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The Black Cat Superstition Kills Droves of Adorable Kitties (and Puppies)

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Every year, more than 5 million dogs and cats find their huggable asses sitting behind bars in an animal shelter. About half of those get adopted. The other half? Well, for them, the animal shelter is the last stop in their furry little lives. And since we're a website and therefore can't accompany this paragraph with the soul-destroying stylings of one Miss Sarah McLachlan to make it even more heartbreaking, we'll tell you that a huge chunk of those senseless deaths are absolutely thanks to an age-old -- and infinitely dumbass -- superstition.

We lied.

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In China, Your Zodiac Sign Can Destroy Your Job Prospects

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Hearing the question "What's your sign?" in any sort of dating context is ... well, it's not a real good sign. If the potential partner you're scoping out is willing to judge your relationship compatibility based solely on the fact that you were born while Taurus was getting beasty with Uranus, we're betting they're not going to turn out to be your soulmate. More likely, you'll find yourself three months down the road sitting in an empty apartment decorated with Indian tapestries and reeking of incense, wondering where the hell your TV went.

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"What's that thing say about aligning your ass to a Best Buy and ascending me a new flat-screen?"

Don't say that to people in China, though -- because people in China take their zodiac bullshit seriously. In one recent survey of 3,000 young Chinese folk, damn nigh all of them said that they followed their horoscopes, while a full third viewed astrology as an absolute science. And while this widespread adoption of Western astrology has most definitely had a strong effect on the Chinese dating scene -- good luck with ever dusting off those funbits, Capricorns -- it didn't stop there. It's also oozed its way into the workforce.

Imagine clicking your dream job opening on Monster.com, only to be greeted by a big, red "Pisces need not apply" (adjust for your sign accordingly). It sounds utterly ridiculous to us, over here wading through our fancy pools of democracy and capitalism, but it's not at all out of the ordinary in China -- right after "degree required," companies have no qualms listing that they're "looking to hire a Gemini, Libra, or Aquarius." That's right: As if it weren't already difficult enough to find a job in a country that somebody apparently nuked with a population bomb, now one of the default job qualifications is having been born at the right time.

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"Says here you're impulsive, superficial, and devious.
"So is that a 'maybe'?"

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In Japan, Your Astrological Symbol Can Make You a Victim of Infanticide

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As anyone who's ever suffered a long wait at a Chinese restaurant can expertly attest, Chinese astrology is sort of complicated. Each year is represented by not only one of a dozen animals (a rat, a tiger, or a snake, for example) but also one of five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, or water). Whichever combo happens to land on the year in which you're born will supposedly decide myriad things about you, including your personality traits and your likelihood of bringing unending famine and shame upon your family for generations to come. Now, normally we'd dismiss such balderdash straight out of hand, but we have to at least give some consideration to any system under which we could possibly be referred to as a Metal Chicken.

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"Symphony of Frank Perdue's Destruction"

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The Number 4 Can Tank Your Home's Value (or Kill You)

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In many Asian languages, the number 4 is pronounced similarly to the word for "death" -- in Japanese, for example, both are pronounced "shi." And since death is pretty much universally considered the unluckiest of all states, people native to such languages consider the number 4 similarly unlucky. In a study of five years' worth of real estate sales in the greater Vancouver area, researchers found that houses in Chinese neighborhoods with an address containing a 4 sold for an average of $8,000 less than their luckier counterparts.

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If Sherlock Holmes lived at 224B Baker St., Moriarty would've gutted him on day one.

Plummeting home values are of little concern, though, to those who've moved so far out of the neighborhood that they've left this mortal coil -- which is exactly what untold 4-fearers have done throughout the years. Back in 1942, Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon coined the term "voodoo death" to describe the very real possibility of a person making themselves so sick with stress as a result of superstitious belief that ... well, the "death" in the name kind of gives away the ending there. Basically, when someone goes through life constantly stressing that unlucky things are about to happen to them, their bodies are pumping out a constant flow of stress hormones. Then they mistakenly walk under a ladder one May the 4th, and boom! Goddamn heart attack.

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"This is the worst Star Wars Day ever."

When researchers studied more than two decades' worth of U.S. death certificates for Chinese- and Japanese-born citizens, they found that deaths from cardiac arrest peaked on the 4th of each month. White Americans, on the other hand, showed no such peak -- their tickers gave out at a fairly steady rate throughout the month, mostly due to what we call the "cheeseburger effect." It seems that, by shuffling through the 4th of each month in a constant state of worry about the barrage of bad luck that's about to befall them, many Asian-Americans have created a self-fulfilling (and heart-exploding) prophecy.

And ... that's pretty much how superstition works, in a nutshell.

For more superstitions that miiiiight not be, check out 6 Insane Superstitions That Are Still Shockingly Influential and 5 Retarded Superstitions (With Logical Explanations).

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