Fun Friday Fact - hope you respond weekly to give us all a smile

[Heather Shay]

Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don’t drift apart.

[Ashley0616]

There are no seagulls in Hawaii.

[Heather Shay]

The Ancient Romans used to drop a piece of toast into their wine for good health - hence why we 'raise a toast'.

[Jani]

Here, Here! 

[Ashley0616]

Raccoons have four times more sensory cells in their paws than most mammals. This allows them to "see" with their hands and get images of the object they touch without even looking at them.

[Davie]

The Denisovans. These ancient relatives lived in the Caucasus mountains tens of thousands of years ago. They co-existed and interbred with Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. Many were transgender.

[Heather Shay]

 

The color you see in pitch darkness has a name.

If you close your eyes in a completely dark room. When you open them, the color you see is called eigengrau, which means intrinsic gray. It's the shade of dark gray people see when there's no light.

[Heather Shay]

• Cats are believed to be the only mammals who don’t taste sweetness.
• Cats are nearsighted, but their peripheral vision and night vision are much better than that of humans.
• Cats are supposed to have 18 toes (five toes on each front paw; four toes on each back paw).
• Cats can jump up to six times their length.
• Cats’ claws all curve downward, which means that they can’t climb down trees head-first. Instead, they have to back down the trunk.
• Cats’ collarbones don’t connect to their other bones, as these bones are buried in their shoulder muscles.
• Cats have 230 bones, while humans only have 206.
• Cats have an extra organ that allows them to taste scents on the air, which is why your cat stares at you with her mouth open from time to time.
• Cats have whiskers on the backs of their front legs, as well.
• Cats have nearly twice the amount of neurons in their cerebral cortex as dogs.
• Cats have the largest eyes relative to their head size of any mammal.
• Cats make very little noise when they walk around. The thick, soft pads on their paws allow them to sneak up on their prey — or you!
• Cats’ rough tongues can lick a bone clean of any shred of meat.

[KathyLauren]

55 minutes ago, Heather Shay said:

• Cats are supposed to have 18 toes (five toes on each front paw; four toes on each back paw).
• Cats make very little noise when they walk around. The thick, soft pads on their paws allow them to sneak up on their prey — or you!

 

Our cats haven't read the owner's manual!  Our orange tabby boy has 24 toes: 7 on each front paw and 5 on each back paw.  One of our two ex-feral black-and-white kitties has very loud (for a cat) footfalls.  I often hear him at night trotting into the bedroom: bop-bop-bop-bop.

 

His loud footfalls didn't prevent him from being an excellent hunter when he was an outdoor cat.  One time, his kitty pal was injured after a couple of nights out carousing.  When he limped back home the second morning, his buddy trotted into the woods and, within two minutes, brought him a mouse to eat.

[Ashley0616]

The Greek name for the mosquito is "anopheles," which means “good for nothing

[Heather Shay]

Dunce caps used to be signs of intelligence

Thirteenth-century philosopher John Duns Scotus believed that a pointed cap would help spread knowledge from the tip to the brain, and his “Dunsmen” followers wore them as a badge of honor. In the 1500s, though, his ideas became less popular and the meaning of the Duns cap was turned on its head, becoming something of a joke.

[Ashley0616]

The chess term “checkmate” is from a 14th-century Arabic phrase, “shah mat," meaning “the king is helpless.”

[Jani]

Two good ones this week! 

[Heather Shay]

[Ashley0616]

Beaver eyelids are transparent so that they can see through them as they swim underwater

[Heather Shay]

• "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
• Almonds are a member of the peach family.
• Maine is the only state that has a one-syllable name.
• There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
• Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"

[Ashley0616]

The opposite of paranoia is pronoia. A person suffering from pronia feels that people or entities around them are plotting to do them good

[Heather Shay]

Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.

[Ivy]

2 hours ago, Heather Shay said:

Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.

I believe it

[Jani]

I swear my cat sleeps up to 20 each day! 

[Ashley0616]

The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea of the eye. Oxygen is obtained directly from the air.

[Heather Shay]

• A fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
• The longest English word is 189,819 letters long.

[Ivy]

That is frightening.

[Ashley0616]

Human brain capacity exceeds 4 terabytes

[Davie]

7 hours ago, Ashley0616 said:

Human brain capacity exceeds 4 terabytes

Not for me today, I'm afraid. My tank is down a terabyte or two.