Corrections
Every claim our own check found false. Not a summary of them: the list itself, with what is actually the case and the page where we said it.
This page builds itself from the checks, which is the only way a list like this stays honest. A corrections log you have to remember to update stops being updated in the second busy week, and an empty one reads as a claim never to have been wrong. So far 123 claims have gone through the check across 13 pieces, and 4 of them did not survive it.
New World monkeys, found only in the Americas. Most have fully prehensile tails, meaning they can use them like a fifth limb to grip branches.WrongPrehensile tails are limited to atelids (spider, howler, woolly, muriqui) and partially to capuchins; most platyrrhines (marmosets, tamarins, squirrel monkeys, titis, sakis, uakaris) lack them. Source dropped: Fleagle, Primate Adaptation and Evolution, 3rd ed. (Academic Press, 2013) is not a study, an organisation or a reference work.Did Humans Evolve From Monkeys?
It's a rally cry before a hunt.WrongNo scientific evidence supports the claim that wolves howl before a hunt; howling occurs mainly in social and reunion contexts and a loud howl would likely alert prey.L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani, Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (2003)Do Wolves Howl at the Moon?
That crack isn't bones grinding together; it is the sound of a bubble being born and then dying/collapsing.WrongImaging shows the sound is produced by the rapid formation of a gas bubble (cavitation) in the synovial fluid, not by the bubble collapsing – the bubble remains visible after the crack.Kawchuk et al., PLOS ONE (2015)Does Cracking Your Knuckles Cause Arthritis?
A key part is the hippocampus, just like in mammals.WrongTeleost fish such as goldfish do not have a mammalian hippocampus; the medial pallium is considered the homologous region.Rudolf Nieuwenhuys, The Central Nervous System of Vertebrates (1998)Goldfish Have a Three-Second Memory
What happens when a reader catches it first
Write to hello@handorial.com. A correction with a source is the most useful email we can get, it goes on the piece and into this list, and if the error changes the answer it goes out to The Redraw subscribers too. How the checking works is written down in how we check things.