It’s true that a lot of the pictures we might scroll past can have a backstory that would make us regret ignoring them, but this phenomenon isn’t limited to sights that might fade into the background.
As we sometimes discover, a very fascinating picture can totally grab us only for whoever posted it to tell us absolutely nothing about what’s going on. In such moments, it’s easy to go from finding the picture intriguing to maddening because our curiosity can’t get the satisfaction it needs.
Well, that’s not something we’ll need to worry about today because everything you’re about to see has an explanation that makes it even more interesting.
Here we see a leucistic alligator, which is similar to an albino one except it doesn’t have photosensitive eyes.
If this is your first time seeing one, that won’t be much of a surprise because only a couple of hundred exist in the world.
This has to do with how sensitive their skin is to sunlight, as any specimen that can’t retreat into the shady Louisiana bayou is likely to be sunburned to death.
While this image from the 1930s might seem like it was taken on Halloween, it actually marks a festival that begins in the days leading up to Lent.
Specifically, these kids are celebrating Denmark’s Fastelavn festival, a children’s festival that works a little bit like Mardi Gras.
The difference is that it traditionally involves putting a black cat in a barrel and clubbing the barrel with sticks until it breaks. While that might sound bad because it scares the cat, the Scandinavian Standard reported that earlier variants of this tradition were even worse because they either featured the flogging of children or infertile young women. Another variant apparently also encouraged kids to wake their parents up by hitting them.
It’s worth noting that these more violent traditions weren’t particularly widespread in Denmark and haven’t been practiced for years.
If you were to walk by this unknown building in New York City, you would notice that two girls are always standing there and staring right at you.
If this makes you feel a little uneasy, that’s probably how the person who lives here wants you to feel because these are actually life-size stickers they put on their windows.
So many microbes, so little time.
This is the view of a single drop of seawater under a microscope.
Celebrities are always being harassed by paparazzi, but it looks like rapper DMX has found a way to make sure the results aren’t worth their while.
As we can see, any photo taken with a flash will only illuminate the reflective scarf he’s wearing. And so, the photographer ends up with a worthless picture that doesn’t really show its subject.
Considering how long ago this was taken, it’s hard to tell whether the kid is sad because he was tired of waiting for the flash or because of the monstrosity next to him.
If you’re looking at that puffy suit and think it looks like an off-brand version of the Michelin Man, you’re incredibly close to the truth.
Although this was an official suit for the mascot, it was also the first one made before they really smoothed his look out.
You’d be forgiven for wondering what city loves Star Wars so much that they erected a statue of Darth Vader.
It’s actually a statue in Wejherowo, Poland and depicts its founder Jakub Wejher. But when the snow falls, his true allegiance to the dark side of the Force is revealed.
We know that caterpillars can be cute and colorful, and that butterflies are gorgeous, but a cocoon is boring, right?
Look how amazing the chrysalis of a Tithorea tarricina butterfly is! It looks like gold.
These sleek cliffs are both a place we can never visit and a thing we could potentially see every day.
That’s because these aren’t cliffs at all, but rather what a crack in some steel looks like under an electron microscope.
Although it’s not too hard to figure out what most of the priority seating figures are supposed to represent, one is a little more regionally specific.
Buddhism is a major religion in Thailand and as Reuters reported , touching Buddhist monks is considered a serious taboo.
For that reason, they’re eligible for priority boarding in Thai airports to prevent any accidental contact.
While the wild jet stream patterns in the air look fascinating now, they would be terrifying to experience at the time.
That’s because this image of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was taken during the Battle of Britain in 1940, which saw German and British fighter planes in constant dogfights over the nation.
The uploader didn’t have much trouble identifying what turned up in their X-ray, but they were definitely surprised to see it.
When they were shot in the face with a BB gun 15 years ago, they assumed the pellet had bounced off their cheek.
It turns out that it was actually stuck in their cheek all along and magnets will still react to its presence a decade and a half later.
When we think of pigeons, we usually imagine grey birds with only a bit of color around the neck.
But in Southeast Asia, you can find the pink-necked green pigeon, which is a rainbow with wings. Look at those feet!
If pigeons everywhere looked like this, people would probably like them more.
These days, adding some scrolling text to video takes a couple of clicks.
But the original Star Wars crawl had to be done the hard way by printing the text and slowly moving a camera down to make it look like it’s scrolling up.
This person has a lump on their ring finger and depending on what comes naturally to you, the reason will either be very familiar or completely mysterious.
If you hold your pen a certain way while writing over an extended period of time, your finger can develop this little lump in response.
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In their case, we’re looking at the result of 13 years of writing. In my case, it took about 17 years before I was typing more often than I was writing by hand.
Six years later, my lump is still there, but it’s flatter and less obvious than it used to be.
Meet the blobfish. Yes, it’s a real fish.
Apparently, when deep in their natural habitat, they look more like a regular fish, but the change in pressure from those watery depths to the surface squashes them.
I wish this was more common than just a random school project in Germany.
It’s a crosswalk, but instead of pressing a button and staring awkwardly across the road at the stranger waiting on the other side, you can challenge them to a game of Pong.
Thousands of tiny eclipses can be seen in this tree’s shadow.
That’s due to what’s called the “natural pinhole phenomenon”. When there is an eclipse, a common way to see it safely is to make a pinhole camera. Tiny gaps between overlapping leaves can create the same effect, showering the ground with images of the sun.
This is an impressive work of art, but it’s even more staggering when we realize it was painted by a 15-year-old.
Yes, not only was Pablo Picasso a master of his craft, but he was also quite the prodigy.
Considering what he could already achieve as a teenager, it’s no surprise that he became so experimental later in life. Traditional art can get a little boring when you’re this good this early.
This would be fun to explain to your boss as the reason you can’t get into the office.
After the recent winter storm in Western New York, lake houses got frozen solid by the blowing, icy water.
You can dig out of snow, but ice is a whole different challenge.
This is a water spout spotted off the coast of Florida.
I know that it’s not the kind of spout referenced in the Itsy Bitsy Spider rhyme, but I can’t help but have an epic mental image. Poor spider.
At best, this flat black awning would only be a mildly interesting design choice out of context.
However, it turns out that these are actually solar panels that the business owner didn’t want to seem obvious. So they thought of this clever idea.
Don’t let the tutus and graceful movements trick you, ballerinas are badass athletes.
They aren’t magically better at standing en pointe than average people. Their feet have been forced into it and show the damage.
This looks like a mineral make-up palette or maybe an array of tasty spices, but it’s neater than either of those.
This is actually an array of sand from all over the Sahara Desert, showing how the different conditions and mineral make-up of various regions can completely change the color.
While this would normally be exactly the kind of picture to trip our Photoshop alarms, what you’re seeing here is the real deal.
As a study published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America explained, when an animal is born without enough of a protein called myostatin, it can end up with excessive muscle growth like this.
But while the muscles on this cow are certainly large, that doesn’t mean it’s an unstoppable juggernaut. In fact, mice that had this condition were found in the study to be weaker than those without it.
This image finds two different ways to express just how massive certain dinosaurs used to be.
It helps to know that the bone we’re seeing on the right is the femur of an African elephant, while the bone on the left is the femur of a triceratops.
As you can see, both bones are almost as large as an entire person, but the triceratops femur is much thicker than the elephant’s.
While this may seem like some kind of skin condition, it’s actually the result of a very wide, but shallow wound.
Specifically, we’re looking at the chest of a pro wrestler after he took a particularly rough chop from his opponent.
So while pro wrestling may be scripted, photos like this do a lot to illustrate why it’s not really fair to call it “fake.”
