Life as a scientist, economist, computer expert, or structural engineer can be pretty boring. Even if you have a natural drive and passion for your subject, it requires grindingly long hours to master these highly complex jobs. Who could blame them for occasionally making up a stupid name and plonking it on one of their discoveries or inventions?

OK, so some of these entries were intended as a joke, but that will not diminish their hilariousness. Scientists with a sense of humor, we salute you. Excelsior!

Related: 10 Famous People With Extremely Silly Quirks

10 Here’s Looking at You, Skid

Most people who have had a general physical exam with a doctor have had their reflexes checked. A quick tap on the knee, a little involuntary kick, and you’re free of serious nervous system disorders. But the knee tap isn’t the only way to check an involuntary reflex. Indeed, the knee jerk is one of many reflexes the human body is capable of. One of them concerns the eye. The brown eye, that is.

An “Anal Wink” occurs when the skin around the anus is stimulated (please try to read that sentence back without giggling like a small child). As with other reflexes, the absence of this wink is suggestive of a breakdown in the neural pathway that controls the central nervous system, damage to the pudendum, or damage to the spinal cord. So, you better hope you have a balloon knot cheeky enough to wink at whoever decides to tickle it.^[1]

9 A Rock to Knock Your Socks off if You Wanna Get Your Rocks Off

There is a type of rock-forming mineral found in New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, and the Northeastern U.S. that has quite a wonderful name. It was discovered and named near the town of Cummington, Massachusetts, in 1824. They named the mineral after the town.

Cummingtonite.

Chester Dewey, according to mindat.com, “did not analyze the species, but noted its unusual physical appearance.” He later added that, despite the clear coincidence of the mineral being found near a place that bears a similarity to his chosen name, it was in fact based on a promise he had made to his wife at the breakfast table that morning…^[2]

8 Cootchy-cootchy-coo! Now, Where’s My Hammer?

Contradictory terms are good for two things—as names of punk bands (like “The Razor Clouds” or “Shotgun Kittens”) or for laughing at. These linguistic quirks come up quite regularly, especially in the study of human behavior. We are complex organisms, perhaps the most complex on Earth (given our massive brains), and we should expect a great deal of seemingly contradictory aspects when describing ourselves. Mood, gains in knowledge, and changes in the environment all contribute to this ever-shifting profile.

Maybe the funniest sounding term in this regard is “Cute Aggression” (See! What a great name for a punk band). This is the expressed desire to bite, pinch, squeeze, or crush something perceived as extremely cute due to its intrinsic cuteness (without a desire for actually causing harm…probably).

You see a little puppy; it rolls around as it plays, sits up, and looks into your eyes. And sneezes. It isn’t uncommon for you to exclaim, “Ooooh, I could just squish you.” Followed by five minutes of gibberish baby talk. This phenomenon is an example of a “dimorphous expression,” like laughing during a funeral or gently striking your partner when they do something romantic. It is postulated that cute aggression, as with other dimorphous expressions, is an evolutionary adaptation to help humans regulate overwhelming positive emotion, thus aiding with caregiving.^[3]

7 En Garde!

Flatworms, those gorgeous, scrap-of-colorful-silk-looking things you find floating around in tropical oceans, are actually weird little buggers. Like many organisms found in nature, they are hermaphroditic, having both male and female sex organs. Unfortunately, their mating ritual is also like many other organisms, too: traumatic and very violent.

Despite this surface-level similarity, flatworms have more of a Hollywood action movie feel to their copulation. Two flatworms will rear up when it’s time to mate, exposing their two pointy penises (like a rapier and a parrying dagger in human duels) and fighting to inseminate each other. If this were applied to humans, 17th-century duels would have been even more ridiculous/traumatizing/hilarious than they were in reality. The term for this mating ritual is gloriously anthropomorphized:

“Penis Fencing”^[4]

The “Flatworm Olympics,” of course, are a must-watch.

6 Really? You Couldn’t Think of a Less Suggestive Term

The Japanese have been responsible for a great many scientific and technological discoveries in the last 200 years—camera and lens improvements, video gaming, Tamagotchi, Ivermectin for curing parasitic illnesses like River Blindness (and that’s all.. .ahem), the Sony Walkman and Discman, and, of course, tentacle porn. Oh, and deep-fried matcha ice cream.

A discovery that you may not know is of Japanese origin is the accurate method for ascertaining the sex of a chicken. Japanese experts discovered a sure-fire way of ascertaining a just-born chick’s sex by checking the poop tract—males and females have a slightly different cornhole (great care must be taken in handling the tiny birds as they crush easily…apparently). The method, quickly implemented by the Zen Nippon school, cut the price of eggs worldwide overnight. Second-generation Japanese Americans found great success in turning this method into a lucrative line of work, virtually cornering the market in the States from the ’30s through to the ’60s, allowing for a boom in the agricultural/food industry.

Unfortunately for the English language, the term used for this process is “Sexing.” Sexing chickens. A person trained to do this is called, even more childishly, a “Chick Sexer.” This is because, unbeknownst to most, Japan is actually a population comprised solely of 13-year-old boys in a Playboy-magazine-littered treehouse from the movie Stand by Me.^[5]

5 Won’t Somebody Pleeeease Think of the Children?

“Mothers Against”-type groups were big news in the 1980s. These censorious, deeply worried, and often super evangelical matrons made it their job to right all the Western World’s moral failings during that decade (and well into the ’90s too). Their crusade against various transgressions (otherwise known as “fun”) covered all manner of things, from heavy metal and rap music lyrics to violence in films, TV, and video games to pushing for teen abstinence from . One big group (and one of the least contemptible) were “Mothers Against Drunk Driving”—despite their noble aims, they were a bit preachy.

The term was used by some scientists in the mid-1990s, their tongues firmly placed in their cheeks, after the discovery of a new protein in the genes of fruit flies (and later, related proteins called SMADs in many other species, including us). The piss-takingly-named “Mothers Against Decapentaplegic” acts to switch off the decapentaplegic gene, sending a message to the cell to stop dividing. This bizarrely named protein is now of special interest to the scientists who search for a cure to cancer.^[6]

4 The Teeny Croakers of Madagascar

Naming conventions in zoology can be confusing. The correct taxonomic name for a lion is Panthera leo—this means that the animal colloquially referred to as a lion is cataloged as the “leo” species of the “Panthera” genus in the family “Felidae.” Got it? Good.

A recently discovered genus of tiny frogs in Madagascar has been given a far simpler, easily parsed name by a team from Germany: “Mini.” And yes. Yes, they are.

The various species have been given awesome species names to follow the genus. We have Mini mum, Mini ature, and Mini scule, all tiny enough to fit comfortably on your fingernail with room to spare.^[7]

3 No, It Doesn’t Always Roll Downhill—Check the Chart

Sometimes, names and terms have extremely complex, byzantine derivations, sending etymologists on decade-long quests of discovery. Other terms are dirt simple. This is one of the latter.

An “SFD” is a high-level technical drawing used in the planning and improvement of sanitation and sewage systems, most often employed in developing countries. They are most useful in aiding planners against allowing effluent and waste to enter sources of drinking water and other such waterways—nobody wants shit in their river. Right?

And that is what SFD stands for—”Shit Flow Diagram.” Yes, that’s right, this integral tool in avoiding waterway pollution is called a shit-flow diagram. Was the word poop too infantile?^[8]

2 Programming Is Complex

Coding is a skill that, as we have been assured by tone-deaf and largely useless journalists, will be the new home economics or shop class in schools (as well as the new skill that workers whose jobs are soon to be taken over by automation should learn—like millions of truck drivers and coal miners will all soon be moving down to Silicone Valley…). Kids and adults in this brave new world will easily pick up enough coding to be able to build and run their own websites and decode a nuclear bomb.

And then we have “Brainfuck.”

This is a coding language invented in 1993 by Urban Müller with the sole intention of messing with coders. What is already a complex area is made all the more difficult by Brainfuck, the goal being to break down simple commands into micro-steps. Ad infinitum. It’s a Turing complete system, meaning it could be used to run a Turing machine, thus making it logically and practically sound. Just really, really, really, really annoying. Really.

So, instead of our students spending a couple of hours a week learning about capital cities or Shakespeare or long division, let’s give them a crash course on Brainfuck. And watch their tiny minds melt. Watch this space—the abacus will be making a come-back to a classroom near you!^[9]

1 Well, It Was Born That Way…

Although a “creepy little mammal with oddly shaped teeth” would be a very uncharitable way to describe many English peers in the House of Lords, paleontologists thought that naming an extinct ungulate after a flamboyant songstress was A-Okay.

Meet “Gagadon minimonstrum.”

This little critter, a weird-looking cross between a deer and a giant shrew, was named after the “Born This Way” singer Lady Gaga, the “gaga” coming from her stage name and the “mini monster” referring to her fans (“little monsters”). Or it’s due to both she and the long-dead beast having “unusually large teeth that were much broader, with wide ridges around the base of its molars and pointed protrusions called cusps rising along their sides”…have you ever seen her teeth?

The creature roamed what is now southwestern Wyoming; this genus is a unique addition to the fossil record, having teeth unlike any similar specimen found in the Americas. Much as Lady Gaga is unique in being a transgressive Italian American singer who has a large gay following.^[10]

What? Who’s this “Madonna” of which you speak?

Humanity’s relationship with nature has been complicated. From the distant hunter-gatherer past right up to the present, we have relied heavily on the natural bounties reaped from the environment. While most people have shifted to office work, interacting and coexisting with nature has never been more important. With that in mind, here are ten places around the world where people and nature coexist.

Related: 10 Times Nature Ended Human Conflict

10 Mesa Verde and the Anasazi

First up on our list is perhaps a unique outlier. Mesa Verde is not currently a populated city but rather is a national park protecting hundreds of unique species indigenous to the mesa and the ruins of the Anasazi people, who once lived and coexisted with their natural environment in the area.

The former villages and cities of the Anasazi were built into and on top of the mesa, forming very distinct images. Like most Native peoples, the Anasazi were experts at living in peace with nature. They held a deep respect for nature and placed great focus on living in harmony with it, believing that doing so would lead to healthier lives, a belief that remains prevalent today.

9 Denver, Colorado

Nestled on the eastern edge of the Rockies, Denver had humble beginnings as a mining town during the mid-1800s Pike’s Peak gold rush. Nicknamed “the Mile High City” due to its position a mile above sea level, Denver has since grown to be its own county and the capital of Colorado.

Known for its great ski slopes and its role in the game Horizon: Zero Dawn, Denver also has a plethora of green spaces. During the spring and summer, aerial shots of the city reveal a lush, green landscape surrounding a small cluster of skyscrapers. Denver has over two hundred parks and green spaces, the largest of which is simply called City Park. Covering a massive three hundred and fourteen acres, City Park is a neighborhood surrounded by a larger park space. Outside of the city itself, Denver has access to a wide variety of trails, national parks, and mountain peaks for the adventurous. 

8 The Modern-Day Curwood Castle

Curwood Castle looks like it has been scooped right out of a fairytale. The structure was the home of James Oliver Curwood, an action-adventure novelist from the turn of the twentieth century with a taste for the fantastic. The house is like a miniature fairyland castle complete with flagstones, towers, and turrets.

Perhaps more impressive than the castle itself is its location. The castle is set in the middle of a small park and is surrounded by trees on the banks of the Shiawassee River in Owosso, Michigan. It would have been the perfect getaway for an author looking for inspiration in nature. It has been preserved in that state and now serves as a museum and public park.

7 Chautauqua Lake, New York

The Chautauqua Lake region of New York is a brilliant mixture of small towns and rolling forests. Located an hour and a half from Niagara Falls, Chautauqua Lake was originally used for ice mining during the harsh, upstate New York winters. Miners would carve chunks of ice out of the frozen lake and pack them into wagons to be shipped across New England.

While the days of ice mining are gone, much of the area remains unchanged. Towns are nestled in forest clearings, and buildings are placed wherever there is free space. During the summers, special events are held that send tourists and natives alike out into the wild, and while the ice is no longer mined for trade purposes, it is used to form incredible ice sculptures in the winter. Perhaps my favorite is the number of wildlife we see here. It’s quite common for deer and other forest critters to come up to people (we have three deer who live somewhere by our house. They sometimes stop by and say “hi”). The only way to make the area more fairy tale-esque would be if there was a castle nearby. Maybe Curwood Castle could be relocated?

6 The Ruralization of Chicago, Illinois

Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago is currently the third-most populous city in the United States, with no sign of slowing down its growth. The city suffered a major setback due to the aptly named Great Chicago Fire but has since recovered.

This is nowhere more apparent than the city’s Green Healthy Neighborhoods initiative. Over the past several years, Chicago has begun renovations of some of its older, less safe neighborhoods with the goal of transforming them into a massive thirteen square mile area of parks, farms, and trails. This process has been ongoing, and the results are already apparent from the beautiful green streaks now seen throughout the city.

5 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam’s old. Older than most other places on this list, Amsterdam was first settled by farmers millennia ago. Since those humble beginnings, it’s grown to be the capital of a nation, one that pulls many people from across the world.

Amsterdam’s people coexist with nature in perhaps more obvious ways than others. For starters, many of their streets are paved with water. Amsterdam is well known for its canal system, a result of very careful planning when Amsterdam’s immigration rates began picking up. Perhaps because of this, the streets are lined with a verdant array of trees, and parks dot the city, including the Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest green space and one that attracts millions of visitors each year. It’s a city that’s really in touch with its surroundings.

4 Central Park, New York City

When one is asked about places where you can find nature and people together in the U.S., one might naturally jump to New York City’s Central Park. The massive stretch of green stands out in stark contrast with the surrounding office buildings and skyscrapers, a man-made frame of steel and glass for the beautiful green canvas.

Central Park is two and a half miles long, half a mile wide, and is over seven hundred acres in area. The park receives millions of visitors each year and is one of the most touristed areas in the United States. Hidden amidst the foliage are an abundance of attractions, including a mall, a castle, several taverns, and a zoo, to name a few. It truly is a marvel and a place where people coexist with nature.

3 The Majesty of 25 Verde

Almost a small village in and of itself, 25 Verde is a building, a garden, and an art piece rolled into one. Located in Milan, Italy, the building was first conceived by Luciano Pia, who has a talent for blending the natural and the man-made. Pia’s goal was to bring the nearby hills into the city and give it some more green space, and he succeeded.

25 Verde is a three-sided, box-shaped apartment building surrounding a beautiful, raised park. Trees, flowers, and greenery cover its terraces and available surfaces, and even the buildings were built to blend in with green paints and rust-colored steel. The combined efforts of the real plants pull hundreds of liters of carbon dioxide from the air. This makes it act almost as a living filter for Milan, the birthplace of Fiat, and one that, if well maintained, should last for years to come. 

2 Auckland, New Zealand

As any fan of The Lord of the Rings can tell you, New Zealand is gorgeous. Wide, sweeping grasslands run along stony hills and through forests, right down to the banks of Auckland, the country’s largest city. Established by the Maori, joined by the British, originally the capital before Wellington, and now an international melting pot of cultures, Auckland also serves as an introduction to New Zealand’s natural wonders.

Besides the nearby beautiful rolling hills, Auckland was built on the Auckland Volcanic Field, a group of volcanic points that have been largely dormant for the past several thousand years. The Maori used many of the mountains (which they call “maunga”) as fortifications. A few of the remaining maunga have been preserved and integrated as parks and monuments, truly a unique way to integrate nature.

1 The Blended Urban Forest of Singapore

The island city-state of Singapore is, perhaps, the most environmentally friendly city globally. There are several places in Singapore itself that could have made this list, including the massive airport, which contains a zoo and a new, massive park, and a giant man-made waterfall. Rather than fill the entire list with those, we’ll just tackle the entire city as one spot.

Everything about the modern city has been designed to strengthen the environment, from the decades-in-advance planning to the positioning of its blocks, streets, and parks. Much of the new construction is covered in greenery, and efforts are being made to increase those green spaces and preserve the natural environment and wildlife. Even its farms have been revolutionized, turned into vertical, indoor structures. There aren’t many modern places more in touch with their environment like Singapore.