March 26, 2016 at 03:37AM

Today I Learned: 1) Apparently banana plants are really difficult to kill (unless, you know, you're a banana blight). The reason is that banana trees form rhizomes, which are bulbous little root balls that can grow back an entire tree if the rest of the plant is killed. In fact, when bananas are harvested from their trees, the trees die off and are re-grown next season somewhere else in the root system. Also, regarding bananas, there are "variegated" banana varieties, which are striped in different shades of green. And yes, the fruit is striped too: http://ift.tt/1PwqmzG Thanks to Mengsha Gong for today's banana facts! 2) Ants have a surprisingly large range of eyesight-ability. Some are essentialy blind, and can only distinguish between large differences in illumination. Other species have great visual acuity for a creature of their size, and can distinguish motion from a meter away (!). Most ants fall somewhere in the middle -- they can detect ambient light pretty well, can see at very close ranges just fine, but can't see much detail at range. More importantly for my purposes, apparently most ants can't see well in red, so you can illuminate an ant nest with red light without freaking out the ants. (this may actually just be because humans can see better in low-light conditions when that light is red, so you can see without using as much light. I'd have to find some actual ant research to tell) 3) Apparently insurance companies make razor-thin margins when it comes strictly to payments and payouts, and some even pay out more than they receive in premiums. Where they actually make their money is in *investment*, which they can do very efficiently because they've lumped together lots of peoples' money in one pot. Thanks to Asher Rubin on this one!