A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello there! Welcome to Volume 125 of Dovi’s Digest.
My assumption is that many of you have seen the Pixar movie Inside Out, but for those of you who haven’t the quick synopsis is: the main emotions of an 11-year-old girl are personified, with most of the movie taking place inside her head.
One of the themes of the movie is memory, and in particular, core memories. We all have them. They shape who we are. Whether it’s one of joy at a childhood accomplishment, or sadness at a loss, each of these main memories define us, guide us, and mould us into the adults we are today.
Thankfully, the vast majority of my core memories are happy ones. The first time I took part in a quiz, my bar mitzvah, family holidays - too many to mention in fact. Not all of them are tied to good and bad. Some of them are neutral, yet still had a profound impact on us.
When I was quite young, I, like many of my contemporaries, would idle away time using a magnifying glass to terrorise ants. One day a friend (who, incidentally, subscribes to the Digest, you know who you are) grabbed my hand and said “it’s so easy to destroy that! Let’s see you create it!”. This deeply affected my rather malleable conscience and made me see the error of my ways. To this day, I go out of my way to not destroy, like the usual shepherding spiders outside under a cup, to reviving bees with sugar water, and, in penance, dropping some sweet treats near ant nests.
Some research that dropped last week has made me reconsider my benevolence. A paper published by the University of Hong Kong estimated that there are about 20 quadrillion ants on earth. This is a mind-boggling number. It’s a 20 followed by 15 zeros (20,000,000,000,000,000) or put another way: 20,000 trillion). That means that per human there are about 2.5 million ants. That’s probably more than I can fight (that being said, in a recent poll 6% of American men thought they could beat a grizzly bear in a fight, with 9% thinking they could beat an elephant). These ants weigh ±12 megatons, or several times more than all the birds and mammals combined.
If I had known this information all those years ago, I would’ve probably felt less guilty about my tiny little fight against the ants. Unfortunately, we can't change our core memories, so I’ll still be trapping crickets in cups and releasing them into the wild of the garden. The only exceptions I make are wasps, because screw those guys.
The headline article is of course about ants, this study, and what it means in relation to us. It also taught me my new favourite word – myrmecology (the study of ants).
Do you enjoy the Digest? Would you like it to get better? Then please consider sharing it, as the more articles I’m sent, the better it is. It only takes a few seconds, and all you need to do is click here 👇. Thank you!
There were TWO correct answers to last week’s brainteaser. Well done to Ariel Subotzky and Rachel Goldstuck. The answer and this week’s riddle are below.
Aside from the creatures great and small, there are a myriad other things to read about. Hear from the world champion of Monopoly, the marathoner who has been top of his game for ten years (far longer than any other marathoner) and is only getting better, what a LEGO figurine looks like in an MRI, a real-life Top Gun pilot who puts Tom Cruise to shame, how winning the lottery ruins your social life, and what makes the world’s biggest brains tick. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming,
Have a great week,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
Scientists Have Calculated How Many Ants Are on Earth. The Number Is So Big It’s ‘Unimaginable.’
A new estimate for the sheer number of ants on Earth comes to an “unimaginable” sum, one researcher said.
Experience: I Am the Monopoly World Champion
If I were to play with you, I would probably win because I know the tricks.
He’s Probably the Best Athlete Alive. Does Anyone Care?
After his world record-setting win in Berlin, Eliud Kipchoge has now won 15 marathons in 10 years.
A LEGO Like You’ve Never Seen It
An MRI reveals all the figures secrets.
The Real-Life Maverick Who Took On 7 Soviet Jets in A Classified Korean War Dogfight
The existence of the improbable dogfight remained under wraps for decades, yet the details of what happened are the stuff of legends.
The Curse of the Lotto
They won the lottery—and friends and family turned on them.
In the Mind of a Whale
How can we make sense of the biggest brains on the planet?
Quote of the Week:
“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally, they credit the wrong person.” – Alexander von Humboldt
Facts of the Week:
Oxygen levels in human womb are similar to those at the top of Mount Everest.
The cornea is the only part of the human body with no blood supply. It gets its oxygen from the air.
The ancient Greeks believed the uterus wandered around inside the body.
Examining the pelvis is the only way to tell the sex of a human skeleton.
No one knows if Lucy, humanity's oldest ancestor, was male or female.
Male red sided garter snakes pretend to be female and entice other males to have sex with them.
To kill off the snakes in Guam, 2000 dead mice were pumped full of paracetamol and dropped by tiny parachutes into the forest.
Parachute tester Rickster Powell has made 20,000 parachute jumps and tested 50 new parachutes – only nine of which went into production.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
If five = four, six = nine, and seven = five, what does twelve equal?
Last Week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
Try to unscramble the following 11 letters to make a single word.
H E N I A T R E D G S
Answer:
Nearsighted