What fact makes you think 'what the f**k were they doing to discover that?'

1. I'm not sure if this is a perfect fit, and it's not new to Reddit, but I love how scientists conducted a study on penguins sleeping patterns during the day. They poked them with sticks to see how many pokes it would take for them to wake up. https://www.nature.com/news/2002/020925/full/news020923-3.html
   — Lil_Miss_Plesiosaur


2. The element phosphorus was discovered because someone decided to boil pee cos he thought since pee is gold in colour there's probably some gold in it
   — p_orestad


3. Fugu, a pufferfish that is poisonous unless you prepare the *right part* in exactly the *right way*. The road to current standardized fugu preparation procedure must be littered with dead people. One wonders what they were thinking, exactly.
   — ReplicatedPenguin






4. Someone figured out that castoreum taste like raspberry and so it became used occasionally as an artificial raspberry flavoring in food as well as an ingredient in perfume due to it's vanilla smell. Castoreum is juice from a beaver's Castor sac which is located in their anus.
   — hepatitisC


5. Lutefisk. Let's take this fish, soak it in lye for a few days, then soak it in water to get the lye out (because, you know, it's lye), and then eat it!
   — lundah


6. I feel like a lot of the food related ones can be summed up by either "desperation" or "boredom".
   — Vape_and_Plunder






7. My mum was diagnosed with glaucoma a while back. She had to use eye drops which she said were derived from bull semen. She wasn't too disgusted, she was a nurse, she was just endlessly baffled with HOW anyone ever came up with that idea. Like, you'd have to know a fair bit about semen to even think of its uses beyond the obvious one. How do these people describe themselves on LinkedIn?
   — SuzyJTH


8. Some gaming speed run glitches are insane! I’m thinking specifically of any% Ocarina of Time. Guys are jumping at walls, then doing backflips, whack a rock with a stick exactly 38 times, then do one more flip through a wall and BAM! You just beat the game.
   — just_a_hunk


9. Hákarl. You know, that shark that is usually poisonous unless you leave it to rot for months.
   — ObscuraNox






10. Looking at body modification, I found penile modifications, including basically bisecting the entire penis between body and glans. According to one quote “the inside feels better!” Uh... ok? So, did you just cut your penis for fun and then realize that afterward? Did you have a horrible accident and then say “Eh, I’m going to fuck something before they fix this.” It’s just such an odd thing.
    — Esqurel


11. How people invented the procedure to make coffee. I will never understand.
    — bigboi649