Magnate

I just love this show and thanks to BBC entertainment i can actually watch this serie in Sweden.

Even tho its a comedy show it still teached me a lot about the world and its people and animals.

Something i never heard about before was the "frog test"

The Frog Test, the Birth of the Pregnancy Test
Lancelot Hogben discovered that the same test could be performed on the female African clawed frog. After being injected, if the frog produced eggs within 24 hours, the woman was pregnant. No killing, and yet the accuracy remained. This saved time, and even meant that frogs could be reused. The ‘Frog Test’ was the world’s first cheap and reliable pregnancy test and became the international standard for decades. At the end of the 1950′s it was finally supplanted by technology, technology which went on to produce the pregnancy tests we all know, but don’t all use.


The Frog Test, the Birth of the Pregnancy Test

What about you guys? Did QI teach you something?

amberroberts09

That's great!!!

azato2000

I did this test when I was a student. Just for fun. We used a urine sample of our pregnant class-mate. The test was faster in male frogs (about 6 hours). But you need a microscope to see spermatozoons

Naomasa298

QI has taught me a lot, but the most important thing it's taught me is that you should never take anything QI says at face value. Always, always look it up and confirm it if you're going to use it as a fact in a discussion on, for example, a historical internet forum.

Magnate

Don't be so paranoid hehe. I think most of the questions and answers are correct ( i'm not counting the answers from the comedians ).

They must have some experts giving them the questions and answers in some sorta wireless device they got in the ear.

Naomasa298

The information they're given is usually correct on a superficial basis, but, for example, take that answer about the Earth having more than one moon. It doesn't. Cruithne, and the other asteroids that they describe as "moons" do not orbit the Earth - they're co-orbital with the Earth around the Sun.

QI is primarily a comedy show. They play hard and loose with the facts for comedic effect, so if you're going to bring them up in a discussion, it always pays to check them first.

Of course, when Professor Brian Cox appears on the show, I do tend to believe what he says...

Magnate

Yea i agree with you that its always best to check it by yourself before taking any stand on the question.

Something i learned yesterday from QI was that there are no GREEN mammals!

redcoat

At the time they said this it was thought Cruithne did orbit the Earth, but since then this has been disproved.

Zeno

There is, in fact, three-toed sloths (aka green sloths) are green due to algae growing in their fur. Maybe you think that's cheating, but there are no land animals that produce green pigments. In birds, reptiles and amphibians a green color is produced by light refraction (changing the wavelength of the reflected light), so they're also cheating.

Magnate

They actually used this example in the show

But since the algae dont grow naturaly on the green sloths it does not count.