Ridiculous question from the internet: I swallowed an ice cube, and I haven’t pooped it out?

Source of said ridiculous question:  Yahoo Answers

Science’s answer:  Ice melts at 32ºF, or 0ºC.  Your body temperature is approximately 98.6ºF, or 37ºC.  I can’t believe I’m going to say this… ok, here it goes… 98.6ºF is warmer than 32ºF, so the ice melted. There, I said it.  No one should feel good about this.  You actually did excrete the ice in question, but it came out as water, likely as urine, but also potentially as sweat, water vapor you exhaled and yes, maybe also as part of a “poop”.

Ridiculous question from the internet: Why are the holes in cats fur always in the right places for their eyes?

Source of said ridiculous question:  Yahoo Answers

Science’s answer:  It’s inaccurate to say that holes formed in the skin of your cat (or any other animal) just for the eyes.  The skin, fur, eyes, and all the other tissues and organs in an animals body form together, in a very tightly controlled process.  It would take thousands of pages to convey what we know about the complexities of developmental biology, and I’m guessing from your question that this level of detail is not what you are looking for.  So here’s a summary: The basic design of your cat (and you, for that matter) is controlled by genes, of which the Hox genes are considered the master regulators.  Together with positional cues and tightly controlled cell division and programmed cell death, they produce the eyes, skin, bones, hair, and everything else that makes your cat a cat and you a human being who maybe needs to read more.

Ridiculous question from the internet: Is it possible for tattoos to be passed genetically from parent to child?

Source of said ridiculous question:  Yahoo Answers

Science’s answer: No. Only organisms (animals, plants, fungi, bacterial, etc) are capable of passing along genetic information.  Tattoos are not organisms.  They arrived on your skin not by infecting or colonizing you, but because you paid some dude (possibly named Atticus or Wren, ring a bell?) to inject ink into your dermis.

Ridiculous question from the internet: What happens to the people born on Feb.. 29????? do the stay one until 4 years past??

Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers

Science’s answer: It is true that by the strictest definition, people born on Feb 29th will only be able to celebrate their birthday on the actual calendar date of their birth once every four years.  This does not mean, however, that they fail to age.  For instance, a child born on Feb 29th, 2016 (the last leap year) is actually one day older than a child born on March 1st of that year, despite the fact that they had to eat their birthday cake on Feb 28th or March 1st of this year.   The modern Gregorian calendar is something people made up (in this case, Pope Gregory XIII).  Years, however, are empirically defined as the time it takes the earth to make one revolution around the sun, or approximately 365.25 days.