The reality: smooth biologists have proven this fantasy quite a few instances, and elephants seem little greater than bored on the sight of a mouse. specialists say the parable may possibly come from the truth that elephants have bad eyesight and customarily slightly discover whatever as small as a mouse till it’s correct on best of them, at which element they're stunned through the tiny creature’s scent. additional: it may be famous the Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of the invention Channel convey MythBusters additionally confirmed this fable in 2007. the 2 elephants they saw truly appeared putoff via the unexpected visual appeal of a white mouse and went out in their technique to stroll round it. So perhaps this wishes extra trying out in any case? fable: a few spiders have 10 legs. the way it unfold: This has most likely been round so long as humans notion to count number spider legs, and it’s nonetheless anything that arachnologists are frequently requested approximately. the reality: All identified spider species—all 40,000 and extra of them—have 8 legs. the reply to why a few humans imagine they’re seeing 10 legs lies in simple spider anatomy: All spiders have pedipalps, a couple of appendages that develop from front in their heads and are segmented in approximately a similar approach spiders’ legs are. other than they’re now not legs—they’re mouthparts. Pedipalps are used for containing prey, no longer for jogging. They’re additionally frequently very brief, a lot shorter than legs, notwithstanding in a few species, particularly the tarantula, pedipalps could be as lengthy or longer than the spiders’ legs. So occasionally it feels like spiders have 10 legs. every year, rice blast fungus destroys sufficient rice to feed 60 million humans. delusion: Spiders could cause pores and skin ulcerations just like these because of bites…just through peeing on you. the way it unfold: in response to Rod Crawford of the Burke Museum of typical background and tradition on the college of Washington, this fable all started in primary the USA, and in recent times has made its approach to the us. And it initially needed to do with horses, no longer people. Crawford wrote: In Guatemala this fantasy (still going robust in 2008) facilities on a tarantula species in the community referred to as araña de caballo (horse spider), that is stated to reason serious hoof and leg difficulty in horses and different cattle by way of urinating on them. the reality: For starters, spiders don’t urinate within the approach we predict or urination—they really mix urine and fecal subject inside of their our bodies and emit it as one quite good mass. And, says Crawford, it can’t reason dermis ulcerations. It’s made essentially of guanine, which, as one of many major materials in DNA, is admittedly found in each telephone on your physique. fantasy: Wolves howl on the moon. the way it unfold: humans worldwide built myths regarding wolves and the moon. (In Norse mythology, for instance, the wolves Skoll and Manegarm chase the sunlight and moon round the sky, and should achieve this for eternity. ) It’s no longer demanding to determine why such myths got here to be: Wolves are nocturnal, doing their hunting—and howling—at evening. Over the eons humans got here to affiliate those feared and revered evening hunters with that different nice image of the evening, the moon.