20 Weird Science Facts That You Might Just Need One Day
4. The Housefly Hums In The Key Of F
The sound of a fly buzzing around your home is annoying as hell, so you could be forgiven for not noticing that the sound is actually relatively tuneful.
The common housefly, although it lacks vocal cords, hums by flapping its wings about 190 times per second. We don't hear the individual flaps, but a low level humming noise in the key of F major. Different sizes of fly will hum at different pitches, but they will always be either F, G, A, B♭, C, D, or E.
Weirdly, the F major scale is thought to be the most prevalent in nature and even Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony”, which was written to communicate the beauty of nature, is in the key of F.
When you might need to know this:
When you are trying to tune your guitar, but one of the sound technicians has wandered off with your tuner.
3. The Urge To Squeeze Cute Things Is Called "Cute Aggression"
Maybe it's an indicator of just how screwed up we are as a species, but that urge you get to squish and smoosh cute things has finally got a name: Cute Aggression.
We're still not entirely sure why it happens. Some researchers think that it might be due to frustration that, when watching kitten videos on the internet, that we can't actually snuggle them. This, however, doesn't take into account the urge to smoosh kittens in person.
It could be that our brains get so over-stimulated by a positive emotion, that it actually interprets it as a negative one - in much the same way people cry when they're extremely happy.
When you might need to know this:
To remind yourself that you're not a psychopath for wanting to cuddle that puppy to death oh my god.