Wikipedia:Unusual articles/Science

Science

The sound of ancient pottery.

Not dead, just resting.

Archaeoacoustics	Can ancient pottery be used to play back recorded voices from the distant past?
Ota Benga	The tragic story of a Pygmy man from the Belgian Congo who was briefly exhibited in the Bronx Zoo.
Buttered toast phenomenon	But only if you're eating at a table.
Buttered cat paradox	If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...?
Campanology	For the good of society, we must study how to properly ring bells.
Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre	SI rules says you can't use a capital letter for a unit unless it's named after a person, but everyone uses L for the litre... so they made up a namesake.
Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles	This scientific paper has the longest article name on Wikipedia. The paper itself only has five words, though.
Vladimir Demikhov	Eminent Soviet biologist and father of the canine head transplant.
Drake's Plate of Brass	A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry.
Elvis taxon	A taxon (species, genus, family, etc.) that is extinct but is later imitated by others.
Further research is needed	Some journals have banned this infuriating and redundant cliché. Some researchers are researching its effects, but FRIN...
Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory	You may have had a chemistry set when you were a child. I bet it didn't come with radioactive substances in the box.
Greeble	Stimuli used in studies of object and face recognition with hilarious names.
Lazarus taxon	Leaping Lazarus! Somewhat like Monty Python's Dead Parrot, it's not really dead; it's just resting.
List of Ig Nobel Prize winners	Nobel Prize meets Weird Science. Result: Award-winning papers like "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts" and "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans".
Nylon-eating bacteria and creationism	The intersection of science and religion in a simple bacterium.
'Pataphysics	A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.
Archaeological interest of Pedra da Gávea	Did ancient Phoenicians visit Brazil centuries before the Portuguese? Actually, no, they did not.
Pathological science	A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field.
Project Steve	A wildly successful list of scientists in which all signatories (1) support evolution, (2) oppose intelligent design, and (3) are named Steve or a variation of that name (Steven, Stephan, Stephanie, etc.).
Raven paradox	First, you'll grant that all ravens are black, yes...?
Sokal affair	Physicist Alan Sokal demonstrates that at least some postmodernists can't see an emperor with no clothes.
Timeline of the far future	The ultimate list of spoilers. Also gives you an existential crisis.
Women-are-wonderful effect	A phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with the general social category of women compared to men.

Physics

This blue-looking noise is actually pink.

"It's Professor Pauli! Quick, pack that stuff away!"

Anatoli Bugorski	What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator?
Colors of noise	Including white, pink, purple, blue...
David Hahn	A 17-year-old, known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, who irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Demon core	A two-time radioactive killer.
Deutsche Physik	Or "German physics" during the Third Reich.
Fictional elements, materials, isotopes and subatomic particles	Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
Fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position	Named after a famous cereal phenomenon.
Flying ice cube	They happen to live inside the computers of scientists trying to simulate molecules.
Frog battery	A curious experiment to determine the existence of animal electricity.
The Hum	A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations.
Impossible color	Try to see it!
Kundt's tube	A serious piece of scientific apparatus whose name has induced sniggering among English-speaking schoolchildren for over 150 years.
List of unusual units of measurement	Fortnights and nibbles, super feet and Sagans.
Mpemba effect	Hot water freezes faster than cool water, and no one is sure why. Also probably the only scientific term named after a Tanzanian schoolboy.
Oh-My-God particle	Proof that physicists have a dramatic flair.
Pauli effect	Something in the lab not working? Technical difficulties? Blame this guy.
Quantum suicide and immortality	An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube	What happens when you blow in a hole in a tube? Hot air comes out one end and cold air comes out the other. No consensus reached on why it happens yet.
Shower-curtain effect	Nobody knows why when you turn on the hot water in the shower, the curtain blows in.
Smoot	A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sound of fingernails scraping chalkboard	Urrrgggh!
F. D. C. Willard	A published author in the field of cryogenics, and a cat.

Earth sciences

"It's flat and that's all there is to it."

"No, this definitely isn't flat, but it's the other way!"

Aachenosaurus	A fossil plant that was mistakenly identified as a dinosaur.
Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition	An ill-fated attempt to reach the North Pole in 1897.
Bloop	Does a mystery sound from the bottom of the sea indicate that Cthulhu may awake...?
Floyd Collins	A cave explorer from the early 20th century that got stuck in a cave in Kentucky. Despite a massive rescue effort, he ended up dying there, but that wasn't the end of his story.
Continental drip	A playful theory devised to explain why the continents are tapered toward the south.
Expanding Earth	A theory that the Earth is growing.
Hector (cloud)	A cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia, from approximately September to March each year. Also known as "Hector the Convector."
Snow in Florida	Yes, snow is not unknown in the "Sunshine State".
Kentucky meat shower	It's raining meat. Hallelujah it's raining meat.
List of unexplained sounds	Must've been the wind.
Mumbai "sweet" seawater incident	Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle.
Rain of animals	When it's literally raining cats and dogs.
Red rain in Kerala	Did blood rain from the sky?
South-up map orientation	The crew of Apollo 17 snapped Earth with Antarctica on top. NASA followed Ptolemy and rotated it "back".
Roy Sullivan	An unlucky park ranger who was hit by lightning on seven separate occasions. He survived them all, but came to his own tragic end.
Tinnunculite	A recently discovered mineral that forms from bird feces.
Waffle House Index	The U.S. government's alternative measure of disaster impact.

Chemistry and material science

Warning: It's LETHAL.

At last – the look of BO. Sounds fishy?

9,10-Dithioanthracene	The molecule that walks.
Botulinum toxin	One of the most deadly substances known is nonetheless extremely common in the cosmetic industry.
26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union	Largest gem diamond ever found in Russia.
Cummingtonite	A hard rock.
Dihydrogen monoxide	A commonly used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to global warming, erosion, acid rain, torture and countless other maladies. Or... that's what they want you to think.
Elephant's Foot (Chernobyl)	One of the world's most toxic objects, created as a product of the Chernobyl disaster.
List of chemical compounds with unusual names	Some a consequence of their constituents or origins, others simply the work of whimsical chemists.
Thomas Midgley Jr.	Inventor of two of the world's most severe pollutants – and a machine that killed him.
NanoPutian	A series of organic molecules having a structure that looks human.
New car smell	Ahh, that new car smell. What do you mean, it might be toxic?
Nitrogen triiodide	What's purple and explodes if a feather brushes it?
Orotidine 5'-phosphate decarboxylase	Known for its extreme catalysis, this enzyme can reduce the time required for a reaction from 78 million years to 18 milliseconds.
Pitch drop experiment	The world's most viscous liquid dripping out of a funnel since 1927. There's been 9 drops so far.
Proton-enhanced nuclear induction spectroscopy	A nuclear magnetic resonance technique with a very long name, so we can just call it penis.
Pykrete	A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound once used in an attempt to create an aircraft carrier.
Thiotimoline	A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water.
Trimethylaminuria	Do you smell something fishy? It may be you!
Unobtainium	A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess.

Space and astronomy

Elon Musk did it again.

All watched over by machines of loving grace.

That's no moon... Oh wait.

"Of course, it never reached the Moon..."

Inevitable?

1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg	Perhaps one of the first "alien" sightings in recorded history.
Apollo 15 postal covers incident	Three astronauts never flew to space again after being paid to take postal covers with them on Apollo 15. But that's not much of a punishment though, considering they got to go to the freakin' Moon.
Blue Origin v. United States & Space Exploration Technologies Corp.	Two companies got into a brat fight and sued NASA in the process.
Cosmic latte	The average colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white.
Cydonia (Mars)	You've heard of the man on the Moon, now get ready for the "Face on Mars", well, sort of...
Edward Makuka Nkoloso	The leader of a non-government Zambian space program planned to send "Afronauts" to Mars with the goal of establishing a Christian ministry to civilise Martians.
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster	Driving in space becomes reality.
Embryo space colonization	A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.
Extraterrestrial real estate	Want to buy a housing plot on the Moon?
Fallen Astronaut	A small statuette which is the only sculpture on the Moon.
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey	Five mice who circled the Moon 75 times on Apollo 17, among the last eight Earthlings to travel to the Moon. Upon returning to Earth, the four remaining living mice were soon murdered and dissected in the name of science. ("That's one small squeak...")
Gauss's Pythagorean right triangle proposal	Proposal of Pythagorean theorem "drawing" to be constructed in the Siberian tundra as a signal for extraterrestrials.
Harlan J. Smith Telescope	Have you heard about the telescope that got shot? Contrary to initial reports, the harm from the bullets was extraordinary small.
Hot, dust-obscured galaxy	Hot DOGs, anyone?
Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect	Sadly, the alignment of two planets wouldn't allow the British public to float. Maybe the fact that the news came out on April 1 should have clued them in.
List of hypothetical Solar System objects	The planets that could have been. You think Pluto had it rough? At least it got its fifteen minutes of astronomical fame.
Lunarcrete	Perfect for building your own cut-price Moon base.
Mariner 3	A Mars mission that failed after the spacecraft housing failed to open following launch. It was unable to deploy its solar panels and ran out of power. It is still orbiting the Sun.
Mars Climate Orbiter	Another failed Mars mission that disintegrated in the Martian atmosphere due to a unit conversion error.
Matrioshka brain	Star-sized computer.
Milkdromeda	The birth of a future galaxy, and the death of our own.
Mimas (moon)	A moon that looks like the Death Star.
The Moon is made of green cheese	Scientific consensus says it isn't, but are there people (or wolves) who think so?
Moon landing conspiracy theories	Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Moon Museum	Only two people have ever seen its exhibits in person.
Nazi UFOs	Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there.
Nuclear pasta	Gnocchi, spaghetti, lasagna, bucatini and Swiss cheese may sound tasty at first, until you realized that one teaspoon of this pasta weighs more than Mount Everest...
Peryton (astronomy)	Don't use microwaves next to radio telescopes!
Valeri Polyakov	The current record holder for the longest single stay in space: 14 months.
Phobos 1	Yet another failed Mars mission, this time due to a poorly-designed user interface causing an end-of-mission command to be accidentally transmitted to the spacecraft, permanently cutting off the power.
Seatbelt basalt	A lunar sample spotted by David Scott while driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the moon. He assumed that mission control wouldn't allow him to stop and get it, so he pretended he was fastening his seatbelt.
Sex in space	And when you've exhausted the list, here's something new to try!
Space advertising	Plans to launch giant billboards into space.
Space elevator competitions	How high can you go?
Spaghettification	What happens when you fall into a black hole.
Stolen and missing Moon rocks	The rocks were out of this world! Unfortunately, they fell into the wrong hands.
Solway Firth Spaceman	"Wasn't there when I took the pic – honest!"
Space Poop Challenge	A challenge in 2016 to design a new toilet system for use in space.
Supermoon	It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Supermoon! (Actually, this is a phenomenon where the moon appears slightly larger than normal. Still impressive, though.)
Sylacauga (meteorite)	The first fallen meteorite in recorded history to have verifiably injured a human.
Tabby's Star	A star that has been suggested to have an alien megastructure surrounding it.
Timekeeping on Mars	How Martians know when they are.
Vatican Observatory	One of the few official scientific institutions linked with the Catholic Church.
Voyager Golden Record	A compilation of sounds and images of humanity on a phonograph record made of gold-plated copper. It was sent to space in 1977 and is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth.
274301 Wikipedia	A comet named after Wikipedia. We truly came to the stars.
Wow! signal	Alien radio transmission, or, at least, the strongest candidate for that role.
Writing in space	How do you write in space?
iPTF14hls	A star that seems to have exploded 6 times in the past 70 years.

Medicine and health

Suckling on a tasty goat.

Well, stone me...

Quick – grab a tissue!

Got one of those headaches that just won't go away?

The pharmacy called; your maggot prescription is ready for pick-up

Man, just brush your teeth!

Put them where the sun doesn't shine.

Accessory breast	Some people have more than two.
Alien hand syndrome	An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take on a life of its own.
Anal wink	Here's looking at you!
Auto-brewery syndrome	Like a microbrewery in your digestive system.
Banana equivalent dose	A banana for scale.
Black hairy tongue	Really?
Bristol stool scale	Taking a close look at a toilet bowl for the sake of science. The scale was inspired by eye charts.
ChIA-PET	Chromatin Interaction Analysis by Paired-End Tag sequencing, that is.
Chronic Lyme disease	A conspiracy theory about long-lasting effects of Lyme disease, not to be confused with actual latent symptoms of lyme disease
Coffee enema	A bizarre type of alternative medicine.
Danger triangle of the face	A very specific area of your face where bursting a boil could mean certain death.
Dimples of Venus	For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face.
Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators	Forcibly withdrawn after officials clamped down on them.
Eigengrau	The color seen by the eye in perfect darkness.
Fart lighting	The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence.
Fiddler's neck	Maybe this is proof that God hates violinists.
Five-second rule	The notion that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds.
Geographical tongue	When a map appears on your tongue.
Gynecomastia	Also known as "man boobs" or "moobs".
Hair-grooming syncope	Who knew that brushing your hair could be deadly?
Human–animal breastfeeding	If you have breast milk to spare, a puppy, piglet or monkey would like to hear from you.
Hypertrichosis	Also known as "human werewolf syndrome".
Hypoalgesic effect of swearing	Got hurt? Swear the pain away!
Jenkem	Huffing the gas from fermented human feces for a hallucinating effect.
Jogger's nipple	That uncomfortable friction some people get while running has a name.
Louse-feeder	In search of a cure for typhus, humans let lice feed on them.
Lucky iron fish	Treat anemia by putting an iron fish in your soup.
Maggot therapy	Those hungry, wriggling little larvae will clean up festering wounds because they are hungry.
Male lactation	Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it.
Maple syrup urine disease	For once, a sweet smell you don't want your infants exuding.
Medical students' disease	A condition frequently reported in medical students who perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying.
Mellified man	A legendary medicinal substance from Arabia involving honey.
Michelin tire baby syndrome	Babies that look like the Michelin man.
Moebius syndrome	A disease, most envied by poker players, that makes facial expressions impossible.
Mucophagy	The consumption of mucus.
Nacirema	An obscure New World tribe with some interesting practices.
Navel lint	A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it.
Nasal sebum	Yes, that stuff on the surface of your nose.
Old person smell	Apparently developed to allow humans to avoid partnering with people who are too old for them. Not to be confused with death smell (though they're not incompatible in some places).
Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis	A tooth in the eye (is worth two in the foot?).
Paleofeces	Our ancestors' poop. Worth a close look, apparently.
Peanut butter test	A diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease which measures subjects' ability to smell peanut butter through each nostril.
Photic sneeze reflex	People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis	That's a mouthful! Good thing it has a much shorter name: silicosis.
Powder of sympathy	Healing a wound of war by applying a powder... to the weapon that caused it.
Rapunzel syndrome	Chewing on your hair is one thing, but actually eating it can have some untoward results.
Retained surgical instruments	An unfortunate possible side-effect of surgery.
Schmidt sting pain index	An entomologist is stung by just about everything known to sting and, en route, describes the pain involved in terms of a four-point comparative scale.
Supernumerary nipple	A condition in which one has an additional nipple. Apparently 1 in 18 people have this condition.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy	Yes, you can die from a broken heart.
Thumb twiddling	Maybe this is unusual to you.
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body	Just because you're not a rhino, or a tiger, or a pangolin, doesn't mean you're safe.
Trepanation	A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness.
Uncombable hair syndrome	Not just a bad hair day.
White-nose syndrome	Bats with white noses: sounds cute, is horrifying.

Human sexuality and reproduction

"Fresh-baked dildos for sale!"

Biscuits, before being made soggy.

Autocunnilingus	Like autofellatio (see below), but much more difficult.
Autofellatio	Acts of oral self-stimulation.
Armin Meiwes	German guy who met another German guy on a Yahoo Gay-Kannibalengruppe (they exist) in 2001. The rest, as they say, is history...
Bathroom sex	Ever wanted to defecate and have sex at the same time? Well now you can!
Bread dildo	A supposed Ancient Greek sex toy, made of bread.
Cello scrotum	A hoax illness allegedly affecting male cello players.
Coregasm	An orgasm caused by exercising of the core abdominal muscles.
Death during consensual sex	Talk about going out with a bang...
Donkey punch	Allegedly a sex move involving punching one's partner in the back of the head during intercourse.
Female hysteria	A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation.
Footsies	Did you know? It's possible for a couple to flirt by touching each other's legs.
Gerbilling	An urban legend about a sexual practice purportedly conducted. It was made popular by South Park.
Global Orgasm for Peace	Oh yeah, the end of human conflict just turns me on...
Hamster zona-free ovum test	A test – sometimes called a "hamster test" – involving human semen, hamster eggs and a petri dish.
Human penis size	Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends.
Koro	A condition where one (mistakenly) believes that his or her genitals are slowly disappearing.
Lithopedion	The rare condition of an unborn fetus calcifying.
Male pregnancy	For now, it's just a seahorse thing, but...
Napoleon's penis	(Allegedly) cut off after his death and, among other things, displayed at a museum in Manhattan.
National Masturbation Day	Not related to the week, and certainly not related to the month.
Parasitic twin	A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially formed fetus developing within the body of the other.
Persistent genital arousal disorder	Not as funny as it may sound.
Post-coital tristesse	"But after the enjoyment of sensual pleasure is passed, the greatest sadness follows." –Baruch Spinoza
Puppy pregnancy syndrome	A condition found in remote regions of India in which people believe they have conceived a puppy shortly after being bitten by a dog.
Rumpology	Theory that a person's buttocks reveal a person's past and future.
Scrotal inflation	For real now, boys: DO NOT try this at home. You can put your life at risk while doing it.
Self-inflicted caesarean section	A harrowing practice, verified to have occurred at least five times.
Sexual headache	Not the one that wives pretend to have to dissuade their husbands; this type happens during the act.
Sleep sex	A form of parasomnia (similar to sleepwalking) that causes people to engage in sexual acts while they are asleep.
Smoking fetishism	Apparently, this is a thing.
Soggy biscuit	Don't finish last, whatever you do.
Zombie pornography	Modern reincarnation of necrophilia.

Individual patients and staff

This skull's owner didn't even get a headache – but he was a changed man.

Elisabeth Anderson Sierra	Diagnosed with hyperlactation syndrome, her generous donations of excess breast milk have earned her the title of "Milk Goddess".
Jaxon Buell	A child born with only 20% of a brain. He lived for 5 years despite doctors' expectations that he would only live for 1 year.
Jeanne Calment	A Frenchwoman with the longest verified human lifespan in recorded history. She was 122 at the time of her death.
Legrand G. Capers	The only person ever to witness a woman being impregnated by a bullet.
Stubbins Ffirth	An American trainee doctor who went to unusual lengths in his quest to prove that yellow fever is not contagious.
Phineas Gage	A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long (0.91 m) tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Genie	A feral child who was neglected by her father and was locked in a room for the first 13 years of her life.
James Harrison (blood donor)	An Australian man whose 1,173 blood donations have saved over 2.5 million babies.
Abby and Brittany Hensel	Conjoined twins with separate heads but joined bodies.
Paul Karason	An American man known for having blue skin.
Eugene Landy	A psychologist who developed a form of 24-hour therapy and later became business partners with one of his many celebrity patients, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Hans Langseth	A guy who had the longest beard recorded in history.
Robert Liston	A 19th-century Scottish surgeon who, among other things, performed what has been described as "The only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality rate".
Barry Marshall	A doctor who, against the consensus of mainstream medicine, drank a vial of bacterial culture to prove that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria rather than stress, spicy foods, and too much acid as was believed at the time. He won the Nobel Prize for it, too.
Alexis St. Martin	A 19th-century French-Canadian fur trader who survived a gunshot wound and was left with a hole in his stomach, which allowed revolutionary experiments on digestion to be conducted.
Lina Medina	A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was five years old, becoming the youngest human mother on record.
Billy Milligan	A man with 24 personalities, popularized by the 1981 book The Minds of Billy Milligan.
Wenceslao Moguel	A Mexican man suspected of working with the Mexican Revolution who survived his execution and continued to live 61 years afterward.
Blanche Monnier	A French woman who was locked in an attic for 26 years because her parents disapproved of her choice of suitor.
Mariam Nabatanzi	A Ugandan woman who had given birth to 44 children by the age of 36.
Chandre Oram	A man in India with a 13-inch (33 cm) tail.
Adam Rainer	The only person known to be both a dwarf and a giant.
Tarrare	A Frenchman with an insatiable appetite, who made a show out of his ability to eat just about anything. Including, allegedly, a toddler.
Mary Toft	An English woman who hoaxed doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
Robert Wadlow	An American man who, at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m), was the tallest verified person in human history.

Nervous system and behaviour

Can you get high on this?

Ever woken up thinking this has just happened?

It's... beautiful... Just... beautiful!

Alice in Wonderland syndrome	Distortions of perception that may include one's surroundings appearing too large or too small, faint noises sounding loud, or time slowing to a trickle.
Anton syndrome	People who are blind but convinced they can see.
Bananadine	Exactly how psychedelic are those dried banana peels?
Bicameral mentality	Neuroscientific hypothesis that the human mind before the Bronze Age was split into two discrete components, a speaking mind and obeying mind.
Capgras delusion	When you're sure a friend or loved one is an impostor.
Cortical homunculus	A distorted representation of the human body based on areas of the brain dedicated to processing motor functions for different body parts.
Cotard delusion	Suffered by people, very much alive, who believe they're dead.
Conversion disorder	Blindness and similar disabilities caused by anxiety.
Cute aggression	The reason why people want to squeeze cute things without harm.
Dancing mania	Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity	For those allergic to Wi-Fi.
Encopresis	Voluntary or involuntary defecation in persons who are toilet trained (older than 4 years of age.)
Exploding head syndrome	Ever woken up after an hour or two of sleep thinking you've just heard a massive explosion?
Expressive aphasia	You know when you have a word on tip of your tongue but you just can't remember it? It's that, but with every word.
False memory	Forming of false memories; sometimes leads to thousands of people having the same false memory.
Fugue state	You black out and when you wake up years have passed, you're in a different city, you have a new name and have lived a different life while you were unconscious. Also known as dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue.
Foreign accent syndrome	A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion	The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Geophagia	Eat dirt, pal.
Homicidal sleepwalking	A real parasomnia that has been successfully used as a defence in court.
Impossible color	Supposed colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning.
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine	Like Tourette syndrome, but more Gallic.
Klüver–Bucy syndrome	A behavioral disorder with some very odd symptoms, including "hypersexuality" and a desire to examine objects with the mouth. Named after two doctors who gave psychotropic drugs to lobotomized monkeys.
Mariko Aoki phenomenon	A Japanese expression referring to an urge to defecate that is suddenly felt after entering bookstores.
Paris syndrome	Being clinically disappointed by Paris. Particularly common among Japanese tourists. Not to be confused with Jerusalem syndrome or Stockholm syndrome.
Rosenhan experiment	An experiment involving certifiably sane mental patients.
Somatoparaphrenia	A type of delusion in which a sufferer denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of the body.
Stendhal syndrome	A psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art or natural beauty.
Tanganyika laughter epidemic	What happens when contagious laughter becomes an actual epidemic.
Target fixation	To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Tip of the tongue	What was this article was about again... Wait, I think I am just about to remember...
The Truman Show delusion	Those afflicted feel they are being watched all the time by a television audience, like Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Urophagia	The consumption of urine. Not always for survival reasons.
Visual release hallucinations	Millions of perfectly sane people are having freakish hallucinations – and just not admitting it.
Zero stroke	An alleged mental disorder that caused patients to write endless rows of zeroes.

Phobias

See also: List of phobias

Cherophobia	Fear of happiness
Chromophobia	Fear of colors
Coprophobia	Fear of feces or even defecation, and possibly enjoying constipation
Dentophobia	Fear of dentists
Emetophobia	Fear of vomiting
Globophobia	Fear of balloons or balloons popping
Genuphobia	Fear of knees or the act of kneeling
Koumpounophobia	Fear of buttons
Mageiricophobia	Fear of cooking
Numerophobia	Fear of numbers
Osmophobia	Fear of odors and smells
Phallophobia	Fear of the erect penis
Philophobia	Fear of love
Phobophobia	Fear of having a phobia
Pogonophobia	Fear of beards
Submechanophobia	Fear of submerged man-made objects
Technophobia	Fear of computers and internet
Telephobia	Fear of making or answering telephone calls

Animals

To boldly go where no monkey has gone before. Well, where a few monkeys have gone before.

Jenny Haniver.

A major in Antelopology

Can only wear mittens, not gloves

The Far Side of a stegosaurus.

Adactylidium	A mite with a very unusual life cycle.
Animals in space	An annotated list of the various animals used in space programs.
Animal attack	Not kidding: death by beavers, bunnies, squirrels, crocodiles, and other creatures you should not have as pets.
Anting (bird activity)	Not recommended for humans.
Apophallation	Are you a slug and can't extract your penis? Amputate and change your gender.
Bee removal	Removal of bees.
Candiru	Barbed fish allegedly attracted to, lodged in, and extracted from human penises.
Carcinisation	Crustaceans may evolve how they wish, but eventually, it all comes back to crab shape.
Common Surinam toad	The mother's back is where the eggs are embedded and where they develop.
Conservation-induced extinction	The extinction of highly endangered parasites at the hands of conservationists.
Depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states	A great ecological problem indeed complete with fourteen references in Russian.
Cat–dog relationship	For centuries the two most popular house pets have been fighting like, well, cats and dogs.
Cymothoa exigua	A parasitic crustacean that, when female (they are hermaphroditic), attaches to and then destroys a fish's tongue, hooks itself to the remaining stub and becomes the fish's new tongue.
Epomis	A deceptive beetle larva that entices its own predators by feigning prey-like movements in order to eat its predator.
Eunice aphroditois	"Armed with sharp teeth, it is known to attack with such speeds that its prey is sometimes sliced in half." As if being a three-metre (9 ft 10 in) worm were not impressive enough.
Goblin shark	Indeed, a monster from the deepest oceans.
Hallucinogenic fish	No, the fish are not trippin'; they will cause hallucinations if ingested. It is not known if hallucinations will occur if one fish consumes another.
Hebrew character	Actually a species of moth.
Hurricane Shark	The meteorological equivalent of Bigfoot. (Except it's real. Kind of. Probably. At least once.)
Israel-related animal conspiracy theories	Has an animal looked suspicious? It was probably Israel.
Jenny Haniver	A grotesque-looking sea monster made from the corpse of a ray.
Lioconcha hieroglyphica	A type of clam with a shell covered in hieroglyph-like markings.
List of animals displaying homosexual behavior	Everything from salmon to seagulls to dragonflies.
List of animal sounds	Snail do "Munch, crunch", Squirrel do "squeak".
List of animals awarded human credentials	Mostly due to pranks pulled on diploma mills.
London Underground mosquito	A species of mosquito that lives in underground railways.
Love dart	Hermaphroditic snails play Cupid.
Lyall's wren	Made extinct by feral cats, possibly the offspring of one pregnant female.
Metoecus paradoxus	A beetle with - as prophet of our age Megan Thee Stallion put it - eyelashes "on fleek".
Nightingale excrement as facial	Droppings of a nightingale variety used in facials. Some claim that it helps with acne. Project Medicine states that the references are not MEDRS. (MEDical Reliable Source)
Orbiting Frog Otolith	A NASA frog experiment, sending two bullfrogs into space to test their sense of balance.
Paracerceis sculpta	A species of isopod that has some males that mimic females and others that mimic juveniles, allowing them to mate without the alpha males realising what is going on behind their backs.
Pasilalinic-sympathetic compass	Telepathic communication is not possible in snails no matter how far apart they may be. Nothing else has been ruled out.
Penis fencing	A literal figurative variety of cockfighting between some species of flatworm.
Polar bear jail	For polar bear criminals.
Prostitution among animals	Did you know that prostitution exists among animals?
Rotating locomotion in living systems	Why don't animals have wheels?
Shortarse feelerfish	Bathumycops brevianalis is a fish so named for its short anal fins – brevianalis meaning "short anus".
Supernumerary body part	Having an extra body part, be it as simple as an eleventh finger or as extreme as a second head!
Thagomizer	A feature of Stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip.
Traumatic insemination	A form of mating in invertebrates in which the male stabs the female in the abdomen with his penis, and injects his sperm through the wound.
Trout tickling	Coochy coo!
Uraba lugens	It's called the mad hatterpillar for a reason...
Worm charming	No spade? No worries! There's a better way to get hold of earthworms.

Cats

Flash photograph of an odd-eyed cat.

Bonsai Kitten	The practice of growing small jar-shaped kittens caused controversy years after it was revealed to be a hoax.
Cat burning	A form of entertainment in the Middle Ages, sometimes participated in by royalty.
Demon Cat	A cat that supposedly haunts government buildings in Washington, D.C.
Popular cat names	Cat names, ranked by popularity.
Polydactyl cat	Cats with extraordinary numbers of toes.
Odd-eyed cat	One of the national treasures of Turkey.
Pittsburgh refrigerator cat	A "breed" of cat that lived in refrigerators that people actually believed existed.
Cats That Look Like Hitler	Kitlers exist, live with it.

Cattle

Cow tipping	This actually takes up to 14 people to make it happen.
Hardware disease	A condition in bovines caused by ingesting stray bits of metal.

Chickens

Can you tell the boys and girls apart?

Cannibalism in poultry	See: tastes like chicken.
Chicken eyeglasses	Tiny spectacles for chicks, to stop them from seeing red.
Chicken Dance, Chicken (dance)	There is a huge difference.
Chicken gun	Valuable for the mitigation of damage from bird strikes. The chicken carcass must be thawed first, though.
Chicken hypnotism	Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not?
Chicken or the egg	Which came first?
Chicken sexer	A person whose job is to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings.
Chicken powered nuclear bomb	A British project to lay nuclear mines in West Germany during the Cold War that were planned to be kept warm by live chickens.
Empathy in chickens	Have some empathy when eating crunchy chicken nuggets.
Tastes like chicken	But baked, grilled, or fried?

Squirrels

Electrical disruptions caused by squirrels	Two squirrels on a wire...
Squirrel fishing	A sport of skill and patience.
Squirrels on college campuses	Squirrels are noted to be prominent fauna there.

Mammals

Dried deer penis.

This goat has fainted.
It has ceased to stand.

Ambergris	Do you really want to know what your fancy perfume was made from?
Berserk llama syndrome	The result of being too friendly with llamas.
Danish Protest Pig	A pig bred to look like the flag of Denmark, to circumvent prohibition of the flag.
Deer penis	It is said to enhance sexual potency in men and was banned by the Chinese government from the 2008 Olympics.
Diving horse	A short-lived attraction during the 1880s.
The dog ate my homework	Instead of a pathetic excuse for an article, an article about a pathetic excuse.
Domesticated silver fox	Soviet Russia subsidizes the breeding of silver foxes.
Exploding whale	The next time a whale washes on shore in one Oregon county, the authorities will leave the dynamite at home.
Fainting goat	A breed of goat whose muscles freeze for about 10 seconds when it is startled.
Flying primate hypothesis	Hypothesis that megabats are primates like us.
Globster	Blobs of organic matter found washed up on beaches, which are frequently as mysterious as they are disgusting.
Guided rat	Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand".
House hippo	The world's biggest domestic pest. If you can believe that.
Human	An article that reads as if non-humans wrote it.
New Guinea singing dog	Not only that, but it climbs trees too!
Overtoun Bridge	A bridge from which dogs keep leaping to their death.
Panda pornography	Pornographic movies created to achieve sexual arousal for Giant pandas, which have been proven to be unaffected by the popular drug Viagra.
Quokka	An Australian animal which has developed a habit of posing for selfies with humans.
Revival of the woolly mammoth	Plans to clone the woolly mammoth and re-introduce them to Siberia.
Rhinogradentia	A fictitious order of mammal invented by a German zoologist with a sense of humour.
Skunks as pets	For pet owners who like a challenge.
Street dogs in Moscow	Some of them have figured out how to commute using the subway system.
Weasel war dance	The behavior of extremely excited ferrets who are enjoying themselves too much.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?	Life’s most important questions.
Whale fall	The ecological consequences associated with a dead whale sinking to the seafloor.

Individual animals

Her face told you exactly where you stood with her.

52-hertz whale	Dubbed the "world's loneliest whale", it vocalizes at a frequency used by no known whale species.
Adwaita	Possibly the oldest creature of modern times, this 255 year-old tortoise was the former pet of Robert Clive of the British East India Company.
Andy	A footless goose who wore sneakers as prosthesis and was tragically murdered.
Ken Allen	Orangutan in the San Diego zoo who was nicknamed the Hairy Houdini.
Benson	A fish. A big fish. Called Benson.
Bubbles	A chimpanzee who used human toilet facilities, moonwalked, and (allegedly) attempted suicide.
Casper	A cat famed for traveling on a bus around Plymouth, England.
Clever Hans	A horse that allegedly knew arithmetic and could read in German.
Cocaine Bear	A bear found dead in the Tennessee wilderness, having gone through a drug smuggler's dropped bag of cocaine. Inspired a 2023 film (though in that one, the bear didn't just drop dead, as there'd be no plot that way).
Domino Day 2005 sparrow	Unlucky sparrow who dropped some 23,000 dominos and got killed for that.
Dusty the Klepto Kitty	Redefining the term "cat burglar".
Enumclaw horse sex case	An unfortunate case of a horse riding a man, as opposed to a man riding a horse.
Fungie	Ireland's favourite dolphin.
Gef	A mongoose that talked (allegedly).
George	A lobster weighing 20 pounds (9.1 kg), estimated to be 140 years old.
Grape-kun	A Humboldt penguin who gained worldwide fame after apparently falling in love with a cutout of an anime character.
Grumpy Cat	Unfortunately, this cat couldn't turn that frown upside down.
Hachikō	A well-known story of a Japanese dog that will make you cry by the end of it.
Harambe	A gorilla killed to prevent it killing a child it was saving. Became a meme.
Hanno (elephant)	An Indian elephant that was a gift from the Portuguese king Manuel I to the pope in the 16th century.
Henry the Hexapus	An octopus missing two arms due to an unfortunate birth defect.
Hoover the talking seal	Hoover. A seal. Which talked.
Jack	A Baboon who took over for his disabled owner as an employee of the Cape government railway.
Jackie	A dalmatian dog who was taught by his owner to do the Nazi salute, long before Count Dankula did.
Jeremy	A left-coiled snail who became famous after a campaign to find another left-coiled snail so he could mate.
Joe the Pigeon	Was put on death row for being American, but later acquitted and released. Named after the then President-elect.
Jonathan	Oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world (if it weren't Adwaita). He made the reverse of the 5p of Saint Helena. What have you done?
Jumbo	An elephant with gigantism and legendary circus attraction, who gave his name to large things everywhere.
Khanzir	Possibly the world's loneliest pig. Even more lonely during the swine flu outbreak.
Lily Flagg	A Jersey cow that produced record amounts of butter and got a sizable neighborhood named for her.
Lin Wang	A Taiwanese elephant made famous for his participation in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Lion of Gripsholm Castle	What happens when you tell a taxidermist who doesn't know what a lion is to stuff and mount a lion.
Lonesome George	The last known individual of the species Pinta Island tortoise. He was known as the rarest creature in the world.
Long Boi	A "exceptionally tall" duck living on the University of York campus.
Mary	Makes the phrase "hung like an elephant" take on a whole new meaning.
Mayor Max II	The world's cutest mayor-for-life creature: a Golden Retriever.
Mike the Headless Chicken	A rooster that lived for 18 months with its head cut off.
Ming	A ~500-year-old clam that was killed when scientists opened its shell to see how old it was.
Nim Chimpsky	A chimpanzee, subject of long-running studies into animal language acquisition, named punningly for linguist Noam Chomsky.
Major General Sir Nils Olav, Baron of the Bouvet Islands	A high-ranking military officer of Norway who happens to live in the penguin exhibit at Edinburgh Zoo.
Osama bin Laden	An elusive elephant who terrorized the jungle of Assam. He was eventually shot, but there are those who question the official story of his death. Much like his famous namesake.
Oscar the Cat	A hospice cat who was featured in the New England Journal of Medicine for his purported ability to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients.
Owen and Mzee	Hippo and tortoise that befriended each other after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Paul	A now-deceased psychic octopus who could predict the winner of football games, notably during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Potoooooooo	Actually, it's pronounced "potatoes".
Penelope (platypus)	A platypus who faked a pregnancy and escaped from the Bronx Zoo.
Ravens of the Tower of London	Ravens used as soldiers in the Tower of London.
River Thames whale	In 2006, a Northern Bottlenose swam into London and on to the front pages of the British newspapers.
Sergeant Reckless	A horse that held an official rank in the US military, fought in the Korean War and participated in an amphibious landing.
Stubbs	A cat who was the mayor of an Alaskan town for nearly 20 years.
Tamworth Two	Two pigs who, in 1998, escaped an abattoir in England and attracted media attraction. Thanks to a newspaper, they were never made into bacon, ham or sausages.
Tillamook Cheddar	The world's most successful and widely shown animal artist.
Timothy	A tortoise that was present during the bombardment of Sevastopol during the Crimean War in 1854 and survived until 2004.
Tombili	A cat famously pictured looking chill on the streets of Istanbul, who is now immortalised by a statue on the site.
Topsy	An elephant that was electrocuted, as the event was filmed by the Edison Manufacturing Company.
Tuffi	An elephant that survived falling out of a Wuppertal Schwebebahn wagon.
Turra Coo	An insurance protest gone too far.
Ubre Blanca	Fidel Castro's favourite cow that produced 113 liters in one day, and was used as a symbol of superior agriculture under communism. When she died, a marble statue was erected in her memory.
Unsinkable Sam	A cat that has survived the sinking of three ships.
Vacanti mouse	A mouse with a human ear on its back.
Whitney Chewston	A dog that gained fame due to having the manner of a homophobic white woman.
William Windsor	A cashmere goat who served as a lance corporal in the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, an infantry battalion of the British Army.
Wojtek	A soldier of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps who also happened to be a Syrian Brown Bear. He enjoyed beer and cigarettes.

Names in biology

'SMAD, mad, mad, mad, mad name?

Neopalpa donald­trumpi: They say it's really small.

Aha ha	Alan Partridge's favorite wasp?
Anophthalmus hitleri	Rare blind beetle named after Adolf Hitler, poached by collectors of Hitler memorabilia.
Aptostichus stephencolberti	A trapdoor spider named after Stephen Colbert. Naturally, because he asked for it.
Bill Gates' flower fly	A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates.
GoldenPalace.com Monkey	A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com online casino.
Harryplax	A genus of crab named in part after the titular character of the Harry Potter franchise. The sole species of this genus is named after the coldly hostile, yet emotion-concealing character from the same franchise.
Kimjongilia	A flower named after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il by a Japanese botanist.
Kinda baboon	Is it a baboon? Well, kinda.
Mini	A genus of tiny Madagascar frogs containing 3 species: Mini ature, Mini mum, and Mini scule.
Mothers against decapentaplegic	Actually, it's a protein.
Mountain Chicken	Is it a frog or a chicken?
Neopalpa donaldtrumpi	A moth remarkable for its orange head and small genitalia.
Pachygnatha zappa	A spider whose abdominal markings resemble a very famous mustache
Pikachurin	An extracellular matrix-like retinal protein named after Pikachu.
Setaceous Hebrew character	A European moth with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Covered smut False loose smut Loose smut	You may snicker now, but if you had any of these, I guarantee you wouldn't be laughing much.
Sonic hedgehog	A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Spongiforma squarepantsii	A type of mushroom named after SpongeBob SquarePants.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni	A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame.
Synalpheus pinkfloydi	A species of snapping shrimp named after the famous English rock band.
Thaumatodryinus tuukkaraski	A wasp named after NHL goaltender Tuukka Rask as both are acrobatic, and have a killer glove hand.
Zombie taxon	Paleontology of the undead.
Zoosphaerium darthvaderi	Named after Darth Vader, this one has an anal shield with a "pronounced bell shape"!
Zyzyxia lundellii and Zyzzyzus warreni	The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively.

See also

• List of organisms named after famous people
• List of U.S. state dinosaurs (does not include any of the List of U.S. state fossils)
• List of individual pigs

Plants

The Queens Giant – the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area.

Bialbero di Casorzo	A cherry tree that grows upon a mulberry tree in Italy.
Chandelier Tree	A 300-foot-tall (91 m) redwood with a giant hole cut through the middle for cars to drive through.
Echinopsis lageniformis	A cactus the Germans call Frauenglück, or "Women's Joy", because, well... just look at it.
Eisenhower Tree	A tree on a golf course that became famous after the President of the U.S. tried and failed to have it taken down.
Golfballia ambusta	Can a burnt golf ball technically be considered a fungus?
Olympic oaks	Gifts from the Führer. Some are still alive.
Moon tree	Trees planted from seeds that were taken into space by Apollo 14.
Nepenthes lowii	A plant that lures animals to release their droppings into a pitcher.
Mimosa pudica	A plant that rapidly closes or folds its leaves after they are touched.
Old Man of the Lake	A 30-foot (9 m) tree stump that has been floating around Oregon's Crater Lake since at least 1896.
Pando	An 80,000 year old quaking aspen colony that is believed to be one of the oldest and heaviest organisms on the planet.
Plant arithmetic	Plants can do math!
Plant rights	If other living beings like humans and animals can have rights, then why not plants?
Pomato	It's both potato and tomato!
Tendril perversion	A geometric phenomenon sometimes observed in helical structures like plant tendrils and telephone handset cords.
Tree of Knowledge (Australia)	Killed by ignorance.
Tree of Ténéré	A solitary acacia that was once the most isolated tree on Earth before being run over by a drunken Libyan truck driver.
Tree That Owns Itself	Its owner loved it so much that he granted it ownership of itself.

See also

• List of individual trees