› added 10 years ago

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TIL that owls have serrations on the edge of their flight feathers, allowing an owl’s flight to be practically silent. Some fish-eating owls, for which silence has no evolutionary advantage, lack this adaptation.

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RBv8 TIL Researchers working with Kanzi (a bonobo who communicates using a keypad with symbols) claim his favorite movies are ones that blur the boundaries between humans and apes such as Planet of the Apes and Quest for Fire.
yQ8dM TIL A hidden ecosystem seems to lurk six miles below the Mariana Trench, offering clues for finding life across the solar system.
eJlD TIL Canada has it’s own equivalent to the Western genre called Northerns, in these stories Canadian lawmen treat native people with compassion and Americans are often depicted as hotheads who are quick to violence
4rew TIL that the classing ‘Kong’ dog toy is so called because a friend of the creator thought it looked like 'An earplug for King Kong’
pYZPQ TIL Olive Yang, a Chinese housewife turned Narco-warlord. A smuggler since she was 19, she built a private army called "Olive's Boys" and took over an entire Burmese Province in the 1950s. Alongside rogue KMT army units, she helped jumpstart the infamous "Golden Triangle" Drug Trafficking Routes.