Spine-Chilling Facts About Life That Will Make You Look At Things From A Totally Different Perspective
I did not need to know any of these, but now I'm glad I do.
Some facts about life are weird enough to stick in your head for days. A few are creepy, a few are unsettling, and a few make ordinary things feel a lot less ordinary.
That is exactly what happened when a Reddit user asked people to share the simple but disturbing facts they know. The responses ranged from strange biology to dark reminders about the world, and each one added a new layer to the conversation.
By the end, it is hard not to look at everyday life a little differently.
1. "Sharks have been around for at least 420 million years..."
... Meaning they have survived four of the “big five” mass extinctions. That makes them older than humanity, older than Mount Everest, older than dinosaurs, and older even than trees. Yet we could potentially see them extinct in our lifetime.
unsplash2. "If a biological trait is common in almost every human, then it evolved for a reason."
Almost everybody has the same response to the "uncanny valley," or in other words, we are made uncomfortable by things that look almost human but not quite. This implies that humans once had a reason to fear something that looks human but isn't.
wikipedia3. "Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British hadn’t eaten most of them."
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That one definitely takes the conversation in a darker direction.
4. "You have no way of really knowing if everyone experiences reality and consciousness the same way you do."
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5. "Statistically speaking, if you are a woman and get murdered, it was most likely by a family member, partner, or ex-partner, in your own home."
If you are a man and get murdered, it was most likely by an acquaintance or stranger, in a public place.
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6. "The majority of oxygen comes from the sea/oceans. But people always talk about protecting trees, not the sea/oceans."
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7. "The world invests more money in Viagra and Botox than in the study of Alzheimer’s disease."
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One comment like that changes the tone fast.
8. "Moving back the start time for school in an area resulted in 70% fewer car accidents."
Similarly, at each daylight saving time change, heart attacks and accidents decrease with an hour of extra sleep and increase with an hour less of sleep.Sleep is incredibly important.
SPD
9. "Cotard's syndrome, also called 'walking corpse syndrome,' is a condition wherein the patient believes they are dead, dying, missing parts of their bodies, or don't exist."
Some people with Cotard's syndrome may stop speaking or eating since they believe they're dead.
Reddit
10. "You can condition someone with zero personal or family history of mental illness into developing some very severe mental illnesses within about a week."
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11. "The entire planet could be immediately destroyed by any one of a number of cosmic events that we have no way of seeing or stopping, like rogue black holes."
Worse... there are some events we can very much see coming, but we do absolutely nothing about them.
wikipedia
12. "I read somewhere (don’t remember where) that you are more likely to be bitten by someone in New York than to be bitten by a shark."
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That comparison is hard to forget.
And if you thought the uncanny valley was unsettling, these 81 visual anomalies that scramble everyday logic will do worse.
13. "Yellowstone is a giant supervolcano. If it erupts, things on this planet will go really bad, really fast."
Reddit
14. "Every time you move your eyes from one spot to another, you go blind for the instant your eyes are moving."
It’s called “saccadic masking”; it’s an evolutionary trait to stop us from getting motion sick.Your brain fills in the blank spot with whatever you end up looking at and context clues. It’s why, when you first look at a clock, the second hand seems to take longer to click the first time.
scienceabc
15. "Chimps don't attack to kill. Instead, they aim for the genitals, face, and fingers and will leave the opponent alive."
There have been many people who have owned chimps that have turned on their owners and left them incredibly disfigured. In one case, the chimp ripped a man's genitals off. In all cases, faces were mutilated and fingers were chewed off. It's pretty much how they instinctively fight in the wild.So if you think that chimp is going to be a cute pet, think twice. Even if you raised it since it was born, they'll turn on you at any second. It's a disfigurement roulette waiting to happen.Vile creatures.
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16. "Despite literally all war propaganda from every country saying otherwise, you are not going to make an individual impact in glorious battle and die valiantly in a hail of bullets."
Statistically, you are overwhelmingly more likely to be killed by an explosive device launched miles away by a vehicle you will never see, long before you ever get a chance to pull the trigger.
csmonitor
17. "If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood."
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18. "That's why traditional marshmallows aren't vegan or halal..."
IDK why this freaks some people out, but gelatin is made from bones. That's right—your melted marshmallow in your hot chocolate is melted animal bone. It's good stuff.
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19. "A male honey bee's ejaculation is so strong it makes his penis explode, killing him."
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20. "If it's sufficiently dark, you will hallucinate your reflection as a different entity, and it will appear to start moving on its own."
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21. "Squirrels carry all the same diseases as rats, but humans don’t mind because they’re cute."
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Life is always unpredictable and random. It would be terrifying to know everything about the world because some facts are just so strange and random, and who knows how many creepy things are out there whose existence we completely ignore? Nevertheless, it's always fun to learn new facts that change your perspective on some things in life.
Still think nature is predictable, check out 70 bizarre events that are breaking science fiction-style expectations.
