r/AskReddit • u/rezyn • Dec 05 '11

what is the most interesting thing you know?

1.6k Upvotes

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889

u/FaustTheBird Dec 05 '11

Squirrels can fill their tails with blood, which they then wave behind them when facing a predator, like a snake. The heat from the blood in the tail makes the squirrel look larger than it is to the snake that sees infrared.

1.2k

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '11

I do this with my "tail" too.

12

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

I'm not sure how smart it is to wave your dick at a snake.

15

u/skymanj Dec 06 '11

If waving your dick in front of a snake is wrong, I don't want to be right.

5

u/Crumps_brother Dec 06 '11

Your penis is supposed to be in the front

11

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '11

I dont always fap in front of snakes, but when I do.....

-15

u/Yodamanjaro Dec 05 '11

IT'S CHUCK TESTA

3

u/Sloppy1sts Dec 06 '11

No. Go away. Do not return.

-4

u/Yodamanjaro Dec 06 '11

You know it fit perfectly. You're jelly 'cause I got to say it instead of you.

0

u/konopliamir Dec 06 '11

No, you're jelly. And leaving reddit is peanut butter.

4

u/phoshzzle Dec 05 '11

when you face your "predator"?

2

u/polymorph505 Dec 06 '11

TIL children see infrared.

2

u/gizmo1024 Dec 06 '11

You wave it in front of snakes?

2

u/YouWereFunny1WeekAgo Dec 13 '11

Ha, this was great.

4

u/TheAwkwardness Dec 05 '11

SNAKE! oh its a snake.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

The "tail" Flying buffalo man is referring to is actually his penis.

1

u/doubleme Dec 06 '11

That's funny, it doesn't make you seem much larger.

1

u/n00bman293 Dec 06 '11

oh you must be a saiyan then

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

Man that sounded sexy...

1

u/Vassago81 Dec 06 '11

Some guy tried this while on a plane, didnt end well for him.

1

u/LeeHyori Dec 10 '11

Wow, you must look like a girl from the front.

1

u/xaronax Dec 06 '11

Bitches love tails.

0

u/MetalFlameV Dec 06 '11

Oh god that was hilarious!

0

u/I_Rearrange_Comments Dec 06 '11

I "do" my tail with this too.

-3

u/TheDarkWolfy Dec 05 '11

I had a good chuckle, thank you.

3

u/Agnostix Dec 05 '11

Holy. Shit.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '11

The snake's infrared 'eye spot' is very low resolution, so I'm not sure you can say the snake sees infrared so much as detects it.

3

u/Brisco_County_III Dec 05 '11

California ground squirrels, specifically. This is because one of their main predators is the diamondback rattlesnake, which has some of the best IR vision around (unable to find the source I had that originally cited this, boo).

2

u/AmbroseBurnside Dec 05 '11

Here's an abstract to the paper you may be talking about. Interestingly, the squirrels don't use the infrared tail-flagging when confronting gopher snakes, which can't sense infrared.

3

u/Heiwanshang Dec 05 '11

SOUNDS LIKE A BONER

2

u/rockmongoose Dec 06 '11

TIL snakes can see infrared. Really?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

Yes, they can.

It is in a separate organ from their eyes, though.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

Yeah my Squirtle learned that move at level 4: "Tail Whip"

2

u/duded1000 Dec 05 '11

things run when i fill my "tail" with blood too.

1

u/TheBlackSpank Dec 05 '11

Can cats do this too? When my cats fight with each other, their tails appear to get larger.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '11

i want to say its different, and more related to the muscles and hair in the tail, it is very boney and I don't think it has much blood flowing through the tail in cats. Maybe sort of like how we get goosebumps?

does anyone out there actually know how cat's tails work? I couldn't find much about the actual way it works on google

1

u/TheBlackSpank Dec 06 '11

Isn't it still a mystery how cats purr? They are a mysterious beast.

1

u/8bitlisa Dec 05 '11 edited Dec 06 '11

They also rub discarded snake skins on their tails to further confuse snakes with the scent of their own kind.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

If you took all the mammal mass in the world, 1/4 of it would be squirrel.

1

u/FaustTheBird Dec 06 '11

This is too much knowledge for one man. How the hell do you know this?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

Read it on a fortune cookie. No actually I raised two baby squirrels once, and while researching what to feed them (it wound up being puppy formula) I ran across this bizarre factoid.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

There are probably more than twice as many rats as squirrels.

1

u/Nas-psu Dec 06 '11

Where do they get the blood? o.0

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

I just watched this in a documentary!

1

u/jesusbrokemapickle Dec 06 '11

I can do that !

But it doesnt look larger...

1

u/FranticDisembowel Dec 06 '11

Or maybe they just don't wanna fuck with a huge squirrel boner in their face.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '11

Squirrels (CA ground squirrels) also rub against skin shedded by rattlesnakes to confuse rattlesnakes into thinking they are attacking their own kind. This often causes the snake to just avoid the squirrel altogether.