John said, “Listen, you can hear the jammer.” The what? “The jammer,” he said, “Watch the moths.” It turns out the moths, through evolution, had developed their own electronic countermeasures to jam the bat radar.
https://steveblank.com/2009/03/23/if-i-told-you-i%e2%80%99d-...
"If you peel a banana, take a bite off the top, and then poke your index finger in to the middle of it, it will split in to perfect thirds".
Upon trying this, I discovered it was not true, and my friend just wanted to see me stick my finger in a banana...
All this time I thought this was him being silly!
(For the record, the banana did NOT split nicely)
It's still technically possible it's a hoax but, boy, that's a lot of effort to provide fake content to support the hoax.
Nice. Maybe GP got the wrong end, or it is a test of ripeness, or perhaps 'bite off the end' ruined it (it at least didn't seem to be necessary in the linked video).
I'm still going to shake my keys at the next swarm I passby.
Might be an urban myth, though it seems like it might just work.
At least I'm more scared of rabies than any government fine. By the time you know something is wrong, you're already a corpse that's about to remember to stop moving.
> Rabies virus travels through the nerves to the spinal cord and brain. This process can last approximately 3 to 12 weeks. The animal has no signs of illness during this time.[^1]
> Several tests are necessary to diagnose rabies ante-mortem (before death) in humans; no single test is sufficient. Tests are performed on samples of saliva, serum, spinal fluid, and skin biopsies of hair follicles at the nape of the neck.[^2]
> Once clinical signs of rabies appear, the disease is nearly always fatal, and treatment is typically supportive. Less than 20 cases of human survival from clinical rabies have been documented.[^3]
[^1]: https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/transmission/body.html
[^2]: https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/diagnosis/animals-humans.html
"The incubation period is typically 1–3 months, but can vary from a few days to more than 1 year [1,4]. Cases of up to 6 years incubation period have been discussed[5]."
And this is specifically in humans, not in animals in general.
There is no test that I know of, but vaccine is very effective even after you got it (but before actual symptoms show up), so if you suspect you're infected, you go and get the shots. Thing is, AFAIK those are quite painful, so it's not something you want to take as prophylaptic unless you're at high risk (e.g. working as a vet).
All this adds up to what I wrote earlier: you get random bat or squirrel bite, tiny enough that you forget about it in moments, and a few months later, you suddenly die.
--
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies
[1] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/14760584.2015.1...
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1. Likely inaccurate description of the plot based on 45-year-old memories of reading the story in a library collection.
Keys will often ring in the ultrasonic and poorly mimic the frequencies that a lot of bats use.
If you have a population of bats that hunt near you, the bugs will typically just drop. Like, just drop to the ground as fast as they can.
They know the sound of hunting bats and your keys may be just close enough to that sound that they think they're being hunted. So they do the best that they can to get out of the way and go with gravity. At least, that's my theory.
Fun little thing to do as a bet or with the kiddos.