Listing to Port

1. Stephen King’s ‘It’ was originally published under a different name. However, an early edition of the book was invited to a book party at which various volumes were playing a game of 'it’ and/or 'tag’. 'It’ was tagged and, as a rather large and ponderous volume, was not able to bounce fast enough to tag any other books in turn. Although 'It’ has attended many book parties since in an attempt to get its original title back, it has not yet been able to do so. But keep an eye out: maybe, someday soon, some other book on your shelves will be called 'It’.
2. Every twenty-seventh copy of 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ on sale is actually a small box containing a compressed house elf and a spell to make readers believe that they have finished the book. This scheme, part of a wider effort to disperse house elves more widely among the non-wizarding world, has been in place for some fifteen years. The spell is rather imperfect in its effect, so you can sometimes tell if you have one of these copies by how well you remember the plot of the book.
3. It is nearly impossible to keep the Complete Works of Shakespeare on a shelf together without one of them eventually stabbing another one. Savvy librarians often use stab-proof inserts between copies to prevent book damage. Titus Andronicus is particularly notorious for its scrappy nature, and has been known to spring off the shelves in an attempt to grapple with the works of Kit Marlowe from above.  
4. If you leave a copy of the Lord of the Rings in an area thick with marijuana smoke for a few hours and then give it a good shake, you can sometimes get a sleeping hobbit to fall out. If this happens, you should make sure to carefully insert the hobbit back where they fell out from, or the story may be irreparably changed. For example, copies from which Frodo has been ejected sometimes mutate into biographies of a heroic band of orcs, perhaps demonstrating that histories are usually written by the victors.

1. Did you know there is a scientific reason why all women wear lipstick? Like many of humanity’s odder characteristics, it dates back to our time in the caves. Natural selection ensured that only cavemen who found mates able to provide meat for their offspring would be able to perpetuate their seed. So it is no surprise that the human chap has evolved to find a lady who looks like she has just ripped the throat from an impala with her bare teeth an irresistibly sexy prospect. Interestingly, the corresponding gene in cavewomen was eliminated in a freak radiation accident in the year 956.
2. Just 5% of the population have a gene enabling then to extend their ears. Do you know any ear-extenders? People with this skill are typically reticent to demonstrate, as uninformed members of the public often react with horror to ear extension. So you might be surrounded by them and never know.
3. 97.12% of the human genome is also present in the three-toed sloth. This explains why, if brought up in the right environment, the three-toed sloth is not only able to play chess but is also able to invent the game of chess from scratch without reference to existing games. Sadly the sloth is too slow to play in major chess tournaments, or we would undoubtedly hear more about its amazing abilities. Conversely, if brought up in the right environment, the human body is able to express genes for having a lot of sleep.
4. Your legs have enough palladium in them to make a tiny Eiffel Tower that is made of leg palladium. After the world has reached peak palladium, this unusual leg fact means you may be forced to choose between having legs or consumer electronic devices.
5. You can lose 80% of your liver down the back of the sofa. Do not do this. It is the third highest cause of sofa-related death annually.

1. A cat’s miaow includes frequencies below the range of human hearing, in fact sounding quite different to other cats that it does to humans. This is why elephants are normally kept separate from cats in societies where both are common, as the lower frequencies in the miaow often mimic elephant mating calls.

2. Despite their short lives, adult mayflies are obsessive groomers. They twitch and vibrate to rid their bodies of dust several thousand times an hour, an action which can sometimes be heard by bystanders as a low clicking noise.

3. In times of scarcity, lions will enter an unusual type of pseudo-hibernation in which they are lethargic and do not eat or excrete. This means that, in extreme cases, lions can go months without defecating. The first lion turd of the post-famine season is unusually pungent and is highly prized in traditional perfumery.

4. Guinea pigs are not true tailless animals. In fact they are born with a small vestigial tail which is shed at around three weeks old, typically being eaten by the mother guinea pig to restore vital nutrients after the rigours of pregnancy, birth and nursing.

5. The expression ‘the bee’s knees’ comes from the small pollen-collecting pads that bees have behind the knees on their four hind legs. These pads are so efficient at attracting small particles that the air filters on the international space station were designed along similar principles.

6. Deer are so fond of strawberries that Muntjacs have been known to chew through a wire fence in order to reach them. It is thought that the red pigment in strawberries acts on the brain of adult deer similarly to catnip on cats. However, juvenile deer are typically unaffected and scientists have not yet discovered why.