ONE WILD WORLD — NEWSLETTER

Issue #005 | 5 Myths You Still Believe | April 2026

Your teachers meant well. Your textbooks didn’t. Here are five things you were taught as scientific fact that have been debunked for decades — and why most people still believe them.

You probably remember the diagram. Sweet at the tip. Salty on the sides. Sour further back. Bitter at the rear. It was in every biology textbook, on every classroom poster. Teachers had you dab sugar water on your tongue to prove it.

It’s completely wrong.

The tongue map originated from a mistranslation of a 1901 German paper by David Hänig. He measured slight variations in taste sensitivity around the tongue — minor differences, not exclusive zones. When his work was translated into English, those subtle variations were reinterpreted as distinct regions that could only detect specific tastes.

In 1974, scientist Virginia Collings re-examined Hänig’s data and confirmed that all tastes can be detected anywhere on the tongue where taste receptors exist — including the soft palate and even the epiglottis. Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 receptors for every type of taste.

This myth is so pervasive it’s become a metaphor. “Memory like a goldfish” is shorthand for forgetfulness. The TV show Ted Lasso told players to “be a goldfish” to forget mistakes quickly.

The reality? Scientists have known since the 1950s that goldfish have excellent memories.

In controlled experiments, goldfish have been trained to navigate complex mazes, push colored paddles for rewards, and associate feeding times with specific locations in their tanks. They retained these learned behaviors for weeks, months, and in some studies, over a year.

A 2003 study at Plymouth University trained goldfish to navigate through hoops and tunnels. The fish remembered the routes for at least three months. A 2022 Oxford University study trained goldfish to swim exactly 70 centimeters before turning around for a food reward — and they continued doing it accurately even when researchers changed the starting position and removed visual cues.

This is perhaps the most persistent myth in popular science. It’s been cited in movies (Lucy, Limitless), self-help books, and motivational speeches for decades. The implication is that 90% of your brain is just sitting there, unused, waiting to be unlocked.

Modern brain imaging has thoroughly disproven this. PET scans and fMRI studies show that virtually all areas of the brain have measurable activity over a 24-hour period. Even during sleep, large portions of the brain remain active.

There is no dormant 90%. Every region of the brain has a known function. Damage to even small areas — from strokes, tumors, or injuries — can result in significant impairment. If 90% of the brain were truly unused, damage to those areas would have no effect.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Those are the five senses you learned in school. The number comes from Aristotle, who catalogued them over 2,300 years ago.

Modern neuroscience recognizes at least 14 to 20 distinct senses.

Beyond the classic five, you have proprioception (the awareness of where your body parts are without looking at them), thermoception (temperature detection), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance), and interoception (internal body signals like hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe).

What we casually call “touch” is actually multiple separate systems: pressure, vibration, texture, and temperature each have their own specialized receptors and neural pathways. And your sense of time — while not driven by a single receptor — is increasingly recognized as a distinct perceptual system.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s supposed shortness is one of history’s most enduring jokes. “Napoleon complex” is a recognized psychological term for overcompensating aggression in shorter people. Cartoons have depicted him as tiny for over two centuries.

Napoleon was approximately 5’ 6” to 5’ 7” (about 170 cm), which was average or slightly above average for French men in the late 18th century.

The confusion comes from two sources. First, French inches (pouces) were longer than British inches. When Napoleon’s height was recorded as 5 pieds 2 pouces in French measurements, British newspapers converted it incorrectly, making him sound much shorter than he was. Second, British propaganda cartoonists deliberately portrayed him as tiny during the Napoleonic Wars as a way to mock him.

A mistranslated German paper from 1901. A fish myth designed to ease guilt. A motivational misquote that became neuroscience. A philosopher’s best guess from 350 BC. And a propaganda campaign that outlived the empire it mocked.

Five facts. All wrong. All still taught.

SOURCES

Smithsonian Magazine — “The Taste Map of the Tongue You Learned in School Is All Wrong”

Live Science — “The Tongue Map: Tasteless Myth Debunked”

Plymouth University (2003) — goldfish memory navigation study

Oxford University (2022) — goldfish spatial awareness study

Scientific American — “Do People Only Use 10 Percent of Their Brains?”