All’s fair in love and war. In times of conflict, people will use any tool at their disposal as a weapon against adversaries, and sound is no exception. Much like the military helicopters in Apocalypse Now blasting out “Ride of the Valkyries” as they swarm ominously over Vietnam, sonic warfare techniques have played a vital role in many real-life combat situations.

In recent years, the Israeli military’s acoustic blaster Scream has been wheeled out on occasions to dispel Palestinian protestors from the Gaza border, similar to how sound cannons were deployed by riot police at the Ferguson demonstrations. That said, weaponized sound is hardly a modern phenomenon; there are examples dating back to the Troubles in the early 1970s and further still to Nazi propaganda music during World War II

Whether it’s nausea-inducing ultrasonic signals or ear-splitting Guns N’ Roses, acoustic weapons have a deep and fascinating history. Here are ten examples.

10 The Overthrow Of Manuel Noriega

General Manuel Noriega cut a fearsome figure in Latin American politics. As the de facto leader of Panama throughout most of the 1980s, he earned a formidable reputation as a ruthless, repressive dictator comparable to the notorious Augusto Pinochet. His purported crimes include the harassment and intimidation of opponents, orchestrating drug smuggling into Miami, and the torture and murder of physician Hugo Spadafora.

Initially, Noriega had been a close ally of the US; under Nixon, he helped arrange the release of two American freighters from Cuba. However, relationships gradually soured, and in 1989, amid claims of drug trafficking and a corrupt presidential election, the US staged an invasion of Panama. Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City.

US troops soon had the embassy surrounded, and on Christmas Day 1989, they began a campaign of psychological warfare to force Noriega out of power. The US Army blared out an endless playlist of rock and heavy metal bands on loudspeakers at the building. Several of the tracks were specifically chosen to humiliate the dictator and his crumbled regime, such as The Clash’s “I Fought The Law” and the Van Halen song “Panama.” After three days of relentless exposure, the music was turned off, and on January 3, 1990, Noriega surrendered.

The US has repeated these tactics on numerous occasions. Texas law enforcement agents are reported to have played loud pop music and Tibetan chants as part of the Waco siege of the Branch Davidian cult in 1993. During a 2010 campaign in Afghanistan, Marines reportedly blasted Metallica and Thin Lizzy into Marjah villages for hours at a time.^[1]

9 The Israeli Scream

In terms of new-generation military equipment, Israel is one of the undisputed global front-runners—so much so that in 2017, they were described by the New York Post as having “the most technologically advanced military on Earth.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have stood firmly at the cutting edge of a multitude of developments in recent years. Unmanned vehicles patrol the borders with Gaza and Syria. Israeli spy satellites monitor the country’s enemies from miles above the clouds. In 2000, with the launch of the Arrow system, Israel proudly announced that it had developed the first working system for intercepting ballistic missiles.

One of the IDF’s innovations is a less-than-lethal sonic weapon named Scream. The sound gun was first deployed in 2011, when demonstrators began hurling stones and burning tires in protest against the ongoing occupation. The high-tech weapon fired sonic pulses at the rioters at the checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The protesters were left with feelings of nausea and dizziness.^[2]

8 The Squawk Box In Northern Ireland

The issue of Northern Ireland has always been a contentious one in the UK and remains so to this day, but as the violence of the Troubles spilled over into the 1970s, tensions neared breaking point. In January 1973—only a year after the infamous Bloody Sunday attacks saw 14 civilians shot dead by the British Army—mass rioting broke out across the streets of Derry. Throughout that year, reports of people losing their lives to the conflict surfaced on a near-weekly basis. Many of them were civilians killed in violent bomb attacks.

In an attempt to quell the escalating resistance movement, the British Army developed a sonic weapon for what they described as the “non-violent” dispersal of rioters. The device emitted two ultrasonic signals with similar but not identical frequencies. In isolation, these signals were relatively harmless—the frequencies were barely low enough to be audible. However, when the two combined in the ear, the result was said to be ear-splitting. A number of people targeted by the device reported feelings of giddiness and nausea. A handful even passed out.

This repellent machine, named the Squawk Box, was thought to have been developed by a team of researchers at the army’s barracks in Lisburn, a city a few miles outside Belfast. The box was favored for its direct precision; the beam was so calculated that it could pinpoint individual targets during a riot.

Although New Scientist magazine reported on the development at the time, the British Army was reticent to divulge much information about the device. The exact range and power of the Squawk Box is unknown, as is the number of cases during which it was deployed.^[3]

7 Havana Syndrome

From the minute Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries drove General Fulgencio Batista out of Cuba, the United States has used any means available to them in their attempts to overthrow the socialist government. While the Bay of Pigs invasion fell flat, the ongoing US-imposed embargo has severely limited the island’s access to trade and tourism—costing the Cuban economy a reported $130 billion. Other attacks on the Cuban government have seemed more like something out of a James Bond movie. During the 1960s, the CIA’s failed plans to assassinate Castro included poisoning his ice cream, drugging his cigars with hallucinogens, and the infamous attempt to conceal a hypodermic needle inside a pen.

However, in recent years, it seems that US government personnel in Havana have also come under attack. As the relationship between the US and Cuba grows increasingly taut, accusations have flown over strange incidents of potential sonic warfare: Havana Syndrome. From late 2016 to August 2017, staff at the US Embassy in Havana suffered a number of neurological health issues after hearing a high-pitched whining noise in their homes and hotels. Twenty-four diplomats reported feelings of nausea, dizziness, and headaches, with many experiencing long-term symptoms like cognitive dysfunction and sleep impairment.^[4]

It was initially reported by the US that the illnesses were induced by a sophisticated acoustic attack. After all, it was highly suspicious that a varied group of people with no history of head trauma would all experience similar symptoms around the same time. Further evidence appeared to verify this explanation after US personnel released a recording of buzzing drone noise to the Associated Press. Government officials told reporters that they were investigating the possibility that a third country was behind the attacks, perhaps in an attempt to widen the divide between the US and Cuba.

However, following investigation from the University of Pennsylvania, several scientists expressed doubts that the sickness was caused by an external stimulus. Some scientists have even claimed that the recording was not an audio device at all but the mating call of a Caribbean cricket.

6 The Mosquito Alarm

The Mosquito Alarm is a highly controversial device, designed to disperse groups of teenagers from public areas. The alarm, which was first sold commercially in Britain over a decade ago, emits an irritating high-pitched tone that is supposedly only audible to people younger than 25. In less than ten minutes, the grating whine is said to be able to move loiterers on from car parks or outside shops. From personal experience as a teenager in Britain, I can confirm it’s a horrible metallic din.

Naturally, the squalling Mosquito has amassed several detractors. UK advocacy group Liberty have claimed that the alarm infringes on young people’s fundamental human rights. Various campaigners have called for it to be banned. The device indiscriminately causes distress to young people passing by. Under-25s with no intention of loitering will still be “stung” by the mosquito, including those with sensitive hearing, like babies and children with autism.

Thousands have been sold in the UK to date, with police forces and city councils among the purchasers. Only a few cities like Edinburgh and Kent have actually taken to prohibiting the Mosquito. In spite of many objections, it seems the anti-teenage buzz will continue.^[5]

5 Deterring Pirates

Acoustic weapons are a popular choice for ships arming themselves against a pirate invasion, and on some occasions, they’ve been brilliantly effective. When the cruise liner Seabourn Spirit was attacked by pirates near the coast of Somalia in November 2005, the security team managed to stave off their armed assailants with a sonic cannon and a high-pressure water hose. Under fire from grenades and rocket launchers, security officer Michael Groves deployed a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) to safeguard the boat’s 300-plus passengers. Groves and his colleague Som Bahadur Gurung, who was injured in the skirmish, were subsequently awarded honors by the Queen for their bravery.^[6]

Although the LRAD was successful for Seabourn Spirit, a few years later, a US chemical tanker would not share the same fortune. In 2008, pirates mounted a vicious attack on M/V Biscaglia, again in waters near Somalia—only on this occasion, when security fired up their sonic blaster, the invading crew shrugged it off. The security team later told writers for British newspaper The Mirror : “We thought it would make the pirates back off, but they just laughed. It was a total waste of time.”

While the pirates brandished automatic assault rifles, Biscaglia’s security were left trying to fend them off with scaffolding poles and flare guns. In the end, their only option was to dive from the tanker into the water—a 15-meter (50 ft) drop—to avoid being killed.

4 Nazi Propaganda Music

Germany has a proud history of revered classical composers—Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner, to name a few. In fact, the tradition is so rich and deeply entrenched that some thinkers have been inspired to describe music as “the most German of the arts.” For this reason, music became a significant weapon in the arsenal of the Third Reich.

During the 1930s, the rising popularity of modernist styles like swing and jazz was viewed as degenerate by various pockets of German society. Several nationalists saw these trends, often performed by Jewish and African-American musicians, as a symptom of the decaying culture they yearned to preserve.

With a clear hostility to modern trends appearing, music was utilized by the Nazi Party as a way to stoke nationalist sentiment and instill people with what they saw as traditional German values. On top of this, it was a valuable tool for attracting new supporters. Songs concerning Hitler and the Third Reich were regularly performed at rallies during World War II; the anti-Soviet propaganda piece “Horst-Wessel-Lied” was a particularly popular choice. The Hitler Youth even established their own prodigious music program.

The Nazi’s regime of cultural propaganda was wildly successful in keeping spirits high and widening the support for their far-right politics. As Joseph Goebbels remarked: “Music affects the heart and emotions more than the intellect. Where then could the heart of a nation beat stronger than in the huge masses, in which the heart of a nation has found its true home?”^[7]

3 Wildlife Preservation

Humans aren’t the only species to be targeted and manipulated by sonic weapons. Across the globe, sound cannons are blasting out harsh tones in order to deter local animals and prevent wildlife-related damage. Some can even be programmed to mimic the call of a predator.

Wind farms, oil platforms, and vineyards are among some of the businesses known to use acoustic systems to protect their assets from attack.^[8] For example, over the better part of the last decade, LRAD units have played an integral role in reducing the number of bird strikes on the Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Bologna, Italy. Elsewhere, villagers in Northern Canada have begun to use them as a humane defense against polar bear attacks.

2 US Riot Police

In recent years, sound cannons have been an effective tool for police in the United States to intimidate and disperse protesters. In 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown sparked enormous anger across the country. Demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, took to the streets, enraged by the death of another young black man at the hands of law enforcement.

To stave them off, police deployed a LRAD similar to the one used against Somali pirates. Initially, the device issues vocal instructions for crowds to clear the area, followed by a piercing deterrent tone that has been known to induce headaches. The ear-splitting sonic blaster, an LRAD 500X-RA, ranges over 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) and can achieve a maximum volume of 149 decibels. To put that in perspective, 120 decibels is the discomfort threshold above which a sound becomes painful, and after 130 decibels, you face possible hearing loss.^[9]

This is hardly the first time a US police force has used a sound cannon to clear out protestors. Similar tactics were used by the NYPD during the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, and in 2016, LRADs were deployed on several occasions as police stepped up their aggression against the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

1 CIA Torture

In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee published an extensive report disclosing a number fascinating and disturbing facts about CIA torture techniques. Among the controversial revelations was the use of “sound disorientation techniques” at the COBALT facility, similar to those reported at Guantanamo Bay in 2008. The report describes how prisoners were detained in shackles in an unlit cell and prevented from falling asleep by repeatedly playing loud music for extended periods of time. This psychological attack disorientates and intimidates detainees, with the aim of eventually “breaking” them into submission.

On top of this, certain songs were used as a form of conditioning to let prisoners know that another torture session was imminent. Before the interrogation of suspected terrorist Ramzi bin al-Shibh, staff would taunt him with the Blues Brothers’ “Rawhide.” Traditional American genres like metal and country are favored by the CIA. These styles are deliberately chosen because the foreign, alien sounds have a disorienting effect on prisoners from the Middle East, thus exacerbating the torment.^[10]

If you make it through life without ever getting sick or injured, you may be entirely fictional. It’s nearly impossible to live without needing medical help at some point. If you’re lucky, you’ll only need minor help. 

For more in-depth issues, medical science has all manner of treatments and procedures that may be able to help you. Some are simple, some are complex and a handful are so weird they sound like they have to be totally fictional. But they’re not!

10. A Bogota Bag Involves Sewing a Urine Bag Over an Open Wound

If someone told you that you needed a Bogota Bag you’d be forgiven for thinking it was either a horrible euphemism or the nickname for something used to smuggle drugs. In reality, the Bogota Bag is a medical procedure used to help close over stomach wounds.

It’s not unheard of that a patient’s stomach can essentially burst after certain procedures. Closing the ensuing wound can prove to be extremely difficult. There are various methods such as using a mesh or packing the abdominal cavity but they can all be risky and lead to further complications. The Bogota Bag, so named because it was first tried in Bogota, has proven to be one of the safest methods.

If a patient has an open stomach wound, doctors can take a sterile plastic bag, often a bag used to collect urine, and cut it open. The bag is then placed over the wound like a shield and sewn to the skin. The patient will have a fully exposed hole covered over by this plastic bag sewn on top of it that can allow the stomach wound to heal underneath or can at least allow the wound to remain covered and sterile until doctors are able to properly treat the cause of the damage and prevent further injury.

9. Rectal Prolapses Can Be Treated With Sugar

Few words in the English language can inspire more discomfort than “rectal prolapse.” The idea is not a pleasant one, and the reality is even less so. Any number of reasons including issues with muscles or ligaments can cause a patient’s rectum to slide out of place and protrude from the body rather than remaining inside as it’s supposed to. This can lead to dangerous complications if it’s not resolved.

In some cases, surgery may be required to fix the problem but not always. In fact, there’s a method that is recommended for a person to try at home if this was a onetime sort of deal you’d like to fix on your own. And, let’s be honest, most people probably want to fix this on their own.

The doctor-approved method for repairing a rectal prolapse at home requires sugar. If you are unable to use a gloved hand to gently push a prolapse back inside, sprinkle it with granulated sugar and wait 15 minutes. The sugar won’t harm the tissue but it will absorb moisture. In doing so, it will cause the prolapse to shrink and make it easier to push back into place.

8. Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis Involves Sewing a Blind Patient’s Tooth Onto Their Eyeball

The term osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis doesn’t roll off the tongue very well. Thankfully, it’s not something most of us need to know but if you ever require the procedure, you better believe you’re going to remember it. It involves sticking a tooth in your eye.

Known as tooth-in-eye surgery, the procedure can restore vision to those who suffer corneal blindness. A patient’s tooth is removed and doctors drill a hole through it. In the hole a small, plastic lens is placed. The tooth is planted in the patient’s cheek so that tissue can start growing over it and it can develop a blood supply. 

Skin from the mouth is sewn to the eye, then the tooth is sewn to the surface of the eyeball with the lens in the correct position. The new lens functions the way your old eye was supposed to. Patients who have undergone the procedure went from totally blind to having 20/20 vision.

7. Laser Surgery Can Turn Brown Eyes Blue

Laser eye surgery to improve vision has been around for years now and most people are familiar with it. But it’s not the only kind of laser eye surgery you can get. Plastic surgery is also an option if you don’t like your eye color. 

For those who have brown eyes, and it only works with brown eyes, there’s a procedure to burn away that pigment with a laser and leave your eyes devoid of pigment which makes them appear blue. The process takes just a few seconds but will require a couple of weeks to show off the results. You’ll also have to go south to get it done as it’s not approved in the United States. 

There’s also a second option for eye color changes in the form of iris implants. This is supposed to be for people with iris damage, but colored silicone replacements can be surgically implanted, permanently changing eye color. They’re known to cause a host of side effects and complications, though.

6. InstaBreasts or Vacation Breasts Give a Patient Bigger Breasts for a Day

Breast implants remain one of the most common cosmetic surgery procedures in the world. There are around 300,000 performed each year in the United States. The procedure costs, on average, about $4,500 and that’s not including the cost of anesthetic or certain other expenses. 

For those who aren’t willing to commit to the procedure and maybe just want to take augmented breasts for a test run, there’s a procedure called InstaBreasts, also known as Vacation Breasts. It offers a temporary idea of what you might get if you went ahead with permanent implants. 

The process lasts for just 24 hours and still comes with a price tag that ranges from $2,500 to $3,500. A doctor will inject a saline solution directly into the breast tissue causing them to immediately swell. Your body will absorb the liquid within 24 hours and pee it out.

5. Rotationplasty Turns Your Foot Into Your Knee

The name “rotationplasty” doesn’t sound ominous or odd at first, but the reality of the procedure is quite perplexing, especially at first glance. The procedure is most often used to treat bone cancer, generally in and around the knees of children. 

The knee, the bottom of the femur and the upper portion of the tibia are entirely removed to excise the tumors. The lower portion of the leg is turned right around, a full 180 degrees and then attached to the rest of the femur. The ankle becomes the new knee, and the foot is on backwards, where you’d normally expect the knee to be.

Once the surgery is complete, a prosthetic can be attached that allows the patient to walk more or less as normal since they now have a functional knee again. 

4. EPR Involves Removing a Patient’s Blood and Replacing it with Cold Saline

Leaning heavily into what looks like science fiction is EPR or emergency preservation and resuscitation. The procedure is a kind of suspended animation meant to give doctors more time to save a patient in a time sensitive emergency situation. 

Like similar ideas in fiction, a patient is forced into a state of hypothermia and their organs are slowed down. That means that their body has to be cooled down to about 10C to 15C or 50F to 59F. This is done by literally replacing the patient’s blood with freezing saline.

The process can extend the time doctors have to operate by up to two hours. It’s only done in the case of a severely traumatic injury, such as a gunshot wound, when the patient has already lost half of their blood and their heart has stopped.  Normally, patients only have a 5% survival rate in conditions like these.

The cooling shuts down the patient’s brain, preserves the organs and they are more or less dead at that moment. But they can be operated on and an injury that would normally only give doctors minutes to repair can now be operated on for those two hours. 

After surgery, the patient gets blood pumped back into their body and their temperature is raised.

The procedure was first tried on a human patient in 2019.

3. Defecography Requires You To Get an X-Ray While You Poop

For doctors to gain a fuller understanding of a patient’s overall condition imaging is often necessary. You’ve got your CAT scans and your MRIs and your X-rays. And then you’ve got your defecography.

Defecography is done with a certain kind of x-ray or MRI and its focus is entirely on how you poop, particularly how your muscles work during the process. Unlike a traditional X-ray where you just hold still and get an image taken, for this one you need to be a little more active. Which is to say it has to be done while you’re in the process of defecating, hence the name. 

As you can, but probably don’t want to, imagine, this is a little more in-depth than most imaging. And it gets worse. They don’t want to watch you poop actual poop for this exam. Instead, they pack you with a barium paste. It has the same consistency as poop, which we’re not going to question right now, but because it’s barium, it shows up easily in scans. 

Once you’re full, you get to sit on a special scanning toilet and let loose the dogs of war. The scans taken will show how all your various organs and muscles work during the process and ideally will aid in diagnosing whatever condition brought you to a doctor in the first place. 

2. The Krukenberg Procedure Can Turn Your Forearm into a Pincer

If you were to get into an accident and lose your hand, you might expect that your options about what to do next are limited. Maybe the hand could be reattached in certain circumstances, but what if that’s not an option? Most of us would probably consider a prosthetic as the next choice. Hand prosthetics have existed since the 16th century and modern ones can be quite advanced. 

There is another option that is less well known for patients who have lost a hand. The Krukenberg procedure dates back to the early 1900s, and it involves turning someone’s forearm into a lobster claw-like pincer.

The procedure is rarely done and typically only performed on patients who cannot afford a prosthetic but still need their hands for work. It allows for some minimal dexterity because it separates the arm bones, the ulna and the radius, to create two appendages like long fingers. The patient can move them and grip things, though obviously not as strongly as they could with a functional hand. One of the perceived benefits is that the patient retains sensation which, in some cases, is preferred to having a prosthesis. 

1. Pokertox is a Botox Procedure to Hide a Gambler’s Tells

Everyone knows about Botox these days, that procedure is old news. Less well known, although essentially just a niche version of the exact same thing, is Pokertox. It’s 100% a gimmick that appeals to a very small segment of the population but that doesn’t mean it can’t make someone a few bucks.

The idea of a poker face is something anyone familiar with gambling is aware of. Poker is a game of skill that requires understanding not just the cards you’re dealt but, oftentimes, the people you’re playing against. If you’re bluffing your way through a game, you need a solid poker face so that you don’t give away any clues. But what if you can’t help it? What if you have a very expressive face?

Pokertox is a procedure to inject Botox into your forehead so that your face is a little too firm and frozen to express any emotion, thus making you a better poker player. Is there any scientific validity to the idea? Who’s to say? But it still exists.

The machine of progress can’t be stopped, but it does need to be tempered. You can’t go about innovating all willy nilly without testing your ideas. Whether it’s something as simple as a new recipe for brownies or as complex as quantum computing, we live in a world where everything needs to be (or at least should be) tested to perfect it. 

When it comes to that brownie, testing it isn’t a hard process to figure out. Have a bite and see how it tastes. But there are some more unusual tests we’ve devised for very specific reasons and, weird though they me, they do stand up to scientific scrutiny.

10. Butt Shaped Robots Test Cell Phone Durability

About 67% of the people on Earth have cell phones, or somewhere north of 6 billion. Of those many billions of people, how many do you think stuff their phone in their back pocket when not using it? In one small poll of just under 3,000 people, about 7.8% kept their phone back there. Out of 6 billion, that would be 468 million. That’s a lot of phones against butts. And that’s why cell phone testing involves robot butts.

Part of the testing Samsung puts its new phones through to ensure durability involves being slipped into the back pocket of jeans worn by robot butts so the robots can sit down again and again and again to see how well the phones handle it. 

That means, theoretically, you shouldn’t have to worry too much if you sit on your Samsung phone because a robot tried it out once already and survived. Unless you sit more aggressively than a robot. 

9. Boeing Tests Wi-Fi on Planes with Potatoes

Pre-Covid there were close to 40 million flights per year around the world. The pandemic brought those numbers down considerably but they are creeping up again and, in any event, it’s safe to say there are a ton of planes in the air on any given day. With so many planes, and people, in the sky, you have to have faith that every aspect of a flight is very rigidly and scientifically tested to ensure maximum safety. And that brings us to potatoes.

Boeing used potatoes as part of the system it devised to test Wi-Fi on its airplanes. About 20,000 lb of them, in fact. The company needed to make sure that a plane, flying at hundreds of miles an hour, 35,000 feet in the air could distribute Wi-Fi evenly among passengers. And yeah, you could get real humans for this job but they need to be paid and to have breaks and all kinds of things. Potatoes, however, do not.

It turns out that potatoes interact with signals, such as Wi-Fi, in much the same way as a human body would. So plopping a sack of spuds in a seat is an easy way to see if the signal strength is dispersed evenly on a loaded plane. 

8. Some Cities Test Their Water Supplies with Clams

Access to clean water is something a lot of people take for granted in parts of the developed world and when the infrastructure that provides it fails, it can be devastating. What many people don’t ever stop to look into is how that water is cleaned in the first place. There’s more than one method available and some places have opted for the unexpected method of using clams.

In parts of Poland, clams provide a reliable early warning system that something is wrong with the water. Clams are extremely sensitive to toxins and pollutants in the water. So clams are placed at a certain place in the water supply and monitored with tiny magnets and coils. If the water flow becomes polluted, say there’s an overabundance of heavy metals in it, the clams immediately close up to protect themselves. The coils and magnets create an observable change in the magnetic field to let scientists monitoring the water know something has happened. 

In America, the same system is being used in cities like Minneapolis. There, mussels have been added to the water supply and the same theory works. When pollutants are detected, the molluscs set off the early warning. They’re so good at this, polluted water can be detected before it ever reaches household water supplies. 

7. A Caloric Stimulation Test Can Help Detect Brain Damage

Brain damage can manifest in numerous ways and can range from the smallest tics to completely life changing alterations in personality or physical abilities. It can also be caused by anything from physical trauma to oxygen deprivation to parasites and more. So how do you even begin to test for something so complicated?

One common method is called the caloric stimulation test. The test is used to measure nerve function and although brain damage isn’t the only thing it can indicate, it’s definitely a test that can help make that diagnosis.

The way it works is remarkably non-invasive. A patient will have electrodes attached to their head near their eyes. Then cold water dripped into their ear. This is then followed by warm water. Eye movement needs to be monitored as the test is implemented. When cold water fills your ear, nerve signals will make your eyes move quickly side to side and away from the cold ear. The warm water will cause the eyes to move back. If your nerves are working properly, this is entirely unconscious movement.

If the results are abnormal, meaning eye movement isn’t what’s expected, further testing can be done to narrow down the cause. 

6. Mice Are Forced to Swim to Test Antidepressants

Over 70 million antidepressants are prescribed every year, so it’s safe to say a lot of people are taking medications that are altering how their brains function. We’ve all likely heard of serious and negative drug side effects so it’s good to know how companies actually test these drugs to ensure they do what they’re supposed to do. 

Before human trials begin with most drugs, animals are tested and antidepressants are no different. But how do you test for depression or the lack thereof in animals? With the forced swim test. Sometimes known as the behavioral despair test.

In this test, a mouse is placed in a container full of water from which they can’t escape. All they can do is swim. The mice are then observed to see how long they will spend trying to swim until they give up. Mice are given antidepressants and the time they spend immobile is measured. So, in a nutshell, an antidepressant is considered effective if it lessens the amount of time a mouse spends immobile. So the longer it can convince a mouse to try to save itself from drowning, the more effective it is. 

5. Horseshoe Crab Blood is Used to Test for Bacteria in Vaccines 

There’s a good chance that if you have been vaccinated against anything in the modern world, you owe a small debt of gratitude to the noble horseshoe crab that probably died as a result. These extremely ancient creatures have some unique blood. Not only is it bright blue, it’s invaluable in medical testing. Well, not literally invaluable. It costs about $60,000 a gallon.

These creatures have remained relatively unchanged for about 450 million years. And the reason their blood is so valuable is that it coagulates when exposed to certain toxins. That clotting feature is incredibly important in medical testing, like for vaccines, because it allows scientists to know if a sample has been contaminated. If the compound coagulates, then they know something went wrong. If it doesn’t, then the sample is pure so they can trust their results. This is integral for ensuring a valid vaccine or other medical treatment. 

Unfortunately for the crabs, this means they need to be harvested and bled en masse. The goal is to only take some blood, about 30%, and leave the crabs with enough to survive, but often they will die as a result of the procedure, anyway. 

4. The US Air Force Tested Ejector Seats on Live Bears

Any good action movie about Air Force pilots probably includes a scene with an adrenaline-pumping high speed emergency ejection. Ever wondered how they make sure those seats work? Back in the day they tested them with bears.

In 1950, when testing ejector seats in a jet that could go twice the speed of sound, the Air Force decided a drugged up bear was the best test subject. They used American and Himalayan black bears and all of the subjects survived the initial testing only to be dissected later.

Bears were actually a second choice for these tests. The first idea was hiring subjects out of unemployment lines. The animals became a better choice probably for a number of reasons but not the least of which was that they could immediately kill and autopsy them to look for internal injuries. Although it seems like the testing worked, they thankfully stopped the practice not long after.

3. Jets are Tested with a Chicken Cannon 

Let’s say you’re on an airplane going across the country. The plane is climbing to altitude and runs into a flock of geese. How scared are you about what happens next? Because birds have downed planes before and people have died. So what does the aviation industry do to try to prepare for this?

Turns out the best way to test how a plane handles hitting birds is to hit it with birds. Jets are tested with cannons that fire chickens at them to see if the windshields and engines can handle the impact. Contrary to some rumors the chickens aren’t frozen, but it’s otherwise a true story. A chicken will be fired into a turbine at 180 miles per hour. For military aircraft it can get up to 400 miles per hour. 

The first chicken cannon saw use back in 1968 and lasted until 2009 when it was replaced. It uses simple compressed air to fire an already killed chicken to test the planes.

2. An AI System is Being Designed to Diagnose Diseases Based on Toilet Sounds

In 2018, about 9.5 million people died from cancer. Year over year it claims more and more victims and while there are great strides in treatments and research, it’s obviously still taking a huge toll. Any technology that can assist in fighting, preventing or diagnosing can save lives. And now there’s a new advance in the fight that utilizes AI and the sounds you make on the toilet to hopefully catch early signs.

The technology is mostly theoretical at the moment with only a prototype having been developed, but the idea is it could listen to your various sounds and detect subtle variations or discrepancies that may indicate your insides are not working exactly as they are supposed to. The AI is sophisticated enough to pull out sounds that a human ear could never detect.

So what do you call a computer that listens to farts and other toilet noises for the betterment of mankind? Synthetic Human Acoustic Reproduction Testing. Or SHART. In 2022 they were working on an algorithm to help SHART detect cholera. 

1. Google Nexus Tested If Sound Can Be Heard in Space

The movie Alien used the tagline “in space no one can hear you scream” and it really set a great tone for the film while also being scientifically accurate. Sound does not travel well in a vacuum. But hey, that doesn’t mean Google wasn’t willing to scientifically test the idea, anyway. 

The Strand-1 satellite was launched in 2013, operated by a Google Nexus smartphone and a CubeSat computer. The operators decided to test that Alien theory by launching a Nexus phone into space with it to test its durability and also how well some recorded screams play in the void. 

Mostly this was just a silly PR stunt because launching satellites is generally mundane stuff these days but, for what it’s worth, the screams were unheard because the physics of space don’t allow sound to travel thanks to a lack of molecules to carry it.

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?

Imagine a war that lasted 335 years but yielded no human losses and caused no bloodshed. Or people wearing cheap, colorful flour sacks during the Great Depression because the colors meant they were still dressing somewhat fashionably. And what about the king who believed his body was made of glass and refused to move for hours on end?

History is littered with strange tales like these. On this list are 10 more stories that reflect just how weird (and sometimes scary) things could get way back in the day.

10 Obscure Historical Events That Would Make Amazing Movies

10 Hector The Convector

During World War II, several pilots noticed that a thundercloud formed almost every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia. This cumulonimbus cloud was visible regularly from September to March. In fact, it was so reliable that it became a navigational beacon for both pilots and mariners. It was even given a name: Hector.^[1]

Hector (aka Hector the Convector) remains to this day. It faithfully forms around the islands almost daily at approximately 3:00 PM. The Tiwi Islands are the ideal location for this regular cloud formation. As the sea breezes blow onto the islands, their topography ensures that the air currents are sent upward where moisture is pulled into the upper atmosphere. This ripens conditions for a thunderstorm.

Currently, Hector is one of the most observed storm formations. People travel from all around the world to study this phenomenon.

9 New Atlantis

In 1964, Ernest Hemingway’s younger brother, Leicester, told The Washington Post: “There’s no law that says you can’t start your own country.”

Which is exactly what he did on July 4, 1964. He created an “island” named New Atlantis by anchoring a bamboo raft to a Ford engine block in 15 meters (50 ft) of water. The island lay on a shallow ocean bank 13 kilometers (8 mi) southwest of Jamaica.

Leicester proceeded to tell the media that he had taken possession of one-half of the island on behalf of the US government under the authority of the US Guano Islands Act of 1856. At that point, guano was valued as a commercial fertilizer. Western nations tried to overrun one another to claim areas that had guano deposits. The remaining half of the island was to be used for the population of New Atlantis.^[2]

By February 1965, Leicester had been voted president of the island by a whopping seven voters (all chosen by Leicester himself). New Atlantis sported a brand-new national flag sewn by Leicester’s wife. The island residents busied themselves by issuing postage stamps. The micro nation even had its own constitution, which was copied from the US Constitution. The only difference: The words “United States” were replaced by “New Atlantis.”

Leicester planned to use the profits from the stamps to fund the International Marine Research Society. But the Universal Postal Union threw a spanner in the works when they refused to recognize the legitimacy of the stamps.

Leicester’s dream of owning his own country didn’t last long. A few years after its founding, New Atlantis sank into the sea during a terrible storm.

8 Huberta The Hippo

In the Amathole Museum in King William’s Town, South Africa, stands Huberta, the country’s most famous hippopotamus.

Huberta headed south one day in 1928 and continued her journey until 1931. From her water hole home in the St. Lucia Estuary, she walked 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) to East London.

Huberta’s progress was tracked by the press, and she became a bit of a celebrity, attracting crowds wherever she was spotted. She brought a little joy to those suffering through the beginning of the Great Depression and even visited a beach, a theater, and a country club. Huberta was fed sugarcane and fruit by those who dared to approach her.^[3]

The happy hippo was declared “royal game” after a failed attempt to capture her. This was meant to ensure her protection against hunters. Sadly, however, she was shot and killed by farmers a month after arriving in East London.

The public protested the farmers’ actions. They were eventually arrested, and each was fined £25. Huberta’s body was sent to a London taxidermist and welcomed back home by thousands of people when she was returned to South Africa in 1932.

7 The Feejee Mermaid

During the 19th century, several creatures were put on display in a number of exhibitions. The owners claimed that these creatures were mermaids. P.T. Barnum was not about to be left out of the action and set up his own exhibition. It featured the Feejee Mermaid, which he supposedly rented from his friend Moses Kimball.

The mermaid was constructed from the upper body of an ape sewn to the tail of a fish. Most believe that it was an orangutan and a salmon. In his autobiography, Barnum described the creature as ugly and dried up. He also said that its mouth was frozen in an open scream with its arms thrown up in the air.^[4]

Barnum’s exhibition—and the mermaid in particular—proved to be hugely popular and caused quite the “mermaid fever” wherever it was displayed. It traveled through New York and London, but by 1859, the whereabouts of the mermaid were unknown.

A mermaid was gifted to the Peabody Museum after Kimball’s Boston Museum burned down around 1899. (Some sources say the gift was made in 1897.) But it remains unconfirmed whether it is the P.T. Barnum exhibition mermaid.

6 Orchidelirium

In the 1800s, orchids caused an ongoing craze among the elite. The rich collected the flowers and paid thousands of dollars for exotic varieties. The phenomenon was dubbed “orchidelirium.”

Fanatics paid explorers top dollar to travel to just about every corner of the globe in search of undiscovered orchid varieties. The explorers spread misinformation about the locations of any new flowers to throw other searchers off the scent, so to speak.^[5]

In modern times, some orchid species are endangered and collecting wild orchids has been banned.

10 Historical Events That Didn’t Happen Like You Think They Did

5 Salem Tomato Trial

The Salem witch trials are well known, but have you heard of the Salem tomato trial?

In the early 1800s, tomatoes were put on trial in Salem, New Jersey, because they were believed to be poisonous. But people had been looking askance at the fruit since the 1500s. Back then, the tomato was thought to be a “sinful” food due to its ability to act as a mild aphrodisiac.^[6]

The tomato trial commenced in 1820 with only one person in Salem refusing to believe that the fruit was guilty of being poisonous. Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson introduced tomato-growing competitions to coax residents to be less afraid of the fruit, but they wouldn’t bite. Johnson also ate tomatoes on a regular basis, and the general public thought him insane.

Feeling annoyed by the trial and the unnecessary fear caused by tomatoes, Johnson walked to the front of the courthouse carrying a basket filled with them. He proceeded to eat all the tomatoes in full view of the crowd gathered there. Contrary to expectation, he didn’t keel over and die on the spot.

This led to the exoneration of the humble tomato. Eventually, it was grown in millions of gardens around the world and served with a multitude of meals on a daily basis.

4 Fork Sacrilege

In the 11th century, a Byzantine princess packed up a bunch of forks with the intent of using them in her husband’s Venetian household. As the couple was newly married, it seems the young woman didn’t understand how rude it was to bring forks into her new home. (It was widely considered to be sacrilegious.)

At the time, it was impolite to eat with anything other than your fingers. When the princess died soon after settling into the house, the consensus was that she had received her due because she had insulted her husband’s household. Another version of the tale says that the princess used a golden fork at her wedding reception and died of the plague soon afterward.^[7]

Until the 16th century, it remained customary to eat with one’s hands or, if need be, a knife to pick up certain foods. Forks were very slowly accepted. Eventually, pointy knives were banned from dinner tables because they proved to be easy weapons when arguments erupted.

3 Anti-Comet Pills

As Halley’s Comet approached Earth on May 6, 1910, England’s King Edward VII died. The superstitious gasped and clutched their collars for surely the comet had brought death upon their king. While the French blamed Halley for the Seine flooding, the Brits took the comet’s journey as a sign that the Germans would soon invade their country’s borders.

The comet was due to swoop past Earth on May 19, 1910. A few months earlier, astronomer Camille Flammarion had theorized that Halley’s tail carried cyanogen gas which would infiltrate the atmosphere and kill all life on the planet.

Although most astronomers did not agree with that, panic ensued. Naturally, fraudsters took full advantage of this opportunity and began hawking “anti-comet pills” to the nervous public.^[8]

Two men from Texas were caught selling sugar pills at ridiculous prices. Although they were arrested, they were soon released after their customers started rioting. In addition to massive demand for these “anti-comet pills,” those selling gas masks were also making a small fortune when masks started flying off the shelves.

When disaster was averted after Halley passed by Earth, people danced in the street as they were much relieved to be alive.

2 Brown Eyes Turned Blue

The Chernobyl disaster took place on April 26, 1986. It is still considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history. A flawed reactor design operated by inadequately trained staff resulted in a massive explosion and subsequent fires that killed 31 people and led to the evacuation of around 350,000 others. Due to the radiation aftermath, it was predicted in 2005 that a further 4,000 people might die due to exposure.

At the scene, firefighters crawled into the radioactive wreck that was the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to try to prevent the fires from spreading further. Over the next few weeks, 28 firefighters died.

The radiation exposure had affected them to such an extent that their skin started peeling off. Firefighter Volodymyr Pavlovych Pravyk saw his dark brown eyes turn bright blue. He died 15 days after the disaster, and it is alleged that he was buried in a sealed zinc coffin.^[9]

1 The Holocaust Avengers

The Holocaust will forever be remembered as one of the darkest and most horrific periods in history. Millions of people—including European Jews, the mentally challenged, the Romani, and those who identified as being homosexual—were murdered by order of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

In 1946, a group of Jewish survivors, who called themselves “Nakam” (“The Avengers”), devised a plan to exact revenge on Germany. They were going to kill at least six million Germans by introducing poison to the country’s water supply. The group also planned to poison bread loaves to kill as many SS officers as possible.^[10]

Their plan was ultimately foiled, but The Avengers never regretted plotting their revenge upon Germany. In fact, most wished that their plan had worked.

10 Historical Events With Hilarious Forgotten Details

Oh history, you do keep showing us you’re full of weirdness. Is it any wonder that today’s landscape of people who get famous for simply existing online, Japanese ‘girlfriend pillows’ and bacon-flavoured soda came into existence when our past was even more wacky?

Here are 10 more odd tales from history to add to Estelle’s great list from earlier this year, Top 10 Historical Events That Sound Too Strange To Be True.

10Those Who Live By The Sword…

This entry might literally be ‘too strange to be true’, in that it may not be true. Charondas was an Hellenic lawgiver from Catania on the island of Sicily who lived at some time between 580 BC and 476 BC. So far, so normal. His contribution isn’t anything special either, but the example he set certainly is.

His laws were, according to Aristotle, very run of the mill. He is credited with introducing legal measures to deal with perjury, as well as the meticulous precision in his wording of the laws. So exact was Charondas that, when he was found to be in contravention of one of his own (minor) laws, he promptly enacted the proscribed punishment upon himself – he took his own life.

So which law did he break? The wearing of a weapon at a public assembly – he’d simply forgotten to leave his sword at home, it seems. How did he kill himself? With that very same sword. Full respect for practicing what he preached, but he must be seen as unlucky to have lived in a time before high-priced defence attorneys. He would have easily gotten off on a technicality.^[1]

9The French King of Sweden

History will sometimes give us a very counterintuitive fact. One such fact is that not all Kings and Queens came from a long inbred familial line. Sometimes, a normal bloke or blokette were given a go at ruling whilst wearing a shiny metal hat. The King of Sweden (actually, he was King of Sweden and Norway) in 1818 was the son of a common prosecutor in the small French Pyrenean town of Pau. King Karl XIV Johan was originally Jean Bernadotte, a soldier in Napoleon’s army. He rose through the ranks and, on the formation of the first French Empire, was made one of eighteen ‘Marshals of the French Empire’, taking the lead of multiple army corps in many military campaigns.

Bernadotte had been pegged as the next Governor of Rome in 1810 but was elected as the heir to the Swedish throne – he was a popular choice, especially amongst the Swedish military who longed for a soldier to sit on the throne.

The only person who seemed not to want Bernadotte to be King was Napoleon Bonaparte himself, preferring his son-in-law, Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg. This slight against Bernadotte boiled over years later when, as King of Sweden, Bernadotte allied with Britain, Russia and Prussia in the sixth coalition. Writing this, even though it happened, feels strange. The dude was French! Imagine if Queen Elizabeth II was from Kentucky.^[2]

8The Slow Death of King Stanislaw

There was a period in American history where almost every ethnic joke where the punch line was that the subject was stupid, it was a Pole. Maybe stories like that of King Stanislaw I are responsible for this stereotype.

The twice-removed King of Poland found himself living in the semi-autonomous Duchy of Lorraine and Bar in France. He had received the Duchy as compensation for his abdication and went on to run the region very well, making it a cultural hub and quite prosperous. At the ripe old age of 88, he was snoozing by the fireside in his palace at Lunéville… wearing some highly combustible silk clothes. A spark ignited his attire and the aged king suffered terrible burns all over his body, dying in agony a few days later.^[3]

7The First Aerial Bombardment Of The Continental US

‘La Cristiada’ was a 3-year-long war between the Mexican Government (with a little help from the KKK, looking to kill a few Catholics) and a Catholic civil rights group known as the ‘Cristeros’ (backed by the Knights of Columbus). The root of the conflict was in the rabid anti-religious stance that the secular Mexican Government had instantiated into law in the 1917 constitution, seeing many crackdowns on the rights of people to worship freely. This war largely took place in Northern Mexico, providing townsfolk in the neighbouring south-western US with something to watch on a sunny Saturday afternoon – full scale battles!

The rebellious Cristeros hired American biplane owners to help out in their war effort – these Americans would provide air support by dropping improvised explosives on government forces. One such ‘mercenary’ was Patrick Murphy. One day, near the town of Naco, Arizona in 1929, Murphy was busy dropping his suitcase held payloads of dynamite, nuts, bolts and nails on the enemy… until the winds blew him back across the border. The Herculean alcohol intake he had enjoyed before taking to the skies had stopped him from realising he was above his own country. He dropped more bombs, causing the shocked American townsfolk to scatter in fear. Murphy got shot down by the Mexicans, deported and promptly arrested by the US authorities. He was never charged for his actions.^[4]

6The USA Had An ‘Emperor’

All hail Emperor Norton, ruler of the United States of America, protector of Mexico! Of course, this guy wasn’t a ‘real’ North American emperor. He was a down-on-his-luck businessman from South Africa who ended up pretending he was emperor of America whilst living in a local doss house. Emperor Norton I was just a local ‘character’ in San Francisco whose antics and ravings amused readers of the SF Chronicle. But was he all that nuts?

Like many ‘crazy wackaloops’, Emperor Norton sometimes made sensible suggestions. This was one of his ‘proclamations’ in 1869:

“Norton I, Dei Gratia, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties…”

Who’s the crazy one now? This guy was a national treasure who would have been the most followed man in the Twitterverse had he been alive and making such proclamations today.^[5]

10 Weird Things We Have Found Inside Statues

5The Maori Joseph Smith

There aren’t many column inches dedicated to the flurry of ‘new’ religious movements taking hold across the globe. From Brazil’s ‘Valley of the Dawn’ movement to Eastern Europe’s various Pagan/nativist religious groups gaining strength , there seems to be a wave of religiosity breaking across the world.

Despite these religions appearing to be ‘new’, many are actually quite old. Romuva, Lithuania’s neo-pagan religion, claims to be the re-emergence of their pre-Christian faith, rather than an entirely modern invention based on the old faith. That would make Romuva, if its practice is unbroken by Christianisation in the 1300s, the oldest practiced faith in Europe, comparable to Hinduism in age.

New Zealand’s Ringatu Church is a melange of quite disparate traditions, rather than a revival.. Much in the way that Mormonism is a mix of Christianity and emerging American identity, Ringatu mixes the Old Testament with Maori tribal customs and traditions. But, once again, it’s older than many think.

Also similar to many early Mormon leaders, Ringatu’s founder was a bit of a badass, willing to literally fight for what he believed. His name was Te Kooti, a former bandit who studied the Bible intently whilst imprisoned. Through a mix of his newly honed religious knowledge, some parlour tricks he’d learned from sailors (using match heads on his fingertips to create the illusion that fire was springing from his hands) and a panache for storytelling, Te Kooti amassed a significant following. The new religious movement, called Ringatu, declared that Te Kooti was the true King of the Maori people and waged a war against the government in the late 1860s. Te Kooti was eventually pardoned by the government and he was allowed to travel the islands, preaching and gathering new followers. The church is still popular today, with around 16,000 adherents.^[6]

4The Progressive Medieval Legal System…Unless You Couldn’t Pay

Have you found yourself in the unfortunate position of having killed a neighbour to take his shiny new boots? Well, if you did that in early medieval Wales, don’t sweat! All you need to do is pay his family a fine, and you can go about your business. Can’t pay? Ok, now you have a problem… aside from finding yourself over a thousand years in the past.

It is true that, under the laws of King Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), there were some astonishingly ‘modern’ elements – women had greater autonomy and legal protections than other contemporary legal systems. But by today’s standards and social mores, it was downright weird.

Rape, for instance, was regarded as an act of theft, an offence that simply required payment of a fine to the aggrieved party. Too lax, too progressive? Well, if you committed the offence and couldn’t pay, they’d cut your balls off. Too barbaric? Tough luck. You would have to pay, one way or another.^[7]

3Burial Mystery Becomes Poignant History

The mystery of the ‘six-headed chief’ has puzzled archaeologists for a couple of decades. After a dig at St. Colman’s church in the Scottish Highlands back in 1997 uncovered the bones of a warrior along with 4 extra skulls and a whole other buried person, experts were left baffled by this odd burial arrangement. Who were they? Why were they buried in this odd manner, creating the effect that this fallen fighter had six heads? The truth turned out to be rather mundane, but quite touching.

This seems to have been a family grave plot. DNA analysis has uncovered that all save one of the different skeletons were of multiple generations of the same family, including a father and son. The outlier? This was the skull of a man who lived much earlier (around the 8th century, the related skeletons were dated as dying between the 13th and 15th centuries). It seems that this skull belonged to a Pictish monk and was probably buried as a holy relic with the fallen warrior family.^[8]

2Great Minds (Think Stupid Things, Sometimes)

Isaac Newton knew a thing or two about science. ‘How to cure the plague’ was not one of the things he knew. A recent auction had a very interesting lot, a wonderful piece of Newton memorabilia – celebrating ‘kooky’ Isaac Newton, not ‘genius who ushered in modern enlightened science’ Isaac Newton. The hand-written pages detail his idea for treating the ‘Black Death’… toad puke lozenges.

First, according to the genius, you suspend a toad by the legs inside a chimney for three days until it vomits up various bugs. These bugs should be captured in a dish of yellow wax. When the toad dies, you must grind it into a powder and mix the whole shebang together, forming little lozenges. You then wear these pukey amulets around the bubo-covered, blackening area. This should cure you… how hard did that apple hit his head?^[9]

1Not The Parthenon

We seem to have 2,000-year-old egg on our faces. Dutch researchers have unveiled that, since Roman times, we’ve been using the wrong name for one of the world’s most famous monuments.

Jarnick van Rookhuijzen, an archaeologist from the University of Utrecht, discovered that the nearby Erechtheion was probably the ‘true’ Parthenon, being a more likely fit for the word’s meaning (‘a room for virgins’). So what was the Parthenon actually called? According to van Rookhuijzen et al, ‘Hekatompedos’ (‘100 ft-long room’) fits better.

Imagine the Sphinx was actually called the ‘Great Pyramid’! And the Great Pyramid at Giza was actually known as ‘The Big Pointy Alien Base of Giza’.

C’mon, CIA, we’re ready to know…^[10]

Top 10 Bizarre Ways Foods Were Discovered

Back once again by popular demand, today we bring you 10 more facts that sound totally made up, but are actually true. We highly encourage you to take these tidbits to your friends and family, just to get a “WTF” reaction. They’ll probably go to Google to confirm it later, only to realize that you were actually right. We promise you that these are completely true facts, even if it sounds stranger than fiction. Seriously… you can’t make this stuff up.

10. Polar Bears are Invisible to Night Vision Equipment

Polar bears are amongst nature’s most fearsome and impressive predators. They can lay claim to being the largest land carnivores in the world. A male bear stands up to ten-feet tall on its hind legs and weighs well over twice as much as a large male African lion.

The popular idea that they use their paws to cover their black noses whilst hunting seems to be a myth. However, they still manage to remain very effectively camouflaged in their icy habitat, and this has made it extremely difficult to track their movements from the air.

Attempts to follow the animals by night proved even less successful when scientists discovered, to their considerable surprise, that angry polar bears, or indeed polar bears in any other kind of mood, are almost entirely invisible to sophisticated night vision goggles.

Exactly how polar bears manage this rather neat trick has been the subject of some debate. There’s no doubt that polar bears are excellent at conserving heat, or they wouldn’t survive for long. However, night vision goggles don’t pick up heat so much as the infrared radiation given off by that heat.

Quite how the polar bears prevent this radiation from escaping is rather more difficult to account for. What is known is that these huge animals come equipped with an unlikely stealth capability.

9. The United Kingdom is a Tornado Hotspot

A typical tornado is a swirling funnel of rapidly air stretching some 2,000 feet from the ground into the sky. They are formed when warm, humid air collides with cold, dry air, and even a relative tiddler releases huge amounts of energy.  By some estimates enough to power all the world’s electrical devices at once.

Tornadoes are commonly associated with the United States of America, with some states even enduring an official tornado season. The US is struck by more than 1,000 tornadoes a year, but the United Kingdom experiences more when measured by square mile.

This news would come as a surprise to most Britons who don’t realize they are living in the world’s tornado hotspot. However, European tornadoes tend to be far more modest affairs than their American cousins, allowing them to slip by largely unnoticed.  

Tornadoes are measured on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. This ranges from F0 tornadoes, which have a windspeed of 65-85 MPH, to F12 tornadoes, which have a windspeed slightly in excess of the speed of sound. The UK’s tornadoes tend to be at the F0 end of the scale. Fortunately for everybody concerned, F12s aren’t possible on Earth, at least under current conditions, and are confined to planets such as Neptune.  

8. Scientists Made Goats that Produce Spider Silk

Spider silk is one of the most extraordinary substances in the universe. It’s up to 1,000 times thinner than human hair, but it’s five times stronger than steel. On top of this it’s flexible, resistant to humidity, and retains its considerable strength even at extreme temperatures.

These properties make spider silk extremely useful for a wide variety of applications. The problem is that it’s difficult to obtain in any great quantities. Attempts to set up spider farms have met with limited success, since spiders tend not to mix well and have a tendency to eat each other. According to the chief executive of Nexio Biotechnologies, it’s like trying to farm tigers.

Scientists decided to get around this problem by implanting spider genes into goats. Genetically modified spider goats are considerably easier to manage, and their milk is full of silk proteins that can be extracted and put to a variety of uses.

The potential applications are vast, but some of the more remarkable suggestions have included the development of bulletproof skin and spider silk suspension bridges.

7. The Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded was in Massachusetts

The universe is characterized by being inconceivably huge and for the most part very chilly indeed.

With temperatures of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit, Neptune vies with Uranus for the record of coldest planet in our own solar system. Deepest outer space is colder still, with temperatures of minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit being deeply, and immediately, hostile to human life.

Massachusetts in the northeast United States of America, despite frequently being more than somewhat chilly, is for the most part considered altogether more agreeable, but it was here that scientists recorded the lowest temperature ever detected.

Theoretically the temperature can never go below absolute zero, or minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the point at which atoms lose all their energy. Absolute zero has never been recorded, and it may be a practical impossibility for anything to ever be quite this cold.

However, in 2003 researchers at the University of Massachusetts succeeded in chilling a cloud of sodium atoms to just a few billionths of a degree above this temperature. This placed the coldest temperature ever recorded, and quite possibly the coldest temperature the universe has ever seen, in Massachusetts.

6. The World’s Biggest Waterfall is Underwater

The Niagara Falls is arguably the most famous waterfall on the planet. More than 3,000 tons of water plummet over the falls every second of every day, and it attracts eight-million visitors each year.

As impressive as this undoubtedly is, it’s next to nothing compared to the biggest waterfall in the world. This distinction belongs to the behemoth that is the Denmark Strait Cataract, which has a two mile drop and a waterflow almost 2,000 times greater than even the mighty Niagara Falls.

Despite these impressive figures the Denmark Strait Cataract is largely unknown and seldom visited. This is in no small part due to the fact that it’s located deep underwater in the Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and Iceland.

The concept of an underwater waterfall seems somewhat strange, but it’s made possible because cold water is considerably denser than warm water. When the two meet at the Denmark Strait Cataract, the cold water plummets to the ocean floor producing what is by quite some distance the most substantial waterfall on the planet. Just don’t expect to see it on too many tourist postcards.  

5. The Longest Musical Performance in History is set to Last for 639 years

In musical notation the very slowest tempo marking is known as larghissimo, which typically indicates a tempo of a lethargic 10-20 beats per minute. However, compared to the longest and slowest piece of music ever performed, that sort of pace is positively manic.

At a church in Halberstadt, Germany, there is an organ that’s been playing the same chord since October 2013; it isn’t due to switch to the next chord until September 2020. This is the slowest section of the world’s slowest musical performance and the longest it will go without changing. However, even at its very liveliest there are only three chord changes in any given twelve months.  

This is all part of a performance of the composer John Cage’s “As Slow as Possible” that began in 2001 and is scheduled to last for 639 years, which is about as long as the specially constructed organ is expected to survive in working condition.

Not all of the residents of Halberstadt are enjoying the performance, and the organ has had to be encased behind a Perspex screen after locals complained about the endless, droning noise.

4. Humans can Outrun Horses

Humans perhaps aren’t the most physically impressive members of the animal kingdom. We aren’t particularly fierce, quick, or strong. If it wasn’t for our oversized brains and opposable thumbs we would most likely have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago.

There is none the less one physical discipline at which humans excel: we are amongst the greatest long distance runners on the planet.

The cheetah is the fastest land animal in a sprint, but at extreme distances they’d have no chance against humanity’s finest. We’re even capable of running down animals specifically built for stamina such as horses and wolves.

This ability was of great help to our ancestors in chasing down lunch, and it came courtesy of our seven-million or so sweat glands. By contrast some mammals such as rhinos, hippos, and pigs aren’t able to sweat at all. Other animals, including our closest relative the chimpanzee, have far fewer sweat glands than us. This makes humans extremely efficient at cooling down our bodies on the move.

In the modern world few people need go to such lengths in pursuit of a meal, but there are endurance races that pit man against beast.

Every year a Welsh village in the United Kingdom sets man-versus-horse in a race over a 22-mile course. The horses currently have their noses well in front, but there have been two human winners, so they haven’t had everything their own way. If the event was held in a hotter climate, humans might well hold the overall lead.

3. Sloths can Starve on a Full Stomach

Long distance running can provide an evolutionary advantage, but sloths have managed to survive for tens of millions of years despite hardly moving at all.

Absolutely nothing about them is built for speed, and even going flat out it would take them around a month to walk a single mile. This is rarely an issue as they spend around 90% of their time hanging upside down in trees and up to 20 hours a day sleeping.

Even a sloth’s stomach does things at its own pace, taking as much as an entire month to digest its way through a single meal. This might seem like an inefficient way of going about things, but it generally works out pretty well for the sloth. It’s rarely going to be in a hurry to find a meal, so it can take life at its own pace.

Unfortunately, there is one major disadvantage to the sloths’ digestive system; at low temperatures their gut bacteria stop working entirely. The sloth will no longer be digesting its meal, will no longer be extracting nutrients, and will be at risk of accomplishing the interesting but unfortunate trick of starving on a full stomach.

2. Your Taste Buds Don’t Work Properly at Altitude

Airline food tends to have a less than stellar culinary reputation. This is at least in part because airline meals tend to be prepared at least ten hours in advance. However, freshness isn’t the only factor at play. Somewhat strangely, research has shown that human taste buds don’t work properly at altitude.

An airliner’s typical cruising height is somewhere around 35,000 to 40,000 feet. Meanwhile humans start to lose their sense of taste at 30,000 feet.

 Around 70-80% of what we think of as taste is actually provided by our sense of smell, and while it may not be a terribly appetizing thought our sense of smell relies on evaporating nasal mucus. At 30,000 feet, the interior of a pressurised aircraft has a humidity of less than 12%, which is lower than most deserts. This means there isn’t much nasal mucus evaporation going on, hence why airliner food tends to taste of cardboard.

1. Some of Your Atoms Once Belonged to William Shakespeare

Atoms are the fundamental building blocks that make up everything, including us. Each and every human is put together from around seven billion, billion, billion of the things, adjusting upwards or downwards based on the individual’s size.

What is perhaps more surprising is that a tiny fraction of the atoms that make up your body once belonged to William Shakespeare.

Atoms are indivisible and to all intents and purposes almost entirely indestructible. These atoms are constantly being recycled, and it’s an arresting thought that 99.999% of the atoms you were made up of seven years ago have by now moved on to do different things entirely.

None the less, most of these itinerant atoms, and indeed those atoms that once belonged to the great bard, will have remained in the rough vicinity of planet Earth. Some very clever people have used very complicated math to calculate that a tiny number of Shakespeare’s atoms, and indeed those of almost any historical figure you could care to mention, are within your body right now, simply by virtue of how extraordinarily numerous they are.

Birds do it, bees do it, and even kleptogenic salamanders do it. No, it’s not fall in love, although maybe that’s part of it. It’s just reproducing. And while as humans we’re most familiar with the process of one male and one female sharing some genetic material so that a baby can be formed, not every living thing under the sun likes to multiply in the same fashion. Some continue their genetic line in ways that are almost unbelievable. 

10. Kleptogenesis Involves Stealing Genetic Material

Kleptogenesis does not involve stealing an early 90s gaming system, but it’s potentially just as cool. One species of salamanders exist solely as females so when it comes time to reproduce they have to be a little bit more creative than your average binary species. In the case of these little amphibians,the solution to their single sex conundrum comes in the form of theft. They steal sperm from males of other species in the same genus and decide for themselves how to use it. If that sounds baffling it’s because it is, but it’s been happening for millions of years, so just assume they know what they’re doing.

Salamander males will drop sperm packets that will then fertilize eggs from the females. Normally this gives you the kind of reproduction you’d expect, with a baby salamander that’s 50% of each parent. But for this one species, that’s not the case.

The females, and there are only females in this species, can collect multiple sperm packets and then apparently they have the ability to sort the genes they want to use. The result is that some of these salamanders have up to five different genomes in their cells. 

The mothers are able to discard whatever genetic material they don’t want from the males, and pass down a variety of genomes, as few or as many as they want, to their offspring. Some have been identified from species the salamanders don’t even descend from.

So, how does a salamander choose what genes to pass on? Good question. Scientists are still trying to figure that out.

9. Gynogenesis Uses Sperm But Not for Genetic Material

This method is kind of similar to kleptogenesis, but more restrictive. Essentially, animals that reproduce through gynogenesis need sperm to start the reproductive process, but not to finish it. So sperm needs to reach an egg and begin fertilization, but then the sperm and its genetic material is discarded and the offspring is made up solely of what the mother brings to the table.Think of it like the mother asking the would-be father to unlock the door to their apartment, but then she closes it in his face after and spends the night alone.

The key thing to remember about gynogenesis and what separates it from something like asexual reproduction and parthenogenesis when only one parent is needed is that gynogenesis does require a male’s involvement, just not his genetics. 

8. Hybridogenesis Occurs When One Half of a Hybrid’s Parents Genetics Are Combined with a Second Parent’s

The term “sexual parasitism” doesn’t sound entirely pleasant, but that’s how you can describe hybridogenesis, an extremely rare form of reproduction that can only occur with an already existing genetic hybrid. The mother has two different genetics from species A and species B. When it is time to reproduce, she will produce a gamete that may be genetically all A or all B, not a combination. That means when the egg is fertilized it will be 50% of the male and then 50% of only one half of the female’s genetics, meaning one genome will be entirely eliminated in reproduction.

Consider something like a mule. It’s a hybrid of a donkey and a horse. If a female mule were to mate with a horse, the mule’s gamete could be 100% horse and no donkey at all. Thus, when the male fertilizes the egg, the offspring will be 100% horse and the donkey genetics will be totally absent. 

Typically, this type of reproduction occurs in some species of frogs and a few fish as something like a mule is usually sterile. That said, a few mules have been bred over the years and some of their offspring seem to be genetically full horses. 

7. Sporogenesis is the Production of Spores to Reproduce

Have you ever wondered how a mushroom reproduces? Well, wonder no more because many fungal species take part in sporogenesis. In these and some plant and algae species, reproductive spores are formed that can remain dormant for a very long time. This is chiefly as a way of preserving the species during unfavorable living conditions. So if there was a drought, for instance, a fungus could create these spores and they could remain lifeless until drought conditions passed and then they could begin to grow. 

Under normal conditions, a fungus could reproduce sexually, but it may also release spores that are genetically identical to the parents, when it needs to. It can continue to do this until such time as traditional reproduction is an option again. 

6. Parthenogenesis Happens When an Unfertilized Egg Produces Offspring

Parthenogenesis is sort of like a surprise method of reproduction where an animal that normally reproduces sexually is able to produce an egg that isn’t fertilized but still gives rise to offspring, in this case genetically identical to the parent. It’s a favorite method of reproduction for marine tardigrades and some much more complex organisms will occasionally reproduce this way as well. In one case, a female shark that hadn’t been exposed to males for years gave birth to a baby that was a clone of the mother. 

Various arachnid species may reproduce through parthenogenesis but it has also been noted in reptiles, amphibians and birds as well. 

5. Fragmentation Is When a Severed Piece of an Organism Can Keep Growing

In terms of creepy reproduction methods, you’d be hard pressed to find anything that tops fragmentation. This is the kind of stuff that happens in horror movies. In simple terms, this happens when an organism gets damaged so badly it loses a piece of itself. That new piece doesn’t just wither and die like your hand would if it was accidentally lopped off, however. Instead, it grows into a whole new organism.

The fragment offspring will be a clone of the parent so that when it’s done, there will be two identical organisms, even though there was nothing close to sex involved in the forming of the second organism. 

It’s possible for fragmentation to be a natural form of reproduction but it’s just as likely to happen when an accident rips a limb off. Fortunately for those who find it unsettling, not a lot of creatures are able to do it. Most notably, this is how some starfish are able to reproduce, but there are some other species like earthworms that can pull it off as well. 

4. Budding Occurs When a Species Grows a New Clone That Pinches Itself Off of the Parent

Budding sounds fairly innocuous and not at all like a method of reproduction but it’s the name for the process organisms like hydras, jellyfish and yeast undergo when it’s time to produce a new round of life. 

The name refers to the fact that the parent organism will develop what looks like an actual bud, like you might see on a plant. The bud begins to form an exact copy of the parent organism until it is complete enough to separate fully from the parent and exist as a separate life form. The parent is left with a scar where the bud baby pulled away and became something new.

The new organism will be identical genetically to the parent but it will also be smaller because it’s still growing. Unlike something like binary fission, which we’ll see shortly, this process can be done with more complex, multicellular organisms. In a way it’s like what you might consider a typical pregnancy but it’s asexual and the offspring doesn’t develop inside the parent but on the parent until it matures enough to leave. 

In a species like the hydra, the buds form at a specific juncture between the stalk and gastric regions. If conditions are ideal, the hydra can produce a new version of itself every couple of days this way. 

3. Heterogony Occurs When a Species is Born Pregnant

If you’re the kind of person who likes to cut out the middleman and get right to the point, then heterogony is for you. Insects like aphids are able to reproduce in this fashion and it allows for the new generation to be born already pregnant with no need to worry about that time-consuming mating process. 

Aphids don’t lay eggs; they have live births and a single aphid is able to produce several perfect clones a day. This is how aphid infestations are so efficient, you really only need one to start an entire colony.

The insects have the ability to reproduce sexually if they want to, and will do this to add genetic diversity to ensure stronger offspring when the situation allows.

2. Binary Fission Involves Making an Exact Copy

Binary fission sounds very sci-fi and maybe a little dangerous but it’s actually one of the simplest forms of reproduction in nature. So simple, in fact, only simple life forms like various kinds of bacteria can do it because the rest of us are just far too complex to pull it off.

Found in simple single-celled organisms and a few other microscopic beasts, binary fission occurs when the DNA of the single cell begins to copy itself and essentially sticks all of the new material to the wall of the cell until it’s so full of new material the cell splits in two and now there are two completely identical cells and the long single-celled organism has become two. It made its own twin!

1. Plant Grafting Can Mix Numerous Species in One Place

Plant reproduction is obviously a little different from animal reproduction but for the most part we understand that one plant needs to be pollinated by another and at some point a seed forms and maybe a new plant grows as a result. More or less. But plants have a few extra tricks up their sleeves that allow them to thrive under the most unusual conditions and nothing is more bizarre than grafting.

Because so many plants are genetically similar, as in they come from the same family, botanists and horticulturists have discovered over the years that you can take a cutting from one plant and attach it to a different plant to produce something brand new. And, just like a human limb transplant, that cutting can heal in place and begin to grow. But unlike a limb transplant, this new branch can be so different that what you create is a fruit tree that now grows two different fruits. Or, if you really want to push the envelope, you can make what they call fruit salad trees.

Right now you can buy a tree that grows limes, mandarin oranges and pomelos. Or maybe one that grows peaches, nectarines, plums and other stone fruit. Word is you can get some that grow as many as 7 or 8 different strains of fruit on the same tree and they come in four main varieties including citrus, stone fruit, apple and nashi which grow Asian pears