Strange But True

* It was 17th-century English novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton who made the following sage observation: “If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.”

* If you have an indoor/outdoor cat, you might have found yourself wondering why it sometimes shows up on your doorstep with an offering of a dead animal. Well, there’s actually a good reason for it. It seems that the cats most likely to present owners with a gory gift are spayed females, and they’re acting out behaviors seen in the wild. Feral cats teach their young how to hunt by bringing them dead or injured prey. With no kittens to teach, your cat is evidently trying to teach the family it does have -- namely, you -- how to find food on its own.

* You probably aren’t familiar with the term “anthropodermic bibliopegy,” but in the unlikely event that it ever comes up in conversation, you now know that it refers to books bound in human skin.

* It’s not surprising that during the severe northern winters, the Arctic ground squirrel goes into a state of suppressed physiological activity. What is surprising, though, is that during this torpor, its body temperature can get as low as 27 degrees Fahrenheit -- without the animal becoming just another chunk of ice. This nifty trick can be attributed to a biological process that clears the rodent’s blood of ice nucleators, which facilitate freezing.

* You might be surprised to learn that in a 2016 survey of human resources professionals, it was reported that more than half of all workplaces offer paid time off for employees to vote.

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Thought for the Day: “We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?” -- Jean Cocteau

(c) 2017 King Features Synd., Inc.