Truffles
Fungi are really cool things, and I thought this fact was neat. I always knew truffles had an unusually strong smell compared to most edible fungi, but I did not really consider why that is, until I read this article about fungi dispersal. It really…
Love darts
Love dart is apparently not as romantic as is sounds. You can read more about this in these two articles: The love-darts of land snails: integrating physiology, morphology and behaviour By Monica Lodi, and Joris M. Koene https://academic.oup.com/mollus/article/82/1/1/2460173 A Syringe-Like Love Dart Injects Male Accessory…
Decapitated slug
Read more about this weirdo in this article from ScienceNews, written by Susan Milius: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sea-slug-detached-head-crawl-regenerate-grow-new-body (last accessed on 15.03.2021). This process takes some time, so it is suggested that this is not a mechanism to escape predators, like some lizards do, but rather to escape…
Yay goats!
As my friend and doctor-to-be can attest to, goats are cool animals, and food made from their milk can taste amazing. My food scientist friend has made loads of tasty cheese that I have eaten way too much of 🙂 I am also allergic to…
Grasshopper mouse
I saw a documentary that included these cuties, I think it was Night on earth, where this mouse, after it had kicked scorpion ass, stood on its hind legs and howled! It was adorable and fierce. Read more about the grasshopper mouse here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/131024-grasshopper-mice-scorpion-venom-pain-animals-science (last…
Rod of Asclepius vs the Caduceus
I had a lot of fun with this one. I started partly because this is a fact I keep throwing at people anyway, and also partly because I have been playing a lot of Odyssey lately =P It is fun to get to do some…
From sugar to energy
There is no way to fit all of the complex processes onto one A4 page, but I wanted to illustrate an overview that shows how these fit together. The electron transport chain got a bit more complex than I intended to. I guess I’m so…
Stem cells
One of the best things about doing FancyFacts, is that I have a good reason to jump back into really old lessons. When people finish university and start working, it is easy to lose a lot of the basics. People usually don’t need everything they…
Jellyfish reproduction
I remembered I asked my high school biology teacher about this, and I thought is was really cool. People have been swimming past these things and just thought “hey, what a neat flower”: But no, they are not flowers, they are stingy ocean jelly buns!…
Thawing food
It sure is tempting to speed up the process, but why risk it? If you want to read more about this topic, I found that WebMD had a very nice and easy-to-read slideshow of what you should and should not do regarding defrosting:) And also,…