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Dad Of Two Curious Kids Requests 'Interesting Facts' On Twitter, Gets Thousands

We're all familiar with the saying: 'ask and you shall receive.' Well, one father asked the internet earlier this week for fascinating facts to tell his children at bedtime, and boy did the internet deliver.

From a wombat's cubed poop to mailing a coconut through the United States postal service, there are so many bizarre things you're about to learn. Be sure to put on some shoes because these facts are gonna knock your socks off.

"Cats only meow at humans, not other cats, [because] they're mimicking what we sound like to them." — @AmandaBecker

Unsplash | Jae Park

Surprised? Yeah, we were too!

This fact was backed up by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which confirms that cats don't typically meow at other felines.

Instead, they vocalize only to humans through their meowing for several reasons. These include communicating their needs, greeting people, or demanding attention.

Think about it — while we talk to our little fur babies, it's so sweet to know that they're talking right back!

"Bananas are berries." — @PGourevitch

As crazy as it is to accept, bananas are in fact berries. An article published by McGill University explains that a berry is defined by having "seeds and pulp (properly called “pericarp”) that develop from the ovary of a flower."

A banana has both seeds, pulp — and yup, you guessed it — develops from the ovary of a flower.

And to make things even weirder, Ada McVean and Cassandra Lee, the writers of the McGill article, reveal another startling fact — raspberries aren't berries at all.

This is because the raspberry is formed by the process of numerous ovaries merging together to become one flower.

How 'berry' bizarre!

"In France a quarter pounder with cheese is called a Royale with Cheese." — @scotjs

If you're a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you're probably already familiar with the fact that the classic McDonald's beef burger is referred to as the "Royale Cheese" in France.

The iconic line from Pulp Fiction is said during an interaction between mob hitmen Vincent Vega (played by John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson).

Since the name "quarter-pounder" is based on Imperial measurements, it wouldn't make much sense in Europe. An "Eleven-Hundredths Of A Kilogram with Cheese" just doesn't have the right ring to it.

"The plastic tags on bread bags indicate the day on which the bread was baked." — @DavidJuurlink

How did we go our whole lives without knowing this?!

The colored-coded tags are as follows: Blue for Monday; Green for Tuesday; Red for Thursday; White for Friday; Yellow for Saturday.

We now return to our previous question — how did we go our whole lives without knowing this?! And the answer is simple: it's not really true. As the internet fact-checking resource, Snopes, states, "no given color code is applicable to every breadmaker’s product."

Because of this, there, unfortunately, exists no standard color-coded system used across the bread-making industry, but if you figure out your preferred brand's code, it could still be helpful.

"George Lucas' [ex]-wife won an Oscar for editing the original Star Wars movie. George has never won an Oscar." — @Quizmonster

Actually, it's very much true. George Lucas has, in fact, never won any Oscars despite been nominated several times.

But it's not this fact that caught the attention of several other users. Instead, it was the reference of American film editor Marcia Lucas as just George Lucas' wife.

"She has a name, too: Marcia Lucas. She also edited Taxi Driver and many more," wrote @LisaDeutscherMA, correcting the original tweet.

"We should stop referring to women by the name [of] their husband," stated another, and we couldn't agree more!

"Dolphins sleep with one eye open." — @CathyJoeGPT

The Twitter user continued their tweet, explaining: "the left eye is closed when the right half of the brain is asleep [and] the right eye is closed when left side of the brain sleeps - pretty cool fact."

We sure think so, especially since it's absolutely true.

According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, dolphins have the abilities to choose which side of their brains sleeps so that they never lose consciousness as they rest.

It's just another reason to add to the list of why dolphins are the coolest, and cutest, mammals around.

"The patron saint of the internet is St. Isidore of Seville, who tried to record everything ever known." — @FernandoGaita10

Unsplash | Jan Paweł Bochen

Yup, it's true, there really is a (supposed) patron saint of the internet — St. Isidore of Seville, who is credited with creating the first encyclopedia while trying to record everything ever know.

Although, it should be noted that it's been widely debated as to whether the saint was ever officially canonized in the position. A claim that John Paul II chose St. Isidore as the patron saint in 1997 circulated around independent Christian media.

This resulted in mainstream media eventually picking it up, although the precise date of the declaration was distorted from publication to publication.

But as an article in the online Christian publication, Aleteia, explains, there's no actual evidence to suggest the saint is the official patron of the internet. Nonetheless, to this day, many still consider St. Isidore to be the guiding saint of the world wide web.

"Woodpeckers can slam their beaks all day every day against a tree and never get a concussion." — @cathyob1

This is because, as another Twitter user, @JakePNeufeld, explains, the woodpecker's tongue wraps around its skull and functions like a shock absorber.

Check out this illustration by Denise Takahashi for BirdWatching magazine to get a glimpse of how their heads are designed.

Considering how much a woodpecker is able to peck its beak into a tree, it only makes sense that their little bodies are built to withstand such intense force.

"Alaska is really big." — @EvieBlad

Like...really, really big. In fact, according to Alaska.org, the 49th state is "as wide as the lower states and larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined."

It comes as no surprise that many Americans don't realize just how big Alaska really is.

This is seemingly due to the fact that it's hard to compare the size of the northwest state that borders the Canadian Yukon territory and province of British Columbia to the rest of the country as it's so far away from its 49 other counterpart states.

"Wombats poop cubes." — @suzgraggen

Surprisingly, the bare-nosed wombat does in fact poop cubes.

Science magazine reports that researchers out of the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Tasmania, Australia discovered that the inconsistent contractions and ridged tissues of the wombat's intestines mold "firm, flat-sided cubes."

Scientists speculate that these odd-shaped feces evolved with the wombat for territory marking purposes. The animals tend to mount rocks and other perches, thus a square dropping is less likely to roll off.

"Edgar Allan Poe, arguably the inventor of the detective story, died under mysterious circumstances - which have never been solved." — @IseultSidhe1

Of course, many people have come up with their own theories of what actually happened to the legendary writer. These range from lesions on the brain to the possibility that Poe may have been a victim of cooping.

As Sarah Pruitt, a contributor to History states, cooping was "a common practice at the time in which Baltimore’s notoriously corrupt politicians paid thugs to kidnap down-and-out men, especially the homeless."

This was all in an effort to force victims to vote at different polling stations for a chosen candidate. Given that Poe was found severely drunken in unfamiliar clothing, this theory could likely be the answer to a mystery that still remains unsolved.

"A group of stingrays is called a fever." — @lostintheculde

The Twitter user didn't stop there. They continued spewing out animal grouping facts that seem to get crazier, and arguably less factual, the more your read. But, surprisingly, they all check out.

Take a look at the bizarre statements for yourself:

"A group of crows is called a murder. A group of turkey vultures is called a committee. A group of pandas is called an embarrassment. A group of turtles is called a bale." — @lostintheculde

"The name of the blob of toothpaste on your toothbrush is called a nurdle." — @jilliette17

Did you know that? We certainly didn't! And honestly, we're not sure how we feel, it's sort of a mix between being slightly unsettled and quite intrigued.

Twitter user @jilliette17 went further to explain the fact saying:

"Colgate-Palmolive once filed a suit against GlaxoSmithKline over its usage. But it was settled cleanly out of court in 2011. Nobody knows the terms of the settlement lol."

We applauded the user for the pretty impressive, and very necessary, puns!

"6 = 1+2+3; 28 = 1+2+4+7+14 are Perfect Numbers, equal to the sum of their divisors." — @MarquisMark23

"No one knows - even in theory - if there are any odd perfect numbers, or if no odd perfect number exists," the user went on to explain in their tweet. "People have studied them since Euclid, over 2000 years ago."

We have no idea what's going on here, so we'll just take Marky Mark's word for it.

"Owls don’t have eye balls *[sic]*. They have eye tubes. And if you look in an owl’s ear, you can see it’s eye." — @DawnSenate47

We don't know what we find more disturbing; the fact that owls don't have eyeballs or that they do have eyes, but they're shaped like tubes.

You know what — they're both equally as terrifying, but even more so knowing that these owl eye tubes are 100 percent real.

National Geographic confirms the fact explaining that an owl's tube-shaped eyes are held in place by sclerotic rings, bones equivalent to human eye sockets.

Ever wonder why an owl can turn its neck nearly all the way around? Yeah, it comes back to them not having eyeballs...so strange!

"You can mail a coconut."

Yes, you read that right — you can indeed mail a coconut. I'm not sure why you'd want to, or more so, what reason would necessitate such use of the national postal service.

But nonetheless, as the Twitter user explained, a coconut is a valid item that goes through the postal system, and here's why:

"The United States Postal Service views a coconut as 'a self-contained unit, one which cannot be easily tampered with by criminals or readily examined by postal inspectors.'”

You really do learn something new every day!

"Naughty goats are made to wear pool noodles on their horns so they don’t hurt people." — @ExpandingViolet

Is there anything better than a goat wearing pool noodles on its horns? Try a goat wearing pool noodles on its horns because it was being hostile to people.

Yeah, this is without a doubt our favorite fact on the list!

"If you're being chased by an alligator, run in a circle. They are very fast in a straight line but can't corner worth beans." — @BS_immunized

"Told this by a guy who grew up near a bayou. Not sure if it's true," continued the Twitter user under the thread. "No intention to find out..."

Yeah, that certainly makes two of us. We'll be staying as far away from alligators as we possibly can, thank you very much.

"There’s a village in Japan with more life-sized dolls than people. Urbanization lead the younger population to move to larger cities." — @Canada_Oi

Sound creepy? Just wait, it gets worse.

"When a former resident returned and noticed how lifeless the town became, she began making dolls to fill the town with people again," continued the Twitter user in their tweet.

Although the intent was sweet, we can't help but feel uneasy thinking about the town of Nagoro in Tokushima Prefecture on the Japanese island of Shikoku where these scarecrow dolls reside.

According to Japan Today, Nagoro has so many scarecrow residents that they outnumber humans by 10 percent.

"Sharks as a species are older than trees as a species. There were sharks swimming around on the planet before any trees." — @drewphilp

Although hard to believe, this fact does actually check out.

As the Natural History Museum states, sharks have existed for hundreds of millions of years, with the earliest fossil of a shark ancestor dating back to 450 million years ago. Wowza!

And if this bomb drop wasn't enough, another Twitter user replied to the shark thread saying, "In the age of dinosaurs, grass had not yet evolved."

Yup, that's certainly enough interesting facts for one day.