Pictures might be worth a thousand words, but there’s no guarantee that those words will make sense on the first or second read through. It could all be nonsense.
But you can guarantee there’s always a story behind a pic, even if it looks like it won’t make much sense.
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Here are some pics that needed some serious explaining.
1. These Japanese dudes recreated the classic “evolution” pic. But what’s the deal with the guy on the left?
He’s re-enacting a weird Japanese game usually played by school kids called kancho , where you try to poke someone in the butt and yell “kancho!”
2. When you go for an allergy test, you’ll get your skin scratched or pricked with a small amount of a variety of allergens.
And this is what it looks like when you test positive for absolutely everything they test for.
3. This parent in Australia found a shock inside her kid’s lunch box.
That’s not a garter snake, either. This is Australia we’re talking about. That innocent-looking fellow is an Eastern Brown Snake, one of the deadliest in the world.
4. These white squares aren’t painted on. They show the original paint that was hiding under some paintings in the house of a smoker.
You know, just in case you needed another graphic illustration of why quitting is a great idea.
5. One of the most common transplant surgeries is a cornea transplant.
And it’s pretty amazing to see all the tiny, delicate stitches the surgery requires up close like this. Amazing.
6. If you thought science and art were mutually exclusive, think again.
This scientist recreated the University of Utah’s Health logo in a Petri dish using E. coli bacteria modified to glow under UV light.
7. No, that’s not a caiman with a cute Snapchat filter. Those are real butterflies.
In the Amazon, butterflies will collect on the heads of caimans and turtles to drink their tears for nutrients.
8. Potholes are bad enough, but when this road collapsed in Texas, the bottom was a long way down.
There was a natural cave just below the entire neighborhood’s feet. Estimates put it at about 43 feet deep and 160 feet wide.
9. What could coat trees in so much ice? This isn’t what freezing rain does.
That ice would be clear. This is the result of freezing fog , a mass of supercooled air and water vapor that won’t turn to ice until it finds a surface it can freeze to.
10. When you lose a thumb in an accident, you don’t always lose your thumb for good.
In this guy’s case, doctors replaced his thumb using his big toe. It’s amazing what science can do.
11. When an area floods and the surface of the water freezes and then the flood waters recede, you get these elevated sheets of ice around anything it could cling to.
12. Heterochromia can make your eyes different colors, which is interesting on its own.
But it can also make just one of your eyes two different colors as well. There are many causes for it that are usually benign, but it can sometimes signal more serious matters.
13. How the heck does a chicken lay an egg that looks like it has a bow tied on top?
Because eggs start out soft shelled, of course. Only in the last part of its development does an egg get the calcium that makes the shell hard.
14. Turns out that Earth isn’t the only planet that gets auroras, as this image of Jupiter shows.
NASA’s Hubble telescope captured the Jovian northern lights show, which, unlike an aurora on Earth, doesn’t need a solar storm to occur.
15. This teacup has an overhang for upper-crust men who didn’t want their mustaches to dip into their drink.
An elegant teacup from a more civilized age, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi.
16. This photo is an explanation if you’ve ever wondered where eggplants get their names from.
Before eggplants ripen up and turn purple, the resemblance to eggs is uncanny. How cool!
