15 COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS THAT MOST PEOPLE STILL BELIEVE TO BE TRUE (part ||)
8. Daddy Longlegs Are the Most Venomous Spiders in the World but Their Mouths Are Too Small to Bite Humans
A widespread myth claims that daddy longlegs are the world’s most venomous spiders and that the only reason we humans are safe from them is because their fangs are too small and weak to break through our skin. But it turns out that assumption is incorrect on both accounts. Daddy longlegs typically live in dark, moist places and feed mainly on rotting vegetable and animal matter. They don’t have fangs or venom glands, therefore they could never poison something as large as a person. However, it is worth mentioning that some daddy longlegs can produce defensive secretions that could be poisonous to very small animals if ingested.
7. You Can Catch a Cold From Cold Weather
Why is winter known as the cold season? It’s a common observation that when the weather gets cold outside, people tend to get sick more. But this doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual temperature outside, rather, it’s related to the way we behave when the temperature drops. According to Dr. Sorana Segal-Maurer of the Division of Infectious Disease at New York Hospital Queens, when the weather turns cold we all run indoors where we remain in close quarters and breathe recycled air that likely has a higher concentration of viruses than it would in the summer months. The dry, cold conditions also make it easier for viruses to spread from person to person.
6. Rabbits Love Carrots
Like humans, rabbits like to eat a wide variety of foods, but for some strange reason there are a lot of people who think they’d be perfectly happy living off nothing but carrots. The reality is rabbits don’t eat root vegetables of any kind in the wild, meaning carrots were never actually a part of their natural diet.
In 2012, the RSPCA even found that feeding your pet bunny carrots can have a negative effect on their health because it can lead to tooth decay and digestive problems.
So if rabbits don’t really eat carrots, where the heck did that notion come from in the first place? As it would happen, all evidence points towards Bugs Bunny.
5. Different Parts of Your Tongue Sense Different Tastes
In school many of us were taught that our tongues have different areas that contain specific taste receptors that are sensitive to sweet, sour, salty or bitter foods. Now scientists say that lesson was all a lie. They’ve discovered that each of the several thousand sensors on our tongue can recognize any of those tastes and it’s really the way our brain interprets the information that determines how things taste rather than what part of our tongue the food touches.
4. Eating a Lot of Sugar Will Give You an Energy Rush
Lots of parents will swear that a single piece of birthday cake will transform their child from an obedient little angel into a wild frosting-faced animal that bounces around the room and screams at the top of their lungs. But according to a double-blind research study conducted in 1994, eating a lot of sugar doesn’t affect kids’ behavior or cognitive skills. There is something that does change when children are seen gobbling up a lot of sugar though, their parents’ expectations.
In a separate study it was found that any parent who thought their kid had just had a sugar fix was more likely to report the child as being hyperactive, even if the supposed sugar fix was just a placebo.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should just give your kids all the sugar they want now, there are still plenty of good reasons to moderate sugary treats—fear of turning them into crazy little sugar monsters just isn’t one of them.
3. Undercover Police Officers Have to Identify Themselves if You Ask Them
This is actually a big misconception. Any law requiring and undercover police officer to identify themselves would put them in danger. An undercover cop is only required to identify themselves if they are taking some sort of legal action against you. Otherwise, officers are permitted to lie when interrogating someone as long as the deception doesn’t force an innocent person to confess to crimes they didn’t commit. For this reason, many jurisdictions require interrogations to be recorded.
An example of a legal lie would be if an officer told a suspect that he has a video tape of the crime in question being committed. Since an innocent person would have nothing to fear given this knowledge, it’s of no concern to them. However, a guilty suspect would probably be worried if the police had him on tape committing the crime, so it could solicit a confession.
2. You Only Use 10 Percent of Your Brain
This is one of the most annoying misconceptions that always seems to pop up in Hollywood science fiction films, where some normal person takes a wonder drug or undergoes a procedure that allows them to use a larger percentage of their brain—instantly gifting them with superhuman abilities. This perpetuated notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be “activated,” is wholly the domain of urban legend. Though there are still enough mysteries concerning the brain that haven’t yet been solved, the physiology of brain mapping indicates that all areas of the brain have a function, they’re just not all operational at the same time. And if they were, you’d probably be experiencing a nasty seizure.
1. You Were The Fastest Sperm
In the case of sperm, it’s been a long-held belief that the fastest swimmers have the best chances of fertilizing the egg. However, recent research has now proved that idea to be nothing more than a myth.
Using fruit flies, a team of researchers at Syracuse University was able to monitor sperm in real time as it made its way through the female reproductive tract. They noticed that sperm from each mating period would swim through the female bursa into the storage area and remain there until the eggs were released. It is in the storage area where the sperm fight it out to see who gets to fertilize the egg. After each mating period, new sperm will try to get rid of the sperm from previous mating sessions. The female will then eject the displaced sperm, eliminating them from the mating game. Interestingly, it was also noted that the longer slow-moving sperm were better at replacing their rivals, which had the effect of making them less likely to be ejected from the storage area when compared to their faster moving counterparts.
According to the scientist, the discovery that slower moving sperm possess this sort of advantage seems very counterintuitive.
