Scientists and researchers are always busy at work, hoping to create the next greatest consumer product, or identify a new species of mammal, or create a cure for cancer. Similarly, archeologists are constantly digging around to unlock secrets from the past. More often than you'd think, all of this hard work results in some pretty bizarre discoveries.
These discoveries don't come just at the hand of scientists, of course. Plenty of regular citizens have stumbled upon the craziest things. So what's been discovered in 2012? Lots of oddities, just like any other year. Here are 10 of them.
How cool would it be if you could pee through your mouth? Actually, it doesn't sound appealing at all. But scientists have discovered a Chinese soft-shelled turtle that can do just that. Its name is Pelodiscus sinensis, and it comes equipped with unusual gill-like projections on its mouth .
The turtles typically live in salty swamps and marshes. Strangely, when they're on dry land, they often stick their heads in puddles. In fact, researchers discovered these turtles can submerge their heads underwater for as long as 100 minutes. They also found the turtles can pee about 50 times more urea through their mouths than from their rears .
So why are they doing this? Like humans, turtles need to wash out the urea their bodies create. Urea is a result of proteins that decompose in our bodies. Humans create the urine to do this by drinking fresh water. But the soft-shelled turtles can't simply drink some water, because they live in a salty environment, and saltwater's not good to drink. Scientists speculate that to solve this problem, the turtles get rid of their urea by sticking their heads in fresh water, like that found in puddles, and simply rinse the urea out through their mouths .
The goopy puddles known as slime molds are part of a group of microbes called protists. These single-celled organisms don't have brains, yet researchers discovered they have memories.
Slime molds secrete a thick, translucent slime as they move. Then, they use the slime trail they've laid down to record where they've been -- which, in turn, helps them go around obstacles and find things. In studies, researchers hid a sugary meal behind a U-shaped barrier, and the slime mold found it by using its trail to figure out where it had already been, and thus where to look next .
Such a memory isn't the same as a human memory, of course. Slime molds can't store memories, for example. Still, the findings help us understand how early organisms figured out problems and puzzles. And the discovery marks the first demonstration of a spatial memory system in a brainless organism .