Facts About Nature's Wonders That Will Take Your Breath Away

To Scale, Saturn's Rings are Thinner Than Paper
The inner circle of Saturn’s seven rings spans about 180,000 miles in circumference. But the rings are, at most, about 0.6 miles. Let’s do some math: at the thickest spot, that amounts to a thickness-to-width ratio of 0.0000033. A standard 8.5-by-11 piece of paper (which is 0.004 inches thick) has a thickness-to-width ratio of 0.00036—or more than a hundred times that of Saturn’s rings.

The King's holly plant reproduces by cloning.

Most plants reproduce by mixing the genetic matter of two or more plants. But that's not true of a lomatia plant called King's holly.

To reproduce, the plant simply drops its own branch, which will form its own root system and become its own plant, but with identical DNA to the parent plant. Unfortunately, it's difficult for these plants to form defenses against diseases and predators without mixing genetic material. So, as a result, King's holly, which exists only in Tasmania, is critically endangered.

Our galaxy is set to collide with the Andromeda galaxy.

Our galactic home, the Milky Way, is on an inevitable collision course with our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.
Stars, including our Sun, will smash into one another and orbits will fly out of whack. The chaos will go on for some time, but eventually, everything will settle down and the two galaxies will merge into one huge elliptical galaxy.

Don't lose any sleep over this eventuality, though—it won't happen for another 3.75 billion years.

Dementors exist in nature.

Well, sort of. In 2015, scientists in Thailand discovered a new species of wasp with a horrifying method of killing their prey. The wasps inject venom into cockroaches to paralyze them, so that they can drag the roach back to their lair and begin to feast while the roach is still alive. To find a name for this wasp, the scientists looked to the Harry Potter universe, in which dementors punish their victims by sucking the souls out of their still-living bodies. And thus, the dementor wasp was born.

The Low’s pitcher-plant is a toilet and food source all in one.

You’ve probably heard of carnivorous plants like the Venus flytrap, but the Nepenthes lowii (or the Low’s pitcher-plant) has moved away from eating animals, to instead feasting on what they leave behind. The plant secretes a white, sugary nectar that both birds and shrews love. But in order to access it, they must perch their rear ends over the mouth of the Low’s pitcher-plant. “Basically it’s a toilet complete with a feeding station,” said one researcher at Royal Roads University in British Columbia.

Cows kill more people than sharks.

Turns out, Jaws really blew things out of proportion for sharks. According to the Center for Disease Control, sharks kill an average of four people per year, while cows kill an average of 22 annually. Though some are due to road accidents, 75 percent were premeditated attacks.

"What's really chilling is that, in five cases, people were killed by multiple cows in group attacks," one Gizmodo reporter wrote. "Group attacks can be surprisingly well-coordinated. When they're feeling defensive, cows will gather in a circle, all facing outwards, lowering their heads and stamping the ground. When they're feeling offensive, certain cows lead the charge."

There are 28 kinds of "co**se flowers."

You might not know about the plant genus Rafflesia, but you may have heard about the "co**se flower," a rare type of jungle plant that attracts pollinating insects to its huge flowers by smelling like death and rot.

In fact, there are 28 distinct species of this rootless, leafless plant, with flowers varying in size from about 5 inches to 40 inches. Most of these flowers take six to nine months to grow and will begin to decay within a few days.

Acacia trees can warn each other of danger

Arcadia trees, which grow all over the African savannah, have a unique defense system. When animals like antelopes start to gobble up its leaves, the tree increases tannin production to levels that are toxic to animals.

But that's not all. The tree then emits a cloud of ethylene gas that travels through the air, reaching other trees so they too can begin producing more tannins.