› added 4 years ago

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TIL that male water striders intimidate the female to have sex with them by tapping on the water to attract predators

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

M7ONb TIL that the leopard attack scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey involved a real leopard pouncing on a real person. Kubrick, despite being known for recording several takes of every shot, only recorded a couple takes to protect the actor and accepted that he wouldn't like the end result.
W1p4 TIL the most common shape of cut on a diamond is called the “brilliant” cut. It has a hidden secret most people don’t know about. If you shine light through it at the right angle it crates shapes of hearts and arrows inside. Not surprisingly this is nicknamed the “cupid effect.”
mxv1o TIL that Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian contains so much violence that it is considered "unfilmable" - a notion that McCarthy himself denies.
epjrE TIL that in deep mine voids, slabs of rocks weighing hundreds of pounds can spontaneously "explode" off the walls from the pressure above until the stresses adjust.
KOpwR TIL that before trees (~400 million years ago) the Earth's landscape was dotted with 24ft tall, 3ft wide mushroom spires called Prototaxites