This rumor is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Whales have their own reasons for releasing intestinal gas, but the specific heat of methane is too low to make this a viable method of heat transfer for such large animals. Why Olympic swimmers use this method is another story.
This rumor may have a basis in fact. Certainly there are bald people whose skulls appear to be full of some sort of fibrous material.
This is another of those false rumors. It may appear that bone-headed people take forever to hear what you tell them, but the fact is that sound travels quickly through the bony skull. The slowdown comes after that. See rumor #2 for a possible cause.
Newt who? This was an ancient rumor. Since then, we've had the Lott and too much DeLay. Another exemplar was Rumsfeld, for whom the standard unit of arrogance, the rummy, was named; the practical unit is the millirummy. Gonzales was incompetent, not arrogant. Ditto for his boss.
But wait! The Newt came back, with a vengeance, and threatened to change history. And now we have Trump!
Just the reverse is true. Brain cooling (and warming) in humans is provided by tiny blood vessels passing through minute holes in the skull, called foramina. As the brain heats up, hot blood passes outward through these veins to the cooler scalp, where the excess heat radiates harmlessly into the environment. Caps or other forms of insulation effectively inhibit the brain's attempt to stay functional. Hence the popular saying "Be smart, be cool, take your cap off in class, dude." Of course bald people have a special cool-headed advantage here, as in so many contexts.
This rumor has been here for a long time, with no apparent challenge. But with no supporting evidence, either. Guess that tells the story.
This actually turns out to be true. It used to be that one could not become a saint without (a) dying, (b) performing a miracle after you've died, and then (c) performing another miracle to show that the first one wasn't just a fluke. At that point there would be a vote. So we were waiting and praying for miracles.
But wait! Pope John Paul changed the rules so that one miracle is enough. Was he worried about having the moxie to pull off two of them himself? In any case, one miracle is now enough, so Francis has declared Mother Teresa to have made the grade.
This assertion is one of the core PETA beliefs, and is hard to argue with. However, if "value" is measured in terms of value to humanity, then the hamster has the edge.
This seems likely. The earlier population explosion in the U.S. has collapsed. Whereas bats account for about 20 percent of all mammalian species world-wide, computer science students, even with their substantial variability, make up less than one percent. At the very least, they may be viewed as "threatened."