‘What scientific discovery sounds fake but is 100% real?’ – 13 totally true factoids that are freaking people out

The universe has always provided an endless array of the unexplainable. Then the internet was invented.

Now we have an answer to just about anything.

Is all of that info trustworthy? Probably not. But enough batshit crazy discoveries have been made around the world to provide WTF trivia that anyone can enjoy.

A lot of that trivia bubbled up to the surface when Redditor u/Bruteresolver asked:

‘What scientific discovery sounds fake but is 100% real and still freaks you out?’

What follows are some of the most extraordinary people, places, and things to exist on the planet and beyond.

1.
“Grizzly bears run as fast as the average horse.”
scary_warrior

2.
“I got charged by a grizzly camping with a couple friends in the Alaskan backcountry a few years back.

“By the time it got within about 40ft of us, my friend’s dog charged back and chased it off. The size and speed of the bear really didn’t compute in my brain – it was like a big furry truck just appeared out of nowhere in the wilderness. I mailed treats to that dog every month for a year.”
shartdeco

3.
“A certain tick bite can cause you to become allergic to meat.”
Eagle-eyed_Player

“The lonestar tick, and its called Alpha Gal syndrome IIRC.”
deinoswyrd

4.
“The discovery of The Great Attractor. A massive gravitational anomaly that is pulling everything in its neighborhood, including the Milky Way Galaxy towards it at rates of +/- 700km per second.

“We have no idea what it is, because we can’t observe it through our own galactic zone of avoidance, but it’s estimated to be roughly 1016 solar masses.”
alphajager

5.
“The chameleon plant. Like WTF. How can it know what other plants look like without vision?

“Boquila trifoliolata, a South American chameleon vine, has been documented to mimic the shape, size, and color of artificial plastic plants, even when no chemical or genetic cues exist for it to copy.”
silverwarbler

6.
“Every single thing they learn about the platypus.”
RetconnedUsername

“We all know how weird they look, and that they lay eggs, and they’re mammals but don’t have nipples, and the males have venom.

“Many people don’t know that the platypus is one of three known mammals to have a sense of electroreception (the others are the echidna, and a type of dolphin). As far as we know the platypus and echidna (which is much less reliant on electroreception) evolved the sense entirely separately from any other animal; the nerve that goes to the electroreceptors in their bill is the trigeminal nerve, which is homologous to the trigeminal nerve in humans and other mammals.

“Even fewer people know — though few are surprised — that the platypus genome is WEIRD. Like, real weird. The overwhelming majority of mammals have two sex chromosomes: XX, or XY. The platypus has TEN sex chromosomes, so male platypus are XY XY XY XY XY.

“They also lack the SRY gene, which in most other mammals is the key to sex determination – it’s pretty much what tells a developing fetus to start developing testes, which in turn leads to testosterone production and so on.

“Until very recently we didn’t know how sex determination worked in platypus, but we’ve recently discovered that they do have a gene called AMH, which is another gene that contributes (but does not initiate) sex determination in mammals. That’s weird, and also interesting that AMH is found on the ‘oldest’ chromosome, X1, which also is more homologous to the Z chromosome, from the ZW sex-chromosome set that is found primarily in birds.

“This suggests that there was separate, convergent evolution in monotremes and other mammals. There’s also some random reptilian homologies thrown in there, too, just for good measure. It’s really true that everything we learn about them makes them seem even stranger.

“Bonus facts if you made it this far: they also have cheek pockets like hamsters, and can use their tail to carry nesting materials!”
theytookthemall