14 Most Bizarre Scientific Discoveries of 2018.

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Credit:  LiveScience.com
▼ Whoa, that's weird science
There's no question that science is full of explanations that defy our commonsense expectations. And every year, researchers find ever more mystifying discoveries about the universe we live in. From disgusting medical anomalies to blueberry planets to giant tadpoles, here are the 14 most bizarre findings of 2018.
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Credit: Catania Lab, Vanderbilt University
Karate-kicking cockroaches avoid zombification
Parasitic wasps are among the most diverse of all animals, with nearly one species for every other known insect, according to research published this year in BMC Ecology. One particular fiend, known as the emerald jewel wasp, preys on cockroaches. After delivering a paralyzing sting to the victim's legs, the wasp then stings its brain and floods it with neurotoxins that hijack the cockroach's nervous system, turning the lowly crawler in a mind-controlled zombie. The cockroaches were once thought to have no defense against this gruesome attack, but new research shows that the prey can knock away their parasitic predator with a karate  kick to the headthat sends the wasps searching for an easier target.
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Credit: Xinjiang Meikuang General Hospital
A long-standing lump in the throat
Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Others swallow them on a dare. That was the case for a patient known only as "Mr. Zhang" who arrived at Xinjiang Meikuang General Hospital in China in October. The spoon — which was actually made of steel — had become lodged in the  man's esophagus a year earlierand was apparently not causing him much suffering until he began having pains after being punched in the chest. (Mr. Zhang sounds like he lives an interesting life.) Three doctors removed the 8-inch (20 centimeters) object during a procedure that lasted 2 hours. "I was very surprised," Dr. Xiwu, the hospital's director of ear, nose and throat ailments, said in a statement. "I have never encountered a similar patient."
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Credit: University of Seville
The hexagon, the dodecahedron, the...scutoid?
Triangles and squares are so passé. Geometry enthusiasts will be thrilled to learn that there's a new shape around, the scutoid. Looking like a strange, 3D crystal, the scutoid was named after a roughly triangle-shaped part of a beetle's thorax. The newly discovered form has actually been around in nature for a long time. Epithelial cells found on the surface of animals' bodies, are often packed together into scutoid-al shapes, which minimizes their energy usage and maximizes their stability.
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Credit:  LiveScience.com
What if Earth became blueberries?
It's not a question most people think about, but one computational neuroscientist wondered what would happen if the entire Earth were suddenly transformed into a  bunch of blueberries. Anders Sandberg, who works at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, wrote about this fanciful idea in a paper published to the preprint server arXiv (whose articles have not yet passed through peer review) in July . The first thing that would apparently happen is a drastic reduction in the force of gravity, since blueberries are less dense than the rocky substrate of our planet. The crushing force of the outer-edge blueberries would then compress and heat up the inner ones into a thick jam that would generate rollicking earthquakes. At blueberry Earth's center would be a hot core of blueberry "granita" ice, smushed into a solid by the extreme pressure. It can only be assumed that any intelligent beings evolving on such a planet would likely invent the pancake before the wheel.
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Credit: Earyn McGee/SWRS/The Frog Conservation Project
A tadpole as long as your face (▪ ▪ ▪)

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