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These days, you can immediately verify any fact by looking it up on Google. If you’re savvy enough, you’ll have the truth within a few minutes. But once upon a time, misinformation spread really easily. To this day, there are a ton of “facts” that countless people believe are true, even though they couldn’t be more false.
A Reddit user asked, “What stupid myth do too many people believe?”
The people answered, and let’s just say everyone should read this thread to avoid looking stupid.
1. Frogs don’t jump out of boiling water.
“That if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog won’t try to escape and save itself when the temp gets too high.
Great for illustrating certain points, but completely untrue.”
2. Goldfish live in bowls.
“That goldfish ARE NOT meant to live in bowls! The average goldfish gets about fourteen inches long in proper conditions, and because they’re such dirty animals (they generate ammonia like you wouldn’t believe) they need heavy proper filtration. Yes, you should have 20 gallons per goldfish. That means two goldfish go into a FILTERED forty gallon tank. No, an air pump is not a filter. No, a plant is not a filter. No, you cannot put other tropical fish with your goldfish, because goldfish require lower temperatures (65 degrees Fahrenheit) while tropical fish require higher temperatures (78 degrees Fahrenheit).
Goldfish can live up to 25 years. Putting them in a bowl means you are stunting their growth, but not the growth of their inner organs. They stay 2 inches while their organs keep growing inside of them, which is why they die in 2 years, instead of living to be 25 years old, and over a foot long.
That turned more into a rant than anything but oh well, PSA brought to you by a humble aquatics associate at a pet store.”
3. The Bermuda triangle.
“For any given same-sized sea area there is statistically the same amount of missing ships and planes.
No, it’s not fucking a magically dangerous place.
Grow up.”
4. Gum stays in your stomach for seven years.
“Actual truth is that you shit out a piece of gum within a day or two in case anybody wanted to know.
So yeah… this one is complete bullshit”
5. You can target belly fat.
“Spot reduction of fat.
People think that doing sit-ups will burn fat around your belly area.
How stupid can you be?”
6. Fire sprinklers go off whenever the alarm does.
“They don’t all go off by pulling a fire alarm.
They’re individually heat-activated.”
7. Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis.
“All it is is just gas bubbles popping.
Also some guy did a long term experiment (several decades I think) where he constantly cracked all knuckles in one hand and left the other one alone.
After the experiment was over, they took X-rays and tests to find that both hands were practically identical in terms of condition.”
8. How to cure a snake bite.
“You can suck venom out of a snake bite…..”
“My cat bit a friend who was catsitting for me, he tried to suck out the venom’ and spent several days in hospital with sepsis.”
9. Rabbits love carrots.
“This isn’t actually that stupid really but it’s my favorite weird myth: That rabbits love carrots.
They don’t, you give a hungry rabbit a carrot it’ll probably eat it, but they likely wouldn’t be high on it’s preference list. So why are carrots stereotyped as a rabbit’s favorite food? Weirdly, because of Bugs Bunny.
Bugs is always munching on a carrot, but why if rabbits don’t really eat carrots normally? Because he was created in 1938 and that particular quirk was a parody of Clark Gable’s character from the 1934 movie It Happened One Night, who had a famous scene being a wiseacre while munching on a carrot. The movie is mostly forgotten today but was a huge hit at the time. Contemporary audiences (who would have also been seeing the cartoons in a movie theater as pre-show shorts) would have recognized the reference as easily as early 2000s audiences would recognize a bullet dodging scene as Matrix parody.
The carrot munching bit became Bugs’ signature and over time the origin was mostly forgotten. Everyone associated rabbits with carrots so strongly because of that that it eventually became “common knowledge” that rabbits love carrots despite it not being true at all.
The myth is prevalent enough that pet shops will commonly warn people getting pet rabbits to make sure they feed them a proper diet, because carrots are not sufficient and the poor bunny can actually starve to death.”
10. Porcupines can shoot quills.
“Too many people believe that porcupines can shoot their quills when they actually have to jab you with their quills.”
11. Being an organ donor is risky.
“That if you’re an organ donor then doctors won’t try hard to save you and might ‘let you die’.
I’m a doctor, when I’m treating a patient whether the patient is an organ donor or not never crosses my mind, I will genuinely have no idea. And even if I did, why would I want to sacrifice MY patient for some random other patient across the country? Surely that would just make me look like a shit doctor!”
12. Humans only use 10% of their brain.
“Good grief I can’t listen to people who say this is true. The worst thing is, my teacher in elementary school thinks that humans only use 10-15% of their brain, and the reason Albert Einstein, for example, was super smart is that he used about 30% of his brain.
The biggest amount of BS I’ve ever heard, and the person saying it is a science teacher…”
13. A fractured bone is different than a broken one.
“In my experience, it seems that most people think a fracture is when it’s not broken the whole way and broken means it’s broken clean in half (or multiple pieces).
In this case, I understand their intent, they simply don’t know the right words. Still annoying though, they do mean the same thing.”
So what did you think about those myths? Have your mind blown by any of that info?
Tell us a myth you couldn’t believe wasn’t true in the comments. Sharing is caring!
