› added 1 year ago

44

TIL the male gharial crocodile's hollow bulbous nasal protuberance starts growing over the nostrils around age 11.5. The bulbous snout tip enables hissing that can be heard 75 metres (246 feet) away. The gharial is the only living crocodile with visible sexual dimorphism

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

ZenQ TIL that sea otters are one of the only natural predators of sea urchins which makes them a keystone species in helping to maintain the balance of kelp ecosystems. Because they help maintain the kelp ecosystem, they are indirectly helping to reduce levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
b9GjE TIL of remittance men - useless sons of Victorian British upper middle class families being given an allowance by their own family to be as far away from family as possible, typically settling in very remote parts of the British Empire.
yVLyp TIL that the concept of curvature in space-time giving rise to matter and gravitation was predicted in 1870 by William Kingdon Clifford (although not rigorously proving it like Einstein managed)
yQdp TIL that the reason one is 1, two is 2, three is 3, etc. is because the ancient Arabic versions of 0-9 numbers had the corresponding number of angles in their symbols. (1 has one angle, 2 has two, and so on)
RPaw TIL Jimmy Carter said if he became president, he would release all government UFO information to the public. Once elected, he decided not to due to “national security concerns.”