Realising Obvious Things (that Blow Your Mind)

SkodaMart said:
It’s even worse for male chickens.
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I was only told about this recently. That male chickens are killed en masse because they don't lay eggs and give poor quality meat. They're just funnelled into a machine in sacks and minced like burger meat.

Look up "chick culling" on Wikipedia for more fun.
 
Steampunk said:
You can't see your eyes move. Your brain literally disables the input from your eyes every time they move. It's called saccadic masking. There's a whole range of crazy stuff your brain does to your perception, including affecting your perception of time and putting things into place past the time when they happened.
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Not to mention plugging the gaps created by your optic nerves.
 
"News" is simply an acronym of Notable Events, Weather, Sport.
The answer to the Chicken and Egg question is the egg came first. The first genetic "chicken" came from an egg laid by a pre-chicken.

The above may or may not be true.
 
CapitalOne said:
"News" is simply an acronym of Notable Events, Weather, Sport.
The answer to the Chicken and Egg question is the egg came first. The first genetic "chicken" came from an egg laid by a pre-chicken.

The above may or may not be true.
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I personally always thought it just as the word suggests, plural of things that are "new". Do you have a source for this? Defiantly sounds like an internet fable.
 
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Cooler running said:
I personally always thought it just as the word suggest, plural of things that are "new". Do you have a source for this? Defiantly sounds like an internet fable.
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I belive that's correct,

Etymology
The English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German Neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – namely the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny, the Bulgarian novini, and Russian novosti – and in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh)
 
All objects that we look at are absorbing wavelengths of light and only reflecting the wavelengths that we then see. Things that appear black are absorbing a lot of light, things that are white are reflecting almost all wavelengths of light back at us.
 
The larger an animal gets the more it needs to eat.

Sounds obvious until you take that to it's natural conclusion, Orca's require between 190,000 and 350,000 calories a day, given that they weigh on average 3 - 5 metric tonnes.
They can manage it as other large aquatic animals like seals can contain over 100,000 calories each, assuming you're able to eat a whole seal in a sitting.

(source: https://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/05-09/whales.asp)
 
bloodiedathame said:
All objects that we look at are absorbing wavelengths of light and only reflecting the wavelengths that we then see. Things that appear black are absorbing a lot of light, things that are white are reflecting almost all wavelengths of light back at us.
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indeed, one thing that confuses me, in the purely evolutionary/biological sense, is why does the human species tend towards darker skin tone in warmer climates and lighter skin in colder climates, when one would assume that the inverse would be preferable from an energy absorbtion/heat management perspective.
 
adolf hamster said:
indeed, one thing that confuses me, in the purely evolutionary/biological sense, is why does the human species tend towards darker skin tone in warmer climates and lighter skin in colder climates, when one would assume that the inverse would be preferable from an energy absorbtion/heat management perspective.
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I believe melanin blocks harmful UV wavelengths. It's to prevent skin damage in hot climates, rather than temperature control.
 
adolf hamster said:
indeed, one thing that confuses me, in the purely evolutionary/biological sense, is why does the human species tend towards darker skin tone in warmer climates and lighter skin in colder climates, when one would assume that the inverse would be preferable from an energy absorbtion/heat management perspective.
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I wouldn't normally link to a Quora article but the first couple of posts are quite good at answering that question:
https://www.quora.com/When-black-co...-climate-Europe-evolve-to-have-fair-skin-Isnt
 
adolf hamster said:
indeed, one thing that confuses me, in the purely evolutionary/biological sense, is why does the human species tend towards darker skin tone in warmer climates and lighter skin in colder climates, when one would assume that the inverse would be preferable from an energy absorbtion/heat management perspective.
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It's because of increased melanin in darker skins. It protects cells from uv radiation. In areas sunlight is weaker, you need lighter skin for vitamin d production.

This partly explains why vitamin d supplements on the NHS might be beneficial for some.
 
potatolord said:
One thing I'd really like to know is why humans are hairless. How is that an evolutionary advantage?
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It's debatable, but the main belief is that it's all connected into how ancient hominids started a technique called "persistence hunting". This method involved jogging after an animal until it gives up and lets you kill it. We were good at it as we are one of the sweatiest mammals around, losing hair probably helped us achieve this by further allowing for cooling.

 
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