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TIL: there is an orangutan named FU-Manchu who is an honorary member of the lock picking union because he has successfully escaped from his cage using home made keys multiple times. Many primatologists believe he has successfully demonstrated human level deception.

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p87eN TIL a bill was proposed in 1910 to release hippos into the Louisiana bayous, both as a way to clear out invasive river plants and solve a critical shortage of meat. It was backed by Former President Roosevelt and The New York Times, which praised hippo meat as tasting like "lake cow bacon."
b64e0 TIL: People used to perform pregnancy tests by injecting urine into a frog. If the frog is female and has eggs at near its rear end after 12 hours then the woman is pregnant. If the frog is male and produces sperm, then the woman is pregnant.
Zp4Np TIL that Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language that deaf children in Nicaragua spontaneously developed in the 1980s. Linguists find it particularly interesting because it is believed to be an example of the birth of a new language, unrelated to any other.
VMNxk TIL that Da Vinci loathed Michelangelo’s drawings, comparing Michelangelo’s muscular figure depictions to a “sack of walnuts” devoid of human grace.
6PmJ TIL there exists a mysterious fruit-tree species in Arkansas discovered by science in 1990, who is only the second of its kind, with its closest relative being in Europe. It exists only in a 22 acre area, there are only 25 trees left of its kind and no one knows where it came from.