› added 11 years ago

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TIL Pigeons are superstitious. When given food at irregular intervals in a lab, they develop rituals (like spinning in a circle) associated with whatever they were doing before the food arrived.

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LkJRQ TIL that Homo erectus stood about 1.79m (5'10"). Only 17% of modern male humans are taller - Their fossils were the oldest known early humans to have possessed modern human-like body proportions. And they are the longest lived human species around 9 times as long as our own species H.Sapiens.
a86bJ TIL Superdollars still exist and new "editions" are are discovered every year. They are of such high-quality it's suspected they are produced by a Nation or State actor.
yQQWJ TIL that the fastest animal in the world relative to body size is a species of mite called the Paratarsotomus macropalpis, the mite can move at a speed of 322 body lengths per second. The equivalent speed for a human running as fast as this mite would be 1,300 mph
kVL5 TIL “3 Ninjas” was the most profitable film of 1992 because of its small budget.
XEDeE TIL of William Kamkwamba, who at the age of 15 taught himself how to build windmills out of junk to provide his family electricity, and later to pump water for his community that was suffering from a huge drought. He did all of this through library books, as his family couldn't afford schooling.