The Democracy of Sneezes and Other Unsolved Mysteries

Why Animals Keep Doing Things That Make No Sense

Okay, so I just went down this ridiculous rabbit hole about weird animal behaviors that scientists can’t explain, and honestly? Animals are way weirder than I expected.

Like, did you know African wild dogs take sneeze votes to decide when to go hunting? They literally have democratic sneezing sessions where they count sneezes to determine group decisions. What the hell? That’s either the most advanced form of democracy in the animal kingdom or the most ridiculous, and I can’t decide which.

But that’s just the beginning of the weirdness parade:

The Unexplained Greatest Hits

Raccoons are obsessed with washing food that doesn’t need washing. They’ll dip perfectly clean food in water that’s dirtier than the food itself. Scientists originally thought this was hygiene behavior, but nope - they just… like doing it? Even when it makes the food objectively worse?

Sheep spontaneously form perfect circles in fields. Not talking about herding behavior here - these are geometric circles that they maintain for hours, like they’re conducting some kind of ovine ritual or summoning something. What are they doing? Nobody knows.

Bears run art galleries. They repeatedly rub against specific trees to create intricate bark patterns that last for years. Forest galleries curated by bears. For reasons unknown.

Octopuses throw things at each other. Not hunting behavior, not defense - they just collect shells and algae and chuck them at their neighbors like underwater jerks. The receiving octopuses even duck to avoid getting hit. It’s aquatic road rage.

Humpback whales coordinate 40-ton bubble-net fishing expeditions. They swim in perfect spirals while blowing bubbles to create massive underwater nets. The coordination required is insane - like if 40 people choreographed an underwater dance while holding their breath and catching fish.

The Really Weird Stuff

Some of this gets into territory that’s just… what?

Aye-ayes pick their noses with three-inch fingers. Their middle finger is specifically evolved to be ridiculously long, and they use it to dig around in their nasal cavities all the way to their throat. Why? Scientists literally just said “maybe because they can.”

Parrotfish wrap themselves in mucus cocoons every night. They spend energy creating these slimy sleeping bags that contain antibiotics and hide their scent from predators. It’s like if humans evolved to sleep in hand-made hazmat suits.

Male jumping spiders catapult themselves off females during mating. They launch themselves at 200 times their body length per second to avoid being eaten. Imagine a human throwing themselves 530 meters in one second just to escape an awkward conversation.

Some insects use “superpropulsion” to pee. Sharpshooter bugs have anal catapults that fling urine droplets faster than the catapult itself moves, defying basic physics expectations. They’ve apparently mastered technologies we’re still figuring out.

The Democratic Animals

The sneeze voting thing really gets me though. These African wild dogs have apparently figured out democracy before most humans did. They gather in a circle, start sneezing, count the sneezes, and make group decisions based on sneeze tallies.

But it gets weirder - the alpha dogs’ sneezes apparently count more than subordinate sneezes. So it’s not even pure democracy, it’s weighted democratic sneezing with hierarchical vote values.

How did they figure this out? Did one particularly politically-minded wild dog think “you know what our pack needs? A voting system based on respiratory functions”?

The Ones That Might Be Smarter Than Us

Crows hold grudges and recognize human faces. They pass down information about specific humans through generations. Your great-grandchildren might be dealing with crows who remember something you did decades ago.

Crows also run traffic-based nut-cracking operations. They drop nuts on roads, wait for cars to crack them, then retrieve the nuts when traffic clears. They’ve figured out how to use human infrastructure as tools.

Termites build their colonies aligned to magnetic fields. Their structures are perfectly oriented to Earth’s magnetic field in ways that would make human engineers jealous. They have built-in compass technology we don’t understand.

The Things That Sound Made Up But Aren’t

Some frogs disguise themselves as poop to avoid predators. Young Wallace’s flying frogs are bright orange with white flecks specifically to look like bird droppings. It works - birds actively avoid the fake poop frogs.

California blackworms escape from tangled balls in milliseconds. They form writhing spheres of hundreds of worms, then instantly untangle using coordinated figure-eight movements. It’s like a biological Rubik’s cube that solves itself.

Vervet monkeys steal alcohol from bars. They’ve developed human-like drinking preferences and will specifically target alcoholic beverages. Some become functional alcoholics. Scientists are studying them to develop treatments for human alcoholism.

White-throated snapping turtles breathe through their butts. “Cloacal respiration” - they absorb oxygen through tissues in their rear ends. Evolution looked at this turtle and said “you know what? Let’s get creative with breathing.”

What This All Means (Probably Nothing)

The thing that strikes me about all this weirdness is how much we still don’t understand about our own planet. We’ve got satellites mapping distant galaxies, but we can’t figure out why sheep make circles or why raccoons insist on washing clean food.

Maybe the real lesson is that evolution doesn’t optimize for making sense to humans. These behaviors might be perfectly logical from the animals’ perspectives, but completely baffling to us because we’re asking the wrong questions.

Or maybe animals are just weird and do things for reasons that don’t need to make sense. Maybe the sheep circles are just because it feels good. Maybe the octopus throwing is just for fun. Maybe the sneeze voting is because African wild dogs figured out democracy and decided sneezing was as good a voting mechanism as any other.

Either way, the next time someone tells you humans are the weirdest species on the planet, remind them about the democratic sneezing, the forest bear galleries, and the turtles breathing through their asses.

We’re definitely weird, but we’ve got some serious competition.

Written by someone who started researching mathematical paradoxes and somehow ended up learning about turtle butt-breathing. The internet is a strange place.