Perfect icebreakers to jumpstart a conversation are difficult to come by.
Fortunately, there's no shortage of depressing facts that are a surefire way to get people talking. Regale fellow party-goers with tales of the world's loneliest animal, or bring down the mood with some harrowing statistics regarding our favorite medical practice.
See also: 6 Depressing Facts About Love
Become the Debbie Downer you've always hoped to be with these depressing facts that will seriously bum you out. Or at least get a conversation going.
Scientists first discovered the whale's song in 1992 and have been searching for it ever since. The mystery mammal sings at a frequency of 52 hertz, much higher than the standard 15-25 Hertz range of other species of whales.
Ming the clam was a whopping 507 years old when researchers opened it up to see how old it was. In discovering that Ming was, in fact, the oldest living animal known to science, they also accidentally killed the clam when they broke open its shell.
Cheer up, little piggy.
H/T: Reddit, flava-slave
Researchers at Cornell University found that silver medalists concentrate on missing out on gold, whereas bronze winners are more likely to concentrate on almost going home empty handed. In other words, silver medalists feel unlucky while bronze medalists feel lucky to have won at all.
It may be tough to stomach, but ours clothes are all a little grosser than we'd like to think. Just one laundry load of underwear can leave about 100 million E.coli in the wash water, many of which remain in the washer for the next load to pick up.
Forget logic or reason, because the brain believes what it believes, regardless of facts.
To test this theory Brendan Nyhan, associate professor of government at Dartmouth, performed a series of studies about whether or not facts matter to American voters.
One of his bleak findings: "People who said the economy was the most important issue to them, and who disapproved of Obama’s economic record, were shown a graph of nonfarm employment over the prior year – a rising line, adding about a million jobs. They were asked whether the number of people with jobs had gone up, down or stayed about the same. Many, looking straight at the graph, said down."
Despite what you've seen on TV, our favorite medial standby isn't nearly as effective as we'd thought. Studies have shown that only 2% of adult patients who collapse on the street and receive CPR recover fully and only 18% of seniors who receive CPR at the hospital survive to be discharged.
In 2009, researchers at the University of Virginia testedcognitive skills of over 2,000 participants ranging in age from 18 to 60. 22 year-olds performed best, and test scores began to drop off in folks over the age of 27.
"Results converge on a conclusion that some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s," wrote Timothy Salthouse, director of the university's Cognitive Aging Laboratory.
And it gets worse. According to a masters thesis from Ohio State University PhD candidate Yue Qian, women over 30 with a university education have lower marriages rates than poorly educated men of a similar age who lack a high-school education.
Bad news for all the cat ladies out there: Researchers have discovered a link between cat bites and high rates of depression in women. After poring over health records of 1.3 million people over 10 years, they found that more than 41 percent of patients who sought treatment for cat bites also sought treatment for depression at some point in their lives. Furthermore, 86 percent of those patients happened to be women.
George Price, the scientist who discovered the formula, spent the rest of his life working to rise above his findings. As his mental and phsyical health deteriorated, he devoted himself to helping the poor before committing suicide in January 1975.
There are also as few as 35 javan rhinos, 880 mountain gorillas and less than 400 Sumatran tigers.
According to the National Canine Cancer Foundation, dogs develop cancer at about the same rate as humans do. Cats contract fewer cancers.
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled organism that lives and breeds inside cat intestines, and incidentally, also inside the brains of about 1/3 of the human population. Though tiny, toxoplasma gondii has the ability to control our brains in more dangerous ways than scientists initially thought. This includes an increase in neurotic tendencies, self-inflicted violence and even suicide.
More specifically, they're having sex on the rims of your hair follicles. After sex, the females bury into the folicles, and lay eggs. After hatching, the young mites live for about 11 days and the whole process starts over again.
According to experts, spare yourself the yelling, get over it and make sure your tempting leather shoes don't end up in harm's way again.
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