# Slate's unanswered questiions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 19, 2012, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slates-unanswered-questiions/644506 "2012-12-19T09:16:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slates-unanswered-questiions/644506/21 "2012-12-20T11:12:17Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > 1. What is it with what I like to call “the pee-pee dance?” When one has a strong urge to urinate, one tends to bounce from one foot to the other. This is especially noticeable in children who love to wait until the last minute. I have found myself doing it occasionally when the button on my pants is especially hard to undo. Does the dance actually help? It must serve some function as it seems to be universal. It serves the same purpose as biting your tongue to prevent yourself screaming, or hipping around when you stub your toe. In really simple terms, your brain can only process so many signals at once. Once it’s receiving too many signals it prioritises them and ignores the least important. Since \*reacting \*to pain is more important for survival than \*sensing \*it, physical movement takes precedence over feeling discomfort, so if you move, the brain shuffles the sensation of discomfort lower down the list of things it pays attention to. Note that this is very simplified. The reality has to do with the volountary and involuntary nervous systems desensitising each other and a heap of other stuff that I’m not sure I recall clearly and can;t b bothered Googling. But in simple terms, moving lessens the pain by forcing the brain to concentrate on the muscles. > [@](#): > > 1. When and how did humankind figure out that sex is what causes babies? It’s not exactly the most obvious correlation: Sex doesn’t always lead to babies, and there’s a long lead time between the act and the consequence—weeks before there are even symptoms, usually. So roughly where do we think we were as we a species when it clicked? Cecil did a column on this. For some peoples, it wasn’t until the 19th or possibly 20th century that they learned this, from outsiders. > [@](#): > > 1. Of all the things in the world that humans produce in multiples, what thing has been replicated more time than any other? It’s probably some nut or bolt or something, but I just thought I would ask. Depends entirely on what your tolerance is and how you define “things” As the question is phrased, the answer would be some sort of molecule. I would guess carbon dioxide. Identical units are produced in the million of moles every microsecond. If we restrict ourselves to the macroscopic, then I guess salt crystals would win. Thousands of of crystals are made every hour. If we restrict ourselves to macroscopic substances that are “the same” to tolerances of a few percent, then I guess the answer would be some form of foodstuff. While we may produce a lot of, say, 7/8 Whitworth nuts, I don’t think it could ever compare to the number of M&Ms or even Oreos. > [@](#): > > 1. I’ve always wondered how other animals can safely clean their anuses with their tongues. Though I have not thoroughly experimented myself, my understanding is that fecal matter is poisonous to humans. Is there some fundamental misconception here, or is there a difference between humans and other animals in this way? Perhaps humans have become intolerant to fecal matter over long timescales. First off, your own feces isn’t usually fatal to humans. The reason why we avoid it is because it \*might \*cause illness, not that it is a certainty. At a guess, I would say that ingesting trace amounts of feces, as you’d get from licking your “clean” anus, would probably result in illness less than one time in a thousand, and serious illness one time in a million. Secondly, other animals don’t clean their anuses with their tongues. That’s mostly something that only the carnivores do. Carnivores are a lot more tolerant of gastrointestinal contamination because of the physiology of their stomachs and the length of the gut. when you consider that a wolf or a lion will happily eat the feces of other animals wrapped in the decaying remains of the colon, their own feces is almost sterile in comparison. In contrast herbivores, including us, have guts that are designed to ferment their food, which means that microbes that get in there can cause some really nasty infections. Cattle, for example, can easily die from ingesting feces because it introduces botulism into the stomach, where it thrives. So it’s not like humans are particularly odd in our sensitivity to feces. > [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > That does not make sense. Cats lost the ability to taste sweetness during their evolution, so they are not attracted to sweet things. Not quite. Cats lack the primary receptor for sweet carbohydrates. That’s quite along way from saying that they can’t taste sweet or that they aren’t attracted to it. It’s entirely possible that, because antifreeze is a powerful trigger for alternative sweet receptors, cats crave it even more than other mammals because it is such a novel and pleasant sensation. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slates-unanswered-questiions/644506/22 "2012-12-20T15:31:04Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Cats? > That does not make sense. Cats lost the ability to taste sweetness during their evolution, so they are not attracted to sweet things. Make sense or not, it’s a pretty well known fact. See: [Antifreeze Poisoning in Cats](http://www.pet360.com/cat/health/antifreeze-poisoning-in-cats/HtBBRc-EMU2-ywOCCjnlhA) or any one of a number of similar sites. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slates-unanswered-questiions/644506.md?page=1)