There is one universal truth in life that we all must accept: we don’t know as much as we think we do. In fact, we know much less.
You probably go about your day thinking that you are pretty knowledgeable about most things…
But this downright bizarre trivia will take you by surprise. Not all of these may be the gospel truth, but one thing is certain. Each of these will make you seriously reconsider everything you do.
1. There are tiny little skin mites that come out at night to have sex on your face.
Every night, while you’re sleeping, millions of demodex mites are feeding off your skin, mating, and laying eggs in your hair follicles. Once they’re done feasting and mating and laying eggs on you, they explode – because they don’t have an anus to expel all of your delicious digested face skin.
2. A ten-second kiss can pass on 80 million bacteria.
Obviously, they’re not harmful…
…
…
…but still.
3. One billion years from now, the sun’s expansion into a red giant will have boiled all the oceans dry and destroyed all life on earth. In 7.5 billion years’ time, the sun will have engulfed the Earth itself.
🙁
4. If an asteroid between one and 10 kilometers in size hit the Earth, it would cause mass extinctions. There are 15 comets of this size whose orbits cross paths with the Earth’s orbit.
It’s probably fine, though.
5. There are tiny little creatures called threadworms (or pinworms) that infect about 20% of children and crawl out of their buttholes at night.
This is their life cycle:
1. You swallow a pinworm egg.
2. The pinworm hatches and chills out in your intenstines.
3. The female pinworm exits your anus while you sleep.
4. And lays eggs around your anus.
5. This kind of itches.
6. So you scratch your butt, naturally.
7. Eventually after you do that, you’re likely to touch your mouth, getting the eggs back into your digestive tract.
8. The circle of life continues, forever.
6. Certain kinds of tumours – known as teratoma – can grow teeth and hair.
7. An average human body has 10 times more bacteria cells than human cells.
In a 200-pound person, that’s two to six pounds of bacteria. (But don’t worry, all those creepy crawly microorganisms are keeping you healthy.)
8. Regulators allow for certain amounts of something called “insect filth” in the food that we eat. But don’t worry, the FDA will step in just as soon as it finds more than 90 insect fragments in a 100 gram sample of chocolate.
As the FDA notes, however, these are “levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans”.
9. The Surinam toad stores fertilised eggs in her back. When they’re ready to be born, they burst out of her back as fully-formed froglets.
And that’s what that looks like. ^^^
10. A single field slug can, in theory, have 90,000 grandchildren and 27,000,000 great grandchildren – if they were all to survive.
In the spring, the average suburban garden in Britain can be home to 200 slugs.
11. If a giant panda has twins, she will almost always leave one to die.
:((((((((
12. Britons have £1.4 trillion in household debt.
And Americans have $13.3 trillion of household debt.
13. Humans lose 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells every minute, or 50 million a day.
14. It’s possible to get a tapeworm infection from your beloved pets.
It’s not a huge chance – you would have to swallow an infected flea – but it’s stillpossible.
15. The universe will expand forever, at an ever-increasing rate, and “will slowly cool as it expands until eventually it is unable to sustain any life”.
Sigh.
16. The average office keyboard has 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet.
If you eat at your desk, you’re making things worse.
17. The mathematical odds of finding your “soulmate” are pretty grim. As the webcomic XKCD has calculated, you would only meet your soulmate once every 10,000 lifetimes.
Statistically speaking.
