Useless trivia and facts

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Not only plants photosynthesise. Algae (which are not plants) and some other organisms – including sea slugs and pea aphids – contain chlorophyll and can also take sunlight and turn it into an energy source.

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You can be heavily pregnant and not realise. Cryptic pregnancies aren’t that uncommon, with 1 in 500 not recognised until at least halfway through and 1 in 2,500 not known until labour starts.

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Bacteria on your skin cause your itches. Specifically, bacteria known as Staphylococcus aureus can release a chemical that activates a protein in our nerves. This sends a signal from our skin to our brains, which our brain perceives as an itch.

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Polar bears aren’t actually white. Surprisingly, underneath all their white fur, polar bears actually have jet-black skin.

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Starfish don’t have bodies. Along with other echinoderms (think sea urchins and sand dollars), their entire bodies are technically classed as heads.

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Somebody has been constipated for 45 days. In 2013, an unfortunate Indian woman had to undergo surgical removal of a faecal mass as large as a football.

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You travel 2.5 million km a day around the Sun without realising. The Earth’s orbit travels around 2.5 million kilometres with respect to the Sun’s centre, and around 19 million km with respect to the centre of the Milky Way.

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Fish form orderly queues in emergencies. When evacuating through narrow spaces in sketchy situations, schools of neon tetra fish queue so that they don’t collide or clog up the line. Scientists interpreted this behaviour as showing that fish can respect social rules even in emergency situations, unlike us humans.

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There are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. The average human is around 56 per cent bacteria. This was discovered in a 2016 study and is far less than the earlier estimates of 90 per cent. As bacteria are so light, however, by weight, each person is over 99.7 per cent human.

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Most ginger cats are male. There are roughly three ginger male cats to one ginger female. This is because the ginger gene is found on the X chromosome, meaning female cats would require two copies of the gene to become ginger whilst males only need one.