Natural Phenomena You Won’t Believe Actually Exist

Dozens of trees in the Dancing Forest of Russia have trunks that are contorted into rings, spirals, and other loops and squiggles, and the reason for this mysterious malformation is not known. The trees were planted in the early 1960s to stabilize the dune sand, but the unstable sand is one explanation people posit for the trees seeming so unstable themselves. Locals call the crooked wood the Drunken Forest. Studies have been done to try to determine the exact cause, though results are inconclusive. The leading scientific theory is that pine shoot moth caterpillars damaged the pine shoot’s apical buds at an early age causing them to start out growing at an odd angle, from their lateral buds. Since plants naturally grow toward the sun, they eventually corrected themselves and started growing up again, but with their new deformities intact.