Didn't want to know?! Fascinating and scary trivia & fun facts
Even though we think we don’t want to know scary stories, our curiosity tends to win and we end up watching or listening anyway, right? In this article, we’ve collected general-audience scary trivia and fun facts—the kind that gives you chills but you just can’t stop reading.
Some of it might make a few people regret seeing it a little, but there’s also plenty that’s good to know.
If you’re the type who wants to be informed—about the good and the bad—then follow your curiosity and check it out!
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Fun facts and trivia of surprise and fear (11–20)
Dolphins sometimes bully smaller dolphins.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Bullying—No Way, Absolutely Not”? It sounds like a slogan from the Ministry of Education for anti-bullying, but it’s actually a song by BABYMETAL.
It’s a great track, so give it a listen sometime.
Speaking of bullying, it even exists in the world of dolphins.
This stems from their high intelligence, and they’re even known to bully in groups.
Some dolphins will chase fish without any intention of eating them, just to exhaust them—pretty mean behavior.
It kind of changes the cute image we have of dolphins, doesn’t it? To think that even dolphins, which are said to be able to connect with humans on an emotional level, have that side to them!
If you drink river water in areas where foxes live, you can contract echinococcosis.
Although foxes live in various parts of Japan, we rarely have the chance to see them, which makes them all the more tempting to approach.
However, it’s generally advised not to get too close to wild foxes, largely because of Echinococcus parasites that foxes can carry.
Echinococcus can infect humans as well and, after an incubation period, cause a range of serious symptoms.
To prevent Echinococcus infection, in addition to avoiding close contact with foxes, it’s also said you should not drink river water in areas where they live.
It’s a chilling bit of trivia: these cute foxes come with the risk of a terrifying infectious disease.
A bear that has attacked a human once remembers the taste of human flesh.
When we think of bears, we picture them living deep in the mountains and rarely coming down near human settlements.
This trivia, which also serves as a warning about what can happen if such a bear encounters a person, touches on that scenario.
It’s especially troublesome when a bear comes down because there’s no food in the mountains; it’s said that a bear that attacks and eats a person will remember the taste of humans.
Once it recognizes humans as food, there’s a frightening possibility that it will attack more people to survive, leading to wider harm.
To prevent such situations, the content emphasizes the importance of precautions to avoid encountering bears in the first place and measures to avoid being attacked.
Hippopotamuses are aggressive animals that can run at 30 kilometers per hour and have a biting force of up to one ton.
Hippos may give off a gentle impression, but they’re actually quite ferocious, and it’s said that as many as 3,000 people are attacked by hippos each year.
A hippo can run at about 30 kilometers per hour—roughly the speed of a moped—and its bite force reaches a ton.
It’s chilling to imagine being chased and bitten.
By the way, hippos are a formidable presence even to other wildlife; they’re said to prey on crocodiles.
Hopefully this gives you a sense of just how terrifying hippos can be.
Spiders inject digestive fluids into their prey, dissolve it, and suck it up.
We often see large spider webs stretched out in the air, sometimes with prey already caught.
The prey ensnared in such a web is injected with digestive fluids, dissolved, and then consumed by the spider as if being sucked up.
This feeding method is called extraoral digestion, and while it makes sense as a way for spiders to eat prey even larger than themselves, the fact that the victim is dissolved from the inside is particularly horrifying.
Knowing this terrifying outcome, you can’t help but want to rescue the prey trapped by a spider.
The kanji 患 means to pierce a person’s heart with a spear.
We learned about the origins of kanji back in elementary school, right? The most famous are pictographs, which were devised from the shapes of things—like “fish.” Then there are simple ideographs, which use lines and dots to represent concepts that are hard to depict visually, and compound ideographs, which combine two meanings.
There are also phono-semantic compounds that combine a meaning-bearing part with a sound-bearing part—like in 鳴. So, how about it—do you still remember all that? The character for “patient,” 患, is a phono-semantic compound made from the two characters 心 (heart) and 串 (skewer).
But if you picture a skewer stuck into a heart, it feels a bit scary, doesn’t it? From that, it came to carry the meaning of illness, which just shows how cleverly kanji are constructed.
Trivia and Fun Facts of Surprise and Fear (21–30)
Toilet Trivia Quiz
There have long been all kinds of funny tales, curious trivia, and slightly scary stories about bathrooms that are popular with elementary school kids, right? For example, how to use the toilet, its history, and unusual bathroom situations around the world—everything is full of surprises once you learn about them! Another charm is that both children and adults can have fun together—laughing or feeling a bit thrilled—through bathroom-themed quizzes and spooky stories.
We use bathrooms every day.
Learning about the hidden secrets and fun stories in such a familiar place makes it all the more enjoyable!
