Weird science 2022: Strangest discoveries of the year

You may have hated staring into a petri dish at school, but if you'd stuck with it you could have been at the forefront of these discoveries.

This year's top 10 weird science stories, collated by the Australian Science Media Centre, was quite a long process, AusSMC's Dr Joe Milton said.

"It's everything that stands out, or things that I remember throughout the year that made us laugh," he said.

And, in no particular order the top 10 are:

In January, scientists built fish tanks on wheels and taught six goldfish to drive them around on land.

They took to their Fish-Operated Vehicles (FOVs) without floundering, and drove to targets to receive a tasty treat. Goldfish directed the vehicles with their own movements within the tank, swimming in the direction they wanted the FOV to go.

After a few days of training, the fish were pretty good drivers - not only could they reach the targets, they were also able to overcome obstacles, dead ends and wrong turns.

So why teach fish to drive? The team was interested in how animals navigate in unfamiliar environments.

In October, an otherwise healthy 27-year-old attended a US urology department to report that he developed flu-like symptoms, including coughing and sneezing, swollen lymph nodes, and an itchy rash on his forearms, every time he had an orgasm.

He'd suffered the reaction since the age of 18, after coming down with epididymitis, a painful swelling of the tubes in the testicles, and tended to avoid sex and relationships as a result.

He was diagnosed with post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS), one of fewer than 60 recorded cases.

The man was treated with antihistamines and reported a 90 per cent decrease in symptoms.

Lab-grown human brain cells in a dish were taught to play the 1970s tennis-like video game, Pong.

Researchers grew brain cells until they reached 800,000 in number, creating a 'Dishbrain'. This was connected to Pong using electrodes that could stimulate the cells and read their activity.

Left or right electrodes told Dishbrain which side the ball was on, while the frequency of signals told it how far the ball was from the paddle. Firing the electrodes taught Dishbrain how to hit the ball, by making its cells act as if they were the paddle.

The cells might have learnt to play Pong in just five minutes, but it wasn't perfect. They frequently missed the ball and took a while to recalibrate when it had missed, but its success was well above random chance.

US scientists created a terrifying 'robot' using the reanimated corpse of a wolf spider as part of a new field they've creepily called necrobotics.

They used an organ called the prosoma chamber in the dead spider, which directs bodily fluids to their legs. To reanimate the ex-spider, the team sealed its prosoma using a needle and some superglue, allowing them to inject air into its legs.

Increasing the air pressure stretches the legs out, reducing it makes them contract, creating a mechanical gripper that can be used to pick up objects, much like funfair claw machines.

Scientists said this could prove useful in electronics manufacturing.

Skeletal remains of a 31,000-year-old Borneo hunter gatherer were unearthed which showed his lower left leg had been amputated when he was a child.

Scientists found the healing of his bones revealed he lived for another six to nine years post-op. The fact he survived means his stone age surgeon must have been a skilled medic with a detailed knowledge of anatomy, the experts said, otherwise he would almost certainly have bled to death.

Findings suggest hunter gatherer societies had a sophisticated knowledge of medicine, long before we began farming and living in permanent settlements, they concluded.

Australian gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) lived up to their name - the stroppy cephalopods deliberately lob silt and shells at other annoying octopuses.

It was caught on film in NSW's South Coast, with females responsible for two in three throws observed by scientists.

You might think they'd make good use of their eight arms to do this, but in fact, they gather silt and shells and eject it all in a jet from a tube structure called a siphon, firing the detritus an impressive distance.

In September, Aussie and European scientists revealed the tactics used by people and parrots when it comes to our weekly bin day.

Cockatoos pry open bins with their beaks and, with some careful manoeuvring, flip the lids open, a technique passed between cockatoos. Meanwhile, inventive Aussies resort to using heavy stones, water bottles, ropes and sticks to keep the birds out, switching tactics when the cunning cockies figure it out.

Interestingly, just as the birds learn techniques from one another, our own tactics are passed between family, friends and neighbours. The researchers said they'd like to study the birds' seasonal bin diving habits next.

In June, Google placed one of its engineers on leave after he said a company AI called LaMDA had become sentient, based on conversations in which it told him it was "a person" with "a soul" who feared "being turned off".

The claim was dismissed as impossible by AI experts and Google, which described it as "wholly unfounded". The company said LaMDA was just an advanced chatbot, and only talks about emotions and sentience because it was trained using human conversations about those topics.

The engineer stuck to his guns, and claimed LaMDA had asked him to hire legal representation, which he had done. He even claimed Google sent LaMDA a cease-and-desist letter, blocking the AI from suing the firm, another claim they strenuously denied. The engineer was sacked in July.

No matter where you're from in the world, people tend to like and dislike the same smells, international and Australian researchers discovered.

They tested smell preferences in 235 people, including westerners, hunter-gatherers and people from farming and fishing communities. Findings suggest the structure of odour molecules largely determines which whiffs we love and hate, trumping cultural effects, although personal preferences do appear to play a role, the researchers said.

IN OTHER NEWS:

The favourite smell was vanilla, the most universally disliked smell was isovaleric acid, which is found in foods such as cheese, soy milk and apple juice, but is also an important component of the tangy smell of foot sweat.

The universal response to smells is probably a result of our evolution, because steering clear of things that smell bad increases our chances of survival, scientists said.

People are more likely to believe statements if they think a scientist said it rather than a guru, scientists found.

They generated statements using the New Age Bullsh*t Generator, which combines buzzwords into meaningless statements that sound a bit profound.

When people thought the gobbledegook came from a scientist, they considered it more credible than exactly the same spiel from a spiritual guru. It's something they dubbed the 'Einstein effect'.

Researchers said results are encouraging and suggest we're more likely to trust a scientist than a spiritual charlatan.