Factual Facts Thread

[Bridge]

Really too many to count. I try to learn something new every day, and also try to verify what I read if possible, so my list of interesting facts is huge. Here are some off the top of my head:

- Spiders can stick to any surface, even wet ones (provided there is not a strong current), not by sticking hooks into them or by using adhesives, but by glitching physics by using the Van der Waals forces. It's well known that a gravitational pull exists between two close objects and spiders use this to their advantage. See, they have 600,000 tiny hairs on their feet which are so close together that when they come into contact with a surface produce an adhesive force of 170x their own weight, which means they can hang upside down pretty much effortlessly (because the hairs are doing basically all the work).

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...054407.htm

This just blew my mind when I read it and just reinforced my opinion that spiders are the most badass creatures alive (there are plenty of other cool facts about spiders - check them out).

- Owls are physically incapable of moving their pupils, they must move their head to see things that aren't straight ahead.

- Plenty of specific animal species have weird collective names. These include:
Exaltation of larks
Army of frogs
Parliament of owls
Murder of crows
Culture of bacteria (this is relatively well known)
Pod of whales
Mischief of mice
Pride of lions (also well known)
Ambush of tigers

You kind of take associations like: "flock of birds" and "pack of wolves", etc. for granted, because they are just as weird if you think about it.

Source: http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Pointless...roups.html (not the most reputable, but these are all easily verifiable - this is just a handy list)

I may post more later, as I said, I have plenty. One thing I want to get clear though is that the popular misconception that duels are legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are organ donors is completely false. I used to live there and while admittedly I did not read the constitution, dueling is not a common occurrence (mugging and stabbings on the other hand…), plus I remember reading a letter from a Paraguayan government official explicitly stating that it's bullshit - can't verify though. I'm not convinced there is even a high percentage of organ donors there either. So that one is completely false in case you were thinking of posting it.