Body Fact

Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second.

Scorpion Fact

Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death.

Donkey Plus Horse Equals?

When a female horse and a male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and a female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny. When a male zebra and a female donkey mate the offspring is called a donk or zebrass. All of these resulting offspring are sterile (can't have babies).

Do You Want Blue Skin?

If you would prefer bluish skin then your diet should include silver. An over exposure to the chemical form of silver causes an acute discoloration of the skin from normal to blue or bluish-gray in human beings or animals. This condition is called as Argyria. The word is a derivative of the Greek word 'argyros' which implies 'silver'. It is due to the deposition of the silver salts on one's eyes, skin and other internal organs. In the pre-antibiotic times, this skin disease was more prevalent due to the use of silver in the nasal drops. This disease has now been recognized as a permanent skin disease that is slowly becoming common. 58-year-old Paul Karason suffered a shocking side effect from the drug "colloidal silver," which he used to treat a skin condition; his skin turned blue. Paul Karason looked like an ordinary man until about a decade ago, when he began treating himself with silver. Patients develop argyria, which is the permanent collection of silver under the skin. Karason is blue for the rest of his life!

Alien Hand Syndrome

There is a very real, very disturbing, and very rare medical condition called “Alien Hand Syndrome” (AHS). An individual with this neurological disorder has full sensation in the rogue hand, but is unable to control its movements, and does not feel that it is a part of their body. The hand becomes personified, as if it has a will of its own, and its owner will usually deny ownership of the limb.

Though AHS was first identified in 1908, it was not clearly defined until 1972. Depending on the cause of the injury, the movements may be random or purposeful, and may effect the dominant or non-dominant hand. The symptoms are brought on by an injury to the brain, such as head trauma, stroke, tumor, or infection, but it can also be a side effect of a certain kind of brain surgery where the patient has the two lobes of the brain separated to relieve severe epilepsy.

As a side effect of brain surgery, or an injury to the corpus callosum (the area of the brain which connects the two halves of the brain), the movements are usually grasping motions in the non-dominant hand. When caused by head trauma, similar grasping and groping motions will often involuntarily occur in the dominant hand.

When the condition is brought about by a brain tumor, aneurysm, or a stroke, the alien hand may also engage in complex purposeful behavior, such as compulsive manipulation of tools, undoing buttons, or tearing clothes. Sometimes the sufferer is completely unaware of what the hand is doing until it is brought to his or her attention, or until they happen to see it themselves.

There is currently no treatment for Alien Hand Syndrome, but the symptoms can often be relieved by giving the rogue hand an object to manipulate, to keep it occupied.