Uncommon Knowledge

In the forests of Africa, you might just feast your eyes upon the brilliant coloring of the marble berry. Its clusters of brilliant blue fruit are considered to be the shiniest thing in nature, and they shimmer with pixelated sparkles. This effect is caused by layers of overlapping fibrous cells that cause the light to reflect and refract. These berries, however, are the ultimate triumph of style over substance: the brilliant surface contains nothing but seeds, with no flavor or nutritional value. The advantage of all this razzle-dazzle is that the plant tricks birds into eating and spreading its seeds, without having to go through all of the work of producing something temptingly sweet.

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If you’re going to give your eye teeth, it better be for something pretty darn valuable. The term eye tooth refers to the canine teeth in your upper jaw, called so because of their placement below the eyes. Giving up these teeth would not only be painful and impossible to disguise, but it might also suggest a loss of prestige or rank. In the 1700’s, “to cut your eye teeth” meant to have matured into adulthood. This is probably derived from the fact that the upper canine teeth on an actual canine are long and fang-like, and a dog would have the capacity to hunt or fight for itself once those teeth had grown in.

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Meet the most conflicted word in the English language: the contronym. A contronym is a word that is its own opposite. Can’t imagine such a paradoxical word? How about a story problem: If three people were in a room but two left, how many are left? The word “left” means both to leave and to remain behind. In spring you trim a tree by taking bits away, but you add bits when you trim the tree for Christmas. You turn off an alarm when it starts to go off. There are plenty of contronyms hiding in our language, but we usually don’t notice them because we’re only focusing on one meaning at a time.

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You know, being a cold fish doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t a warm father. Take, for instance, the hardhead catfish (and whose dad couldn’t be a little hard-headed now and then!). These salt water swimmers live in the balmy waters of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. In spawning season, once their eggs are fertilized, the male catfish gathers them up in his mouth and holds them there for safekeeping until the little ones hatch and swim away a month later. How does he keep from accidentally swallowing one of his little ones? He simply doesn’t eat for the whole month. Now, that’s some committed fathering.

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Sorry, dads. There are more calls made on Mother’s Day than on any other day of the year. That doesn’t mean that the kids don’t want to get in touch with you, though—Father’s Day has the distinction of having the most collect calls made of any day in the year. Researchers are inconclusive as to why Mother’s Day elicits more calls, cards and gifts than its paternal counterpart. It might simply be because it has a 100-year head start, first being celebrated in 1870 while Father’s Day didn’t come about until 1972. Our advice on correcting the imbalance? Dads, start polishing your chocolate chip cookie recipe.

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During the UFO sighting craze of the ‘50s and ‘60s, another mysterious tale began to appear. People who had seen or were investigating the possible presence of alien space craft would often claim to have been visited by mysterious men dressed in dark suits. These Men in Black would threaten sinister consequences if the individual didn’t stop their search for “the truth.” While reports of Men in Black are fairly pervasive, they can be traced back to a pair of writers named Albert Bender and Gray Barker. Bender founded an organization called the International Flying Saucer Bureau, but abruptly shuttered it in 1953, claiming he was pressured to do so by a trio of men in black suits, accompanied by three beautiful women in form-fitting white uniforms. Barker took Bender’s story and spun it into a successful career, producing such books as They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, as well as building the Men in Black mythos by writing fictional “first-hand” accounts and perpetrating the occasional hoax. Is it possible that Bender was actually visited by conservatively-dressed mystery men who tried to force his silence? Sure. But considering their ineffectiveness in doing so, it appears that the Men in Black are nothing to fear.

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You may not know much about the Crimean War, but you’ve probably heard of one of its most tragic battles, memorialized in poetry as “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The leader of that ill-fated cavalry unit was James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. He emerged from combat miraculously unscathed, and on his return to England he was immediately lauded as a hero for his fearlessness in the face of insurmountable odds. Always known for dressing his troops well, a style of button-up sweater which he purportedly provided for them became de rigueur among the British upper class. Unfortunately, as more soldiers began to return from the front, it became increasingly clear that Cardigan, while truly courageous, was also petty, self-indulgent, and incompetent as a leader. But while his reputation faded, the popularity of the cardigan sweater soldiered on.

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Chimpanzees and bonobos, two species of ape that are genetically similar to humans, are providing interesting insight into our own behavior. For example, scientists have monitored how hormone levels shift in males of those species when faced with a competitive situation. In chimpanzees, competition raises the level of testosterone, a hormone that enhances aggression and would be helpful in a fight to maintain dominance. Bonobos, on the other hand, respond with higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, but without impeding their ability to work together and share. Research has found that human males, as well, show elevated levels of either testosterone or cortisol under pressure. What isn’t yet known is whether men are hardwired for a particular response, or if it changes according to circumstance.

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