20 Weird Science Facts That You Might Just Need One Day
8. The Tuatara Has A Third Eye For Ultraviolet Light
The tuatara is a species of lizard that lives in New Zealand, and is unusual in the sense that, not only does it have three eyes, but one of them is on top of it head and can only see ultraviolet light.
It's actual function is unknown, but some think that it could be an efficient way of absorbing UV rays to produce vitamin D.
When you might need to know this:
In case you ever wanted to take a tuatara to a rave.
7. The Synthetic Cell "Synthia" Is The First Living Organism Whose Parent Is A Computer
Sythia or Mycoplasma laboratorium is a species of synthetic bacteria, created in a lab and derived from the genome of the Mycoplasma mycoides.
It is estimated that creating the synthetic genome cost $40 million and took 20 people more than a decade of work, but the potential for the technology to produce biofuels in the future already means that it is attracting the wallets of investors. Synthia is the only organism on Earth that can say its parents are computers (or at least it could, if it had a mouth).
When you might need to know this:
When you are desperately trying to piece together how the AI revolution began.