Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
“The scent of fresh-cut grass is really the grass screaming in pain. The smell is a distress signal that tells insects not to eat the grass so it can heal its wounds.”
“The word ‘avocado ‘ is derived from an Aztec word that means ‘testicle.'”
“Lobsters’ bladders are in their heads and they urinate as a form of communication.”
“There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth.”
“Count von Count on Sesame Street is obsessed with counting because traditional folklore states that if you scatter a large number of small objects in a vampire’s path (think coins, seeds, grains, that sort of thing), they are compelled to stop and count them all.”
“Gargoyles were invented because many ancient Europeans were illiterate and they needed a physical representation of hell to scare them into going to church.”
“If you eat a polar bear liver , you will die from an overdose of Vitamin A.”
“Spider webs were used as bandages in ancient times.”
“The first thing Mickey Mouse ever said was ‘Hot dogs !'”
“Echidnas have a four-headed penis. Ducks have a corkscrew-shaped penis.”
“US cicadas come out of the ground every 13 or 17 years after hatching.”
“The distance between you earlobes is the same as the distance between your nipples.”
“The fear of long words is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia .”
“Wombats have cube-shaped poop.”
“The man who invented the frisbee was turned into a frisbee when he died.”
“Every minute, we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells . That’s about nine pounds of skin cells a year. You probably just lost 40,000 skin cells in the time it took you to read this.”
“Hippos can’t swim. They almost always maintain contact with the bottom or they bounce off the bottom as they move through the water.”
And: “Apple trees need to be grafted in order to grow into a specific type, so if you plant an apple seed, you may not know what kind of apple tree you are growing.”
As usual with lists like this, I wonder how many of them are true. To take perhaps the most trivial, the one about the “Count” on Sesame Street. I think the far more plausible theory is that he is called “the Count” after “Count Dracula”, and the word “count” can be a noble title or it can mean to enumerate things. Is there any evidence that the idea of the Count counting things came from this supposed vampire legend, like quotes from the creators of the character? Does the legend even really exist or did someone just make it up? I don’t care enough to spend time investigating, but the story as given seems rather implausible when there’s a glaringly obvious alternative explanation.
Makes me wonder about all the rest.