“Puffer Fish Inflate Using Water”: 30 Facts That People Realized Only Now

If you pride yourself on your wealth of knowledge, congratulations. But for some folks, some things that may seem widely known could be completely new information. No matter how old we get, there will likely be new things to learn.

One Reddit question asked, “What is a fact that you only recently learned, but should have known for ages?” Scroll below to check out some of the best responses, and who knows you may learn a new thing or two along the way.

#1 Talking doesn’t scare the fish, grandpa just wanted us to shut up.

#2 It wasn’t new information, but through the footage during severe storms from massive waves crashing on ships today, realizing how terrifying it would be to cross the ocean in the 1400s.

#3 It’s not the stripper that spins- it’s the pole. Blew my mind, I thought those ladies were masters of centrifugal force AND core strength!

#4 Cooking food in a cast-iron skillet increases the iron content in your meal. I don’t know why I never thought of it like that until recently…

#5 Ponies are not baby horses. They are small foreveeeeer

#6 Revolving restaurants on towers only revolve on the inside. The entire top of the structure does not move. That would be insane.

#7 Puffer fish fill up with water to inflate. Not air. I don’t know where I thought the fish got the air from.

#8 There are people who do not have an internal monologue. I was like WTF.

#9 Oxen are just employed cows, not a whole separate species of bovine.

#10 Linen is not just a particular weave of cotton. It’s made from a completely different plant (flax).

#11 When using nasal spray, you are supposed to inhale and spray simultaneously. I discovered this while watching TV a few weeks ago.

Nobody ever showed me how to fkn use a nasal spray, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do it on my own because it feels a bit uncomfortable, but my allergy sprays work sooooooo much better now.

I feel like a dumba*s.

#12 Narwals are real.

#13 When you say no because you don’t feel comfortable doing it and someone pushes you to do it anyway, just don’t do it. I just learned about boundaries and I’m freakin’ over age 50.

#14 That the “Spanish flu” probably started in Kansas soldier barracks and spread due to WW1. The only reason it’s named the Spanish flu is because Spain was the only country that reported on it- many other countries had a media blackout on it.

#15 To be tea, it has to come from the tea plant. Black, white, green, oolong teas are all the same plant but with different processing and harvesting. Anything else that calls themselves a tea is actually a tisane – including roiboos.

#16 That opossums are great for the environment and if your dog attacks them, you should stop them. And if you’re brave enough to move them to safer grounds, they will emit a foul odor while playing dead. It stinks, but if you’re willing, pick them up like a kitten (scruff of neck)and relocate. Don’t worry, like skunks, the smell comes from there a**s, but! they don’t douse you with the smell. It’s just to deter predators.

#17 Until yesterday I thought blackened chicken was just that, chicken that had been grilled the f**k out of. Turns out it’s a delicious blend of spices.

#18 A litre of water weighs a kilogram.

#19 My cat used to never drink a lot of water and she would just spend a lot of time staring at the bowl, turns out she was experiencing whisker fatigue so I got her a wider bowl. Poor cat.

#20 Octopus predate dinosaurs.

#21 When they kept liquor stores open at the beginning of the pandemic, it was to ensure that alcoholics wouldn’t overflow the hospitals even more by suffering from alcohol withdrawals.

#22 That the filter in the dishwasher should be cleaned out monthly. Not my original schedule which was never.

#23 I knew that a litter of kittens can have different fathers but I just found out that twin humans can have different fathers also. Crazy.

#24 Babies aren’t supposed to drink water apparently. Not that I should have known, but never would have guessed.

#25 Human skin doesn’t have the ability to sense water. We can only tell that something is wet because of temperature or pressure, but we don’t have the proper receptors for water itself.

That’s why sensory deprivation tanks with room temperature or barely warm water work so well, and why you can’t tell if clothing left out to dry is damp or if it’s just cold.

When I read that somewhere, it was a huge mindf**k. Now I think about it constantly.

Edit: We know that humans don’t have these receptors because we know that certain animals DO. Including fruit flies and cockroaches. Which is weird.

Edit: To all the people saying that they test an object’s wetness by placing it against their lips or cheek, this is still exactly the same principle I’m describing above. You can’t feel the wetness, you’re feeling the sensation of air moving against the wetness. It’s no different from holding the object in your hand. We rely on cues like temperature and pressure to decide if something is wet.

Edit: A lot of people are saying this is b******t and I made it up because you CAN tell when something is wet. Congrats, you’re restating exactly what I already said. We rely on environmental cues to determine it. Also, what I’m referring to is hygrosensation. Do your own research. Google it.

#26 Eartha Kitt, the woman who sings Santa Baby, also voiced Yzma from Emperor’s New Groove.

#27 Groundhogs and woodchucks are the same animal.

#28 Percentages are always reversible.Example 32% of 78 is same as 78% of 32.

#29 Sigh, to remove the top from deodorant, you need to twist it up. I was pulling the plastic barrier out with my teeth. I know.

#30 For 42 years of my life I thought that historical people who killed themselves by sticking their heads in the oven (ie Sylvia Plath) were just metal as f**k and baked their brains to death, and only just learned that old timey ovens ran on highly toxic coal gas that basically knocked you out permanently.

Shanilou Perera

Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.