Don’t do it. Seriously. Move that cannon out to the field. What are you doing? If you light that… oh well.
Thanks to Weird Things reader Mark Sissons for this.
You may not know that the 1963 Hitchcock masterpiece The Birds was inspired by real events. But two years prior, a swarm of the normally docile Sooty Shearwaters which rarely come to shore at all, began slamming into houses inexplicably.
Hitchcock, who frequented nearby Santa Cruz, thought the story was so compelling he crafted the suspense classic.
The film never explained why the birds went rogue, which echoed reality. Until now. Louisiana State University oceanic researchers now hypothesize that it could have been poison red algae that created the airborne attacks.
In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Bargu argues that “toxin-making algae were present in 79 percent of the plankton” the birds ate. The toxins contained “a nerve-damaging acid, which causes confusion, seizures and death in birds.”
“All the symptoms were extremely similar to later bird poisoning events in the same area,” Bargu said.
Pretty terrifying stuff.
Weird Things reader Robin sends us this picture from a mall in Bangkok. It looks like an art installation. But is also attached to a t-shirt shop. Which conveniently sells shirts of Hitler Ronald McDonald.
Pretty bizarre.
The world’s first hybrid shark was discovered off the coast of Australia containing both common and Australian black tip DNA, with up to 20% percent of the population sampled being hybrids. Scientist speculate that the hybridization increases the range that the sharks can survive and could be a result of changing sea temperatures.
The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.
“It’s very surprising because no one’s ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination,” Morgan, from the University of Queensland, told AFP.
“This is evolution in action.”
Once again the town of Beebe, Arkansas is cleaning up dead blackbirds around New Years and the police are banning fireworks.
“It’s just got to be a pain in my career,” Beebe Police Chief Wayne Ballew said.
Prior to this New Year’s Eve, Ballew said he wouldn’t be surprised if people sit out on their front porches in case the winged creatures fall from the sky again.
“I guess we could have an annual blackbird watch,” he said with a laugh. “People can just bring their umbrellas, open them up and walk through the neighborhood and hope they don’t get hit.”
[ABC]
