Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE Q.I. ELVES ANSW
WHY do dogs chase cats at every opportunity? Why do paper cuts hurt so much? Is a tortoise slower than a sloth? And which numbers should I pick to win the lottery?
These are just a few of the queries put to the “elves” of QI – hosted by Sandi Toksvig – by the listeners of BBC Radio 2’s The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.
The researchers’ unexpected and frequently hilarious answers now feature in the book 222 QI Answers to Your Quite Ingenious Questions.
Here are a few of the puzzlers…
QIs there any truth to the saying “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning”?
This saying has been around since biblical times and it actually does hold true for people living in many parts of the world.
In the UK, the weather usually comes from the west, so when you look towards a sunset, you’re looking at the weather to come.
If that forthcoming weather is pleasant, there’s a good chance it’s the result of what’s called a high-pressure system, which traps dust in the air. Sunlight scatters off the particles to create a red sunset.
In the morning, though, the sun is in the east. If you see red, the dusty high-pressure system is to your east and has already passed you. The weather following it is likely to be wet and windy.
Q Why is it that paper cuts hurt so much?
Paper cuts are excruciating because we usually get them on our fingers. We have thousands of sensory receptors, or nerve endings, in each fingertip and tens of thousands in the rest of our hand.
They help our fingers detect things as tiny as fingerprint ridges, which are barely 0.4mm apart.
Test it yourself. Unravel a paper clip and bring its ends close together. Touch them to your fingertip, then to your arm. You should feel “twopoint discrimination” on your finger but only one point on your arm, where sensory receptors are further apart. The finger’s pain receptors, called nociceptors, are packed together like this too, so it’s no surprise fingers are among the most sensitive parts of our bodies.
Then there’s the paper. Under a microscope, you will see that the edge of a piece of A4 is jagged, as if covered in cactus needles. It’s closer to a chainsaw’s teeth than the straight blade of a knife. This means that paper doesn’t cut “cleanly” but tears through the skin, damaging more nerve endings as it does so.
More annoying still is the fact that most paper cuts are shallow. Deeper cuts can sever nerve endings, which stops them sending pain signals to the brain. Paper, however, slices deep enough to trigger the nerves but not deep enough to shut them up.
Q Why do dogs chase cats?
It’s down to how each animal reacts to being surprised.
When a cat encounters a dog for the first time, its instinct is to run and hide. An unfamiliar animal might be prey or a predator, so they need space to work out whether to pounce or flee.
A dog’s instinct, on the other hand, is to chase new or exciting things, including cars, their own tails and cats.
So, when a cat and a dog meet for the first time, an animal whose main instinct is to run and hide is coming face to face with an animal whose instinct is to chase moving objects.
The result is often the classic cat-and-dog cartoon routine.
Q Why do people get left and right mixed up but no up and down?
Which way is left and which right is quite arbitrary. It ca change depending on which wa you’re facing. Plus, you could b referring to your own left o somebody else’s. On the othe hand, it’s easy to know which way i down. Just drop something.
Q What’s the strangest thing that anyone has ever stockpiled?
During the Cold War, the USSR kep a stockpile of steam trains. This was i case their modern trains were take