Can You Tell Which of These “Fake” Facts Are Actually True?

It sounds like a joke, but it's real. Bare-nosed wombats in Australia leave behind neat, cube-shaped droppings, often dozens in a single night. For years, scientists weren't sure how a soft, round intestine could make square shapes.

Researchers finally found the answer: the walls of the wombat's intestine have sections that stretch differently. Stiffer and softer bands squeeze the waste into flat sides and corners as it slowly dries out. The study was quirky enough to win an Ig Nobel Prize. As for why it matters to the wombat, cubes don't roll away easily, which may help them mark territory on rocks and logs.

This is one of the most repeated animal myths in the world, and it's simply wrong. Experiments have shown that goldfish can remember things for weeks and even months. They can be trained to respond to sounds, push small levers for food, and learn which part of a tank feeding happens in.

If your goldfish swims to the front of the tank when you walk in, that's not a coincidence. It remembers you as the snack provider.

Both parts are correct. Two smaller hearts pump blood through the octopus's gills, and a third, main heart sends it around the rest of the body. Interestingly, that main heart pauses when the octopus swims, which is one reason these animals prefer crawling.

The blue color comes from hemocyanin, a copper-based molecule that carries oxygen. Our blood uses iron-based hemoglobin instead, which is why ours is red.

Cattle can't even see red the way we do. They have only two types of color-sensing cells in their eyes and lack the one that picks up red, so a red cape looks dull and brownish to them.

What actually triggers the charge is movement. The matador sweeps the cape back and forth, and the already stressed animal reacts to the motion. A blue or white cape waved the same way would get the same result.

Yes, really. English has a delightful tradition of colorful collective nouns for animals, and a flock of flamingos is often called a flamboyance, a perfect match for birds that are bright pink and famously dramatic.

Other real examples include a parliament of owls, a crash of rhinos, and a bloat of hippos.

This one surprises almost everyone. The Great Pyramid was completed around 2560 BCE. Cleopatra was born in 69 BCE, roughly 2,500 years later. The Apollo 11 Moon landing happened in 1969, about 2,040 years after her birth.

To Cleopatra, the pyramids were already ancient monuments, older to her than the Roman Empire is to us. “Ancient Egypt” covers such a huge stretch of time that we tend to imagine it as a single moment.

Teaching was already happening at Oxford by 1096, and it grew quickly in the late 1100s. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, wasn't founded until 1325, and the alliance that formed the Aztec Empire came together in 1428.

So students were attending lectures in Oxford more than two centuries before Tenochtitlan's first foundations were laid. We often picture the Aztecs as “ancient” and universities as “modern,” but history doesn't always line up the way it feels.

There's no archaeological evidence that Vikings wore horned helmets in combat. The best-preserved Viking-age helmet ever found, discovered in Norway, is a simple rounded iron cap with no horns at all. And practically speaking, horns would give an enemy something to grab or hit.

The horned look became popular in the 1800s, when artists and opera costume designers, especially for productions of Wagner's famous Ring cycle, gave Norse characters dramatic horned headgear. The image stuck, and it has been in movies, cartoons, and sports logos ever since.

Napoleon stood around 5 feet 7 inches (about 1.69 m), which was average or even slightly above average for a Frenchman of his era. So where did the “tiny Napoleon” idea come from?

Part of it is a measurement mix-up: his height was recorded in old French units, and French inches were longer than British ones, so the number looked smaller when read the British way. Add British cartoonists who loved drawing him as a tantrum-throwing little man, plus his affectionate nickname “the little corporal,” and a myth was born.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War of August 27, 1896, is generally counted as the shortest war on record. It began after a disputed succession to the throne of Zanzibar, and it ended after roughly 38 to 45 minutes of bombardment by British ships.

You could quite literally have missed the entire war while having lunch.

Venus completes one full rotation roughly every 243 Earth days, but it circles the Sun in about 225. In other words, its spin is slower than its year.

There's a fun twist, though. Venus spins backward compared to most planets, so the time from one sunrise to the next is actually about 117 Earth days. And if you could stand on Venus, the Sun would rise in the west.

The Great Wall is incredibly long, but it's also narrow, only a few meters wide in most places, and built from materials that blend into the surrounding landscape. Astronauts in low Earth orbit, including China's first astronaut, have said they couldn't pick it out with the naked eye.

Meanwhile, large cities, airports, and highways at night are much easier to spot from orbit. And from the Moon? No individual human structure is visible at all.

Lightning doesn't keep a list of places it has already visited. In fact, tall, pointed, and isolated objects are likely to be hit again and again. The Empire State Building in New York is struck around 20 to 25 times in a typical year.

The saying works as a comforting expression about bad luck, but as a safety rule it's dangerous. If a spot has been struck once, it can absolutely be struck again.

The earliest shark-like fish appear in the fossil record around 450 million years ago. The first true trees and forests showed up roughly 385 million years ago. That gives sharks a head start of tens of millions of years.

Sharks have since survived several mass extinctions, including the one that wiped out the non-bird dinosaurs. They are among the great survivors of life on Earth.

The tower is made of iron, and metal expands when it heats up. On hot summer days, the structure grows by several centimeters, with figures of up to around 15 cm commonly cited. In cold weather, it shrinks back down.

The side facing the Sun also warms faster than the shaded side, so the top of the tower leans very slightly away from the Sun during the day. Engineers designed it to handle this movement safely.

Brain scans show activity throughout the entire brain. Different areas are busier during different tasks, but over the course of a day, virtually every region gets used. Even during sleep, many parts stay active.

Here's another clue: the brain makes up only about 2% of your body weight, yet it uses around 20% of your body's energy. Evolution would not keep such an expensive organ around if 90% of it sat idle.

In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit that develops from a single flower with one ovary and usually has seeds inside. Bananas fit that definition, and so do grapes, tomatoes, eggplants, and even avocados.

Strawberries don't qualify. Their tiny “seeds” are actually individual fruits sitting on the outside of a swollen flower base. Raspberries and blackberries fail the test too. Kitchen names and science names simply follow different rules.

Growth needs a steady supply of energy and oxygen delivered by the blood, and that stops when the heart stops. What actually happens is an illusion: as the body loses moisture, the skin dries and pulls back slightly.

That makes nails and stubble look longer than before, which is how the myth started. Nothing new is growing; the surrounding skin is simply shrinking.

Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that were still preserved after thousands of years. Honey is a natural fortress against spoilage: it contains very little water, it's quite acidic, and bees add an enzyme that helps produce small amounts of hydrogen peroxide.

Together, these make it very hard for bacteria and mold to survive. If your honey turns cloudy or grainy, it has simply crystallized. Warm it gently and it will turn smooth again.

Scotland officially embraces a mythical creature as its national animal. Unicorns have appeared in Scottish royal heraldry for centuries, where they stood for purity, strength, and a proud, untamable spirit.

Look closely at the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom and you'll see two supporters: a lion representing England and a chained unicorn representing Scotland. You'll also spot unicorn carvings on buildings and market crosses across the country.