Facts – The Toughest Tongue Twister
The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick . is the toughest tongue twister according to guinness book of record. That phrase was featured by Guinness World Records as the most difficult tongue twister in the English language in 1974, the last year the organization tracked tongue twisters. It’s still pretty hard to say today, but you can try a hack recommended by Eliza Simpson, a dialect coach in New York. Despite the nod from Guinness, others have put forward their own challenges to the title. Researchers at MIT in Boston have declared that “Pad kid poured curd pulled cold” is the hardest tongue twister in history. While it’s easy enough to read, speaking it out loud without mispronouncing a syllable takes a special kind of verbal dexterity. Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel and her team assert that ‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’ is the toughest tongue twister that has ever been concocted. In fact, it is so difficult that when people were asked to repeat it rapidly ten times, they became so tongue-tied that they stopped speaking altogether. The twister revealed at the Fall Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America that was held in San Francisco from December 2nd-6th, was part of a study conducted by Stefanie’s team to get some insight into the human brain’s speech planning process. The MIT team plan to continue their research by placing tiny transducers on the tongues of volunteers and measuring their articulation to try to gain further insight. Meanwhile, we can all drive people around us a little crazy by continually repeating a phrase that even the researchers agree makes no sense. ‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’
Facts – Female Dragonfly Will Fake There Death To Avoid Mating.
A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera (from Greek ἄνισος anisos, “unequal” and πτερόν pteron, “wing”, because the hindwing is broader than the forewing). Adult dragonflies are characterized by a pair of large, multifaceted compound eyes, two pairs of strong, transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches, and an elongated body. Dragonflies can be mistaken for the closely related damselflies, which make up the other odonatan infraorder (Zygoptera) and are similar in body plan though usually lighter in build; however, the wings of most dragonflies are held flat and away from the body. female dragonflies go to great lengths to avoid sex—they fake their own deaths. For the first time, a scientist has observed that female moorland hawker dragonflies freeze mid-air, crash to the ground, and lie motionless when faced with aggressive males. Called sexual death feigning, this behavior evolved to protect females against aggressive males; for instance, female moorland hawker dragonflies risk injury and sometimes death if coerced into mating. (See more examples of animals that play dead.) Only five species, including a spider and praying mantis, are known to practice sexual death feigning, making this new discovery all the more intriguing, says Rassim Khelifa, a biologist at the University of Zurich who published a new study on the phenomenon in the journal Ecology. “In a lot of dragonflies, males try to seize the female with or without consent,” Khelifa says. “The fittest—that is the fastest, most powerful male—is usually the one who mates.”