Here on Weird Things, we’ve talked quite a bit about the strange history of animal (and human) experimentation for the benefit of medical science. But it would be silly to suggest that there aren’t strange trails that persist to this day.

For example, Taser International is seeking to test how harmful their products are when law enforcement uses them on subjects with elevated heart rates after methamphetamine intake. The solution? Find a bunch of sheep, jack ’em up on speed and taze them ’till they bleet.

Because of the prevalence of methamphetamine abuse worldwide, it is not uncommon for subjects in law enforcement encounters to be methamphetamine-intoxicated. Methamphetamine has been present in arrest-related death cases in which an electronic control device (ECD) was used. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the cardiac effects of an ECD in a methamphetamine intoxication model.

The results? Smaller animals saw more of an effect when zapped while high but larger sheep did not. None died.

However, this surely won’t stop someone from writing “Don’t Taze Me, Baaaaaah!” on a sandwhich board and while handing out literature in front of Taser International HQ in the next two weeks.

[Academic Emergency Medicine]

[io9]

Who needs context?

[@xmasape]

Many mistaken cryptids are actually just fugly animals with a bad case of the mange. So what does that have to do with our planet’s current case of global warming driving and increase in sightings of potential Yetis, Bigfoots and Chupacabra?

Everything.

LiveScience spoke to Mike Bowdenchuck, state director for Texas Wildlife Services, who explained why mysterious, hairless animals are more common in Texas and the southwest than other areas:

“Down here, animals don’t die of mange, because the temperatures are warm enough,” Bowdenchuck said. Rather, the animals live with mange.

“Mange is very common in colder areas, in fact wolves are getting it in Montana right now, and in North Dakota foxes get it,” he said, noting a big difference: “Up there it’s fatal, so you never see animals with the severe cases that we see in the southern climates, because they don’t live long enough for the mites to get that bad to cause the hair to fall off. They die of hypothermia first.”

Animals that have lost their fur are more vulnerable to the cold, so in warmer climates they live longer (and be more likely to be seen). Thus one might conclude that sightings of hairless animals will become more common as the climate warms. The extended forecast calls for more non-Bigfoot, non-Yeti, and non-chupacabra mangy monster sightings.

Why wasn’t this the poster for An Inconvenient Truth?

[Live Science]

Western scientists have officially catalogued animals on the islands of the Phillipines for over a century and a half and yet, a 6-foot-long, gold flecked, colored lizard just happened to escape their attention. Until last summer.

Rumors of the lizard’s existence floated among biologists for the past 10 years, Brown explained.

“People had taken photographs of hunters from the resident tribespeople as they were carrying the reptiles back to their homes to feed their families in 2001,” Brown said.

In 2005, two different groups procured juvenile specimens. “However, both of those efforts didn’t collect genetic samples, so we couldn’t yet prove that it was genetically distinct and didn’t just look different,” Brown said. “Also, we wanted a full-sized adult to see how big it got in life.”

A team went on a two month expedition to track the animal down in 2009 and only found one adult male after all of their food and money had been exhausted. One possible theory while the particular lizard is scarce? Local tribesman prefer their meat to other monitor lizards.

Yummy.

[Live Science]

What with all the earthquake news recently, it might be time to start stocking up on toads.

This from The BBC.

Common toads appear to be able to sense an impending earthquake and will flee their colony days before the seismic activity strikes.

The evidence comes from a population of toads which left their breeding colony three days before an earthquake that struck L’Aquila in Italy in 2009.

How toads sensed the quake is unclear, but most breeding pairs and males fled.

The study does not pin down exactly how the male toads knew when to skeedaddle but is anyone not in favor to all least tying a bell to every toad you see from here on out? When you hear the massive jingling, you know it is time to hit the bricks.

[BBC Earth News]

From The Telegraph:

The poll questioned 23,000 adults in 22 countries and found that more than 40 per cent of people from India and China believe that alien life exists with a human facade on this planet.

European respondents in the survey were more sceptical with only eight per cent of people from Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands convinced that life from outer space exists on earth.

Men were more likely to believe in extra-terrestrial life than women with 22 per cent convinced compared to 17 per cent of women.

Although most of those who do believe in aliens were under 35 they came from all incomes and classes. There was no breakdown for British respondents.

Thanks to Dodd Vickers for passing this along.

Cryptomundo is rightly frustrated by new Chupacabra images floating around. The mangy creatures pictured all walk on four legs. Here is the one item long cheat sheet for any potential cryptid hunters: if the beast does not walk on two legs, it is not the same monster which famously made a name for itself stalking about the hills of Puerto Rico.

Just come up with a new name? Like Quad-racabra. In fact, don’t call it that until I can register the domain.

[Cryptomundo]

A remote controlled vehicle has discovered the deepest hydrothermal underwater vent on record 3.1 miles deep in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. Entitled “black smokers” the vents pump a black, iron sulfide compound into the ocean. The compound is hot enough to melt lead.

Locke is strangely unaffected by the news.

[Live Science]

In European legends, the bite of the werewolf involuntarily turns a hapless victim into a fuzzy-wuzzy killing machine. In American pop culture, zombies prey on the flesh of living innocents who then become skulking face gnawers themselves. In mother Russia, clock punches you. All of these contemporary Western tales portray human atrocities committed by victims of circumstance – upstanding citizens who happen to get cursed, infected or punched by clock, and then go on to act as involuntary proxies for the new and accidental darkness inside them. According to certain Navajo lore, Skinwalkers – dark witches who possess the ability to, among other things, transform into animals – are former high priests who have murdered blood relatives. In other words, it’s a story of active unholy transformation knowingly catalyzed by conscious decisions.

Remember the Algonquian story of the Wendigo – the man who engaged in cannibalism and, as a result, turned into an eternally suffering flesh-craving beast? Skinwalkers are similar in that they are men (occasionally women) who undergo a monstrous transformation by way of a culturally forbidden act (in this case, intra-familial murder). (Granted, there are versions of the story in which Skinwalkers are simply Anakin-esque flock strayers who end up on the wrong side of the force, but I would assume that that’s equally frowned upon.) Whereas the Wendigos are forever damned to tormented lives of feral scavenging and desperate murder, Skinwalkers are powerful, deliberate and feared. Both legends, however, use the threat of once-human monstrosities to demonstrate the corruptive power of sin (“sin” meaning, in this case, culture-specific social malfeasance).

Lots of folks think that Skinwalkers are kind of like Florida’s Skunk Ape – culturally variant analogs of a familiar supernatural beasties – and regard them as Native American werewolves, but that’s totally not even close to right. Unlike werewolves, Skinwalkers transform at will, and can change into any animal of their choosing. These transformations allow Skinwalkers to travel swiftly and easily elude capture. Their shapeshifting abilities even extend to their voices, which can mimic any animal or human sound, up to and including “Sky Pilot” by human band “The Animals.” They can read thoughts, and, in some versions of the legend, even project themselves, by way of a hypnotizing stare, into their victims’ bodies, which then become mere skins in which the monsters walk (though the name “Skinwalker” actually [boringly] comes from their proclivity toward animal skin attire). As acolytes of the Witchery Way (a form of Navajo magic centered on death and corpses), Skinwalkers can use enchanted bone dust to paralyze, or even kill, their chosen victims.

Mostly, though, Skinwalkers are scary because they are self-aware, they are clever and they are malicious. They are monsters because they chose to become monsters. This Navajo legend holds individuals accountable for bringing evil into the world; werewolves and all those other stories? The excuses of desperate children pointing their guilty fingers toward the darkness of caves and the mystery of nighttime forests.

Wednesday: The boys (and girls) who cried, “Skinwalker!”

A list of recommended reading and viewing from Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young as mentioned in the episode Redneck Fireworks Massacre.

Moon

Ayn Rand’s FOUNTAINHEAD

Star Wars The Clone Wars: The Complete Season One (TV Series)

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1)

Dan Simmons’ Hyperion

The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives, With Removable Memorabilia and Two Audio CDs

Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora (James Cameron’s Avatar)

Amongst all the hubbub today about Roxxxy the new amorous robot designed to satisfy your carnal desires, comes this little tidbit buried in an article by The Money Times…

Hines inspiration for Roxxxy came from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“I had a friend who passed away in 9/11. I promised myself I would create a program to store his personality, and that became the foundation for Roxxxy True Companion,” said Hines.

He feels his creation is not only for recreation and fun but also for people with problems of sexual dysfunction.

A lost friend on one of the grimmest days in modern American history ends with a fully functioning robot engineered to unleash primal delight. Figures.

Brett Rounsaville is special to iTricks. Follow his hobo adventure at Amtrekker.com

After nearly two years wandering America as a homeless vagrant I’m no stranger to the weird. Like a bedbug outbreak it jumps quickly from city to city, always lurking just beneath the sheets. Sometimes you have to flip over your Temperpedic and bust out the magnifying glass, but make no mistake, weird moves fast, procreates faster, and it’s just waiting for its chance to leave its itchy red marks on each and every one of us.

Beulah, MI

Fact: Northern Michigan is known the world over for three things. Cherries, unemployment and locals eager to help out a vagrant on a quest to experience weirdness first hand and create a crop circle.

Upon hearing of my desire to learn to speak the language of the aliens (a.k.a. stomp on a bunch of plants using boards and rope) Amber, Colton, Brandon and cameraman Andy contacted me with the promise of untold acres of cover crop with which I could have my way. Knowing there was a giant blank canvas of Russian Knapweed at my disposal, how could I not hightail it to Beulah?!

However, things didn’t go quite so well as one would hope.

Apparently the aliens know a few tricks I don’t.

I’m done.

Brett.

If you had to select one of Bob Clark’s Christmas movies to incorporate into your annual yuletide festivities, which one would it be? If you said “A Christmas Story,” you’re wrong! It would be “Black Christmas,” Clark’s genre-defining 1974 sorority-set slasher film. The creepy extended POV shot that opens “Halloween”? “Black Christmas” did it first. The clichéd bungling law enforcement duo reluctant to believe the wild stories of the incorrigible teenagers until it’s too late? “Black Christmas” did it first. Margot Kidder going into a bizarre, senseless monologue? She did it in “Black Christmas” first.

Admittedly, some folks complain that, like many other holiday-themed horror movies, the film uses its titular holiday as more of a setting than any kind of plot focus (“My Bloody Valentine” anyone?), but, in this case, that’s part of its genius – the logic of the killer’s prolonged and undiscovered spree is only believable given the hectic holiday atmosphere in which everyone’s intermittently leaving the campus, no one fully understands anyone else’s schedule and, what with the good cheer turned up to eleven, most of the characters are consistently drunk.

Still wish “Black Christmas” was a bit more entrenched in the customs and pageantry of the season? Why not incorporate some of its story points into your Christmas traditions?

A New Activity – Receive (or Make) a Series of Increasingly Disturbing Obscene Phone Calls

Make sure they start with unintelligible moaning, escalate into graphic, c-word-laden sexual suggestions and top off with bizarre and threatening multi-voiced character plays. They’re great for interrupting your family’s strawman-mobbed political arguments, and they evoke something even stronger than the spirit of Christmas – fearful discomfort.

A New Decoration – Rocking Chair-Bound Plastic-Wrapped College Girl Corpse

Exactly what the heading says. This isn’t some Damien Hirst work where it’s called “Rocking Chair-Bound Plastic-Wrapped College Girl Corpse” and then it’s like a starfish glued to a two-way mirror or something.

A New Game – Liquor Bottle Scavenger Hunt

To be conducted in honor of Mrs. Mac, the sorority’s booze-hording house mother, whose liquor stowing methods range from the classic bottle-shaped pocket carved into an encyclopedia to the pathetically desperate toilet tank stash. Bonus points for finding bottles that weren’t hidden as part of the game. Now you know why your dad pronounces “stupid bastard” like “shtupa bastus”!

A New Dinner Guest – Drunken Margot Kidder

In character and on the condition that she performs her turtle sex bit from the movie. You don’t want out-of-character Margot Kidder stumbling drunk around your house on Christmas. Her three ex-husbands can attest to that.

A New Argument – Should I Abort this Baby (It’s Father’s an Unhinged Experimental Pianist)

Yeah, it’s a little depressing – but it’s a big part of the film. And it should help to draw your family’s attention away from your real problem – should I abort this baby (it’s father’s either the creepy guy from the club who roofied me and left me for dead, or the heroic rapist who later dragged my unconscious body to the part of the drainage culvert that’s visible from the power station).

Thanks please follow @Michael_Rooker. Special thanks to Matt Finley for his work on the Rooker articles.

This week, Weird Thing Culture Reporter Matt Finley takes a look at the Homunculus, a strange idea that survived against reason and logic. Monday we looked at how long the idea has been around. Wednesday we found out how science got past the idea of little naked men ruling our lives.

The homunculi set a daring course – out of the genitals and into the brain. But before turning things over to all the scholarly yak yak of those incorrigible philosophers, I want to make a brief pit stop over in science. Remember that awesome part in “Blade Runner,” when Roy Batty is shaking down the replicant eye maker and says, “If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes.”? Well, before humans had any real understanding of how vision functioned, some people believed that there was a little brain-dwelling homunculus whose job it was to see what we see through our eyes, and then relate the information to our brains, so that the images weren’t lost, like, in the words of Batty, “tears in the rain.” (Seriously, though, how awesome is “Blade Runner”?)

The flaw in this notion is that if a person requires an internal homunculus proxy to perceive the world, it follows that said homunculus must rely on its own even tinier, more disgusting homunculus proxy. And so on. This conceptual roadblock is known as infinite regression, and it represents, among other things, the intersection between homunculi in science and homunculi in philosophy.

Divorced from unsettling, naked men, infinite regress is still a popular philosophical rejoinder, especially during disputes about consciousness.

(Brief history lesson: It was 20th century philosopher Gilbert Ryle who initially spelled out these types of arguments in depth, initially using the example of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Ryle essentially argued that if, in fact, every intelligent action is preceded by a conscious thought, and a conscious thought is, in itself, an intelligent action, then, etc.)

One classic (though woefully out-dated) philosophical argument about the nature of human consciousness is Descartes notion of dualism (AKA the mind-body problem) – that the mind is non-physical entity separate from the material brain. Descartes even identified the pineal gland as the area of the brain where this immaterial vapor soul thing resided. Cognitive science has since discredited this notion, leaving philosophers to reconstruct an entirely new model of human consciousness.

Lo, gaze yonder! The homunculi are returning! And contemporary American philosopher Daniel Dennett is carrying them in an adorable papoose. Dennett is extremely concerned that, even as philosophers attempt to divorce themselves from the long-standing notions of Cartesian dualism, its ghost haunts even the most logical materialist argument. He calls this effect Cartesian materialism, and basically argues that if you take Descartes’ intangible mind and regard it as physical, but still approach the mind and brain as separate material entities, the newly tangible mind entity becomes, in essence, a homunculus, perched back up inside the human head for the first time since that whole vision debacle, absorbing stimuli and whispering analyses into the cortex. And if that little guy’s up there functioning as our consciousness, then he himself is conscious and must have… well, you know the drill.

They serve as markers for the very society that came before us. Reminders of a bygone era in art, industry or culture that resonated on such a level it had to be publicly memorialized. Or someone just had a eff’d up idea and decided to build it ’cause it looked weird. It is in the spirit of the latter we dust off our disposable cameras, keep on the lookout for bird droppings and attempt to find… The Weirdest Statue In The World!

Here are the ground rules:

• Must be real.

• Must send picures.

Email all submissions to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail. I’ll see you kids right here at the front page at 5:30 p.m. EST where we will hash out the ultimate champion.

Our baseline is this statue of a suspended Rhino, in honor of Matt’s awesome stories of animal experimentation this week.

The truth is out there, we find it today at 6 p.m. EST.