17 Not-So-Fun Facts That Are Actually Pretty Damn Dark
Warning: This article contains mentions of murder, death, and suicide. Please proceed with caution.
Recently, redditor u/Ghost-5AVAGE_786 asked, "What is your not-so-fun fact?" Users from all around the world shared their less-than-fun facts, which ranged from unpleasant to straight-up dark. Here are 17 of them:
If you'd like to learn more about a particular topic, sources have been linked out for each fact.
1.Butterflies are attracted to blood, sweat, and tears in the same way they are attracted to nectar.
Suggested by: u/fighterpilotace1
According to The Chicago Academy of Sciences, sometimes butterflies — particularly, male butterflies — will feed on sweat and tears, as well as other moist things like puddles or wet gravel. These don't nourish them like nectar does, but they actually do it to collect salt and other useful minerals for female butterflies to assist with the development of eggs. Some butterflies have also been reported to feast on blood, but not in the same way mosquitoes do. They won't bite you to get your blood, but rather are "opportunistic" blood drinkers who'll drink it if it's there, for the sodium and glucose. Fun fact alert: sometimes, they do this with fecal matter, too!
2."The low reflective bumper on the rear of an 18-wheeler trailer is called a Mansfield Bar. It's named after actor Jayne Mansfield, who died after her driver ran into the back of a trailer at 2 in the morning in 1967. Jayne, her lawyer, and her children, including 3-year-old Mariska Hargitay, were in the vehicle. The car slid under the trailer and none of the adults survived the crash."
3."Horses can't throw up. If they need to throw up, they'll die."
Horses have a strong lower esophageal sphincter. Due to this, if a horse were having a fluid backup, its stomach would rupture much more quickly than the horse would be able to throw up.
4."There is a condition in which damaged tissue is replaced by bone. People with this condition are slowly consumed by their own skeleton and have to choose which position they want to spend the rest of their life in after a certain point."
This condition is called Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.
5."Whale carcasses can explode."
When dead whales are left on the beach or floating atop the waves, their carcasses can, in fact, explode due to the build-up of gasses like methane inside their bodies while decomposing. If you're feeling particularly brave, you can watch one of the documented experiences of it happening in Tomales Bay, CA here.
6."Judith Barsi, the girl who played Ducky in The Land Before Time, was shot in the head by her own father after years of abuse at his hands."
"Her and her mother were killed in July of 1988, and The Land Before Time was released posthumously in November 1988. All of the work leading up to it and the voice acting was done during the height of the abuse and build-up of the murders. Looking at the whole timeline makes a not-so-fun fact an even more terrible not-so-fun fact."
You can read more about the tragic case of Judith Barsi here.
7."The first suicide hotline was created after a man — 23-year-old deacon Chad Varah — conducted the funeral of a 13 or 14-year-old girl. She killed herself after she got her period for the first time and assumed it was an STD, since no one talked about periods at the time."
While the actual hotline itself didn't come into fruition until nearly two decades later, his "vision began" after that funeral in 1935.
8."There is a whale nicknamed "52 Blue" who is the only whale who sings at a frequency of 52 hertz, meaning it can't communicate with other whales. It is considered the loneliest whale on the planet."
According to Scientific American, the whale, which was originally discovered in 1989 but hasn't ever actually been seen, vocalizes in a frequency that is both too high for other whales and too low for humans to hear naturally. Scientists believe 52 could be a hybrid of two different whale species and may sing at this unique frequency due to a malformation. In a turn of events, though, some believe the whale may not be as "lonely" as we initially thought. Sensors off the coast of California that were quite far from each other picked up similar whale calls to 52 Blue's. This could imply there were multiple whales singing, perhaps meaning 52 Blue has finally found a friend, or that there are a pack of 52 Blue hybrids.
You can listen to Blue 52's whale song for yourself here.
9."When bed bugs have sex, the male stabs his barbed penis directly through the female, into her organs."
This kind of intercourse is called "traumatic insemination," as the male and female bed bugs have "conflicting goals" when it comes to reproduction. If you have the stomach to learn more about their, uh, rather aggressive mating rituals, you can read about them here.
10."The same guy — Thomas Midgley, Jr. — invented both leaded petrol and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). I'm not sure if there is another single individual in history who caused more damage to the environment."
11."Female hyenas have a pseudopenis that they give birth through."
The female spotted hyena's pseudopenis, which is nearly indistinguishable from that of a male, is where the female hyenas urinate, have sex, and give birth from. As you might expect, the latter two are particularly difficult and painful. Childbirth often causes severe tearing, and there's a especially high female mortality rate during childbirth, particularly for mothers giving birth for the first time. You can read more about it here.
12."Bus seats are designed so that you can't tell how dirty they are."
Oftentimes, buses have these bold, chaotically-designed seat cushions that look like something straight out of a '90s arcade floor. While many may simply consider it a bold design choice or that perhaps someone bought up some cheap old fabric, it's actually intentionally designed so that passengers can't tell just how dirty the seats are and to draw attention away from wear and tear. If there's already a lot going on pattern-wise, and you've only got a couple of seconds to pick a spot before the bus starts moving, odds are you're a lot less likely to notice a suspicious stain or two before you take a seat.
13."Dolphins can be sexually attracted to you and will definitely try to do something about it."
"I read that NASA funded a scientist to study dolphin intelligence or something, and it ended with the scientist having sexual relations with the dolphins."
In the documentary The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins — which took place in the '60s — Margaret Howe Lovatt participated in said research, which aimed to teach dolphins to communicate with humans. According to The Atlantic, it started with Lovatt "moving in" with an adolescent dolphin named Peter so she could attempt to teach him. Well, she found their lessons to be particularly difficulty when Peter was aroused (which, apparently, happened often). According to her, Peter would alleviate himself against her, and eventually, she "took it upon herself to relieve Peter of his urges" as it was quicker than relocating him to the tanks with female dolphins to do it himself and would consistently interrupt their lessons. You can read more about it here.
14.Some of what doctors know about hypothermia and how to deal with it came from "Nazi science" in WWII.
The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments were "medical experiments" — or, rather, brutal torture — conducted at the Dachau concentration camp with the goal of discovering the most effective treatments for immersion hypothermia. The use of their findings was highly debated, with some arguing that using it would be wholly unethical, and others considering it valid medical data that could save lives and using it in their studies. You can read more about it here.
15."One of the most common ways to get testicular torsion is just sleeping wrong."
"That literally happened to me yesterday. Woke up with agonising pain, causing me to vomit four times. Had to go to the emergency room and get surgery done. Only just got home a couple of hours ago. I wouldn't wish this on anyone."
Testicular torsion happens when the testicle rotates several times, thus blocking the blood flow to it through the spermatic cord. According to the Mayo Clinic, it often occurs "several hours after vigorous activity, after a minor injury to the testicles, or while sleeping."
16."Andy was a goose who was born without feet on a farm in Nebraska. He was disabled for the first two years of his life, until an inventor named Gene Flemings heard about his disability and decided to create a new method of movement for him. He initially tried to teach Andy to ride a skateboard but eventually settled on teaching the goose to walk in baby-sized sneakers. Since Gene worked with a local charity for disabled children, Andy became a role model, and even caught the eyes of the media, with Nike offering a lifetime supply of shoes and the pair being featured on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Andy disappeared on October 19th, 1991, and was later found with his head and wings torn off. The perpetrator was never found."
17.And finally, "Melting permafrost could soon present humanity with deadly diseases that we have no vaccines for."
According to CNN, the thawing permafrost in places like the Arctic can awaken viruses and bacteria that'd been "lying dormant for tens of thousands of years." Instances of this have happened in the past in places where permafrost has begun melting, like Siberia. For example, in the summer of 2016, there was an anthrax outbreak that was linked to Bacillus anthracis spores from an old burial ground that had been previously frozen under the permafrost. The spores made their way to the surface as the ice melted in the warmer months of the summer. You can read more about it here.
Do you know any not-so-fun facts like these? If so, tell us about them in the comments below.
Note: Reddit comments have been edited for length, clarity, and/or factual accuracy.
