Amazing Facts Around The World

Saturday, February 9, 2013

SIX Underrated Predators With Mind-Blowing Abilities

9:34:00 AM  
Nature is a brutal place where savage predators sift through infinitesimal strands of stimulus you cannot begin to imagine ... and you routinely fall on your face because you thought there was "one more stair." Obviously, you don't stand a chance in the wild -- not when animals like these are out there murdering each other with what might as well be magic powers.

#6. Snakes Have Nine Senses

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The five senses are pretty standard among living creatures. Some animals will have an extra sense thrown into the mix -- directional, barometric, fashion -- but five or six is generally the limit of mortal perceptions. Unless you're a snake. They can have up to nine senses that we know about. No, they can't see dead people or anything -- it's just that they double up on all of the basic ones. Snakes have two types of hearing, two types of smell, and two types of sight.
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"And 12 types of kickass."
A snake's jaw is linked directly to its inner ear, allowing it to literally hear surface vibrations. Snake jawbones are so sensitive that a horned desert viper can accurately strike at a small, quiet mouse coming up behind him ... in the middle of a pitch-black night. Further, their lower jawbones are separated into two halves, and the difference in timing between the vibrations received by the two sides informs the snake of the direction of its scampering prey. Snakes have high-fidelity directional hearing in their mouths.
Better yet, because snakes "smell" by "tasting" the air with their tongues, and because those tongues are typically forked, they also have incredible directional smelling. Snakes effectively smell in stereo. Finally, many varieties of snake have heat-sensing pit organs that can detect infrared light. For their relatively tiny size, these sensors are up to 10 times more sensitive than anything our technology has managed to create, and they come in several different types that all focus on different wavelengths.
Sichert, Andreas, et al.
"Suck it, Predator."
But pit vipers take it a step further; they not only possess this crazy Predator-vision, but actually use the heat map to direct multiple attacks on a single target. They'll strike their prey once, wait for the adrenaline to kick in, watch for heat spikes that show where their prey is most vulnerable, and then direct their next strikes to the weak spots. You might recognize that as the exact same tactic you use to beat video game bosses. That's right: Pit vipers' whole lives are basically one big round of Metal Gear Solid.

#5. Spiders Can Hear With Their Hair

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Spiders have an astounding and frightening array of abilities, like web spinning, jumping, and just ... generally existing at all. And now science is throwing another handful of meat into the Terror Jambalaya: Studies done on the hunting spider, Cupiennius salei, reveal that they can leap up and catch a bug flying past them ... while blindfolded. (Side note: We call "dibs" on not being the guy who has to tie the tiny spider blindfolds.)

"Take it off, motherfucker. I could use a finger steak."
C. salei accomplishes this feat by "feeling" the air around it with the sensitive hairs covering its body. They're so finely tuned that each hair can detect the direction and pressure of the airflow to accurately time and orient the spider's attack without the benefit of vision. It's not necessarily a new trick: Most mammals (including us) have hairs in their inner ear that detect sound vibrations, and spider hairs work on a similar principle, making their entire body a giant super-ear that can hear vibrations down to one ten-billionth of a meter ("roughly the width of an atom"). That's how sensitive their body beard is ... aaaaand of course they use it for murder.
But that's not the only molecular power arachnids possess. Most spiders use their hairy front legs for grasping prey, but some, like Palpimanus gibbulus, have incredible adhesive properties that make escaping intact literally impossible once they lay legs on something. But there's no webbing or glue involved: The microscopic hairs on P. gibbulus' legs are so small that molecular forces give them insane grip. Once seized, its prey, usually other spiders, can only escape by ripping off their own limbs. See? That's how terrifying spiders are: Even spiders are scared of them.
Discover
"Get back here! I want to try a double high-five."

#4. Foxes Have a Magnetic Targeting System

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Foxes have been romanticized throughout history as sly creatures. They've been called cunning, quick, sneaky, and deceitful, but two adjectives have been curiously absent when describing foxes up until now: "mutant" and "sniper." And we should probably fix that, because it's absolutely true: Foxes use the Earth's magnetic field to aim their strikes.
Researchers noticed that, when not appearing in charming anthropomorphic fables, foxes in the Northern Hemisphere preferred to pounce on hidden animals while facing exactly 20 degrees off from magnetic north. We know that lots of animals, from cows to bees, can sort of navigate using the Earth's invisible fields of energy, but no other animal, to our knowledge, uses it to hunt. After observing over 600 fox strikes, the evidence clearly shows that they prefer a northeasterly attack vector. When launching an attack against hidden prey from this direction, a fox's kill rate was a whopping 73 percent. From the exact opposite direction, it was 60 percent. Attacks not issued on this invisible axis at all fell to a pitiful 18 percent success rate. How, exactly, the fox manages this feat is still up for debate, but the leading theory is that they use the Earth's magnetic field in conjunction with their hearing to line up the target in a sort of biological crosshair.
Biology Letters, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2010.1145
You should see this guy sneak up on a Milk-Bone.
Here's how it might work: In the Northern Hemisphere, magnetic forces angle down at around 60 to 70 degrees. As the fox nears its prey, it listens for movement: The "sweet spot" is where the sound from the prey also matches the angle of the Earth's magnetic field. Another possibility is that this magnetic angle is actually built right into the fox's eyeballs, giving it a literal heads-up display.
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Which might explain why Star Fox was the only competent pilot in his squadron.
Let's just hope there's never a fable about the time the fox met the pit viper, or we're all going to need Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover on speed dial.

#3. Dragonfly Larvae Have Projectile Jaws

Most people consider dragonflies to be nothing more than happy indicators of summer. A dragonfly flitting by is visual shorthand for "beautiful summer day," but perhaps it should be shorthand for "Watch out: xenomorphic monsters crossing."
Adult dragonflies are the Harrier jets of the insect world -- they can fly at speeds of over 30 mph, hover, and even fly backward. Those massive eyes allow them to spot prey from over 100 yards away, and they're voracious eaters. But that's nothing compared to the dragonfly larva, which feeds by firing out its lower jaw like the monster from Aliens. Covered with spikes and spines too freaky to call "teeth," a dragonfly larva can extend its labium so quickly that it acts like a projectile weapon, stunning if not outright killing prospective prey.
It's such an effective hunting technique that dragonfly larvae can even catch minnows, some as large as themselves. But this is definitely a case of words and even still images utterly failing at their given task. You truly have to see that weird little insect fire its bladed chin gun at a passing fish in real time to understand that, if there's a God watching over this world, he's a huge horror nerd.
Langston University
"Y'know what the world could use? More nightmares."

#2. Dana Octopus Squids Use Flashbang Grenades

A few of the many fanged nightmares that lurk in the briny deep use bioluminescence to lure prey close, like that creepy fang-fish from Finding Nemo. Others use bioluminescence to signal mates, or even to ward off rivals. But nothing uses it like the Dana octopus squid: It's a predatory flasher.
BBC News
"Call it what you want. I know I look good."
No, these squids have not evolved to run up to bus stops with their balls hanging out of their chinos -- Japanese researchers filmed these gigantic invertebrates using their bioluminescence like a flashbang grenade. The man-sized squids will dash up to prey, splay their tentacles, and then set off a dizzying disco strobe light routine.
Royal Society via National Geographic
If you're looking to have some fun in the ocean, this is the guy to ask.
This sudden photonic onslaught, unleashed in the perpetual gloom and shadows of the tenebrous sea, stuns fish long enough for the tentacles to close, and boom: You've got yourself a squid effectively using urban warfare tactics. Sleep tight!

#1. Humpback Whales Fish With Nets

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Humpbacks are a favorite of ocean lovers everywhere. Compared to the vicious-looking sperm whales (is it just us, or was someone a confusing kind of horny on "Whale-Naming Day"?), big ol' clumsy humpbacks are like your jolly, dumb cousin, all dancing stupidly for your amusement at family barbecues. But much like that time you caught Cousin Jethro hacking into the Pentagon, you are seriously underestimating these blubbery beasts. See, humpback whales have been known to use one of the most convoluted and ingenious hunting methods on the planet: the bubble net.

Otherwise known as the ringworm of the sea.
While they're largely solitary, humpback whales do hunt in groups. When they find a school of tasty fish, the group breaks formation and encircles the prey in a deadly ring of humps. As one, the whales suddenly breathe out, and the ensuing bubbles are so thick and numerous that they form a net of force that the fish cannot swim through. Thus trapped in the bubble ring, the fish are then driven to the surface by a group of "shepherd" whales that swim up from below. Still other whales will scream at the scrambling fish. Yeah, all that beautiful, mournful singing? Turns out it's not all about communication or mating. Some of that caterwauling is straight up banshee-style sonic warfare: The noise disorients and even stuns fish, driving them further into the trap. Finally, when all the fish have been corralled, herded, and shrieked into a stupor, the entire group of humpbacks will bull rush the school from below, swallowing thousands of fish in a single gulp.
Brill, via Science Daily
Leave some for the rest of us, mooches.
Researchers don't think this is recently learned behavior either, which means that humpback whales were probably fishing with nets long before human beings ever thought of it.
So yeah, maybe it's time to rethink that whole "whaling" thing. Not for any ethical reason -- it just might not be a great idea to piss off the 40-ton, sonic-warfare-wielding master tacticians of the ocean, y'know?
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"We can body-check tanks. Something to keep in mind."

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Six Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes

9:30:00 AM  
When you think of the Middle Ages, chances are you picture gallant knights sitting astride brilliant destriers galloping through a sea of plagues, ignorance, and filth. And you can hardly be blamed for that, when everything from the movies you watch to your high school history teacher (who was mainly the football coach) has told you that ...

#6. Scientific Progress Was Dead

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The Myth:
They call it the Dark Ages for a reason. Any scientist who dared to actually study the universe would be shut down by the Catholic church, which thought all that bullshit was immoral and that the Bible was all the learnin' anybody could possibly need. They even thought the Earth was flat, for crying out loud.
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"No, we can't cross the ocean there, don't you see that sea monster in the way?"
The Reality:
Aside from the fact that, as we've already explained, most people in the Middle Ages did not think the Earth was flat, the church wasn't responsible for killing science -- to the contrary, it was largely responsible for saving it.
After the barbarians invaded Europe and Rome went the way of the dinosaurs, the Catholic church was the last remaining aspect of Roman culture in Western Europe. The church went about setting up monasteries across Europe, and along with the monks came the monks' massive libraries. Monks were just about the only educated people in the early Middle Ages, and pretty much everything we know about this entire time period was written by them.
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"Look, the monks' scroll clearly says that all monks had 12-inch dongs, so it must be true."
As time went on, the church stepped it up a notch and started establishing universities to foster the preservation of knowledge. You may have heard of a few of them: Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Paris (not to mention pretty much every other top school in Europe). At these universities, students studied more than most college kids do today, with an average bachelor's degree taking up to seven years to earn, and a master's or doctorate taking several more. The universities were also big on translation, having successfully translated into Latin guys like Aristotle and Plato, which effectively made the Renaissance possible. All of this despite the fact that beer bong technology was still in its infancy.
Around the same time as universities were popping up all over Europe, the Crusades were bringing Europeans into contact with advanced Muslim ideas of science and technology. Ideas like the compass and the astrolabe came to the West via Muslim Spain and came in handy during the later Age of Exploration. Italian merchants came back from trading in North Africa and gave us another innovation: Arabic numerals.
Sju
Pfft, like people are going to want to learn a whole other set of characters.
Medicine also made massive advances thanks to the university system. Contrary to popular belief, dissection of corpses was actually fine and dandy with the church, and medieval universities often did it in the basement (OK, so maybe it wasn't totally fine and dandy). By the 14th century, there were functional hospitals, and doctors had learned how to use antiseptic when lopping off people's body parts.
And that's a good thing, because everybody was encrusted in filth back then, right? Well, about that ...

#5. Everyone Smelled Like Complete Shit

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The Myth:
Even if we know nothing else about the Middle Ages, we know that everyone was absolutely filthy. Medieval peasants looked like something straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail ...
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But not nearly as whimsical.
... and the upper classes were hardly any cleaner. People back then took baths with about the same frequency as we go to the dentist -- a couple of times a year for the obsessive ones. Just getting to a person's genitals required a stiff wire brush and a chisel.
The Reality:
They were way into bathing for much of the Middle Ages. Maybe too into it -- they continued the Roman practice where a bunch of strangers got naked together for communal bathing, and most towns and even villages in medieval Germany had a communal bath where craftsmen would hang out and bathe together after a hard day's work. Just sitting there, probably washing each other's dongs while having loud conversations about how incredibly not gay they were.
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"You see my new pickup wagon with a bunch of tools in the back?"
Meanwhile, not only was it common for medieval folk to wash their hands before and after eating, it was also customary to offer to bathe with guests when they entered your home, something The Man has repeatedly reminded us is no longer acceptable in modern society. Medieval demand for soap (usually made from animal fats, with a variety of oils and salts added) was so great that by the 13th century, soap was being made on an almost industrial scale in Britain, Italy, Spain, and France.
So why do we picture everyone as wallowing in their own filth back then? Well, things changed all at once. If only an act of God could change Europe's epic bathing culture, they got one -- in the mid-14th century, the Black Death strolled up and kicked Europe right in the teeth with its pestilence boot. Suddenly, smart people were telling the previously washed masses that bathing was a surefire way to open your body's pores and invite in all the bad spirits or gremlins or whatever (they weren't too savvy on what caused illness back then).
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"The academy is divided down the middle, between Jews and forest pixies."
As a result, by the early modern period of history, bathing had become obsolete. So it's entirely possible that George Washington rated higher than Richard the Lionheart on the smell-like-shit-o-meter.

#4. Knights Were Honorable, Chivalrous Warriors

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The Myth:
Knights were gallant and brave warriors, charging into battle to slay the dragon and rescue the fair maiden.
The Reality:
Knights often had less in common with this:
Wikimedia Commons
"We shall die for the glory of our randomly assigned piece of land!"
And more in common with this:
Johan Ordonez/NBC News
Wessex side.
Remember, knights were professional warriors, and when there wasn't a war to fight, they had to findsomething to do with their war-boners. Most of these guys were relatively young and didn't have Call of Duty to satisfy their violent urges, so they tended to take it out on the local population. Toward the 11th century, many of the local lords started bickering over who would get a slice of the Holy Roman pie that Charlemagne baked, and the knights were at the forefront of these petty wars. These "wars" were less Braveheart-style epic battles and more knights rolling up into villages and slaughtering everybody.
The church tried to curb these conflicts, because frankly, they were nasty and threatened the stability of everything. First they tried to gather up all the knights and shake various body parts of dead saints at them, but when that didn't work, the Pope called the First Crusade and exported all these assholes to the Middle East, where they chivalrously ate babies and massacred the entire population of Jerusalem.
Wikimedia Commons
"Hey, the Pope said we wouldn't go to hell! No backsies!"
Later attempts were made to get these young 'uns under control, one being the chivalric code that was adopted around the 13th century. Examples like Sir Lancelot and Edward the Black Prince were raised to show knights how to behave in battle and in peace. Knights were encouraged to "defend the weak," but "the weak" was commonly interpreted as noble women and children, not peasants. So noble-on-noble violence may have decreased, but it was still totally cool for knights to kill and rape peasants, since, like those beers you had for breakfast, they didn't really count.

#3. Everyone Was a Prude

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The Myth:
Casual sex, and even knowledge of how sex works, is a modern invention. During the heavily religious Dark Ages, sex was strictly forbidden outside of marriage, and every single person of consenting age (a term that was very loosely defined back then) led a life that was a never-ending squelch through a pool of their own sexual repression.
The Reality:
You know those really goofy-looking shoes that men wore back then? The extra pointy ones, like something an elf would wear?
Ziko
We'd still wear those over Heelys.
Well, those points are called poulaines, and apparently they were meant to directly represent the wearer's dong. And in a revelation that will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with the intricate relationship between a man and his wang, these points were sometimes so big that dudes couldn't walk up stairs. Good thing they were all wearing those elaborate codpieces to protect their actual dongs when their shoe-dongs tripped them up.
And the sexy didn't stop with their fashion. Prostitution was a big friggin' deal back then. Although technically against the teachings of the church, everyone collectively agreed that if there were no hookers around, men would be out raping, just, everyone, because some of what you've heard about the Middle Ages wasn't a myth. In most medieval cities, prostitution was completely legal yet confined to certain districts and licensed by a town's mayor. The church even got in on this deal andlicensed some holy brothels of its very own.
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"She'll tickle your schmeckel for only a shekel!"
But let's not leave out the married folk. Since most upper-class marriages were political arrangements and the people getting married didn't necessarily like each other all that much, extramarital affairs were where it was at. And man, did these people get down -- if you've ever watched a show like The Tudors and thought it was all sexed up for a modern audience, you were wrong.
One of the reasons that Eleanor of Aquitaine usurped her husband Henry II was because Henry II apparently had more mistresses than Tiger Woods. Seeing that getting in bed with the king was a good way to get ahead in life, daughters of lower nobility basically became escorts and tried to become the king's favorite mistress, which worked out pretty well for Anne Boleyn when she married Henry VIII and became Queen of England. Worked out pretty well, that is, until she was beheaded for allegedly banging too many people who weren't Henry VIII.
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The Bible is very clear that you're only allowed three affairs at a time.
But the whole situation was still bad news for women, right? Because women were basically property back then? Well ...

#2. Women Were Treated as Cattle

Nino Mascardi/Getty Images
The Myth:
Europe during the Middle Ages is right up there with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the Top 5 Places It Would Suck to Have a Vagina. Women were horribly oppressed and were treated as second-class citizens -- their only responsibilities were to cook, clean, and squeeze out (male) babies on demand.
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"Sweetie? You get that new male heir I asked for? It's been like an hour ..."
The Reality:
Up until about 200 years ago, Europe was a largely agricultural society. And the funny thing about back-breaking and often dehumanizing labor is that it has a weird way of equalizing people -- when literally every member of the family is out busting his or her ass every morning just to fend off the very real threat of starvation, gender roles and sexism suddenly don't seem all that important. Thus, when it came to household responsibilities, women and men were equals by default, since the women had to do all the same bullshit their husbands had to do. So should time travel ever become a thing, never tell a medieval peasant woman to go make her husband a sandwich, because she'll probably cackle her plague-breath all up in your face before snapping you in half like a twig.
And the story wasn't much different in the cities. If dad owned a shop or a tavern, his daughters were the ones helping out. Sometimes a daughter would actually take over the family business and run it herself if her father became unable to, something that wouldn't really happen until much later in modern society. Women also generally ran the taverns in the Middle Ages -- in fact, women once ran England's entire beer industry. It's not quite clear when that changed, but we have to assume that at some point men realized they had allowed women to become all powerful by letting them be in charge of both beer and vaginas.
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"Well, at least we still have sports ... Oh Christ!"
Women who weren't busy running taverns or growing crops to survive could join a convent, which may not sound all that impressive until you realize that this gave them access to education in a time when that was extremely rare -- nuns could read and write in an age when the most powerful kings couldn't. And if they stuck with it long enough to become the abbess of a convent, they were in a position of power very similar to a male lord -- only, you know, maybe even a little higher, seeing as how they technically reported directly to the King of Kings and all.

#1. Life Was Horrible and Everyone Died Young

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The Myth:
Life in the Middle Ages has famously been described as "nasty, brutish, and short." The food sucked, the housing sucked, the work sucked, everything sucked. Luckily, people didn't have to endure all the perpetual suck for long, since they only lived to see 35, tops. Today, if you see a character older than 60 in a movie set in the Middle Ages, he's also a wizard.
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"A wizard dies precisely when he means to. Or when the giant eagles show up late."
The Reality:
As for lives being short, while it may be true that the average life expectancy was 35 years, we tend to overlook one very important word there: average. Infant mortality was brutal, since vaccinations against childhood diseases didn't exist yet and medicine was still in its "Here, chew on this root and stick some leeches on your junk" stage. So that skews the average way down. But if a male living in 1500 managed to see his 21st birthday, he was expected to live around 50 more years from that point.
The typical perception of the medieval peasant is someone breaking his back doing nonstop labor for lords who gaveth not a single fuck as to his well-being, but your typical peasant actually workedaround eight hours a day, with long breaks for meals and naps. And did you know that peasants got more time off than you do? Sunday was an automatic day off, and when you factor in long vacations at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer, plus all the saints' days (considering the fact that the Catholic church has even more saints than it does scandals), and medieval peasants were on holiday for a goodone-third of the year. And since much of that time was accompanied by epic festivals, they spent it getting shitfaced on various varieties of medieval ale. So not only did they work less than you, they also partied harder.
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"Hey, you guys coming to the after-orgy?"
And it turns out they weren't exactly living lives of "bare bones subsistence," either. By the late Middle Ages, your average English worker was making around $1,000 a year -- significantly better than people in some of today's poorer nations. And while no one will argue that that level of income would provide lifestyles that would inspire rap song lyrics, it did allow them to afford varied diets, the occasional luxury item, and plenty of ale to cover all the partying they were virtually required to do. Hell, you could get a rap song out of that, right? Quick, what rhymes with "dick shoes"?

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The SIX Dumbest Mistakes of Supposedly Smart Movie Characters

9:25:00 AM  
Movies have given us no shortage of wily and resourceful characters who can seemingly think their way out of any jam, be it with technical wizardry, combat experience, or supreme galactic mind powers. However, some of these characters, in the midst of using their wits to topple complicated obstacles, manage to inexplicably overlook some painfully obvious things that come back to bite them directly on their brilliant asses.

#6. Iron Man -- Tony Stark Forgets to Check Up on His Billion-Dollar Company

Iron Man clubs us to death with the idea that Tony Stark is the hippest genius in the history of goateed science. He farts out impossible technology like he's microwaving tater tots, constructs the most advanced suit of armor ever created while being held prisoner in a hollow mountain in the middle of Afghanistan, and is able to douchequip his way into women's pants on a daily basis.

"Before we do this, you should know I have hepatitis A through Z."
Tony is a billionaire because he is the head of Stark Industries, a company primarily concerned with making weapons for the military, which of course allows him to become a superhero in his off hours.
The Big Twist:
Tony thinks he's going to spend his superhero time Iron Manning terrorists to death, but the surprise twist is that his true enemy is someone close to him. His lifelong friend and mentor, Obadiah Stane, has been secretly selling weapons to terrorists, because there's apparently more money in that. He is, in fact, the one who originally set Tony up to be captured at the start of the movie.

"I see no way that not deleting this video can come back to haunt me."
After his plan to have Tony killed fails, Obadiah makes a move to take control of the company by filing an injunction against Stark with their board of directors behind his back, a fact he shockingly reveals to Tony at some weird tuxedoed science fair.
But How Did He Not See This Coming?
Hold on just a damned second. Tony isn't an entry-level worker or mid-level manager at Stark Industries. He is the fucking CEO. His name is on the goddamned building. Why the hell didn't one of his 7 billion phones and/or answering services ring the instant the injunction was filed? Why didn't Pepper, Tony's personal assistant who handles every single aspect of his life, pass on the information?

Her punishment? She's named CEO in the next film.
We are assaulted to the point of irritation with the idea that Tony is a cosmic genius, yet he makes absolutely no effort to pay any attention to what is happening with his company. And don't say he was a hands-off inventor who didn't really get involved with the business side of things -- after three months of being held hostage by cave terrorists, the first thing he does is completely restructure the business by dissolving the weapons manufacturing arm. It's incredibly important to him, and therefore baffling that he wouldn't check in from time to time to see how everything was progressing in the wake of his job-destroying mental breakdown.
But he's too busy screaming at robots in his basement and zipping around Ferris wheels in his rocket suit to be bothered with any of that bullshit. If Tony had decided to check out the proceedings, he would've noticed that Obadiah was trying to lock him out, which in turn might have prompted him to take a closer look at what his partner had been up to for the past several months, thus uncovering Obadiah's nefarious plot (which, to be fair, seems to change on a scene-by-scene basis). But Tony, the business-savvy super genius who could've hacked any secret file on Obadiah's computer with a sidelong glance, didn't think to make even a cursory checkup on something that was surely big enough news to hit the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

#5. Aliens -- Ripley Should Have Immediately Known She Was Being Set Up

After the events of Alien, Lieutenant Ripley is picked up in her escape pod by a team of deep space salvagers after floating in the cosmos for half a century. She debriefs her former employers about the horrible star beast that face-murdered her entire crew, at which point they offer to send her right back to the planet where she found the damn thing in order to help some Marines investigate why none of the colonists there have answered their phones in three months. They even offer to send a company representative with her to oversee the operation.
The Big Twist:
Of course, the good guys arrive and are immediately attacked by swarms of aliens (that's not the twist -- that part was given away by the title), but the big complication comes when it's revealed that the company was in on it! The company rep, Carter Burke, tries to screw all of them over, because it turns out the goal was never for them to succeed -- the goal was to capture a live specimen of one of the aliens.

The lesson, as always, is never trust a collar popper.
But How Did She Not See This Coming?
This all must have seemed rather familiar to Ripley. In the first film, she intercepts a secret message from the company instructing one of her fellow crew members, Ash, to retrieve the alien at all costs. Ash (who turns out to be an android) interprets "at all costs" to mean "stab Ripley with a porno magazine," which he totally tries to do in order to keep her from destroying the alien. Essentially, Ash was under direct orders from the company to either kill or sacrifice his entire six-person crew in order to retrieve a phallus-headed space demon.
Yet for some reason, Ripley doesn't find her new mission to be the least bit suspicious. Her employers (the same ones who fed her crew to an alien last time) are sending her down to a planet (the same planet where they initially found said alien) to investigate the sudden disappearance of hundreds of people (who all work for the same alien-feeding company).

"We're calling the mission Project: Alien Capture because we're capturing the ... uh, planet back from the aliens."
What's worse, Carter Burke is like a walking red flag waving in Ripley's face for two-thirds of the movie. She agrees to go to the planet only after Burke promises that they will destroy any aliens they might find. As soon as they do find aliens, however, he vehemently objects to any and all suggestions of eradicating them (including bombing the entire facility from orbit, which would've saved us all a lot of time). Ripley then discovers log records indicating that Burke, acting on behalf of the company, specifically sent the colonists to go looking for the aliens, resulting in every last one of them getting killed. So she confronts Burke, vowing to make him pay for his crimes.
However, rather than share this absurdly crucial bit of information with any of the Marines, Ripley decides to go take a nap, because she apparently believes that Burke won't try to kill her in her sleep, even though he's already sent hundreds of people to their doom (by the way, this is precisely what he tries to do). Only after Burke's attempt to unleash a pair of face-raping stellar crabs on her is thwarted does Ripley finally reveal his nefarious plot to the rest of the Marines.

At which point Bill Paxton heroically offers to shoot him in the face.
And at no point do the Marines look at Ripley and say, "Wait, isn't this the exact thing that happened to you last time? Either you're the most understanding woman in the world or you're really slow to catch on to things."

#4. Die Hard -- John McClane Somehow Doesn't Figure Out That the Terrorists Have More Explosives

In Die Hard, John McClane systematically outwits and kills a dozen terrorists led by Alan Rickman's fake German accent in a Los Angeles skyscraper. We learn early on that this is not in fact a terrorist attack, but a very elaborate robbery of the building's vault.
The Big Twist:
Oh, shit, the building is rigged to explode! The bad guys are going to blow up the building and the hostages with them, because they think it will help them escape. McClane foils the robbery, but fails to prevent them from blasting the building in half, since the fact that this was the terrorists' plan comes as a complete shock to him.

"Terrorists ... explode things? Who knew?"
But How Did He Not See This Coming?
One of the first bad guys McClane perforates with the bullets of justice is carrying a duffel bag loaded with bricks of C4 and about 87 detonators, way more than the explosives in the bag would require. Obviously, this bag is fairly important to Alan Rickman's plan, because he immediately throws a murderous tantrum demanding them back.
In response, McClane takes the small amount of C4 in the bag, jams a few detonators in it, and drops it down an elevator shaft, incinerating a few of Alan Rickman's henchmen and, as far as McClane knows, disposing of all their explosives. But Alan Rickman doesn't stop pitching a fit about the rest of the detonators. He even gives some hapless loser pretending to be McClane's friend a 9 mm face-ectomy and threatens to start executing hostages one by one after McClane steadily refuses to hand them over.

"Can you at least kill the assholes in accounting first?"
"Well screw you too, Sheila!"
This is a hint and a half that there are more explosives somewhere in the building (judging by the sheer number of detonators McClane is still lugging around, there are probably a lot more). Why else would the terrorists be so desperate to get the detonators back? Does he think they're rentals that have to be returned to the bomb store?
To be fair, McClane maybe couldn't have anticipated that Alan Rickman would literally blow the roof off of the joint, but he should have at least suspected that there were one or two more bombs still stashed somewhere. But this doesn't dawn on him until they finally meet face to face and yet another demand for the detonators is issued. By then it's far too late, and Alan Rickman consumes the top floors of the tower in a cataclysmic explosion that destroys a helicopter and leaves McClane swinging from a fire hose and swearing at everything.

"Seriously, fuck everyone named Karl!"

#3. The Fugitive -- Dr. Richard Kimble Forgets That He Lent the Murderer His House Keys

In The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimble (played by Harrison Ford's bearded variant) is wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife but escapes on his way to prison thanks to an awesome train/bus accident. He goes on the run, trying to avoid capture while tracking down the real killer, a one-armed man who bizarrely overpowered both him and his wife.

"Wow, he must jerk off a lot."
The problem is, the police have no evidence that the other killer even exists (which is baffling considering that Kimble battles the guy in his foyer before the cops arrive and he has one goddamned arm, how hard can he be to find?), and there were no signs of forced entry into Kimble's home on the night of the murder, a fact the good doctor couldn't explain (which is why he wound up convicted of the murder).
The Big Twist:
In the end, Kimble finds out that the murderer was sent to kill him by his friend and colleague Dr. Charles Nichols (we assume he got some kind of discount by hiring a one-armed assassin). It was all because of an unsafe drug Kimble was about to blow the whistle on (or something).

In the original script, it all stemmed from his jealousy of Kimble's dope beard.
But How Did He Not See This Coming?
Remember the thing about there being no forced entry into the house? Well, Kimble lent his house keys to Nichols earlier that day. Since the whole "the killer had a set of keys" thing was kind of crucial to the investigation (it's what made Kimble a suspect, after all), you'd think he would have made the connection.
Now, we aren't saying that the fact that Nichols had free access to the Kimble residence immediately makes him the killer, but had Kimble simply mentioned to the police that he'd lent Nichols his house keys, that bit of information would've been enough to at least add Nichols to the list of suspects. Once that happened, it probably wouldn't take the cops very long to figure out that Nichols knew a sketchy one-armed man and had contacted him several times in the weeks preceding the murder. After some email transcripts revealed that their conversations focused mainly on the best methods of removing the skull fragments of other people's wives from beneath your fingernails, the case would've been pretty well closed, and Kimble would've been spared a whole lot of running away from Tommy Lee Jones.

"Next time I'm just going to shoot you in the dick and call it a day."
Instead, Kimble either forgot about it entirely or didn't think it was worth bringing up the entire time he was on trial for murder, right up until he was given the freaking death penalty. You'd think he'd have had plenty of time to think about it while sitting in jail.

#2. Limitless -- The Man With the Superhuman Brain Forgets to Pay Back the Terrifying Loan Shark

Limitless stars Bradley Cooper as a washout writer named Eddie Morra who lives in a shitty apartment run by a terrifyingly aggressive Asian lady. About 20 minutes into the film, Eddie discovers a drug called NZT that gives him unrestricted access to every piece of information he's ever stored in his brain, even if it was only in there for a second. This apparently makes him Thought Superman, and he solves every single problem in his life in a series of montages, because that's how drugs work.

We'd call this scene bullshit, but the career of Hunter S. Thompson says otherwise.
Eddie then goes to an Eastern European loan shark for some quick cash. With his NZT mind lasers, he is able to use that money to become stupefyingly rich on the stock market, which we're pretty sure is the only time in history anyone has ever become a stock-trading super baron after shoving dangerously unregulated drugs into their face.
The Big Twist:
Eddie comes home one day to find that -- holy shit! -- the loan shark is demanding repayment of his money. In the course of the confrontation, the loan shark winds up with the super brain drug, and now Eddie has a big-brained enemy who makes his life hell for the rest of the film, nearly driving Eddie to suicide.

"Who could have predicted that life choices based on drug abuse and criminal involvement could turn out so bad?"
But How Did He Not See This Coming?
Wait a second. Despite the fact that his veins are coursing with the mind-flexing drug of the future that makes you remember everything ever (possibly even events in other people's lives that you didn't even witness), it somehow slips Eddie's mind to pay the loan shark back? It's not like he didn't have the money -- he is literally the most rapidly successful man in history at this point in the film. Eddie has written his dream novel, made a fortune on Wall Street, and become the personal financial adviser to one of the most powerful men in the country.
The $100,000 Eddie owes the loan shark is like peanuts now, plus he has the memory of a mythological deity -- why the hell wouldn't he pay off the loan? Instead, he lets his face get plastered all over the news under the headline "Handsome Billionaire" while Crazy Russian Scarface gets to stand around leering like a hideous ogre, wondering when the fuck he's going to get his money back.

"I should go pay him back, but it's not like these sits are going to up themselves."
The film ends with a permanently drugged Eddie about to become a senator, with eyes on becoming president. It's played like a happy ending, but the guy seems like a shoo-in to immediately forget where he left the nuclear launch codes.

#1. Watchmen -- Dr. Manhattan Forgets That He Can See the Past

As Watchmen draws to a close, and you attempt to pound circulation back into your legs, Ozymandias reveals that he has siphoned energy from Dr. Manhattan (the dong-swinging omnipotent superman) to stage atomic-level blasts in major cities across the globe. By framing Dr. Manhattan as an unpredictable (and indestructible) threat to the entire world, he brings an end to the Cold War, saving us all from total annihilation at our own hands.
However, Rorschach doesn't cotton to this idea, seeing as how Ozymandias murdered millions of people to pull it off, and he vows to bring the truth to light. However, before Rorschach can leave Ozymandias' snow palace to spread the word, Dr. Manhattan blows him up like a jelly doughnut in a decompression chamber, thus preserving Ozymandias' lie and keeping the world united and safe from nuclear war.

Satan's answer to snow angels.
The Big Twist:
Except at the end we find out that Rorschach had already mailed his journal, which we see in the hands of the news media just as the credits roll, implying that his batshit insane version of events will be both entertained and accepted by all who hear it. Dr. Manhattan's plan to go along with Ozymandias' plan was foiled by a guy who isn't as smart as either of them.

"At least I was smart enough to understand the concept of pants."
But How Did He Not See This Coming?
Wait. This is Dr. Manhattan here. That is, the godlike being who can see through time and space.
True, Ozymandias created a tachyon field (comic book science) that blocked Dr. Manhattan from seeing the future, but he should've still been able to see the past at least marginally clearer than the scrambled porn struggling through the blocked channels on your parents' television. If he was so intent on preserving Ozymandias' plan, why wouldn't he check the past to make sure nobody didexactly what Rorschach did to jeopardize it? That's just like proofreading your work, man. You're supposed to be a doctor.

"Hey, it's not like I have all the time in the wor- oh, wait ..."
If Dr. Manhattan had taken half a second of his infinite lifespan to scan the sands of time, he would've noticed Rorschach dropping his gibbering scribbles in the mail and could have done one of a million different things to "correct" it (teleport to the newspaper office and vaporize the journal, turn the journal into a chicken, etc.), because ultimate power is pretty flexible. Instead, after voicing his agreement with Ozymandias' logic and killing a fellow superhero to keep the plan a secret, Dr. Manhattan gives it absolutely no more thought and beams off to another galaxy, never to return.

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