Grossopedia: A Startling Collection of Repulsive Trivia You Won’t Want to Know!

Be an Expert!Vultures have bald heads so that they don’t collect blood and bits of dead flesh in their feathers after they poke around inside a carcass.

This Means War

The Portuguese man-of-war looks like a jellyfish, but it’s actually a colony of invertebrates all clumped together. The tentacles can extend down to as much as 165 feet underwater. If that’s not scary enough, washed-up dead men-of-war have still been known to sting people!

One-Stop Shopping

The chicken is an efficient little animal. Its underside has only one hole, and all these things come out of it: eggs, poop, and pee. (Sperm travels through the same shoot—opposite direction.) Here’s hoping there aren’t any traffic jams!

IN THE KNOW

Zoophobia: this one’s easy to remember, as it means fear of animals. We’re all scared of tigers or snakes that might kill us, and that’s a good thing. A zoophobic is the friend whose heart starts pounding when your mini poodle wakes up from his nap.

Squirmy Worms

Pinworms grow in your intestines and are very contagious. Can you guess which part of your body they come out of? Think for a minute. The intestines lead to…your butt—which means that the worms may show up in your underwear or in the toilet if you get infected. They are little white stringlike fellows less than half an inch long. The females go to work while you are asleep, planting thousands of eggs around your butt skin. You’ll start to itch, but it’s best not to scratch. There are effective medications, but it can take quite a while to completely wipe out an infestation. Washing your hands is the best prevention.

Trippy Fish

When snorkeling off the coast of Florida, don’t be drawn in by a piranha’s beguiling smile. These river beasts can easily rip off skin with their teeth. Its African relative, the Goliath tigerfish, has even been known to eat crocodiles.

IN THE KNOW

Herpetophobia: fear of reptiles, especially lizards and snakes

Lots of Snot

As gross animals go, giraffes don’t even rank, except for their 18-inch tongues, which work double duty by chewing leaves and giving their nostrils a clean sweep. Ever heard of touching your tongue with your nose? These guys keep riding right on inside and then stay awhile.

Two Heads Are Better than One

On various occasions, unusual snakes, calves, and turtles have all appeared with two heads on one body. There was once even a calf born with eight legs and two tails, although it did at least have the decency to limit his head count to one. On the other hand, the two-headed blind Brazilian snake has only one cranium, along with a misleading tail that also resembles one. Turns out the reptile’s not blind, either; however it can move in either direction—heads or tails.

Did You Know?The famed horny toad, celebrated outdoor pet of many a Texas child, is really a lizard. But that’s not the exciting part. These lizards can squirt blood from their eyes!

Porta-Umbrella

Shower much? An alligator in British Guiana once grew a tree on its back. At least he didn’t have to look for a shady spot to rest.

Did You Know?In the United Kingdom, skunks are occasionally domesticated (kept as house pets). Since 2006, taking out their scent glands is against the law, so think twice before bringing one home and letting him sleep in your bed. These gentle creatures, who eat seeds, berries, fruit, and insects, will issue a warning before spraying in self-defense, however. So if you see a raised tail, run the other way.

Smell You Later

We’ve all seen it happen. We may look away and pretend we don’t notice, just like we do when our math teacher has his fly down. But still, we have to ask the question: Why do dogs smell each other’s privates upon initial greeting? As Psychology Today points out, given that dogs can sniff out cocaine and dead bodies, “Why would a dog need to stick his nose directly into another dog’s snout, genitals, and nether regions to garner social information? Couldn’t he do that at a ‘safer’ distance?” The answer to this is inconclusive, as dog experts don’t agree on this rather boorish behavior. Some say a face-to-face greeting can be seen as confrontational, while others say canines collect more information from going where no man dares to go.

Did You Know?Dogs are champion smellers. Compared to the measly five percent of your brain devoted to figuring out that you stepped in something other than mud, at least a third of a dog’s brain is dedicated to olfactory stuff.

IN THE KNOW

Olfactory: it sounds like something you’d find in an abandoned mill town, but olfactory actually means having to do with your sense of smell, from the Latin olfacere (to smell).

Bite-Size Reptile

A rattlesnake was no match for Rodney Fluery, who, in 1971, killed one by biting it.

Prehistoric Horror

The 2007 discovery of a fossilized giant scorpion claw has led scientists to believe that spiders and other objects of our disgust had been even bigger than previously believed. As Dr. Simon Braddy from the University of Bristol put it, “This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were. We think the claws on this creature would have been powerful enough to rip someone to shreds.”

Glow in the Dark

Scorpions can glow in the dark. If you have an ultraviolet light, you’ll be able to see them. They’re also poisonous, though—so stand at a good distance. We’d rather stand as far as possible away—maybe even light years away—by gazing safely at the Scorpio constellation in the night sky. (If you’re more adventurous, maybe you’d like to taste one. See Score for Scorpion Lovers (#ulink_da5d7291-77c2-515a-96f1-bfcd7357d306))

Sea Cucumber

Such a harmless name, and some people do eat them, but it’s what they eat that’s rather disturbing: a mixture of dead animal matter and feces. They’re also called sea slugs—even less appealing, isn’t it?

Dining in

A hagfish eats its prey from the inside out (by slipping inside through the prey’s mouth or any other opening that’s big enough). It also has a rather interesting way of protecting itself: it produces slime that chokes its predators.

The Big Gulp

Have you ever used the term “big mouth” for a friend who can’t keep secrets? Well, he or she probably has nothing on the gulper eel—his entire head is basically one huge chomper.

Did You Know?Hippos fling around their own poop and pee with their tails, to mark their territories and show others who is boss. Couldn’t they just get one of those corny mugs with the words “World’s Greatest Boss”?

Ocean Whopper

In the Bible, Jonah spends three days inside the belly of a whale. Finally God ordered the whale to upchuck the prophet. If it had been a blue whale, Jonah could have fit neatly inside a blood vessel. A blue whale’s blood vessels are wider than your entire body!

The Last Supper—as in, the One You Just Had

When a wolf returns to the pack from a solo romp, the other wolves lick its mouth to see if any prey has been captured and eaten. But that’s not the gross part. If any prey is detected, the swallower is supposed to share by regurgitation. Now that’s grossitating! Our guess is that they eat pretty fast at least. The expression “to wolf it down” has to come from somewhere.

It’s Raining Snakes

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a…flying snake! Their official name is chrysopelea, but the truth is, these fellows don’t actually fly. Instead, they crawl to the end of a tree branch and launch. They do a good enough job of gliding by twisting their bodies back and forth between an S and a C shape that they appear to be flying as they make their way down.

Double-Duty Sucker

Octopuses use one of their arms in the process of reproduction. The hectocotylus arm is particularly flexible—that’s the one males use to enter the female cavity and fertilize the eggs. But wait, there’s more. Some kinds of octopuses up the grossness ante by leaving part of that arm behind. The female receives the sperm, along with a sacrificial limb. (The male dies soon after, so perhaps the amputation is not a big a deal in the overall scheme of things.)

“A Giant Mutant Rat” and “The Dead Body under the Christmas Tree”—these headlines are horrible, so why do we keep reading? Blood and gore in black and white—it’s the modern-day version of watching gladiators fight. There’s just some primal hankering in humans for blood and disgust that attracts and repels us at the same time. Kind of like a magnet if the two sides overlapped. But then it wouldn’t be a magnet. Okay, we need a better metaphor here. In the meantime, press on through the weird and terrible stranger-than-fiction truth! And be glad you’re not in print, at least for these stories.

Monster Rat

New York City subways are notoriously rat infested, but Jose Rivera was in for a surprise when he came upon a group of gigantic, mutant white rats in Brooklyn, where he was working for the housing authority. He ended up stabbing and killing one with a pitchfork. A wildlife expert believed the super-size rodent was likely a Gambian pouched rat that had once been a house pet (which, in our estimation, is even weirder than the image of one running loose outside).