Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t! Read online




  Fact.

  The giraffe was originally called a “cameleopard” because fourteenth-century Romans thought the animal looked like a cross between a camel and a leopard.

  Fact.

  Giraffes need a serious ticker to get blood up those long necks to their brains: A giraffe heart often weighs up to 25 pounds, and can be more than 2 feet long.

  LEARN THE TRUTH AND SPOT THE LIE

  on Everything from Tequila-Made Diamonds to Tetris’s Soviet Roots—

  Plus Tons of Other Totally Random Facts from Science, History, and Beyond!

  Bullsh*t!

  Giraffes are one of the sleepiest mammals around; they average a whopping fifteen hours of sleep per twenty-four-hour period. They’re great at hiding it, however: They only sleep standing up.

  Neil Patrick Stewart

  Copyright © 2011 by F+W Media, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any

  form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are

  made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.

  www.adamsmedia.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-2553-6

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-2553-7

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-2775-X

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-2775-3

  Printed in the United States of America.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is available from the publisher.

  This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction: How Good Is Your Bullshit Detector?

  CHAPTER 1

  Kingdom Animalia

  The Giraffe!

  The Dog!

  The Falcon!

  The Duck-Billed Platypus!

  The Frog!

  The Skunk!

  The Cockroach!

  The Baboon!

  The Hummingbird!

  The Panda!

  The Cow!

  The Squirrel!

  The Earthworm!

  The Snow Leopard!

  The Elephant!

  The Manatee!

  The Tyrannosaurus!

  The Swan!

  The Otter!

  The Shark!

  The Koala!

  The Liger!

  The Unicorn!

  CHAPTER 2

  Pop Culture!

  Back to the Future!

  The Cell Phone!

  Rubik’s Cube!

  The Beatles!

  Soap Operas!

  Barbie!

  Jeans!

  Star Wars!

  Star Trek!

  Tetris!

  Zombies!

  Monopoly!

  Oprah!

  Dungeons & Dragons!

  The Wedgie!

  Harry Potter!

  LOL!

  YouTube!

  Bugs Bunny!

  The Moustache!

  Superman!

  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

  The iPod!

  Jazz!

  CHAPTER 3

  Everything Edible

  Coca-Cola!

  The Tomato!

  Rice!

  French Fries!

  Marshmallows!

  Beer!

  Sliced Bread!

  High-Fructose Corn Syrup!

  Bacon!

  Pepper!

  Watermelon!

  Cheese!

  The Sandwich!

  Tequila!

  Jell-O!

  Chocolate!

  The Hot Dog!

  The Ice Cream Sundae!

  The Apple!

  The Fortune Cookie!

  Honey!

  Gummi Bears!

  The Twinkie!

  Spam!

  CHAPTER 4

  Famous Dead People

  Elvis!

  Harry Houdini!

  Helen Keller!

  Marie Curie!

  Michael Jackson!

  The Elephant Man!

  Picasso!

  Jimi Hendrix!

  William Shakespeare!

  Al Capone!

  Martin Luther King, Jr.!

  Albert Einstein!

  Confucius!

  Ronald Reagan!

  Che Guevara!

  Napoleon!

  Anne Frank!

  Walt Disney!

  Marilyn Monroe!

  Thomas Jefferson!

  Cleopatra!

  Mozart!

  Amelia Earhart!

  Gandhi!

  Boring!

  CHAPTER 5

  Weird Science

  The Sun!

  Plastic Surgery!

  Life!

  Gold!

  Cloning!

  Pi!

  Pee!

  P!

  Electrocution!

  The Robot!

  Dentistry!

  Bacteria!

  Fingernails!

  Lasers!

  Hiccups!

  Viagra!

  The Milky Way!

  Mind Control!

  Pregnancy!

  Flamethrowers!

  The Atom!

  Magnets!

  Blood!

  Uranus!

  CHAPTER 6

  Sports and Other

  Wastes of Time

  The Football!

  Jousting!

  The NBA!

  Volleyball!

  Luge!

  Archery!

  The Yo-Yo!

  The Frisbee!

  Lucha Libre!

  Nascar!

  Cluster Ballooning!

  The Baseball Glove!

  Ice Skating!

  Tug of War!

  Synchronized Swimming!

  Karate!

  The Jockstrap!

  The Sports Bra!

  The Cleveland Indians!

  Ping-Pong!

  Weightlifting!

  Pillow Fighting!

  Strange Sports!

  CHAPTER 7

  Florilegium,

  Omnium-Gatherum,

  and Gallimaufry

  The Toothbrush!

  Bank Robbery!

  Toilet Paper!

  Stonehenge!

  Valentine’s Day!

  New Jersey!

  Severed Feet!

  The White House!

  Holy Cow!!!

  1950!

  Hugs!

  Impostors!

  Rare Books!

  Pajamas!

  Eleven!

  Murder!

  Tuesday!

  Pink!

  The Pencil!


  Feline Cruelty!

  Exploding Whales!

  Laughter!

  Introduction

  How Good Is Your Bullshit Detector?

  Everyone’s an expert. As kids, we breathlessly informed each other that swallowed chewing gum takes seven years to digest. My best friend likes to point out that we need eight glasses of water a day to be healthy. My uncle taught me that the alcohol burns away when you cook with wine, and a pet store cashier recently remarked to me that goldfish have a memory span of just a few seconds. A barber once instructed me that shaving causes hair to grow back even thicker, and a college classmate smugly pointed out to a group of us that glass is actually a liquid that moves very, very slowly. A tour guide once told the group that water drains out of a toilet according to the Coriolis effect, and a particular public speaker seemed to be looking at me when she said that men think about sex every seven seconds.

  All of these things, however, are bullshit. Conventional wisdom is quite often not wisdom at all, just a series of old wives’ tales that we repeat to each other endlessly in a brainless worldwide game of Bullshit Telephone. I’ve always thought people are capable of believing just about anything they hear, and I intend to prove it. I bet I can make up complete fabrications about topics you’re familiar with, and that you’ll buy it–hook, line, and sinker. At least, some of the time you will.

  Care to prove me wrong? I’ve collected a mountain of data on a plethora of topics, ranging from Elvis Presley to the duck-billed platypus, added a healthy dose of bullshit to the mix, then stirred it all up.

  On every page, you’ll find three statements about a particular topic, of which two are true and one is a lie. Make your call, then turn the page to find out if you’re right. My wager is that more often than not, you’ll be surprised at what you find.

  CHAPTER 1

  Kingdom Animalia

  Currently, there are about 2 million species on the planet (that we know about), and scientists figure there are probably at least twice that many–perhaps even fifteen times that many–living and dying around us every day. Any biologist worth her salt will tell you that she’s learned enough to know just how much she doesn’t know about animals. Which is a lot.

  We do know enough, however, to help preserve endangered species, to improve a sick or injured animal’s condition, and to take excellent care of our pets. We ought to know something: We humans are animals too.

  But we’re more than just animals, right? We have culture, language, tools, personality, emotions, and morals, after all. That makes us something more. That’s what makes us human.

  Bullshit. Different species of animals have been proven to possess each one of those things, in turn, and scientists continue to be surprised on a regular basis by what animals turn out to be capable of accomplishing.

  If you doubt the fact that you know far fewer things about animals than you think you do, turn the page, spot the bullshit, and prove me wrong.

  THE GIRAFFE!

  Lugging around that long neck is tiring! Giraffes are one of the sleepiest mammals around; they average a whopping fifteen hours of sleep per twenty-four-hour period. They’re great at hiding it, however: They only sleep standing up.

  The giraffe was originally called a “cameleopard.” Fourteenth-century Romans came up with the name because they thought the beast looked like a cross between a camel and a leopard. The Afrikaans language still takes its cues from the Romans, calling the giraffe the kameelperd.

  Giraffes need a serious ticker to get blood up those long necks to their brains: A giraffe heart often weighs up to 25 pounds, and can be more than 2 feet long.

  Bullshit! In fact, the opposite is true. Giraffes need less sleep than most other mammals, and sometimes they sleep as little as ten minutes in a given day. On average, they sleep between thirty to 120 minutes daily. While they can sleep standing up, they also curl up on the ground and sleep with their head resting on their own rump. Giraffes often doze in very short bursts, keeping their ears perked to listen for predators.

  Fact. Those silly Romans! Have you ever seen a camel or a leopard with a 6-foot neck?

  Fact. Giraffe hearts have special valves to regulate blood pressure, depending on whether the head is raised (eating from a tree) or lowered (drinking from a spring). Without its specialized heart, raising its head would lead to such a drastic change in blood pressure that the giraffe would faint.

  THE DOG!

  The dog is the most widely kept companion animal in human history. There is approximately one dog for every seventeen people on Earth. In the United States, we have dog fever: There is one dog for every four people.

  The fox is actually a kind of dog. Domesticated silver foxes that behave just like normal dogs were bred in painstaking selective-breeding experiments that were begun sixty years ago by Soviet scientists.

  A dog’s sense of smell is so well developed that it can perceive odors at concentrations sixty times lower than a human can.

  Fact. It is estimated that there are 400 million dogs on the planet, and 6.77 billion people. That’s one dog for every 16.9425 people. We’ll call that seventeen. Roughly 308 million people live in the U.S., and approximately 77.5 million dogs. That’s one dog for every 3.9742 people. We’ll call it four.

  While cats are more popular than dogs in the U.S (one cat for every 3.3 people), dogs have been domesticated by humans for more than 12,000 years (some experts put it closer to 100,000), whereas cats became domesticated roughly 5,000 years ago. (It’s up for debate as to whether cats are domesticated at all.)

  Fact. The project was set up in 1959 by Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev. The foxes were selected based on tame behavior for over forty generations, and the project produced foxes that are extremely friendly towards humans, wag their tails, and like to lick faces.

  The term “dog” can be used to refer to any member of the family Canidae. Under this definition, foxes, wolves, jackals, and dingoes are all dogs. The prairie dog is not, in fact, a dog. (Neither is the dogfish.)

  Bullsh*t! The dog’s ability to smell should be considered a superpower. Dogs can perceive odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than a human.

  Your dog’s icky wet nose also aids its sense of smell: The wetness helps it determine the direction of the air current, which in turn helps it determine the direction a smell is coming from.

  THE FALCON!

  Peregrine falcons are exceedingly rare and critically endangered, with numerous conservation efforts in full swing to keep them around. Hampering progress is the fact that peregrines are among the slowest-moving birds of prey, and are consistently outperformed in their habitat.

  All kestrels (such as the Madagascar kestrel and the gray kestrel), hobbies (such as the African hobby and the Oriental hobby), and merlins (such as the black merlin and the prairie merlin) are falcons. All falcons (such as the red-necked falcon and the bat falcon) are raptors. Eagles, hawks, and vultures are also raptors.

  A groundbreaking gene study published in 2008 suggests that falcons are actually more closely related to parrots than to hawks or eagles.

  Bullsh*t! Peregrine falcons are neither rare nor endangered. On the contrary, they can be found nearly everywhere on the planet, from the highest mountains to the densest tropics. They are the most widespread bird of prey.

  They are also hands-down the fastest animal in the world, having been clocked at 240 miles per hour during a dive.

  Fact. The term “raptor” loosely refers to birds of prey that hunt during the day, whereas birds of prey that hunt at night are called owls.

  Kestrels, hobbies, and merlins are all members of the genus Falco and the order Falconiformes, making them falcons.

  Fact. The finding, sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s “Assembling the Tree of Life” initiative, is counter to the assumptions made by ornithologists for decades. If proven to be true, falcons may wind up getting evicted from the order Falconiformes, which was, obviously, named after them.
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  That would be like kicking Dave Matthews out of the Dave

  Matthews Band.

  THE DUCK-BILLED

  PLATYPUS!

  The platypus was first discovered by European explorers in 1849, and early British settlers in Australia (its native environment) called it a beaverduck. The plural of platypus is “platypi.”

  Besides being one of just a few species of mammals that lay eggs, the platypus is one of a very few species of mammals that are actually venomous! A male platypus has a spur above the foot in each hind leg that can inject poison produced by a gland in its thigh.

  A mother platypus will nurse her young, but not with help from her nipples: She doesn’t have any. Instead milk is secreted through pores in her abdomen, which the babies scrape up with their bills.

  Bullsh*t! European explorers discovered the animal in 1798, and British settlers commonly referred to the platypus by many names, including the watermole, duckbill, and duckmole, but not beaverduck. While colloquially used, “platypi” is not a correct pluralized form of platypus.

  There is no universally agreed-upon plural form, since both “platypus” and “platypuses” are thought to be correct in different circles.

  Fact. The spur is about 15 millimeters long, and a platypus will use it to defend itself. The gland in the thigh is called the crural gland. While not deadly to humans, the venom can cause quite a bit of discomfort. The best way to pick up a platypus and not get poisoned is by the tip of the tail.

  Other venomous mammals are the Eurasian water shrew and the European mole.

  Fact. While she does have mammary glands, a female platypus has no teats. It’s a good thing too–a baby platypus is born with a full set of teeth. The teeth fall out after a couple of weeks.

  THE FROG!

  Many people get frogs and toads confused, but they are in fact two completely separate taxonomic groups, from different orders and families. The resemblance between the two is a biological marvel, since one has to go way back on the evolutionary timeline to find a common ancestor.

  Frogs of the genus Ceratophrys are known as pacman frogs, because of their huge mouths and round shape, as well as their tendency to try to swallow anything that they can fit their prodigious mouths around, including fish, mice, lizards, and even birds.