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TIL there is a fungus in Thailand that spreads into ants and controls their central nervous system making them perform actions to help its spread. It causes ants to climb trees and then fall into the moist soil where the fungus thrives. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/5/110511-zombies-

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Y7gOZ TIL baby manta rays are born like little burritos, with their fins wrapped around their bodies.
Y9kd TIL in 1991 a fake Russian TV program convinced many citizens that Lenin consumed a lot of psychedelic mushrooms, eventually even becoming a mushroom himself. The Leningrad Communist Party responded that “Lenin could not have been a mushroom” because “a mammal can not be a plant”
5Vnbp TIL According to his widow, Constanze, Mozart received the commission for composing his Requiem from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner's identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.
aw44N TIL Great white sharks do not survive in captivity due to depression and refusing to be fed by humans, leading them to die of starvation. There are currently many theories on why this is. The current record for a Great White in captivity is only 44 days.
1aPZ8 TIL in 1989, Dermott, a town in Arkansas, passed a curfew law that allowed for punishment of the curfew-breaker's parents by putting them in stocks for two days. The punishment was remitted, among other things, because the city had no stocks nor had allocated funds to build them.