hey everyone and welcome to top think today we're going to learn about 15 crazy facts that will blow
your mind now let's begin number one painterly pigeons hey did you know that pigeons have an
eye for arts it is true in 1995 researchers discovered that pigeons could distinguish
between different famous artists yeah this study started by teaching birds a few paintings by Monet
and Picasso and once they got familiar with each artists the pigeons were shown a new painting that
they'd never seen before amazingly these birds could tell you exactly who painted it did they
talk hmm they knew the difference between Monet's impressionist landscapes and Picasso's colorful
abstracts oh but their talents didn't stop there the pigeons got so good at recognizing these two
painters they started identifying similar artists to using their knowledge of Monet these birds
could pick out works by Cezanne and Renoir who were two more impressionist painters they could
do the same thing for Picasso and his cohorts ROC and Matisse if you think about it that's better
than most people number two your second brain have you ever wondered why you get butterflies
in your stomach turns out that nervous fluttery feeling comes directly from your brain but not
the one in your head hmm every person has around 100 million neurons in their gut for reference
that's more than your entire spinal cord which is why scientists have nicknamed this cluster
of neurons your second brain so what is your second brain actually do it mostly controls
digestion but it can also influence your mood and mental state the butterflies in your stomach are a
great example but there's one major thing that your second brain do it can't make conscious
decisions and it doesn't know how to be creative or solve problems of course that doesn't mean
it's not important without your second brain your body wouldn't make it through a single day number
three widespread misinformation think about these two names Sherlock Holmes and Winston
Churchill one was a genius detective and the other a British politician now of course only
one of them was a real person do you know which this might sound like a stupid question okay it
was a stupid question but an astonishing number of teenagers got it wrong nearly 60 percent thought
Sherlock Holmes was a real detective while another 20 percent thought Winston Churchill never existed
number four the lemon juice experiment your mouth can tell you a lot about your personality all you
need is a little lemon juice and a cotton ball start by putting a few drops of lemon juice on
your tongue now swish the juice around for about 15 seconds without swallowing huh then take the
cotton ball and try to soak up all the saliva in your mouth the amount of saliva you produce tells
you what kind of person you really are that's because of the reticular activating system or
Ras in response to things like food and drinks this part of your brain produces saliva but
there's one very important thing that gets your Ras going social contact if someone starts up a
conversation or gives you a hug it'll trigger your Ras and you'll start making saliva so what is your
Ras tell you about your personality well people with a more sensitive Ras are more introverted
so if you are an introvert it'll only take a few drops of lemon juice to create a ton of saliva
in your mouth on the other hand extroverts are a lot less sensitive you'll need much stronger
stimulus to get the same reaction so if you've ever wondered where you fall on this personality
spectrum give this quick and easy experiment a try number five 300 questions as a child we're
constantly exposed to new things so how do we make sense of the strange and unfamiliar world around
us the answer is actually pretty simple we ask a mind-blowing amount of questions the average
five-year-old asks their mom 300 questions every single day that number drops to about a hundred
and fifty by age nine but that's still tens of thousands of questions each year with so much
new information coming in on a daily basis it's no wonder the human brain grows so quickly number six
stars never twinkle think about the way people describe the stars we say they twinkle in the
night sky but they're not really twinkling at all their light is stable and constant the flickering
is a mirage created by fluctuations in the Earth's atmosphere so is picturesque as it looks the sky
is really just playing tricks on you number seven rain a fish we've all heard of raining cats and
dogs right but what about fish once a year in the small town of euro Honduras thousands
of silverfish rained down from the sky countless people have seen these animals tumble out of the
clouds but is it really raining fish well it's a little complicated this strange phenomenon happens
during the country's stormy a season thanks to something called a waterspout water spouts are
vortexes like tornados that develop over bodies of water and just like how tornadoes scoop up dirt
and trees water spouts pull all kinds of things out of the water you guessed it fish so during
a big storm one of these water spouts will suck thousands of fish into the sky and then send them
flying everywhere while it isn't really raining fish euros is you de peces is still one of the
most amazing natural occurrences in the world number eight powerful calculator think back to
those scientific calculators you used now to most of us these seem like pretty simple electronics
but in the 1960s your calculator could have sent people to the moon it's crazy to think about but
the average scientific calculator is six times more powerful than the computer on the Apollo
11 now it's true that these devices were built for very different things but it just goes to
show you how much technology has progressed over the years number nine lightning quick
shrimp the world record for the quickest punch by any human is forty-five miles per hour oh
but we're not the fastest in the animal kingdom that title is held by peacock mantis shrimps who
throw punches at over 50 miles per hour and that's underwater so how do they do it these
shrimps aren't just tossing their arms out there they have a complicated spring system built into
their shoulders when they want to throw a punch they create so much tension that they can launch
their claws forward at breakneck speeds number 10 furry finger prints everyone knows what a
tiger looks like orange and white with black stripes now to us they all look the same but
every tiger has its own unique arrangement of stripes you'll never find two Tigers with the
exact same pattern just like you'll never find two humans with the same set of fingerprints
number eleven Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California a giant patch of garbage
spans over 600,000 square miles of ocean that's roughly three times larger than all of France so
what's it made of a little over half the garbage patch is made of fishing nets and another 20%
comes from natural disasters like the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 unfortunately the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only getting bigger and before long it'll be large enough
to be its own continent number 12 blood falls Antarctica's blood falls is one of the world's
most bizarre natural wonders it gets its name from the scarlet stream that flows down the side of a
massive glacier now of course it's not actually blood that red hue comes from 2 million years of
oxygen and heat deprivation the salt water has such a strong reaction when it's first exposed
to the outside air that it changes color but even if you know the science behind it high it's
hard to imagine this waterfall as anything but a cascade of bright red blood number 13 full-body
replacement you're constantly getting rid of dead skin cells throughout the day so how long does it
take to shed your entire body it turns out humans expel their whole outer layer of skin every 45 to
50 days in other words your exterior is completely different than it was just two months ago number
14 the amazing diversity of grass most people think of grass as just grass it's those green
blades you find at the park or on the side of the road yeah sure grass is nice to walk or sit on but
come on it's not as exciting as those giant trees or colorful flowers so very few people know that
there are over 600 species of grasses and most of them look nothing like the green blade that
we're used to some are thin and feathered like reeds others are tall and hard like bamboo grass
may not be the most exciting plant at first glance but it's a lot more diverse than you
think number 15 sailing stones in Death Valley the lowest point in North America a number of
strange boulders sail their way from one end of the valley to the other but how is that possible
how do these giant rocks move hundreds of metres fall on their own this strange phenomenon happens
during the winter Death Valley gets covered in a thin layer of ice which slides the boulders
across the ground as they slide their rough bottoms carve trails into the ice that way when
the ice melts it looks like the rocks have moved across the valley all on their own hey thank you
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