What animal's venom is one of the most expensive on Earth?



Scorpion venom is among the most expensive liquids on the market.

Most rational people are inclined to leave scorpions well enough alone, given those stinger-tipped tails that administer venom capable of paralyzing their prey (and worse). Yet there are certain intrepid souls willing to brave the dangers and coax these arachnids into unleashing their toxins, for the simple reason that scorpion venom can sell for as much as $39 million per gallon.



Who actually dishes out the dough for this potent liquid? The medical industry, as venom from scorpions, spiders, vipers, and an array of other creatures has been found to provide compounds with surprising health benefits for humans. The venom of the deathstalker scorpion, for example, contains a peptide called chlorotoxin, which can pinpoint the location of aggressive brain tumors. Another species, the Diplocentrus melici, produces venom with 1,4-benzoquinone compounds that kill highly infectious bacteria, including the strains that cause tuberculosis.



Unsurprisingly, the monster dollar signs linked to this particular field have inspired a sub-industry of scorpion farmers and breeders, some of which are endangering scorpion populations. Insiders caution against getting involved for the money, though: For one thing, the venom has to be “milked” in absolutely sterile conditions; it’s a laborious process to do so, and the minute amounts that change hands between buyers and sellers aren’t going to pay off anyone’s mortgage. Additionally, many labs have turned to synthesized versions of the isolated compounds needed for their research.



Numbers Don’t Lie



Estimated number of venomous species on Earth

220,000



Length, in centimeters, of the largest modern-day scorpion

29.2



Age, in years, of the oldest scorpion fossils discovered

437 million



Studio albums released by German rockers the Scorpions

19



Antimatter is the most expensive substance on Earth.

If you think scorpion venom costs a pretty penny, then imagine the payment plan you’d need to meet the $2.7 quadrillion price tag for one gram of antimatter. As you may recall from high school physics, antimatter is a substance that has the opposite electric charge of the ordinary matter that fills up most of our universe; because naturally occurring antimatter detonates upon contact with regular matter, the only way to obtain it for a significant length of time is by way of high-speed collisions generated by immensely powerful and expensive particle accelerators (currently only available at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research). So what purpose does this elusive material serve? The observation of antimatter production has been used for medical radio imaging, and it’s been speculated that the energy created by matter-antimatter collisions could be harnessed for space travel. Otherwise, the practical applications are pretty minimal, as fascinating as it is for scientists to study.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was partly based on a true story.

With apologies to anyone who already found The Birds terrifying while under the impression that it was wholly fictional: Alfred Hitchcock’s avian thriller was partly based on a true story. Said event took place on California’s Monterey Bay in August 1961, when “thousands of crazed seabirds” called sooty shearwaters were seen regurgitating anchovies and flying into objects before dying on the streets. The Master of Suspense happened to live in the area, and called the Santa Cruz Sentinel — which had reported on the strange goings-on in its August 18 edition — for more information. Long after his movie was released two years later, the bizarre event remained shrouded in mystery: What would inspire birds to act this way, and were they as malicious as they seemed in Hitchcock’s movie?

The truth ended up being both straightforward and a little sad. The scientific consensus is now that the birds were poisoned by toxic algae found in a type of plankton called Pseudo-nitzschia. The birds weren’t attacking anyone; they were disoriented and barely in control of their actions. That explanation is absent from Hitchcock’s thriller, which also drew inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s short story of the same name. (Hitchcock’s Rebecca was also a du Maurier adaptation.) A resounding success, The Birds is widely considered one of Hitchcock’s greatest works, alongside Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.



One of Hitchcock’s earliest films is lost.

A full 86% of American-made films from the Silent Era (1912-1929) are considered lost, meaning they don’t survive as complete works in their original form. Among them is one by the Master of Suspense himself: 1926’s The Mountain Eagle, the second feature he ever directed. Though some production stills remain, all prints of the Kentucky-set melodrama have been lost. Hitchcock completists have spent the better part of a century bemoaning this, but he wasn’t especially bothered by it — he once referred to it as “a very bad movie.” Even so, the British Film Institute has long included The Mountain Eagle on its 10 Most Wanted list of lost films.

What animals received medals for bravery during WWII?



Thirty-two pigeons were awarded medals for valor during World War II.

Pigeons tend to get a bad rap among urban dwellers, but the birds have a distinguished history of service. Bred for their instinctive ability to find their way home from long distances, homing pigeons were trained as message-bearers as far back as in ancient Egypt. With their deployment by besieged Parisians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the era of the military pigeon was underway.



By the time the United States entered World War I, homing pigeons were being used on both sides of the fighting for their ability to reliably deliver progress updates from planes, tanks, and mobile lofts on the front lines. While telephone and radio communications were more advanced heading into World War II, there were still times when conditions rendered such technologies useless, and the only solution was to strap a message to a pigeon and send it airborne through a hail of gunfire. Sometimes, a lone bird’s efforts saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers: One such instance occurred in Italy in 1943, when an American pigeon named G.I. Joe was dispatched to an Allied air base in the nick of time to call off the planned bombing of a village that had just been liberated by British troops.



That year, White Vision, Winkie, and Tyke became the first three of the 32 pigeons to receive the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) Dickin Medal for exceptional wartime accomplishments. Although the award came into being too late to honor pigeon predecessors like Cher Ami and President Wilson, the more recent creation of the Honorary PDSA Dickin Medal in 2014 honored all the winged warriors and other service animals who served during World War I. And although the PDSA is based in the U.K., the Dickin Medal is awarded to animals in theaters of war around the world, and recognized worldwide.



Numbers Don’t Lie



Number of pigeons supplied by the United States to Allied forces in WWII

54,000



Year the U.S. Army pigeon service was disbanded

1957



Speed, in miles per hour, of the fastest recorded pigeon

110



Price, in dollars, paid for racing pigeon New Kim in 2020

1.9 million



One cat has won the Dickin Medal.

That would be Simon, a tomcat who had the misfortune of getting caught in the strife of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. A crew mascot aboard the British HMS Amethyst, Simon sustained shrapnel injuries when the ship was attacked and cornered by communist forces on the Yangtze River. Not only did Simon get back on his feet and provide comfort to his rattled shipmates, but he also fought off the rats that attempted to raid the dwindling food supply as the crew waited for weeks for safe passage to freedom. Simon then became something of a celebrity after the Amethyst made news with its escape to Hong Kong, with a designated “cat officer” assigned to handle his fan mail. Sadly, the battle-scarred feline died shortly before he was scheduled to receive his Dickin Medal late in 1949, although TIME magazine provided an additional salute by featuring his picture on its obituary page.

What animal can you hear from 5 miles away?



A lion’s roar can be heard from more than 5 miles away.

It’s generally a good idea to keep your distance from lions, which is why it’s reassuring to know that hearing one doesn’t necessarily mean it’s nearby. A lion’s roar is so loud, in fact, that it can be heard from more than 5 miles away. Reaching 114 decibels (about 25 times louder than a gas-powered lawn mower), the sound is louder than that of any other big cat — just one reason why the lion is known as the king of the jungle. They’re able to make such an imposing call thanks to their larynx: While most animals’ vocal cords are triangular, a lion’s are square and flat. This allows air to pass through more easily and results in a loud roar that requires relatively little effort on the lion’s part.



Lions aren’t the only animals that can be heard from long distances. Blue whales make the loudest sound of all, with males emitting a rumbling call that can reach 188 decibels and be heard by potential mates hundreds of miles away. The famous hyena “laugh,” meanwhile — actually a sound the animals make under stress — can reach a distance of 8 miles. Lions, blue whales, and hyenas would all be impressed by the mighty, tiny pistol shrimp, which shoots out bubbles to incapacitate its prey and in doing so creates a sound that can reach 218 decibels, louder than a gunshot. Fortunately for any humans that might be nearby, it lasts only a fraction of a second.



Numbers Don’t Lie



Weight, in pounds, of the largest lion ever recorded

827



Estimated number of lions living in the wild

23,000



Cat species larger than the lion (tigers)

1



Super Bowls won by the Detroit Lions

0



Lions don’t need to drink water every day, but they do need to eat often.

Lions can go for days without drinking water, and get much of their moisture from prey and plants. They aren’t as resilient when it comes to food, however. They need to eat frequently, and typically consume about 17 to 20 pounds of food each day. Males can eat close to 100 pounds of food a day, while females can eat more than 55. Though mostly known for eating medium-sized hoofed animals such as zebras, antelopes, and wildebeest, lions are opportunistic hunters who will also dine on everything from mice and hares to lizards and tortoises.

Unclaimed Luggage.

You can buy the contents of unclaimed airport luggage.

Airlines around the world misplace about 25 million bags each year. Whenever a mysterious suitcase turns up, the airlines begin a 90-day tracing period to try to reunite the bag with its owner. If the tracing period is unsuccessful, all major U.S. airlines sell the luggage to the Scottsboro, Alabama-based company Unclaimed Baggage. Founded by Doyle Owens in 1970, the company cherry picks a fraction of items for resale while tossing or donating the rest. For its first several decades, Unclaimed Baggage operated solely as a 50,000-square-foot store stocked with everything from apparel and accessories to musical instruments and sports equipment. (A lucky buyer once took home a loose 41-carat emerald for $17,000, less than half of its appraisal value.) In honor of its 50th anniversary, in 2020 Unclaimed Baggage launched a curated website so bargain hunters can now shop the contents of former checked trunks and carry-ons without making the trip to Alabama.

https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/

Meteorite Strikes Alabama Woman. Nov. 30, 1954

The first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurs at Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounces off a radio, and strikes a woman on the hip. The victim, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. The space rock was a sulfide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Mrs. Hodges was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg.

Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling meteorites, but the Sylacauga meteorite was the first modern record of this type of human injury. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by the Nakhla meteorite.

Benjamin Franklin created a new alphabet.

When he wasn’t busy experimenting with electricity or dismissing our national symbol as “a bird of bad moral character,” America’s most eclectic founding father had an even stranger pastime: creating a new alphabet. Benjamin Franklin began working on what he called a “Reformed Mode of Spelling” in 1768, envisioning his phonetic alphabet as “a more natural order” that consisted mainly of “sounds formed by the breath, with none or very little help of tongue, teeth, and lips; and produced chiefly in the windpipe.” He removed six consonants he considered superfluous — c, j, q, w, x, and y — while also adding two new vowels and four new consonants.

Under Franklin’s system, each letter could be pronounced only one way (hence why letters such as “c,” which have both “soft” and “hard” pronunciations, were removed). “Long” vowel sounds were achieved by simply using the letter twice in a row. This, he reasoned, would lead to fewer misspellings. Franklin tested his alphabet in a 1768 letter to Polly Stevenson, the daughter of his landlady in London, that ends with “ɥi am, mɥi diir frind, iurs afeks̸ɥnetli, B. Franklin” — “I am, my dear friend, yours affectionately, B. Franklin.” Given the fact that you’ve likely never read such a sentence before, you already know that the alphabet never caught on.

Ben Franklin’s son was a loyalist during the Revolutionary War.
The American Civil War wasn’t the only U.S. conflict that pitted family members against one another, as the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and his son William reminds us. As the British-appointed governor of New Jersey, William Franklin implored the state Legislature to remain loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution, and achieve “peace, happiness, and a restoration of the public tranquility” rather than “anarchy, misery, and all the horrors of a civil war.” Born in 1730 to an unknown mother and raised by his father’s common-law wife Deborah Read, the younger Franklin was considered a capable governor and was encouraged to join the revolution. He refused, and after being placed under house arrest and removed from the governorship by the Continental Congress in January 1776, he was later imprisoned in Connecticut. He fought for the loyalists upon his release and, following the American victory, never reconciled with his father.

What animal has rectangular pupils?

Goats have rectangular pupils.
The animal kingdom is full of incredible variety, thanks to evolution, but one thing most animals have in common is that they use a set of eyes to navigate the world around them. But even the pupil of the eyeball, the biological aperture responsible for how much light enters the eyes, is nearly as diverse as the types of birds that soar the skies or fish that swim the seas.

For mammals, one big factor determining the shape of a pupil is whether the creature is predator or prey. For example, a goat is a grazing prey animal that would be a pretty easy target for coyotes, bears, and other predators with sharp teeth. Yet evolution gave the goat a few tools to defend itself. The horns certainly help, but the biggest advantage is a goat’s horizontal rectangular pupils. These long, horizontal pupils create a panoramic view that lets the animal see more of the landscape, which makes it harder to sneak up on them. The pupils also enhance the image quality of objects (read: threats) all around the goats, and they cut down on glare from the sky by capturing less light from above and more from below. Cats and snakes, on the other hand, are ambush predators, whose vertical pupils help them hunt in the night and judge the distance between themselves and their next meal. But according to scientists, vertical pupils are reserved only for animals whose eyes are close to the ground. That’s why other cats that are higher up, like lions and tigers, have round pupils rather than vertical ones.

Goats have accents.
A 2012 study from Queen Mary University of London revealed that kids (the goat kind, not the human kind) altered their bleating when socializing with other goats. The ability to change one’s voice in response to a social environment is known as “vocal plasticity,” and humans display an extreme form of this concept — it’s how we can develop accents. Goats develop similarly distinct accents based on their social group, admittedly with a more limited vocabulary. In the study, scientists analyzed one-week-old goats compared to five-week-old goats; the latter is about the time goats form social groups known as “crèches.” They found that young goats raised in the same crèches developed similar bleats, altering their noises to fit in their social group as they aged. It’s also possible these accents help goats identify members of their group, an idea familiar to anybody who’s traveled outside their home country — or even their hometown.


Years ago the first animals with eyes appeared on the planet
550 million

Maximum size (in millimeters) of the human pupil in the dark (at full dilation)
8

Approximate year the first goats were domesticated, in western Iran
8000 BCE

Height (in feet) a mountain goat can jump in a single bound
12