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TIL there is a parasite which breeds inside the guts of a cat. Their offspring are deposited in droppings and can then be eaten by rats. The offspring then affect the rats’ behaviour to make them less scared, and even sexually aroused, by cats, with the aim of returning to the cat guts

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eMdD TIL American Pharoah is a fifth generation Decendant of Secretariat
ANQ8n TIL: After being synthesized by Heinrich Dreser of The Bayer company in 1895, heroin was originally used as a treatment for morphine addiction and The Bayer company marketed it by sending out free samples of it to the public
R70b4 TIL in 2013 a dog named Killian saved a baby boy from an abusive babysitter. He alerted his owners by growling and standing between the baby and the sitter whenever she was there. Suspicious, the parents left an iPhone under the sofa recording audio. The sitter was later convicted on what they heard
780lL TIL that in 2017, an AI developed by Facebook created its own language to negotiate and communicate more efficiently, using shorthand phrases humans couldn’t understand. Researchers had to shut it down because the AI diverged so far from English, it was no longer interpretable
nWkko TIL that it was originally planned to have four clip shows per season in “The Simpsons” in order to cut production costs.