind contour drawings since childhood. He often visits bars and events where he creates blind contour drawings for interested people. A single drawing takes seven minutes to complete, after which he will sometimes add colors while looking at the drawing.^[7]

3 Steven Spazuk Paints With Fire

Fire is one thing that we generally want to keep away from our artworks. However, Steven Spazuk wants his art near fire because that’s how he creates it. To be clear, Spazuk does not actually paint with the fire but with the soot from the flame.

This art form is called fumage and was not invented by Spazuk. It has been practiced by artists throughout history. In fact, historians suspect early humans used it to create cave paintings.

Spazuk creates fumage paintings by putting his artwork right above a candle or blowtorch. The soot from the flame rises to the paper, where it forms blackened outlines. Thereafter, Spazuk draws around the soot using a pencil or feather. Sometimes, he uses acrylic paints to add more color to the artwork.

The process of creating fumage on paper is a bit complicated, since the paper needs to be as far away as possible from the flame to make sure it does not catch fire. At the same time, it needs to be near enough so that the soot will create the required outline.^[8]

Spazuk said he got the idea of painting with soot after dreaming about wandering into an art gallery. The gallery was black and white, which Spazuk said was caused by soot after a fire. He tried out the fumage technique the next day. However, the paper repeatedly burned until he switched to a thicker cardboard paper.

2 John Bramblitt Paints Despite Being Blind

John Bramblitt is blind. You’d think painting would be the last thing he would consider for a career, since he obviously needs to see to get the job done. However, he has broken that barrier and proven that you do not need sight to become a painter.

Bramblitt lost his sight after suffering complications caused by epilepsy when he was just 30 years old. He fell into a serious depression—one which he only defeated by painting. Bramblitt paints by using his hands to trace the outline of drawings he makes himself. He determines and mixes his colors by just feeling their textures.

Interestingly, Bramblitt draws people, too. He cannot see but makes a mental outline of his subject’s face after touching it with his fingers. This simple touch is more than enough for him to create a portrait of the person.^[9]

1 Katsu Draws With Drones And His Poop

Cops have a hard time catching graffiti artists. It seems that it’ll only get harder as graffiti artists turn to drones. In 2015, Katsu, a popular and radical but anonymous graffiti artist created the first drone graffiti when he attached a spray can to a DJI Phantom drone.

His target was a six-story-tall billboard of Kendall Jenner in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Katsu used the drone to spray red paint on Jenner’s face. Katsu later commented on the incident, saying, “It’s exciting to see [drones’] first potential use as a device for vandalism.”

Katsu made the news earlier that same year when he used his poop to create a smiling portrait of Mark Zuckerberg. Katsu does not like Zuckerberg, and his criticism of the Facebook billionaire worsened after he watched The Social Network, a movie about the founding of Facebook. Katsu had earlier attacked Zuckerberg by pasting posters of him with a blackened eye around New York.

For the poop portrait, Katsu ate a lot of Thai food before pooping into a container. He was so dedicated to the task that he used a mirror to confirm that his fecal matter was getting into the container. Then he drew Zuckerberg, using his poop in place of a pencil.

Katsu later stated that the whole thing was so messy that he frequently changed his gloves. He also wore a respirator and had incense burning to weaken the smell. He added that it is actually difficult to draw with feces, since poop contains excessive amounts of moisture that could destroy the artwork.^[10]

We come to expect some things as par for the course in the world. The sun rises in the east, tacos are delicious, roosters crow, and so on. But just because you expect a thing and have even grown used to a thing based on past experience doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how it always is. It may not even be that way at all, you just have a misunderstanding of the facts, like back when people thought the sun revolved around the Earth.  

Many things in the natural world are not always the way we think they are. Nature is nothing if not surprising. So with that in mind, let’s look at some life forms that may not work the way you expect.

10. The T. Rex Lacked the Ability to Roar

Do you remember the end of the first Jurassic Park, when the T. rex somehow stealths its way into the visitor’s center, takes on the velociraptors, and enables our heroes to escape before letting out a mighty roar? Most of us can probably pick that sound effect out of a crowd at this point. And that speaks to the power of sound in movies, and Steven Spielberg’s vision. It’s also very ironic because, as far as the evidence shows, the T. rex could not roar at all. 

It’s hard to piece together the anatomy and real-life characteristics of dinosaurs based on fossils, but we’ve been doing this for a long time. While it’s also speculative, based on the science at hand, it’s unlikely a dinosaur like a T. rex had a larynx. That means it’s unlikely it could vocalize like any mammal that exists today, such as bears and lions and others we associate with roaring.

Birds, however, have something called a syrinx, and that allows vocalizations. It’s more likely a dinosaur could have something like that to allow for bird-like chirps, but even then, that may have been from the order of smaller, arboreal dinosaurs that evolved into modern birds.

Still, the T. rex could have made sounds, but they may have been more in line with more modern reptiles. Think the hissing that can be done by snakes and crocodiles, or even humming and drumming sounds. While they weren’t likely to be 100% silent, they were probably nowhere near as vocal as the movies make them seem.

9. Cheetahs Aren’t Big Cats Because They Can’t Roar

Speaking of roaring, in the modern world, a roar is a defining characteristic of what we consider a big cat. Obviously, a lion can roar, and tigers can do that, too. Jaguars and leopards also have that trait, so if you ever hear that coming from the woods at night, maybe stay indoors. But don’t think you’re always safe if you don’t hear it. 

Aside from roaring cats, there are purring cats and while that may sound like your cute kitty at home, there are other cats in the same group that are bigger than seems entirely normal. The cheetah, for instance. It can’t roar, and is therefore not a “big” cat in that sense of the word. It lacks a ligament in its larynx that allows the other big cats to make big noise.

Despite the fact a cheetah can weigh up to 140 pounds and run at over 60 miles-per-hour, it’s not a big cat. They’re actually in a weird family all their own called Acinonyx. They’re the only cats with only semi-retractable claws instead of fully retractable ones, too.

8. Earthworms Can’t Drown Very Easily

How many times have you gone outside after the rain and seen the sidewalk covered in earthworms, all pale and damp? If you’re like most people, you assumed, or even learned, that this is because they were escaping the rain so they don’t drown. After all, their little worm holes have to be full of water, right? Not so fast.

Earthworms breathe through their skin and can survive, fully immersed in water, for days. They need dampness to breathe properly. So the rain can’t drown them at all. Instead, it’s believed worms surface because it allows them to get where they’re going faster.

Because they need moisture to survive, burrowing in dry soil is actually a slow process for a worm. But in the rain, they can come up, stay as moist as they like, and likely move places much faster. It’s a convenience thing.

A second possibility is that rain confuses worms who may think the patter of drops is a predator, so they’re just heading up to escape. Either way, though, they’re not drowning.

7. Baby Pandas Cannot Poop Without Help

People make jokes online about pandas a lot. Thanks to many videos of the animals being goofballs, it’s not uncommon for folks to ask how they survive in the wild at all since they seem like limited-diet cartoon characters. With that in mind, here’s another thing to make you wonder how they’ve lasted this long.

Baby pandas are at risk of dying if they are not taken care of by their mothers from the moment of birth because they are some of the most helpless babies in all of nature. At just 1/900th of their mother’s size they cannot see, they cannot move, and they cannot even go to the bathroom on their own. They can potentially die of constipation without help.

Panda mothers can be observed licking their cubs frequently, not to groom them but to stimulate excretion. Yes, that means they need help to, shall we say, unload. For the crucial first week, mothers are with their young constantly, rubbing their bellies to make sure they can poop when they need to.

6. Reindeer Can’t Walk and Pee

Ever heard a joke about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? That’s an old school one that basically means someone seems clumsy and too incompetent to handle simple tasks. But the fact is some animals out there can’t walk and do other basic tasks at the same time. Reindeer, for instance, cannot walk and pee.

The fact reindeer need to stop for regular pee breaks, and they will all stop together in herds, is so well known that the Finnish reindeer herders have a name for the length a reindeer will walk before it pees. One poronkusema is about six miles. If the herd all stops to pee, you can count on them to all walk about six more miles before it has to happen again.

5. Birds Are Unaffected by Capsaicin

We know from YouTube that people love hot peppers. Hot Ones is a big deal, after all. But whether you love or hate spicy food, you’ve probably experienced the sensation that capsaicin, the ingredient in peppers that gives you that hot feeling, provides. 

If you’re not a spice fan, you may be envious of birds because they lack the ability to experience what capsaicin offers. Part of this is because of birds and their incredibly rudimentary ability to taste. Humans have 2,000 to 10,000 taste buds that help us experience flavor. A chicken has 24. Research suggests birds either have no capsaicin receptors, or just ones that are not very sensitive. This could also be beneficial to plants because it would allow birds to ingest seeds from spicy peppers and spread them around, making it an evolutionary advantage.

4. Velociraptors Lacked Higher Intelligence

We already visited Jurassic Park once. Why not go back and look at the raptors? The movies have also given modern audiences an idea of how a velociraptor works. They’re pack hunters, sly and deadly and intelligent, and nothing short of Chris Pratt with his arm extended can stop them. But, again, that’s Hollywood. And while raptors may have been smart in real life, that’s a loaded word.

Raptors were smart for dinosaurs, which is like describing a hot dog as pretty tasty for gas station food. When you’re the best of the worst, you’re still not great. Smart for a dinosaur, based on the size of the cavity in which its brain was housed, means a raptor was probably smarter than a rabbit but not as smart as a cat. 

Also, don’t forget, movie raptors were actually closer to Utahraptors. Velociraptors were small, about the size of turkeys, and with less intelligence than a cat, they were less intimidating than we all think. 

3. The Domestic Silk Moth No Longer Has the Ability to Fly

Agriculture has done wonders for mankind, but that’s not always the case for things we farm—for instance, the silk moth. For thousands of years, humans have been making silks out of these insects, and that has changed the way these little creatures live. They’re the second most widely cultivated animal in the world after bees, and we breed trillions of them. 

Once upon a time, when a silk caterpillar went through a metamorphosis and became a moth, it could fly away. Thanks to generations of farming, the domestic moth no longer can fly because we’ve bred it out of them. For so long they’ve never been allowed to fly that now, even if they had the chance to fly away, they couldn’t. 

2. Cats Can’t Taste Sweetness

Cats can be remarkably finicky about the food they eat or they can be furry garbage cans taking everything from cat food to salad, bread, and rabbit turds. Like people, there’s no accounting for taste sometimes. But you shouldn’t let that trick you into thinking food is the same for cats as it is for us.

If your cat likes your ice cream, you might be tempted to think he has a sweet tooth, but that’s not the case. Your cat may love all desserts, but that’s probably because of the dairy or the fat or literally anything else. Cats are physically incapable of tasting sweetness.

Almost all other mammals can taste sweetness. There is a gene responsible for sending sweet signals to our brain and it’s useful for survival because sweet usually means sugar, which means a carbohydrate, which means energy. For most animals, sugar means something to keep you alive. But cats, carnivores as they are, don’t work that way. So the gene, known as Tas1r2, works with another gene to create the proteins that make up sweet receptors. But cats didn’t evolve that way.

Now, when it comes to cats that seem to go crazy for sugar, there may be something else at play. Researchers say it’s possible the other gene, Tas1r3, allows them to taste sugar at high concentrations. Or maybe cats are just weird. 

1. Not Everyone Has an Inner Monologue

It’s very easy to take for granted that the way you think is the way other people think. In fact, it’s probably impossible to get through life without wondering what the heck someone else was thinking when they did something foolish.  But the truth is, we do not all think the same way. And some of us think very differently than others.

Most people experience an inner monologue when they think. Your thoughts exist as words, whole sentences and you “hear” them in your mind, probably in your own voice, as though you were talking to yourself. You may be surprised to know not everyone can do that and even the people who can don’t do it all the time.

It’s been estimated that inner monologue is the predominant method of thought for between 30% and 50% of people. But we also engage in other manners of thinking. Another common method is visual thinking, which is picturing something in your mind. Not everyone can do that, either. But in this way of thinking, you imagine a place you want to go, a person you want to see, maybe a food you want to eat with no actual words or dialogue included.

There are other methods of thinking also based on feeling, based on sensory awareness, and based on a thoughtless kind of instinct. Most of us engage in all kinds at various times, and rarely just a single kind. So few people have an inner monologue 100% of the time, but some people seem to have it none of the time.

Self-defense is big business. You could learn boxing, jiu-jitsu, krav maga and dozens of other fighting styles. You can also invest in tools that range from telescoping batons to tasers to high-powered rifles. If you want to defend yourself, the sky’s the limit. Animals, on the other hand, have far less at their disposal. Most rely on their ability to flee or hide and those that fight typically just use teeth and claws. But every so often an animal comes up with a really novel way to protect itself.

10. Exploding Ants Blow Up On Enemies

No one can tell you exactly how many ants there are in the world and for good reason – how would anyone ever know? Even estimates can be pretty wild, but some guess around 100 trillion. Fire ants have painful stings and bullet ants are legendary for the paint that their bites cause. But even among ants, you have to hand it to exploding ants when it comes to self defense. Their name makes it pretty clear these little things are on a whole new level. 

Found in the trees of Borneo, these ants react to threats in the most dramatic way imaginable. Known as Colobopsis explodens, the ants are able to rupture their own bodies by flexing them so hard they burst in a process that not only kills them but covers their attack in a sticky and toxic mixture of internal fluids. The process will either kill or disable the attacker.

9. Sea Cucumbers Shoot Their Guts at Enemies

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. And the best offense is to be incredibly disgusting. Enter the sea cucumber and its gut regurgitation method of defense that may not be physically damaging but, if nothing else, is psychologically traumatizing to would-be attackers.

Though some species do vaguely resemble cucumbers, sea cucumbers are classified as echinoderms. They are invertebrates, which means they don’t have a spinal column like shellfish, worms, jellyfish and so on. What they do have is a digestive system and, when threatened, they can force it right out of their bodies at predators.  

A shark is able to puke its own stomach out as a way of cleaning it and then swallow it again, but that’s not how a sea cucumber works. Once those guts come out, they stay out. The animal is then able to just grow new ones. It takes a couple of weeks, but it beats being eaten. 

8. Bees Cook Wasps Or Resort to Poop

Most of us don’t need to be told how a bee defends itself. Bee stings are fairly well known and they’re the reason most of us don’t go stealing honey from hives like we’re bears in the woods. Less well known is what a bee has to do when its sting is not sufficient to take out an enemy.

Giant Asian Wasps have become an infamous species over the last decade or two thanks to the internet and its fascination with unusual life forms. These giant, terrifying insects are known to attack beehives, and just a few can destroy everything. They literally cut bees apart with their mandibles and the bee’s sting is unable to pierce the wasp’s exoskeleton. So how does a hive react when the wasps attack? They form a super hot sphere of bee power and cook their attacker to death.

The bees will swarm on the deadly wasps en masse. Though the wasp will kill many individuals, the hive may be able to survive as the group all work together to beat their wings and generate heat from the effort. They can raise the temperature of a wasp to as much as 47 degrees Celsius, which kills it. Amazingly, the bees are able to properly regulate this temperature so that it’s hot enough to kill a wasp, but not themselves, which could happen if things were just a few degrees warmer.

Some species of wasps have learned to avoid these heat balls by picking off drones outside of the hive until there are no bees left to defend it. But the bees have also adapted to this. Beekeepers have observed honey bees gathering buffalo dung. They place it around the entrance to the hive, something that they would normally never do. Dung is often dangerous thanks to pathogens, and it effectively keeps wasps away. Even when wasps do try to attack a dung-defended hive, they spend 94% less time doing so. 

7. Vultures Projectile Vomit When Threatened

Vultures are considered by many to be rather ugly birds with their bald heads and hooked beaks. They also seem rather objectionable when it comes to their habits, since they feed on carrion and can most often be seen neck deep in a rotten carcass. They also slather themselves in their own waste to keep cool. Their highly acidic urine will lower their temperature as it evaporates and also kills bacteria.  It probably comes as no surprise that their chief method of self defense is also extremely unpleasant.

When threatened, a vulture will force itself to vomit. That’s pretty awful in and of itself. But remember that they eat already rotten meat, so when it vomits it’s throwing up the most vile filth you can imagine. Not only is it going to look gross and smell gross, it’s laden with the bird’s extremely volatile digestive juices which are so potent they can burn. 

This spray of vomit is also projectile and can travel upwards of 10 feet. And while all of that makes it seem like these birds are wretched in every way, remember that they provide a valuable service by cleaning up all that carrion and we’d likely have far more disease and bacteria being spread around if it weren’t for them. 

6. Crested Rats Slather Themselves in Poison 

Humans are renowned for using ingenuity to get a job done, and there are a handful of animals that demonstrate similar talents. Monkeys use tools, coyotes and badgers hunt together, there are a lot of ways to reach a goal. When it comes to African crested rats, they go above and beyond to defend themselves from predators by engaging in chemical warfare.

The rats have been observed chewing on the poisonous bark of certain trees. Once they work up a nice mouthful of toxic spit, they wipe it on their fur, effectively giving themselves a poisonous shield. Similar behavior does exist elsewhere in nature. There are species of toxic toads that get their toxins from the insects they eat, but this is the only mammal known to engage in such behavior. 

Initially, the rats were thought to make their poison until one single rat was observed chewing the bark and wiping the toxins on itself. Researchers then captured some to house them under constant surveillance, and many of them were observed engaging in the same behavior, though exactly why the rat itself is immune is not entirely understood. It may be thanks to their four-chambered stomach full of dense bacteria, but it’s not conclusive. 

5. Spanish Ribbed Newts Force Their Ribs Out and Coat Them in Poison

The Spanish ribbed newt has bug eyes and grows to about 9 inches in length. They look a little cartoonish in real life and aren’t very intimidating, but perhaps that’s just a plot. When it comes to self defense, few creatures go as hard as the ribbed newt. When threatened, the newt is able to freeze and rotate its own ribs inside its body from 27 to 92 degrees relative to its spinal axis. The ribs push right out of the newt’s skin through fleshy warts and are then coated with a poisonous secretion.

In pop culture terms, the newt is like Wolverine if he also poisoned his claws. There is no permanent hole that allows the ribs to protrude. The newt has to pierce its own flesh each and every time it uses the defense. 

4. Blanket Octopuses Rip the Poisonous Arms of Portuguese Man O’Wars

The ocean is full of strange and terrifying creatures more than capable of defending themselves in a variety of ways. From the claws of a crab to the jaws of a shark, you don’t want to tangle with too many beasts of the deep blue sea. Some of the most formidable creatures rely on a bevy of debilitating and deadly toxins that can stop a predator, including a human, with remarkable speed and efficiency.

The blanket octopus has developed a backdoor to its down defenses. Unlike the deadly blue-ringed octopus, a blanket octopus doesn’t produce potent venom. Instead, they will steal weapons from the Portuguese man o’war. 

The man o’war, often mistaken for a jellyfish though it’s actually a siphonophore, has dangerous, stinging tentacles. They’re not usually deadly to humans, but they can cause blisters and welts and are powerful enough to kill small fish. Blanket octopuses are immune, however. They’ll rip the tentacles right off the man o’war and then wield them like toxic whips either to attack or defend themselves.

3. Hoopoe Birds Use Filth as a Defense

Many birds have a pretty decent cache of defensive skills available, chief among them the ability to just fly away. Some birds are also equipped with dangerously powerful beaks and talons as well. But what of the smaller, more delicate ones? What happens when they face danger?

The Eurasian Hoopoe grows to be maybe a foot long and weighs less than a deck of cards. These are not fearsome creatures. So to stay ahead of predators, they’ll smear their own eggs with secretions that smell rotten, and poop all over their own nests. 

Females coat themselves in the secretion, which comes from a gland below the tail. Despite the smell, it’s antimicrobial and makes her feathers more waterproof and flexible. Within six days of hatching, babies are able to fire projectile feces at predators in their own defense as well.  

2. Numerous Kinds of Larvae Make Poop Shields

Turtles, armadillos and shellfish have a good defensive advantage in life thanks to their armor. Other creatures aren’t so blessed genetically, so they have to get creative. Take the tortoise beetle, for instance, which creates a shield out of its own feces to protect it from attackers. 

Many other species of beetle do the same thing in larval form as a means of protection before they grow their own tough carapace. The strategy is oddly ingenious, as it uses a resource that the beetle never runs short of and it’s something very few predators want to get near. The tortoise beetle can even move their shield and attack would-be predators with it like a weapon. 

1. Bombardier Beetles Shoot Boiling Chemicals 

Bugs are generally disliked by most people and the fact that many bite or sting is a big part of that. But a bug that eschews such pedestrian attacks in favor of literally shooting you with scalding hot chemicals is its own special kind of terrifying.

Bombardier beetles are less than an inch long, possibly the only saving grace for these powerhouses. When threatened, a chemical reaction occurs in their abdomen. Hydrogen peroxide mixes with hydroquinone. The beetle has a little nozzle on its backside that it can aim with amazing accuracy to fire at a predator. And you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that blast.

The two chemicals together can irritate the eyes and respiratory system. Worse, the reaction creates heat, so not only is it an irritant, it comes out literally boiling hot at 100 degrees Celsius. The beetle has enough chemicals to fire this 20 times.

Everything comes from somewhere. It’s a statement so preposterously obvious it’s rarely worth even making. And yet the implications of it are rarely explored. Where do you come from? Finding the precise time and place that humans began is no easy feat, and it’s the same for most life forms. But there are some things we can trace back with a fair degree of accuracy, often with surprising results.

10. Modern Cattle Can Be Traced Back to One Herd About 11,000 Years Ago

The average American eats 55lbs of beef per year, so there’s a lot of love for cow meat there. Our ancient ancestors never had that pleasure because, while there were herds of animals like aurochs back in the day, the modern cow as we know it never existed in the wild. We can actually trace our current world-wide cattle family back to a herd of 81 female animals that were bred nearly 11,000 years ago.

Researchers from across Europe analyze DNA samples from living cattle as well as from DNA extracted from bones taken from archaeological sites that date back to the beginning of farming as we know it. The differences in genetics seen in modern cattle could only exist if the original herd was limited to a size of about 80 animals which descended from the ancient aurochs which was kind of similar to a modern cow, but not exactly the same thing and certainly much bigger and wilder.

9. Domesticated Hamsters All Trace Back to One Pair in Syria

A lot of attention is paid to the domestication of both cats and dogs, the two most common house pets in the world. Most of us know that dogs were domesticated long ago from wolves, and cats seem to have domesticated themselves alongside mankind as an almost strategic move that ensured food and shelter. But humans do keep a lot of other animals as pets, like hamsters for instance. 

A wild hamster is probably not something most of us have ever come across, but they do exist and the modern domesticated hamster can be traced back to a specific breeding pair from Syria. Their story is a curious and remarkable one.

Jewish biologist Israel Aharoni had made it his mission to identify the animals listed in the Torah. The problem was that the animals didn’t have names, just very vague descriptions. And one animal that he had a special interest in had a name that translated to English as “Mr. Saddlebags.” The only description of it stated it was golden. Not much to go on. 

In 1930, Aharoni traveled to Syria and hired a hunter. They traveled the countryside looking for clues and then, on a farm, dug a hole and discovered a nest of small, golden animals. He had discovered hamsters. Mr. Saddlebags. 

Aharoni took the hamsters, and things quickly spiraled out of control. The mother ate several babies. A handful more escaped and were never found. But one pair of siblings bred, as hamsters tend to do. They became the Adam and Eve of the modern hamster world. That pair had 150 babies. They were transported to labs around the world and continued to breed. Today if you see a hamster in a pet store anywhere in the world, it’s almost guaranteed to be a descendent of that breeding pair.

8. White Mushrooms Can Be Traced to a Pennsylvania Farm in 1925

If you go to the grocery store looking for mushrooms right now, you will probably have a small handful of options, depending on how much variety your store has. But if they sell fresh mushrooms at all, then they’re going to be those white mushrooms sometimes called table or button mushrooms. They’re probably the most common type in the Western world and they can all be traced back to a single Pennsylvania farm in the year 1925.

Prior to 1925 mushrooms were chiefly brown. Your local store may sell brown cremini mushrooms next to white button mushrooms today and they look identical except for the color. That’s because they basically are. 

Louis Ferdinand Lambert was growing brown mushrooms at Keystone Mushroom Farm when he discovered a white one in the mix. It was a mutation, just a random chance. But he was an amateur mushroom scientist in the making, so he took that one back to his lab and cultivated the spores. 

The white mushrooms grew faster and were more uniform in shape and size. By 1933 it was the leading mushroom crop in the country and soon tens of millions of pounds were being produced each year. Customers were more attracted to the color and shape and it’s still the most popular mushroom today, all thanks to one little mutant in 1925.

7. 200 Million Rabbits in Australia Came From Just a Handful in the 1800s.

Australia is home to a wild rabbit population of around 200 million. Is that a lot of rabbits for a country the size of Australia? Definitely, when you consider it’s supposed to have none. As one of the many invasive species that has caused problems down under, rabbits were never meant to be there in the first place. Those 200 million all come from a handful that were released in the year 1859.

Though the animals had been on the continent as early as 1788, it’s believed that either 13 or 24 of them were let loose in 1859 from the farm of settler Thomas Austin. He had let the animals run in his yard and may have set them free for hunting. Obviously he didn’t manage to hunt them all. 

Australians have been fighting the losing battle against rabbits ever since. In the late 1800s they were killing two million per year and getting nowhere. Most famously they tried to erect a rabbit-proof fence across the entire country which is effective against larger animals but did not work on the rabbits. They were already on the far side of the fence before construction was finished.

6. Golden Retrievers Come From Two Dogs Named Nous and Belle

According to the American Kennel Club, the Golden Retriever was the third most popular dog breed in America in 2021. It’s consistently in the top ten breeds, in fact. They’re loveable and a bit goofy and they seem to make good family dogs. The entire breed can also be traced back to two specific dogs named Nous and Belle in the year 1868.

A Scotsman named Sir Dudley Courts Marjoribanks was the owner of the first of the breed, the dog named Nous who was said to be a yellow retriever of some kind. The original story was that Nous was a Russian circus dog but there’s no evidence of that being true. The real story seems to be that he was just out walking one day, saw the dog, and bought it off a cobbler.

Sir Dudley, as a breeder, kept detailed breeding logs. The records are still available today which show that he bred the dog with another named Belle, a Tweed Water Spaniel, in 1868 and they had a litter of four puppies. The resulting mix of Retriever and Water Spaniel made a light-coated sporting dog that clearly struck a chord with people. 

5. South Dakota’s Mountain Goats Come From Six Escaped Canadian Goats

Mountain goats, more properly known as Rocky Mountain Goats, can be found across Western Canada and the United States. Their population estimate is somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000. The ones found in the Black Hills can all be traced back to six goats from Canada. They were gifted to Custer State Park back in 1924 but goats being goats; they were not content to stay in their pens.

The six goats escaped and made their way into the wild where they took up residence in the granite mountains. That number is up over 200 today with no sign of slowing down any time soon. 

4. A Majority of Macadamia Trees Can Be Traced to One Australian Tree

Hawaii is famous for a lot of things from beautiful beaches to the luau. Macadamia nuts are also huge in the state with 40 million pounds being produced in 2019. While the bulk of macadamia nuts in the world come from Australia and South Africa, their origins are not so diverse. Seventy percent of all the macadamia nuts in the world can be traced to one single tree in Australia. 

Biodiversity in plants is a big deal. The lack of diversity in bananas cause an entire strain of them to die out once already, so this field is of great interest to scientists. When trying to trace the origins of macadamia trees they tested samples from farmed trees in Hawaii and wild ones in Australia and found they all linked back to a very small population on a private island called Moloo. The genetic differences between trees was so small that they believe they all probably descended from the same individual tree. 

3. Most Thoroughbreds Can Be Traced to the Darley Arabian

When a horse proves itself on the racetrack, it often gets retired to life as a stud where breeders try to continue and improve upon his genetic line. No horse seems to have done a better job of that than the Darley Arabian.

There are 500,000 Thoroughbred horses in the world. Thoroughbred, which is sometimes used as a synonym for “purebred,” is more properly a distinctive breed of race horse. These are typically considered the best racehorses in the world and nearly all half million can trace their lineage back to 28 specific horses. And among those, 95% of all males can be traced to one specific stallion – the Darley Arabian. 

Thomas Darley was said to have purchased, or maybe stolen, the colt from a sheik in Syria. The horse’s name was Manak or Manica. Many famous horses were sired by the Arabian back in England and it’s said the horse lived to be 30, which is a pretty advanced age for a horse. 

2. Almost 150,000 Faroese People Are All Descended From One Guy

The Faroe Islands are located in the North Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. There are about 158,000 people who live or have lived there and a stunning 149,000 of them can all trace their lineage back to the same man. The family reunions must be epic.

The prolific ancestor of most of the Faroese Islanders is known as Clemen Laugesen Follerup. Back in the 17th century he had 23 children. That turned into 66 grandchildren in 27 villages. 

Back in 2006, the people of the island were registered in something called the Genetic BioBank, a sort of national registry of genetics for the Faroese people. The computer program kept reading errors because everyone it registered turned out to be a cousin of everyone else. 

1. Blue Eyed People Can Be Traced to One Ancestor

Blue eyes are the second most common eye color in the world, though only about 10% of people have them. The color itself is a genetic mutation and scientists have traced it all the way back to a single common ancestor that lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years. Back then there were only brown eyed people. Mutation in a specific gene that governs eye color occurred in one individual and was passed down through the generations to the 10% of blue eyed people who exist today. 

The gene mutation worked in a way that switched off the brown allele for the affected individual and their ancestors. Basically, the option for brown eyes was removed because the body’s ability to produce melanin is reduced due to the mutation. That means brown eyes can’t fully form and you get blue eyes instead. There’s no genetic advantage to the mutation, but there’s no disadvantage either, and it seems to be one of those random chance things that pops up in nature.