Wait, Really? Fun Science Facts

An octopus can taste whatever it touches, which helps it decide in a moment whether something is food. Where are those taste sensors?

• In its suckers
• In its beak
• Around its eyes
• Inside its ink sac

Answer: In its suckers. Harvard researchers found chemical sensors in the lining of the suction cups, so an arm can tell prey from a rock just by touch.

Sealed honey can stay safe to eat for a very long time. Bees add an enzyme to nectar that makes which germ-fighting chemical?

• Chlorine
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Ethanol
• Ammonia

Answer: Hydrogen peroxide. The enzyme glucose oxidase produces hydrogen peroxide and an acid. With so little water in honey as well, microbes struggle to grow.

Birds can gulp down fiery chillies without a flinch, then spread the seeds far and wide. Why don't they feel the burn?

• Their beaks cool the food
• They swallow too fast to notice
• Their pain sensors ignore capsaicin
• They only eat ripe, mild chillies

Answer: Their pain sensors ignore capsaicin. Small changes in a receptor called TRPV1 leave birds unbothered by capsaicin. Rodents chew and destroy chilli seeds; birds pass them out ready to sprout.

Plenty of mammals glide from tree to tree. Only one group flaps its wings and truly flies. Which?

• Flying squirrels
• Sugar gliders
• Colugos
• Bats

Answer: Bats. Bats have powered flight; the others only glide on flaps of skin.

Scientists talk about a "banana equivalent dose" of radiation. Which element in bananas earns them that name?

• Iron
• Sodium
• Potassium
• Calcium

Answer: Potassium. A tiny share of natural potassium is radioactive potassium-40. The dose from eating a banana is harmless.

It overtook Jupiter in 2023 as the planet with the most known moons, and by 2026 its count had passed 280. Which planet?

• Neptune
• Uranus
• Saturn
• Jupiter

Answer: Saturn. NASA counts 293 confirmed moons around Saturn as of August 2026. Most of the new ones are small, irregular moons only a few kilometres across.

A Tanzanian schoolboy noticed his hot ice-cream mix froze before a cold one. What is that effect called?

• Coriolis effect
• Mpemba effect
• Leidenfrost effect
• Doppler effect

Answer: Mpemba effect. Erasto Mpemba spotted it in 1963, and scientists still argue about when and why it happens.

Every second, the Sun fuses millions of tonnes of its main ingredient into helium. What is that ingredient?

• Helium
• Carbon
• Oxygen
• Hydrogen

Answer: Hydrogen. About 73% of the Sun's mass is hydrogen, the fuel for the fusion that makes sunlight.

Flamingo chicks hatch with dull grey feathers. What eventually turns them pink?

• Sunlight on their feathers
• Pigments in the algae and shrimp they eat
• Standing in salty water
• Hormones released as they grow up

Answer: Pigments in the algae and shrimp they eat. Carotenoid pigments in their food end up in growing feathers. Flamingos that don't get enough of them stay pale.

Some panes in centuries-old church windows are thicker at the bottom than at the top. Why?

• Glass slowly flows downwards over the centuries
• The panes were uneven when made, and set thick edge down
• Rain has worn the tops thinner
• Frost has cracked off the top layer

Answer: The panes were uneven when made, and set thick edge down. Old glassmaking gave uneven panes, and glaziers often fitted the heavier edge at the bottom. Studies of medieval glass, including Westminster Abbey's, show it flows far too slowly to ever notice.

Which of these animals was already swimming in Earth's seas before the first trees grew on land?

• Crocodiles
• Frogs
• Snakes
• Sharks

Answer: Sharks. Sharks go back about 450 million years. The first trees appeared roughly 385 million years ago.

Which Australian animal is famous for leaving cube-shaped droppings, which stay put on rocks and logs to mark its patch?

• Wombat
• Koala
• Kangaroo
• Platypus

Answer: Wombat. The cubes form inside the gut, where stiffer and softer sections of intestine squeeze at different rates. The study won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

Laser beams fired at mirrors left by Apollo astronauts show the Moon is doing what, year after year?

• Drifting a few centimetres farther away
• Creeping a few centimetres closer
• Shrinking by a few centimetres
• Speeding up in its orbit

Answer: Drifting a few centimetres farther away. Laser ranging puts the drift at about 3.8 cm a year, roughly the speed your fingernails grow.

A lightning bolt heats the air around it to about 50,000°F. How does that compare with the surface of the Sun?

• About half as hot
• About the same
• About five times hotter
• About 100 times hotter

Answer: About five times hotter. The Sun's surface is around 10,000°F. That sudden heating makes the air expand with a bang, which is thunder.

In 2007, thousands of dried-out micro-animals nicknamed water bears rode an ESA satellite and survived open space. What are they?

• Rotifers
• Tardigrades
• Copepods
• Nematodes

Answer: Tardigrades. Most survived the vacuum and cosmic rays, some even survived raw sunlight, and the survivors could still reproduce afterwards.