Here are 10 of the scariest things that actually happen!
10 - Coffee secrets
If you like to drink coffee, you may just wanna sit this entry out.
But maybe, you’ll just want to know the truth!
Apparently, cockroaches living in coffee machines aren’t as rare as we might think.
In fact, one coffee machine manufacturer actually admitted that this problem was actually an
industry secret!
Coffee machine maker Aquaspresso, actually stated in a now removed post on their website,
quote “We know cockroaches inside of coffee machines is a reality.
A disgusting reality.”
Ugh.
So why do cockroaches love coffee machines so much?
Well, it’s simple really.
They’re naturally attracted to three things: darkness, moisture, and nutrients.
What do coffee machines have?
All three!
It’s no wonder coffee machines are a cockroach utopia!
With plenty of commercial coffee machines being ‘fixed’ with immovable parts, it
may sometimes be impossible to remove everything and wash the machine down to get rid of the
roaches.
According to one pest control company from Singapore, roughly 40 percent of the coffee
machines they check have cockroach infestations in them!
Even worse is that large piles of coffee beans typically get infested with cockroaches.
And because when the piles DO get infested, it’s practically impossible to remove them
completely.
So they’re simply ground up with the coffee beans!
Yeahhhh….maybe it’s just time to quit coffee.
9 - To Wash or Not to Wash As crazy as this sounds, microbiologists have
discovered in their research that a quarter of the soap in public restrooms is so contaminated
that it leaves your hands filthier than before you washed them!
Wait what?!
How?!
In fact, some of the soap they tested contained so much fecal matter that you're almost better
off washing your hands in the toilet after you flush it!
Scientists have known for decades that liquid soap can become contaminated with bacteria,
but no one had specifically studied how often that actually happens.
Public restrooms replaced bar soaps with liquid soap after studies in the 1960s found that
bar soaps were often contaminated with bacteria.
The thing is, bulk soap dispensers usually get topped off with its lid removed while
the dispenser itself stays mounted on the bathroom wall or beneath the sink.
However, that container rarely gets off the wall to be disinfected!
The CDC has clear guidelines about liquid soap for healthcare facilities, by instructing
NOT to use dispensers that allows soap to be added to a partially empty soap dispenser.
That's because the biofilm bacteria that remains on the inside of the dispenser is very resistant
to bleach, and even a tiny amount -- especially in the hard-to-reach nozzle -- was enough
to recontaminate the soap.
So what’s the best solution?
Yep, individual sealed soap dispensers that squirt soap directly on the hands!
8 - Sea fleas
Here’s another story on why Australia is a scary place to visit!
After playing soccer with his friends, Sam Kanizay from Melbourne Australia, dipped his
feet into the ocean to cool off.
When he walked out of the water, he saw what he thought was sand covering his ankles and
simply shook it off.
But what he shook from his legs wasn't sand.
When he got home, he and his parents discovered thousands of tiny bites on his legs, almost
as if he had been pricked with a pin repeatedly!
His legs started bleeding and wouldn’t stop, so they decided to go to the hospital.
However, the hospital staff was baffled by his injury.
Clueless and desperate, his dad returned to the beach.
He managed to find and bring in thousands of the creatures that had caused the bites.
A marine biologist examined the captured samples and concluded that the likely culprits were
sea fleas, a type of scavenging crustacean.
Sea fleas are known to bite, but they don’t usually cause what happened to Sam.
The cold water Sam was splashing around in may be the reason he didn't feel the bites
until it was too late.
Luckily, sea fleas aren’t venomous and they don’t cause any lasting damage.
However, who wants to be bitten thousands of times when they’re relaxing in the ocean!
There’s no real way to know where sea fleas are, but the good thing is, they don’t typically
like to bite humans.
7 - Reusable bags Just when we think bags are safe to use, we
find out they’re really not!
One 2011 study found that only 3% of shoppers with multi-use bags regularly wash them.
Wait, 3% of people do that?!
Who are these psychopaths!
We thought that percentage would have been lower!
The same study found bacteria in 99% of bags tested, with half of them carrying coliform
bacteria and 8% showing E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination.
That makes reusable shopping bags about as dirty as the bottom of our shoes!
Another study looked at how fast pathogens spread through grocery stores with the help
of reusable bags.
The answer is, they spread pretty fast.
The study involved spraying bags with bacteria that’s harmless to humans but spreads in
a similar way to norovirus, a leading cause of gastrointestinal disease linked to more
than 19 million illnesses each year in the US.
The tracer bacteria was detected in high concentrations on shopping carts, at the checkout counter,
AND on food items shoppers had touched but returned on the shelf.
The contamination cycle often began right after shoppers entered the store, when shoppers
placed their bags at the bottom of the shopping cart or the baby carrier in a shopping cart.
The good news?
Machine or hand washing bags reduced bacteria on bags by more than 99.9%!
Well, guess this is where we stop shaming people for washing their bags.
6 - Dream house with snakes
Back in 2009, when a family bought a five-bedroom house for less than 180 grand about 125 miles
southwest of Yellowstone National Park, it seemed like a steal.
But the dream soon became a nightmare for the Sessions family!
How did it become a nightmare?
Shortly after buying their new home, they discovered that the land their house sits
on was infested with thousands of garter snakes!
Snakes slithered behind the walls at night.
There were so many snakes, the Sessions family claimed that the water tasted like how the
snake smelled!
The family often had to eat out to escape the smell of the musk the snakes released
in order to keep away predators.
Why’d they move in in the first place?
Sessions said that they trusted their real estate agent, who claimed that the snake problem
was "made up" by the previous owners just so they could leave their mortgage behind.
The Sessions' signed paperwork acknowledging the snakes when they bought the house, trusting
their real estate agent that the stories were false.
Things didn’t go well for the Sessions, because they ended up defaulting on their
loan, declared bankruptcy and moved out out!
The lesson here is to not trust just anyone!
5 - A New Friend
During a family trip to the beach in 2013, then-4-year-old Paul Franklin from California
fell and scraped his right knee.
A scrape to the knee shouldn’t be too much to be scared of right?
It's not unusual for an active little boy.
However, not in this instance!
It’s what emerged from Paul’s swollen knee that makes this story so unusual!
Paul was walking along the beach when he banged his knee against a rock.
His parents just cleaned it up and put a Band-Aid on it.
But before long, his knee became swollen and infected.
A doctor told Paul's mom that it might be a nasty staph infection, something anyone
should be afraid of.
The doctor gave Paul antibiotics, but there was still a growing black bump underneath
the skin.
Tired of waiting and certain that the wound needed to be drained, Paul’s mom decided
to take matters into her own hands!
She squeezed the lump with her fingers, and out popped something that looked like a black
rock.
However, once she turned it over, the whole family was shocked to realize that it was
actually a tiny sea snail!
The family figured a snail egg got under Paul's skin when he scuffed up his knee.
And what was little Paul's reaction?
He thought it was crazy, but not so crazy that the preschooler didn't make the best
of his strange situation.
He decided to name his baby snail Turbo, and kept it as a pet!
4 - Two is better than one?
Surgeons in Japan made an unusual discovery while performing a routine procedure on a
16-year-old girl.
During a standard appendix surgery, they discovered a 4-inch tumor on one of her ovaries.
Now that wouldn’t be all that unusual by itself because these things happen.
But, when they did further investigation, that’s when things got pretty weird.
Their biopsy revealed that the tumor actually had clumps of hair!
The tumor also had a structure that resembled a cerebellum and brain stem!
The growth was identified as a teratoma, which is greek for “monster tumor”!
A teratoma is a type of tumor that can be made up of several different types of tissue,
such as hair, muscle, or bone, exactly like this case.
Medical experts who did the biopsy said that even though brain cells are often found in
ovarian teratomas, it’s rare for the tumor to develop into an actual brain!
There are reports of patients with the same rare condition developing neurological symptoms
such as personality changes, paranoid thoughts, confusion, seizures, and memory loss.
Why?
It’s because the immune system recognizes the brain cells in the ovary as foreign and
launches an attack.
However, brain cells in the person’s actual brain can end up being attacked as well, leading
to inflammation.
Fortunately for the 16 year old patient, she didn’t experience any of these symptoms,
and recovered just fine once the tumor was removed.
3 - Ants Ants Ants
The tawny crazy ant hails from South America, and they live up to their name.
The ants first appeared in the United States around in 2002 but have become more of a menace
in the past few years.
They’ve spread to many areas of the Gulf Coast, particularly Texas and Florida.
As the ants have advanced into new habitats, they've developed the annoying habit of swarming
inside electronics and occasionally destroying them!
Wait what?!
Why are these ants attracted to electronic devices?!
One reason is that crazy ants are always looking for cavities to nest in.
These ants are incredibly small, as they’re less than an eighth of an inch in length.
This allows them to crawl inside cell phones, computers, and appliances.
When the crazy ants enter these devices, their bodies can create connections between electrical
contacts, which can cause the circuits to short and electrocute the ants!
The electrocuted ants then release an alarm pheromone, a scent they use to communicate
that they’re under attack, attracting even more ants to come out and fight!
This creates a vicious cycle that can leave appliances broken full of dead ants and swarming
with live ones as well!
Their sheer abundance adds to their destructive power.
For example, in one case, tawny crazy ants quickly spread to 90 out of 150 air-conditioning
units in an apartment building in Waco, Texas and it took about two months to get rid of
them!
Who knew ants can be so in love with electronics in the south?!
2 - Curly-Q Tails
There are few things more chilling than the sound of a nearby rattlesnake.
But the only thing worse than hearing a rattlesnake may just be not hearing a rattlesnake at all!
Herpetologist Terry Philip discovered that a growing number of Prairie Rattlesnakes are
developing curly-Q tails.
Basically, imagine the tail on a pig and you get the idea.
This strange shape comes from the snakes’ atrophied tail muscles, meaning that they
can’t shake their distinctive rattles!
He believes this is a genetic issue that multiplies because snakes that can rattle usually end
up being killed, while snakes with the genetic defect survive and reproduce, passing on the
genetic defect to their offspring.
Other experts think that the situation could be an evolutionary development to avoid detection.
By the way, supposedly, rattlesnakes that can't rattle tend to be more aggressive, since
they're missing a key protective element.
So if you happen to be hiking in South Dakota, you can’t necessarily trust your ears to
keep you safe!
1 - Mass Ballooning
In 2015, millions of spiders dropped from the sky in the Southern Tablelands region
of Australia, covering the countryside with their webs.
Does this sound like a nightmare yet?!
Yes, spiders can drop from the sky and cover everything!
In what's called a mass ballooning event, the tiny spiders ride the wind on silk sails
in order to spread to new areas or escape danger.
Of course, this wasn’t even the first time spiders have dropped from the sky to coat
an area in webbing, and it won’t be the last time.
Although many people refer to them as baby spiders, the spiders are actually just teeny
tiny adults referred to as sheet-web weavers or money spiders.
The spider rain starts when millions of them crawl up to a nearby high point and send out
silk strands that allow them to be lifted on air currents like they’re using little
parachutes!
Most of these "aerial plankton", as they’re sometimes called, won’t actually make it
through the journey.
They’ll either be eaten by predators or overpowered by harsh weather conditions.
But only a small fraction needs to survive to set up their new home.
Fortunately, these spiders pose no real danger to people, but that doesn’t make the whole
thing any less creepy!
Here’s what’s next!