The toop

When one is immersed in nature, absorbing sounds, smells, and the views, it brings us back to our primordial roots. It can be a place for healing and rejuvenation of the spirit, with psychological and physiological benefits. It’s no wonder that it connects us to our brief, impermanent being.

Humans are creators instinctively, so we want to contribute to the landscape and make our impression on the world. Sometimes, we create beautiful things, only to let them go. We enjoy the transience of art, like building sandcastles even though we know they will be washed to the sea or designing intricate mandalas that we will destroy upon completion with a blow of breath.

Some people, however, take this inclination a step further. This list is concerned with artists, shepherds, adventurers, as well as millionaires and rebels who have participated in this desire to create something incredible, only to hide it in the middle of the wilderness for someone else to find.

10 Giants

If you find yourself wandering off the beaten path in a forest in Copenhagen, Denmark, you may encounter giants. Six massive sculptures made from recycled wood were created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, who hid them deep in the woods for hikers to come across. Some are camouflaged amid tall trees, while others lounge on hillsides. One is even lurking beneath a bridge like a troll.

Dambo says, “As humans, we often have a way of choosing the beaten path and the main roads.” In this creative endeavor, he wanted to challenge that mindset and encourage people to explore the hidden outskirts of their town. He calls the project an “open air sculpture treasure hunt.” For those with a taste for adventure, he posted a treasure map on his website with hints so that people can follow the bread crumbs. He also engraved poems on stones near the sculptures with clues to find the next one.^[1]

9 Eyes

Nietzsche famously said, “ . . . if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Australian artist Jennifer Allnutt took this statement quite literally. She paints stunningly hyperrealistic eyes, complete with lids, lashes, and the surrounding skin. She uses stones as her medium and then places those stones back into nature in the exact spot she first found them.^[2]

Allnutt says, “I’m fascinated by those in-between, grey areas, intangibles and ambiguities and then fusing these into the physicality and language of paint.” She paints these ocular rocks to create a sense of wonder in the unsuspecting passerby, who may find that the abyss is gazing back after all. She also says that if the eyes don’t meet another’s gaze, that’s alright, too. They can simply be lost forever.

8 Living Artifacts

Who hasn’t carved their initials into a tree at some point? Trees have been a canvas for this activity since ancient times, and there’s a new field of archaeology that’s being created around this human tradition. The study of arborglyphs examines the world’s oldest tree carvings, some of which are a few hundred years old. Since the carvings were etched onto a living host, the artifacts can only exist as long as the tree does.

The most famous arborglyphs were created by Basque shepherds from the mid-1800s in the western parts of the United States on the smooth, white canvas of aspen trees. Being isolated for long lengths of time in remote forests with no one to talk to but the sheep led to the creation of elaborate tree carvings.

In the mountains of California, Oregon, and Nevada, 20,000 of these living artifacts have been recorded for study, from drawings to poetry. Without them, nobody would ever know that these shepherds existed. There’s nothing written about them in history. They were only able to communicate through time by leaving these hidden messages behind. One carving simply says, “Es trieste a vivir solo,” which translates to, “It is sad to live alone.”^[3]

7 Geocaches

Geocaching usually involves a group of people who are hunting for a cache that has been left behind by someone else. They use GPS coordinates to determine its whereabouts. This recreational activity was made popular in recent years by the relative ease of finding specific points in nature by simply using a smartphone. It’s a treasure hunt that’s not only meant for children but also adults, who hunt for geocaches all over the world.

A cache is a small, waterproof container that has at least a pen and a notebook for hunters to exchange musings of their journey and sign their code name into the log as proof that they found it. Then, they re-hide it for the next person. Some of these caches have toys, gems, trinkets, or other small objects to exchange. It’s the usual “take one, leave one” scenario.^[4]

Some of the caches can be extremely challenging to find. There’s an underwater cache that’s only accessible by scuba diving to the site, for example. Another cache is a fake bird’s nest, complete with eggs and even a phony bird guarding over them.

6 Twisting Branches

Spencer Byles is an artist who sculpts branches and twigs to create a mystical experience of twisting, curving limbs that appear to be the result of magic. In the south of France, Byles sculpted the woods surrounding the Loup River. After a year of living in the remote wilderness, he left behind these strange, temporary structures from the natural materials he came across.^[5]

Byles says, “The force of life and growth and the slow disintegration of all living things has always fascinated me.” These fairy-tale creations are woven into the natural fabric of the landscape and are almost impossible to find, but Byles doesn’t do it to attract attention. He doesn’t share the location of the ephemeral sculptures because he prefers that people stumble upon them by chance.

5 Fairy Homes

The lore of fairies, enchanting thumb-sized creatures with wings that live deep in the woods, continues to allure children and the young at heart. Some communities keep the flame of imagination lit by creating fairy houses for people to find on their nature hikes. In Roswell, Georgia, for example, they exist along a public nature trail to the delighted squeals of children visiting the Chattahoochee Nature Center. They can be hidden in stumps or bushes. Fifteen of these whimsical fairy houses are carefully camouflaged into the natural surroundings, as they are made of twigs, pine cones, moss, rocks, and feathers, so it takes a keen eye to discover them.^[6]

In upstate New York, 20 fairy houses have mysteriously appeared on a rarely used nature trail. These charming cottages are ornate, with painted doors that opened up to reveal tiny steps and ladders inside. Now, they attract visitors who want to connect to their inner child. Fairy homes are also popping up on the islands of Maine and across the nation in San Francisco Bay.

4 Treasure Chest

A sheriff in Montana had to issue an official warning that the hunt for the infamous, secret treasure chest could be deadly. In 2010, an eccentric millionaire named Forrest Fenn said that he’d hidden a chest filled to the brim with gold and jewels somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The 19-kilogram (42 lb) chest holds antique coins, relics like an ancient Chinese jade carving, and a jar of Alaskan gold dust. Fenn left clues in the form of poetry and has dropped other hints throughout the years.

Ever since, treasure hunters have been scouring the hills in search of it, and two have died in the pursuit. Others have come close to death and wound up seriously injured. The problem is that treasure hunters don’t want to reveal their location to anyone at the risk of someone finding the chest before them, so nobody knows where they are when something goes wrong. This was not Fenn’s intention when he set the treasure hunt into motion. He had been diagnosed with cancer, and he wanted to leave behind a legacy that inspired people to explore the outdoors and pursue the thrill of the treasure hunt.^[7]

3 Time Capsule

On Spitsbergen, an island in the Svalbard archipelago, researchers created a time capsule that contains the history of civilization and preserves the science and technology of modern humans in 2017. They buried the 60-centimeter (24 in) stainless steel tube 5 meters (16 ft) deep in a fjord, where it won’t resurface for at least 500,000 years.

Within the tube, scientists have included DNA samples from humans, rats, salmon, and even potatoes to explain the biology of our time. There’s a bee frozen in resin and about 300 tardigrades, which are the microscopic “water bears” that can survive exposure to radiation and other extreme conditions. To inform the future discoverers of Earth’s geology, they included a chunk of a meteorite that’s 4.5 billion years old, sand from Namibia that has diamond particles, and lava from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The technology they placed in the capsule includes electronic devices like a basic mobile phone but also more complex machinery like a radiation detector. They also threw in a photograph (etched into porcelain to extend its existence) of Earth taken from space.

The permafrost specialist who created this time capsule is Marek Lewandowski. He says, “I wanted to create a memorial for the ages.”^[8] So, he filled the container with objects for a distant, unimaginably different civilization to hopefully find and decode many years from now.

2 Graffiti

Graffiti can be found in the most unlikely of places. Not only are spray cans light and easy to carry, but humans have an insatiable propensity for leaving their mark. In Riverside, California, for example, there’s a local secret spot where people go to do just that.

It’s called Graffiti Waterfall, although it’s not a waterfall at all. It’s a giant mound of rocks tucked between hillsides, where just about every crevice is painted in bright, swirling colors. This mural has been touched by many people who dare to climb the steep and treacherous rock pile for the sake of creating something that simply says, “I was here.”^[9]

1 Nature Art

Andy Goldsworthy is the master when it comes to nature art, which entails working with natural materials that disappear over time by either ice melting, wind blowing, or rainfall. Whether it’s stacking ice between two tree trunks or laying down the petals of poppies in a bright red line down an ancient staircase in Spain, Goldsworthy surprises people by challenging their perception and creating an uncanny reality that makes you look twice. He’ll set down golden autumn leaves around the base of an old sycamore tree to make it appear as if the tree is glowing. He’ll use mud as his paint or ice as his clay. It doesn’t matter, as long as the materials are natural and overtaken by nature’s course eventually.^[10]

He never creates anything permanent, but he does photograph his work upon completion. Goldsworthy says, “It’s not about art, it’s just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last.” His work is too bizarre and diverse to capture in words, so he’s made documentaries to capture his art and the process it takes to make it. If interested, check out the trailer above for Leaning Into the Wind to get an idea of what nature art is and the nerve it takes to create it. At times, he can put his life in danger for the pursuit of his creations, like balancing on icy rocks at night or walking through a mangrove swamp in Africa. He’ll be cut and bloodied by brambles and still go on making art that may only last for seconds and be seen by no one except him.

Biological mimicry is when ones species evolves to look like another. Sometimes, one organism will additionally take on the behavior and mannerisms of the other. They end up looking so similar that it is difficult to tell them apart, even though they are totally unrelated.

Animals do this for many reasons. Often, it has to do with predation. Some prey animals take on the look of some other, more dangerous animal that their own predators avoid. Conversely, a predator may mimic an animal that its prey doesn’t fear.

10 Hornets And Hornet Moths

We all know hornets can deliver quite painful stings. Several species belonging to the Sesia genus, such as Sesia apiformis, have evolved to mimic hornets in look and behavior. These copycat moths are called hornet moths, for obvious reasons.

S. apiformis has the distinctive yellow and black markings of a hornet. It is also around the same size as a regular hornet and has a similar wingspan. The moth has also learned to take off in a haphazard manner, just as a hornet would, the moment it spots a threat.

There are a few differences between the hornet and hornet moth, though. The moth is yellower than a hornet and lacks a waist, even though hornets have waists in between their thoraxes and abdomens. The wings of the moth are also transparent. This last part only becomes discernible in flight, and most people and animals do not hang out long enough to find out, anyway.^[1]

9 Ladybirds And Ladybird Spiders

Spiders are so amazing they have a popular fictional superhero named after them. The ladybird (aka ladybug) is special, too. It does not have its own superhero, but it does have real spiders named after it. These spiders belong to the genus Paraplectana. They are a group of spiders that have evolved to look like like ladybirds.

The mimicry is necessary, considering that many predatory birds avoid ladybirds. This is because ladybirds contain toxic chemicals that emit a terrible odor when crushed and leave a nasty, lingering taste in the mouth of the bird. This had made many birds develop a strong distaste for the ladybird. Aside from spiders, a few other insects, like the ladybird-mimic fungus beetle, have also evolved to look like ladybirds.^[2]

8 Jumping Spiders And Metalmark Moths

The metalmark moth (Brenthia coronigera) does not mimic just any random insect or spider but its predator, the jumping spider. The moths are so good at mimicry that jumping spiders mistake them for other jumping spiders. Smaller jumping spiders even flee from the moths over fears that they could be eaten.

The metalmark moth doesn’t just resemble the jumping spider in looks. It also moves in a manner resembling jumping spiders instead of just fluttering around like most moths do. Male jumping spiders get so fooled that they become attracted to the moths and display courtship behavior by raising their two front legs toward the moth.

Researchers who have studied the effectiveness of this mimicry say the moth needs to have its wings in the right position for the ruse to be effective. The black dots on its wings resemble a jumping spider’s eyes, while the rest of it mimics the spider’s body. Several experiments indicate that the spider will recognize the moth as prey if it does not display its wings or if any part of it is concealed.^[3]

7 Ants And Spider Ants

Ant mimicry (also called myrmecomorphy) is found in quite a few spider species. In fact, about 300 species of spiders take on the appearance of one ant or another. The mimicry serves two purposes. One is to deceive the ants, and the other is to deceive its predators, which will usually avoid ants.

These copycat spiders have spots that resemble the compound eyes of ants. They also have reflective hairs that make their thorax and abdomens look like those of ants. Most even walk in zigzag manners as an ant would. To appear more convincing, they make periodic stops and move their two front legs close to their heads to imitate an ant’s antennae.

Spiders like the ground spider mimic ants to deceive other ants. The spider hunts and kills isolated ants before dragging the body off while pretending to be just another ant trying to help the dead ant. The crab spider does the same thing, except that it drags the ant with a web. This allows it an easy escape if its ruse is discovered.

Other spiders mimic ants to avoid getting eaten by ants, spiders, and birds that consider them prey. These spiders also behave like ants to confuse their predators. They even build their nests close to the ants they mimic. This works because ants regularly fight off larger predators despite their smaller size. These predators have learned to avoid the ants—along with spiders disguised as ants.^[4]

6 Rove Beetles And Army Ants

About 12 species of parasitic rove beetles are currently looking like one species of army ant or another. Most army ant colonies have one rove beetle per 5,000 army ants. The rove beetle does this to gain access into the ant colony, where it feeds on the ants’ larvae.

Their bodies have evolved to the point where they look so much like the real thing that even humans cannot tell them apart at a glance. Army ants cannot either, even when they touch the beetles, as they often do.

To be clear, most army ants are blind and actually recognize their colony mates through chemical and tactile cues. The beetles have this covered, too. They clean other ants just to get access to the chemicals the ants use for identification. This makes the beetles undetectable, even by scent. To appear more convincing, the rove beetle participates in every activity with the ants and even follows them on raids.

Scientists say the resemblance between both creatures is fascinating, considering that their last common ancestor was 105 million years ago. That is a really long time, even for evolution. Most creatures with similar characteristics diverged much more recently. In fact, 105 million years ago is when our distant evolutionary ancestors diverged from mice.^[5]

5 Blue Streak Cleaner Wrasses And False Cleanerfish

As you should have guessed from the name, cleaner fish strip other fish clean of harmful and parasitic organisms on their bodies. The relationship is considered mutually beneficial. The cleaner fish get food, while the fish that get cleaned are saved from harmful parasites.

The blue streak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus, left above) is one of the many cleaner fish around. However, the false cleanerfish (Aspidontus tractus, right above) has evolved to look like the blue streak cleaner wrasse. Both fish look and behave so similarly that they are hard to tell apart.

The false cleanerfish runs fake cleaner stations about a meter away from the blue streak cleaner wrasse’s real ones. Sometimes, it even has a couple of real cleaner wrasses around just to appear more convincing. When an unsuspecting fish comes in, the false cleanerfish pretends to be cleaning before biting off a chunk and darting away.^[6]

4 Pit Vipers And Hawk Moth Caterpillars

Hemeroplanes triptolemus is a hawk moth that lives in the forests of Central America. The caterpillar of the species is capable of mimicking pit vipers to send would-be predators fleeing. When threatened, the caterpillar faces the aggressor as a true pit viper would. Then it withdraws its legs and extends the front of its body in such a way that it puffs up to resemble the head of a pit viper.

To complete the mimicry, the caterpillar mimics viper-like curves, scales, and eyes. For lifelike effects, it also throws jabs like a real viper. The appearance is so convincing that it even fools humans. Birds and other caterpillars trying to eat this caterpillar don’t hang around long enough to wonder where the rest of the “viper’s” body went.^[7]

3 Common Wasps And Marmalade Hoverflies

The marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) is often confused with the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris, also called the common yellow-jacket) because of their similar body coloration. Both have black and yellow markings, which make them indistinguishable to their predators and even humans. They look so alike that quite a few people screamed and fled when marmalade hoverflies swarmed several British beaches in 2004.

The common wasp got the color first. The marmalade hoverfly is the copycat. Wasps are generally feared for their painful stings. In humans, those stings can cause anaphylactic shock, which can lead to death. The marmalade hoverfly is harmless but mimics the wasps for protection against its many predators, including birds.

There are differences between the common wasp and the marmalade hoverfly despite their extensive similarities. Wasps have four wings, while hoverflies have just two. Wasps also have waists in between their thoraxes and abdomens, while marmalade hoverflies have none. Hoverflies also tend to fly sideways, which wasps rarely do.^[8]

2 Flesh Flies And Fly-Mimicking Weevils

As you should have guessed, the aptly named fly-mimicking weevil (Timorus sarcophagoides) is weevil that looks like a fly, specificity flesh flies from the Sarcophagidae family. The weevils’ body coloration and markings are similar to the flies’. They also have two large reddish dots on their thorax that look like the eyes of a fly.

The fly-mimicking weevil executes the mimicry so well that it even moves and rubs its legs together as flesh flies do. The idea is to trick potential predators into believing they are flesh flies.

You see, flesh flies are very fast, and birds generally avoid chasing after them because they are difficult to catch. The fly-mimicking weevil is much slower, so the disguise is necessary to make the birds think they are not easy prey. As a result, potential predators just move on to invest their time on other, “slower” insects.

However, the ruse does not always work on entomologists, who will often want to inspect the weevil. The weevil quickly realizes the game is up and just retracts its legs and rolls over until it falls to the ground, pretending to be dead. A very clever insect we have here.^[9]

1 Nymphister Kronaueri Masquerades As Part Of An Army Ant

Some new creature always pops up whenever we think we’ve seen it all. What do we make of the so-called ant lovers (aka myrmecophiles), a group of organisms that just love to hang around ants? Scientists are not sure why they do, but they think it has a lot to do with the fact that ants are good at finding food.

Nymphister kronaueri is one of these ant lovers. The beetle attaches itself in between the thorax and abdomen of army ants without being noticed. The beetle gets a free ride, along with the free food it probably already receives from the ants. Scientists have also observed that the beetle prefers to attach itself to the bodies of medium-sized ants. They do not know why but think it has to do with N. kronaueri wanting to trick the ant into thinking it is actually a part of the ant’s abdomen.^[10]

We may not think about it a lot, but it’s almost magical that we can give birth to a whole new person all on our own. (Or, at least half of us can.) Pregnancy is a marvel of evolution and a pretty handy way to continue the survival of our species without having to rely on external factors. Imagine, say, having to depend on a bee to take your DNA to another person just so you could reproduce.

Despite being such an integral part of human life, though, there are still many interesting and lesser-known facts about pregnancy that come as a surprise to many. Here, we count down ten of the best of them so you don’t have to.

10 Triple-Parent Trials

We generally assume that the maximum and minimum number of people required for a pregnancy is two. Even if modern medical technology has made it possible to get your eggs fertilized by a sperm donor, we still need at least two people to make it happen and no more.

Some recent scientific trials, however, are out to challenge that assumption by using three people to make a baby, rather than the traditional two. While we’ve known that it’s theoretically possible for quite some time now, it was more in the realm of science fiction until the 2010s.

Known as mitochondrial replacement therapy, the procedure entails using mitochondria (and thus mitochondrial DNA) from a third parent to eliminate chances of a serious mitochondrial disease. The procedure has been mired in controversy due to its ethical implications, especially in the US, but a number of countries around the world are now going ahead with trials.^[1]

9 The 17-Month Pregnancy

As we all know, the average amount of time women remain pregnant falls somewhere in the vicinity of nine months. It’s not a precise number, and childbirth may be premature or delayed depending on specific circumstances, though the deviation is rarely more than one month, give or take.

A woman in China called Wang Shi was having none of that and decided to challenge nature itself by staying pregnant for 17 months (or so it was claimed by the People’s Daily). While pregnant, she was diagnosed with a condition called placenta previa, in which the placenta remains underdeveloped for an abnormal amount of time, delaying the delivery date. There have been other cases of the condition in the past, but none of them got stretched out to as long as 17 months. Surprisingly (and fortunately) the baby, born in August 2016, was healthy, with no underlying conditions due to the delay in birth.^[2]

8 Men Experience Effects Of Pregnancy As Well

Pregnancy is often thought of as a strictly female endeavor, even if men are involved in making it happen to a great extent. Once the baby is conceived, though, men have little biological role to play in the whole thing, unless you count providing emotional support to their partners.

According to some research, though, men may experience physical symptoms when their partner is pregnant, a condition known as sympathetic pregnancy. They could develop symptoms like nausea, abdominal pain, cramps, toothaches, and backaches during their partner’s pregnancy. Even if doctors and researchers have noticed this phenomenon for quite some time now, science doesn’t quite understand it. While it’s not a medically recognized medical condition at the moment, research into why it happens at all is still going on.^[3]

7 Taller Women Are More Likely To Birth Twins

The chances of giving birth to twins (or greater numbers of babies) are fairly slim. We currently have no way to directly control how many kids we have in one birth. If we did, many people would still choose to have only one, as every additional kid translates to added cost and responsibility (even if we’re sure parents of twins love them both equally).

As it turns out, though, there is at least one proven factor that could influence whether you have twins or not: being tall—at least for women. According to one study, taller women have a higher chance of conceiving twins. On that note, another study suggests that women who consume dairy products are five times more likely to have twins.^[4]

6 Double Pregnancy

You might think that the greatest number of pregnancies a woman can have at any given time is one, as that’s what science has told us. People certainly don’t continue to take contraceptives when they’re expecting, as they don’t expect another pregnancy to take place when one is already going on.

While that’s still largely true, there have been rare cases in which women got pregnant when they were already pregnant. You see, when a woman gets pregnant, her body is supposed to switch off ovulation to provide the unborn baby with all the resources it can get. A plug of mucus in the cervix should also prevent more sperm from getting into the uterus, the thickened lining of which should be difficult for another fertilized egg to attach to. In rare cases, though, those mechanisms don’t work for one reason or another, resulting in double pregnancy. Why exactly it happens is still a mystery, and more research is required to determine whether it’s due to some medical abnormality or just the female body feeling like doing something adventurous once in a while.^[5]

5 Orgasms During Childbirth As Painkillers

The female orgasm is one of the most mysterious parts of human sexuality, and we still have little idea about why it exists at all. It’s not always related to sex, either, as women have been known to orgasm from seemingly mundane things such as exercise, further deepening the mystery.

What most of us don’t know, though, is that some women experience an orgasm during childbirth, which may as well be the last place you’d expect it to happen. We still don’t quite get why it occurs, though instead of brooding on the mystery, some women in recent times have chosen to employ orgasms to dull the pain of childbirth.^[6]

Admittedly, it does involve some awkward maneuvers (e.g. masturbating during labor), but at least it helps with the overwhelming pain of delivery.

4 Pregnancy Causes Memory Problems

As many women who’ve been pregnant can tell you, it comes with its share of memory issues. Pregnant women are known to regularly forget where they’re going and to just generally space out while doing everyday things. What gives?

According to science, there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for it. Studies suggest that the hormones released during pregnancy may cause the brain to change in ways we don’t understand, and one of the effects is memory problems. While they can’t tell exactly which hormones are responsible for it—or why it happens at all—pregnant women have been found to be much worse at spatial memory tests than others. They also had higher anxiety levels and lower mood. To be clear, memory issues don’t affect all pregnant women, but the effects are especially pronounced among women who do experience them.^[7]

3 Nipple Stimulation For Inducing Labor

Listen to old wives’ tales or just search through the Internet, and you’ll find a lot of advice on how to manually induce labor in the last stages of a pregnancy. It may range from the intuitive “just have sex” to the absurd “eat a lemon,” depending on the veracity of the source you’re looking up.

As of now, though, there are very few scientifically proven ways to induce labor that we know of. One of them is stimulating the nipples. Much like most of this list, we’re not quite sure why it happens, as larger-scale studies are required to effectively understand the mechanisms behind it. A 2018 study by researchers in Japan found that late-stage pregnant women who stimulated their nipples for a total of one hour per day for three days had higher levels of oxytocin in their saliva.^[8] A bit over a third of them gave birth within 72 hours of the study.

2 The Baby Strengthens The Mother

A woman’s role as a mother starts long before the actual birth. Over a period of around nine months, her body makes sure that the baby has all the nutrients and immunity it requires before coming into the world, and everything that happens to it in the womb has longstanding effects on the baby’s subsequent life.

Their relationship isn’t exactly one-sided, though, as the baby also helps the mother in a variety of ways. For one, it activates the previously dormant parts of the body (like the mammary glands). More importantly, the baby also occasionally sends stem cells to repair damaged tissues and injuries for the mother, something that was suspected but not proven until recently.

Some research suggests that the fetal cells that get into the mother’s bloodstream may remain there for the rest of the mother’s life.^[9]

1 Babies Practice Emotions In The Womb

Thanks to evolution, our faces are incredibly good at expressing a wide variety of emotions through expressions. Facial features like the eyebrows, eyes, lips, and nose are capable of lending nuance to even the simplest of emotions, something we don’t think of in our day-to-day lives. Most of us may think that we learn how to control them a bit later in life, though according to one research, it all starts in the womb.

A study done by researchers from Durham showed that unborn babies are capable of making a lot of facial expressions in the womb, from the simple laughing and crying to the more complex nose wrinkling. It may be because they’re actually feeling those emotions, but the researchers believe that it’s actually the brain’s inbuilt mechanism to learn how to express various emotions once they’re born.^[10]

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

Movies are our windows into what could be instead of what is. That’s why we tolerate so many exaggerations and creative liberties in them because films would get boring quite fast if they were accurate about everything.

It’s a problem, though, when some of these oft-repeated misconceptions in movies are so prevalent that people start believing them as fact. They don’t just affect our perception of the world but also create issues during real-time crisis situations in some extreme cases.

10 That’s Not How Chloroform Works

Chloroform is portrayed as the ultimate weapon to instantly knock someone out in almost every movie in which it’s featured. No matter how scientifically accurate the rest of the movie is, writers often fail to research this misunderstood chemical.

In reality, chloroform doesn’t work like that. While it’s true that it’s incredibly good at knocking someone out—even in small doses—it doesn’t do it instantly. Even at higher doses, chloroform takes at least five minutes to be effective.

A couple of drops of it on a handkerchief—like they do it in movies—is certainly not a high dose. It’s also not usually used for criminal activities. Chloroform has many worthwhile properties—like being an anesthetic—which have been used throughout the years.^[1]

9 Amber Can’t Hold DNA For So Long

Even if this one is too specific to show up in many movies (as we’ve only see it in Jurassic Park), enough people believe it for us to include it here. Thanks to that movie, we think that DNA can survive over millennia if it’s preserved in amber (or any other type of rock) and can be used to revive prehistoric animals if needed.

While DNA can survive in certain mediums, it certainly can’t stay long enough for us to still have dinosaur DNA. Sure, we can probably hope to obtain, say, mammoth DNA trapped in Siberian ice. But that’s only because the mammoth existed a lot more recently than dinosaurs.

It’s so widely believed that a team of researchers had to conduct a study to debunk it. However, thanks to Jurassic Park, the myth refuses to die out.^[2]

8 Cops Don’t Have To Read You Rights While Handcuffing You

Whenever an arrest is made in TV shows or movies—at least the ones based in the US—the cops always make it a point to read a Miranda warning (“you have the right to remain silent,” etc.) to the unlucky suspect. For the people who’ve never been arrested in real life, this may seem like the way they do it. But that’s not the case.

Although it’s true that cops have to read you your rights at some point after you’re arrested, it’s almost never done at the time they handcuff you. Your Miranda rights are usually read to you after they’ve taken you into custody and are preparing for the interrogation—or at some other point during the arrest.^[3]

Just see any real video of a cop making an arrest and you’ll know what we’re talking about.

7 Meteors Are Actually Freezing Cold

Movies about meteors crashing into Earth and causing an apocalypse are rarer now than the time preceding the 2012 end-time scare. Still, this one shows up in many films that have been made on the subject, with the worst culprit being Deep Impact.

Although we think that all meteors that make it to Earth’s surface are seething hot and burning, most aren’t big enough to cause a global problem. If you know anything about space, then you realize that meteors are actually freezing cold in nature.

The burning trail we see in the sky surrounding the meteor is the air catching fire around it. The meteor itself stays as cold as it was before entering the atmosphere.^[4]

6 No Gunshot Can Knock You Off Your Feet

We’d probably let this one slide a bit as it does look quite dramatic and awesome on-screen. However, it propagates a faulty idea of how guns are supposed to work, which is never a good thing. Gunshots in movies are often enough to knock someone back, which sounds intuitive as bullets have a large amount of momentum.

In reality, if a gun were able to do that, it would exert an equal amount of force on the shooter. That’s true for all guns regardless of their type and caliber. It’s just a fundamental rule of physics. If movies were to accurately portray that, they would end up with unintentionally hilarious scenes of shooters getting knocked back along with their victims.^[5]

5 You Don’t Always Get One Phone Call On Arrest

We’re not sure if scriptwriters aren’t arrested that often or if they don’t use Google a lot, but many movies and TV shows portray suspects getting one phone call when they’re arrested.

In reality, there’s no rule about how many phone calls you can make while in police custody. You may not be able to call anyone if the crime you’ve committed is serious enough and the interrogators believe that calling someone may jeopardize their investigation.

Conversely, you can also get more than one call depending on the severity and location of the crime and arrest. No matter how many calls you get, though, it’s almost never one.^[6]

4 Dual-Wielding Guns (Or Any Weapons) Are Impractical

Action movies of the 1980s and ’90s would look very different without badass heroes dual-wielding a wide variety of guns in their various fights. It stands to reason that two is always better than one, and you’d think that two guns would have more bullets and could be used to inflict more damage.

As it turns out, dual-wielding anything—let alone guns—is hugely impractical and actually reduces your overall chances of landing a hit. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have two guns lying around and a diabolical villain to defeat, you’re better off just picking one weapon.^[7]

The effective number of bullets and accuracy is higher with one gun. This gives you more of a chance to kill the bad guy before he murders you.

3 You Can’t Pull A Grenade Pin With Your Teeth

There are quite a few myths surrounding grenades in movies. But we’ll focus on how films show that pulling the pin off a grenade with your teeth before throwing it is somehow a thing people can do. In real life, that’s not how these weapons work.

As grenades are full of shrapnel that can incapacitate—and even kill if close enough—the targets, their pins are specifically designed not to come off easily. It also depends on the grenade.

While some types of grenade pins are spread out wide, others require quite a bit of twisting and turning. In almost all cases, pulling the pins with your teeth will end up with you not having teeth anymore.^[8]

2 Quicksand Isn’t An Automatic Death Sentence

Accidentally falling into quicksand without any help around is considered a sure way to die if movies are to be believed. This is one of those myths that can cause problems in real life as people stuck in quicksand often panic and end up making things worse for themselves than they would if they knew how quicksand works.^[9]

In essence, quicksand is just mud mixed with water (and clay in some cases). It can get a bit gooey and spoil your clothes if you fall into it. That’s mostly the only risk it poses, though, as most types of quicksand allow you to float free once you’re about waist-deep in it. You don’t have to believe us, either, as it was proven in a study published in Nature.

1 Sharks’ Sense Of Smell Has Been Massively Exaggerated

We’re not sure who’s the real culprit behind this one—movies or viral science pages on Facebook. However, Jaws did a lot to cement this myth in popular imagination before it had a chance to be debunked. We’ve all heard of some version of “sharks can smell a drop of blood from miles away,” which has probably contributed to many people’s acute phobia of them.

Now we’re not saying that sharks have a bad sense of smell. It’s actually quite keen. But it’s just not as good as we thought it was. All the studies conducted on the subject suggest that sharks can, at most, smell a drop of blood across an Olympic-sized swimming pool.^[10]

It also depends on what they’re smelling as their range drops off considerably if it’s a denser liquid. Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that sharks cannot smell anything across miles of ocean.

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

Plagiarism, passing off other people’s words and ideas as your own or failing to properly attribute other people’s contributions to your work, is, it seems, almost as old as writing itself. The first documented case of plagiarism concerned the poet Martial in the first century AD. Martial was incensed that other poets were using his words without his permission and wrote to a suspected plagiarist:

If you’re willing that they be called mine, I’ll send you the poems for free.
If you want them to be called yours, buy this one, so that they won’t be mine.^[1]

Despite ever more sophisticated means of detecting plagiarism, writers, journalists, and presidential hopefuls still keep trying to get away with it. Here are ten who didn’t.

10 The Romance Novelist

Cristiane Serruya was a “bestselling” romance novelist when she was accused in 2019 of plagiarizing not one but dozens of other authors. It was said that she copied passages word-for-word from other novels.

Her plagiarism was first spotted by Courtney Milan, who recognized her own work and posted about it on her blog, after which several other authors also spotted their words among the pages of Serruya’s books and began to tweet about their discoveries. It soon created a frenzy, with authors and readers combing through her books to find examples of plagiarism.

Cristiane Serruya had been a successful lawyer for over 20 years in Brazil before leaving to take up writing because, she said, she loved to write. She had published 30 novels in less than seven years, which is impressive. Normally.

Rather than denying the plagiarism, Serruya took the unusual step of blaming the ghostwriter who she had hired for $5 an hour, which did not improve her standing in the writing community. She soon shut down her Twitter account and her website. Her books, however, remained on sale, though many are listed as “not currently available.”

Despite the large amount of evidence that her work was plagiarized, there was little that any of the affected writers could do, given the costs of bringing a lawsuit against a person in another country.^[2]

9 The Chick Lit Author

In 2006, at the age of 18, Kaavya Viswanathan published her debut novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, which seemed a great achievement. Viswanathan was a Harvard undergraduate, while her main character was a bright girl who was desperate to get into Harvard. The tagline of the book was “How far would you go for that one thing you’ve always wanted?”^[3]

The answer became clear very soon after publication. The book quickly climbed the bestseller charts, which also included a similar novel by Megan McCafferty about an aspirational young woman. This inevitably drew comparisons, which was unfortunate, since closer inspection showed that Viswanathan had lifted large sections of McCafferty’s book. Journalists at The New York Times found at least 29 passages that were “strikingly similar.”

When challenged, Kaavya Viswanathan admitted “unconscious plagiarism.” The book, which had attracted a $500,000 advance, was soon withdrawn by the publishers. However, the scandal doesn’t seem to have done Viswanathan any harm. She moved swiftly on to a new career. In the law.

8 The Classicist

Plagiarism isn’t a new thing, but in 1747, William Lauder managed to put a twist on it that few have repeated to this day.

Lauder was a classical scholar at Edinburgh University but was, it is said, bitter about his lack of public recognition. He came up with a cunning plan to secure his reputation by matching his wit against John Milton, celebrated author of Paradise Lost.^[4]

He wrote a series of essays “proving” that the great epic poem was a plagiarized work, full of stolen quotations. He expected that his reputation as a classical scholar would be made by the articles. In order to “prove” his theory, he inserted lines from Paradise Lost into the Latin translations of older works, hoping that this would convince people that Milton had stolen them.

So, in trying to prove that Milton was a plagiarist, he plagiarized Milton’s work and attributed it to earlier writers. What he didn’t take into consideration, of course, was that the original versions did not contain these extra lines, and the fraud was soon detected. Lauder was forced to confess and apologize, though he later tried to pass the affair off as a joke.

It did little for his career as a scholar, however, and he was forced to abandon academia to become a shopkeeper in the West Indies.

7 The Historian

Historian Stephen Ambrose was already a bestselling nonfiction writer when he published his new book about a World War II bomber pilot, so when another historian recognized passages from his own work, it was assumed to be a mistake. Ambrose had credited the other writer in his footnotes but had failed to add quotation marks around his writing, thus making it look like his own. A simple mistake, surely. Ambrose apologized, and the other writer accepted the apology.

However, the incident caused writers at Forbes magazine to dig a little deeper. They found several more passages, by other writers, in the book, as well as the same pattern of “misattribution” in his previous works, too. Ambrose was a little less apologetic when these “mistakes” came to light, saying, “If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I want to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people’s writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote.”^[5]

After the historian’s death in 2002, it was alleged that his most famous work, a biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, was based on fabricated interviews and invented meetings. He claimed to have spent “hundreds and hundreds of hours” with the former president, working in Eisenhower’s office two days a week. The evidence suggests, however, that they met for a maximum of around five hours. On several occasions when Ambrose claimed they were meeting in his office, Eisenhower was actually somewhere else entirely.

Oh dear.

6 The Doctoral Candidate

Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man. It seems, however, that he may not have been a great scholar. In 1990, it was revealed that he had plagiarized “substantial parts” of his doctoral thesis, entitled “A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” The historian who had been appointed to manage the large collection of documents left by the civil rights leader, admitted, reluctantly, that his researchers had uncovered ideas, sentences, and entire passages taken from other sources without acknowledgement.

Normally, when a thesis has been proven to be plagiarized, the university concerned will remove the offending work from their library. However, for obvious reasons, Dr. King’s thesis is still available to view at Boston University, and, though a panel of academics met to discuss the matter, they voted not to strip him of his doctorate.

Dr. King is also alleged to have plagiarized his most famous “I Have a Dream” speech from another political writer, Archibald Carey Jr. There are passages of striking similarity.^[6] However, whether or not Carey said it first, Martin Luther King certainly said it best, and his speech had an impact on an entire generation.

5 The Conservationist

Jane Goodall is one of the world’s leading primatologists and had published a number of books on apes when she took a literary detour and wrote a book on plants in the early 2010s. A reviewer for The Washington Post recognized portions of the book and, after some investigation, published an article alleging there were at least 12 sections of the book that had been lifted directly from websites, including Wikipedia.

It was not only the lack of attribution that caused concern. Many of the sources were deemed to be of poor quality, including one which appears to have been taken directly from the sales pitch of a website that advertises organic tea.

Goodall blamed her “chaotic method of note taking” for the error, saying, “I’m not methodical enough, I guess.” She admitted to not citing her sources correctly.^[7] She promised to correct the errors in the second edition and promised to post an explanation on her blog, though commentators seemed to wait in vain for it to arrive.

Perhaps she is still checking her facts.

4 The Kid

Is plagiarism ever excusable? Well, maybe sometimes. Helen Keller was a blind and deaf 11-year-old when she wrote a story called “The Frost King.” It was published in a school magazine and then republished in a journal for deaf-blind educators.

Shortly afterward, it was discovered that the story strongly resembled a previously published work, The Frost Fairies. Keller, who went on to an extremely successful career as a writer, told the story of how it happened in her autobiography. She said she did not remember having read Frost Fairies, and she had never owned the book, but through questioning her friends and family, she finally discovered that she may have read the book while staying with a friend.^[8]

She was “tried” in a school “court,” and after a long interrogation, the jurors were split 50/50 on whether she had intentionally plagiarized the story or whether she had been subject to “cryptomnesia,” where a memory is confused with original thought. The tie-breaking vote went in her favor, and she was “acquitted.” The experience was understandably traumatic for such a young author, and she said that she gave up writing fiction afterward because she had difficulty distinguishing her own ideas from recalled memories.

In 1903, Mark Twain wrote to Helen Keller to praise her writing and to lend his support against the accusations of plagiarism, saying, “As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism!” He maintained that art is theft and that he had himself unintentionally plagiarized the words of others, as, he was sure, had the “gang of dull and hoary pirates” who had presided at her trial, “piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they’ve caught filching a chop!”

Well said, Mr Twain.

3 The Young Pretender

Helene Hegemann was only 17 when she published her debut novel and took the German literary world by storm. The novel was nominated for awards, and critics praised its gritty realism. Hegemann was invited on chat shows and featured in dozens of magazines. She was riding high.

And then a blogger pointed out its similarity to a previously published novel. Further scrutiny brought to light more examples from other writers. There was even a suggestion that the book had not been written by her at all but by her father, which she denied.^[9]

Far from being apologetic, however, Hegemann defended herself, saying, “There is no such thing as originality anyway, there is just authenticity.” And she may have had a point, since one of the disputed passages had been lifted from from an author who had lifted it from the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who had himself admitted to lifting it from Jean-Luc Goddard. (Who knows where Goddard stole it from.)

Hegemann’s publishers denied that it was plagiarism and called it “intertextuality.” That, apparently, is okay.

2 The Journalist

Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, wrote a book entitled Merchants of Truth about the “state of modern media,” decrying low-quality journalism with its low truth threshold. Surely, she was exempt from accusations of plagiarism?

Apparently not.

It was claimed in 2019 that there were at least six examples of material from other writers being used without being properly attributed, as well as quotes which gave the impression that Abramson had spoken to people who she had not. Jill Abramson maintained that she did not plagiarize any parts of the book but that she “took the allegations seriously.” Her publishers maintained that the book was “meticulously sourced,” but, if changes were necessary, “We stand ready to work with the author in making those revisions.”^[10]

Unequivocal support there.

Abramson, who was a lecturer in journalism at Harvard, blamed the errors on her note-taking, saying that the notes didn’t “match up.” She did, eventually, acknowledge some failures in attribution but suggested that they were only minor and not intentional—the sort of mistake that any Harvard lecturer of journalism might make.

1 The Folklorist

Alex Haley, the author of the massively acclaimed Roots, was famous all over the world for his book about slavery. Published in 1976, Roots was an immediate bestseller, was made into a highly successful TV miniseries, and even won a Pulitzer Prize.

Some questions had been raised about the factual basis of the book, which purported to be an account of the author’s ancestor and his journey from the Gambia to America as a slave. Haley was forced to admit that some parts of his book were fictionalized but denied that he had knowingly made any factual errors. He defended the book as “a symbolic history of a people.”

Haley had already been sued for plagiarism, a case which he won, by a well-respected writer who claimed that large portions of her book had been stolen. The judge in that case had ruled that there were only “insignificant similarities.” As soon as the first case was settled, however, Haley was hit with a second lawsuit, this time from Harold Courlander, who had written The African, which was certainly a work of fiction, since Courlander was white.

At the beginning of the trial, the judge encouraged Haley to settle, which is never an encouraging start. The defense, however, refused, so the case proceeded. Testifying in his own defense, Haley denied that he had taken any of the plot or the characters from Courlander’s book and that Roots was “the story of [his] own maternal family” through seven generations, which seems pretty definite.

He also stated that he had never heard of Courlander’s book until after Roots had been published but did acknowledge that three short passages had somehow made it from Courlander’s work into his. Asked to explain this, Haley said that “someone must have given them to [him]” when he was doing his research. He had used student volunteers to go through material for him, one of whom must have given him the passages.

After six weeks, Alex Haley finally decided to take the judge’s advice, and he settled the suit with Harold Courlander for an undisclosed amount.

Unfortunately for Haley, the suit was only the beginning of his troubles. It caused researchers to look into “the story of his maternal family,” and they found that there was very little evidence for much of the story and that it was “highly unlikely” that he would have managed to find the exact village where his ancestor Kunta Kinte was born. Haley presented the work as a historical document, rather than a novel, which permanently damaged his reputation.^[11]