EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG (nsfw)

THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE  is different from  the previously reported "Useless Information," being presented in Q&A style. In the words of Thomas Edison, the man who didn't invent the lightbulb, "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." The intro ends:
"biologists say that our primal drives are food, sex, and shelter, no different from the animals.  We say there is a fourth drive which makes us uniquely human--curiosity.  Porcupines do not worry abut the meaning of existence. Moths and aardvarks do not look up at the night sky and wonder what the twinkly bits are.People do...We think we know the answer: Ask more questions."

Diving right in:
Q. What's the largest living thing?
A.It's a mushroom.  And it's not even a particularly rare one.  You've probably got in in the garden, growing on a dead tree stump.  For your sake, let's hope it doesn't reach the size of the largest recorded specimen, in Malheur National Forest in Oregon.  It covers 2,200 acres, (mostly underground) and is between two thousand and eight thousand years old..."

Q. What's the most dangerous animal that has ever lived?
A. Half the human being who have ever died, perhaps as many as 45 billion people, have been killed by female mosquitoes. (the male only bite plants--another fact I did not know.)
Mosquitoes carry more than a hundred potentially fatal diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, encephalitis, filariasis, and elephantiasis. Even today, they kill one person every twelve seconds...female mosquitoes are attracted to their hosts by moisture, milk, carbon dioxide, body heat, and movement. Sweaty people and pregnant women have a higher chance of being bitten.

and more delightfully:
Q.Which animals are the best-endowed of all?
A. Barnacles. These unassumingly modest beasts have the longest penis relative to the size of any creature. It can be seven times longer than the body.

Somehow, though, I don't think a human male would like to hear his partner say, "you're a real barnacle!"

The nine-banded armadillo has a penis two-thirds as long as its body (an arresting image). The blue whale's penis, relatively modest compared to its size, is six-ten feet long and 18 inches wide. Hotcha!