Which of these 10 common misconceptions have you fallen for?

Shaving makes your hair thicker. Swallowing your chewing gum will take seven years to digest it. Goldfish have three second memories. We hear all of these ‘fun facts’ so often that we end up just assuming they’re correct when in fact, they’re not. They then become what is known as a common misconception.

Once again Reddit has given us the goods when it comes to online crowdsourcing. User rps-killerwhale recently asked the masses for their favourite common misconceptions out there in the big wide world and the feedback, well it was both surprising and sometimes hilarious.

Here are some of our favourites.

1. Bats are blind
While the term ‘blind as a bat’ may have worked itself into our vocabulary, it’s not in fact true according to one user. “Despite the tiny eyes and nocturnal lifestyle, none of the roughly 1,100 bat species are blind.”

2. Undercover police have to reveal themselves as undercover police. Uh, doesn’t this defeat the purpose of them being undercover?

3. "If the Earth was six feet closer to the sun we would all burn to death, and if it was six feet further away we would all freeze to death."

4. Turns out your mother was wrong, according to user monkeyapo who called B.S. on the eating before swimming will result in cramps and possible death situation.

5. If a woman has a lot of sex her vagina will become bigger. Closely followed by ‘If a woman doesn’t have sex her vagina will close over”. If someone could just produce a booklet or something on exactly how often a woman should have sex so we all know exactly how to keep our v-jay jay’s in tact that would be awesome.

6. One user chimes in with “My favourite is that you can "crush" the foetus with your abdominal muscles so you should not engage the core and back muscles ever during pregnancy. This prompted another user to ask ‘But surely you would want strong muscles for the delivery?’. Good point.

7. Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis. Apparently not.

8. “That hair that is shaved/trimmed will grow back thicker and longer. It won't and doesn't. It's an illusion created by everything being neatly cut to the same length, giving it an effect of more volume.”

9.People only use ten per cent of their brain. I’ve heard this one so often. I would argue that I know a few people I suspect of using even less.