It’s a revolution best served with pickles and onions on a sesame seed bun.

The first test-tube grown hamburger will be produced this fall. Although still in the laboratory phase as of now, the experiment will eventually produces thousands of small tissues recreated from a cow’s stem cells. This proof of concept could be a very powerful one, reshaping agriculture as we know it.

Could meat grown in a lab and not from a slaughtered animal be considered vegan?

Only time and possibly some Bar-B-Q sauce will tell…

[Fox News]

That was the challenge for one biologist who discovered that this plant, Philcoxia, was indeed consuming worms.

Yet it doesn’t seem to have any orifices to trap the organisms, or lures to bring the creepy crawlies out of the dirt to their doom. No, the Philcoxia does things the easy way. It grows sticky leaves under the ground to trap the wrigglers and slowly digests them.

Yummy.

The picture below shows a close-up of the worms trapped underground in the leaves.

[Discovery]

This awesome wildlife rescue happened back in October, 2010 in Taku Inlet near Juneau, Alaska. Alaska Quest Charters was crossing the inlet when four deer approached the boat about a mile offshore.  The struggling animals were brought aboard where they recuperated. When they reached the opposite shore, three of the deer took off into the forest. The fourth had to be rolled off with a wheelbarrow, but after a couple hours was able to take off as well.

“About a mile offshore, Sharon, a birder, spotted something odd in the water coming towards the boat through her binoculars.  What she first thought were sea lions or shorebirds turned out to be four young Sitka black-tailed deer (a subspecies of mule deer).

Even though Sitka deer are known for their swimming ability and often cross large bodies of water between islands, these four where in obvious distress in the frigid water and whipping winds that had stirred up two to three foot swells in the inlet.  The biggest sign of that distress was the fact that the deer actually swam towards the boat and tried to board it, their fear of drowning overpowering their fear of people.

Unable to propel themselves out of the water in their exhaustion, they had to be hauled out onto the deck, where they collapsed.  There, the hypothermic deer slowly but calmly recovered.”

[Animal Planet]

In yet another attempt to to bridge the gap between art and science, Geert Verbeke plans to graft a synthetic blend of spider silk and human skin into his arm as the latest piece in his art collection.  The artificial skin graft will be grown by a team made up of Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi and cell biologist Abdoewaheb El Ghalbzouri. So far the hybrid skin has been able to stop a rifle bullet that has been fired at half its normal speed.

“It connects nature, science and art. If I put the art that Jalila has made on my arm, then I will always have it with me,” said Verbeke, who has a particular interest in marrying arts and life sciences.

However, such grafted skin is still far from being truly bulletproof.

El Ghalbzouri said that spider silk is three times stronger than Kevlar, which is used in bulletproof vests worn by the military and others in conflict zones. Since bulletproof vests are made from 33 layers of Kevlar, using more layers of spider silk could prove more effective in stopping a bullet, he said.

These hybrid grafts could potentially help burn patients as the silk enables scientists to make larger grafts. Other studies have shown that silk placed in burn wounds encourages healing and minimizes scarring.  The question that remains is “does spider silk possess these same characteristics?”  If that isn’t enough, El Ghalbzouri doesn’t  just want to stop at skin either.  He said that these is potential for spider silk to be a good basis on which to build  bone, cartilage, tendons and ligaments.

[Reuters]

Glowing cats – I want one.

[Mirror]

In an effort to be accepted by their peers, dolphins located in Western Australia’s Shark Bay have been spotted “conching.” What is conching? Conching is a method used to catch fish by trapping them in a conch shell, bringing that shell to the surface and shaking that shell with your beak inside the conch so that the fish falls into your mouth.  The curious part of conching is that this appears to be a learned behavior that other dolphins are observing and mimicking.  Early conchers were doing this as early as 2007 but in the last four months there have been as many as seven documented conching instances.  There is still much speculation as to the actual technique used underwater as scientists have only been able to observe “conching” from the surface.

“That’s significant on a few levels. For one, we already know dolphins are very intelligent creatures, but a horizontal spread of a learned behavior at this rate is pretty off-the-charts. Moreover, scientists appear to have gotten in on this fad at the ground floor (they were observing dolphins conching way before it was mainstream, bro), so they have the opportunity to observe this learned behavior as it spreads.”

[Popular Science]

As part of an art experiment that was set to blur the line between species a woman named Marion Laval-Jeantet decided to inject herself with horse plasma.  She is half of the French art duo called “Art Oriente ojet” (who you can check out here).  She could not inject the plasma initially but had to build up a tolerance by injecting horse immunoglobulins and glycoproteins over several months.  In February of this year, she was ready for plasma that contained the entire range of foreign immunoglobulins.  What happened was interesting in that her body did not reject them, but entered her blood stream and bonded with her own proteins.  The results are stunning.

“the artist, during and in the weeks after the performance, experienced not only alterations in her physiological rhythm but also of her consciousness. “I had the feeling of being extra-human,” explained the artist. “I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.’”

[we make money not art]

P. Selvakumar was a man cursed. Being physically fit 15-years ago, the man had attacked and killed two dogs through stoning. This violence caused him, in the eyes of him and his family, to be stricken by the inability to move his limbs freely and loss of hearing. He tried salves and other such cures to make him better, but nothing would work. However, 3 years ago, he went to an astrologer.

This astrologer gave him some advice: marry a dog.

By marrying a dog, he would appease the spirits and show that he had atoned for his crimes. This is actually quite a common aspect of Indian culture, with many people marrying animals and sometimes objects to appease spirits. A famous example is actress Ashwarya Rai marrying a tree so that her engagement to another Bollywood actor wouldn’t have bad signs against it, as they would already be spent on the tree. However, this practice is actually illegal in India, as it practices the caste system, something that has been deemed illegal and taken out of the constitution.Rai has been taken to court about the matter.

The bride, named Selvi, who you see picture above was dressed in an orange sari, was taken to the temple where vows were exchanged, somehow, and the couple were married. The villagers cheered the newly-weds, and soon enough, Selvakumar alleges he was cured.

[Telegraph]

“According to a statement from the Uruguay navy, officers on a routine ocean patrol came “across a large number of dead penguins” and alerted environmental authorities.

Officials are now attempting to “establish whether the cause of death is due to a sudden change of temperature” from a toxic substance called Ferox, that was recently found in coastal waters on the Atlantic coast, the navy said.

An animal rescue group told The Associated Press that they found the carcasses of 400 Magellan penguins washed up near the town of Piriapolis. Dead turtles, dolphins, and albatrosses were also found nearby.”

[The Epoch Times]

That bad mother above is the DEVIL WORM. CUE MUSIC

It was once thought that life could not live more than a few dozen feet below the ground. Those non-believers are now proven to the be foolish mortals the DEVIL WORM always knew them to be. CUE MORE MUSIC

The new nematode species—called Halicephalobus mephisto partly for Mephistopheles, the demon of Faustian legend—suggests there’s a rich new biosphere beneath our feet.

Before the discovery of the newfound worm at depths of 2.2. miles (3.6 kilometers), nematodes were not known to live beyond dozens of feet (tens of meters) deep. Only microbes were known to occupy those depths—organisms that, it turns out, may be the food of the 0.5-millimeter-long worm.

Evidence has even be found the DEVIL WORM has existed for over 12,000 years! Bow you dogs! Bow to DEVIL WORM! CUE THE MOST METAL MUSIC EVAR

[National Geographic]

Reindeer have developed the ability to see the world in ultraviolet light since migrating to the Arctic 10,000 years-ago. Most mammals, aside from rodents and some species of bats, can only see the visible spectrum and the shorter wavelength ultraviolet light remains invisible. Also, aside from being unable to see ultraviolet light, it is also damaging to most eyes, causing snow blindness.

In dark conditions, they shone LED lights of different wavelengths, including UV, into the eyes of 18 anaesthetised reindeers while recording with an electrode whether nerves in the eye fired, indicating that the light had been seen. The UV light triggered a response in the eyes of all the reindeer.

The eyes of most mammals cannot cope with UV light because it carries enough energy to destroy their sensitive photoreceptors, permanently damaging vision. To prevent this happening we experience “snow blindness”: our corneas respond to UV light by becoming temporarily cloudy, preventing excess amounts of UV reaching and burning the retina.

“Why don’t reindeer, arctic fox, polar bears or arctic seals get snow blindness?” asks Jeffery. “Arctic mammals must have a completely different mechanism for protecting their retinas.”

[NewScientist]

Henry Wu: You’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed?

Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.

Scientists looking to create a species of all-female lizards have finally succeeded. An origin of a species like this has never been directly observed.

“It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It relates to the question of how these unisexual species arise in the first place.”

Female-only species that reproduce by cloning themselves — a process called parthenogenesis, in which embryos develop without fertilization — were once considered dead-end evolutionary flukes. But in the last decade, unisexuality has been found in more than 80 groups of fish, amphibian and reptiles. It might not be such a dead end after all.

Peter, the kind of control you’re attempting is not possible. If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers. Painfully, maybe even.. dangerously, but and… well, there it is.

[Wired Science]

GPS tagged coyotes are roaming the streets of Chicago as part of an urban coyote research project. The coyotes are allowed to roam the streets as part of the program in order to eliminate nuisance rodents. The Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control assures Chicago that everything is fine.

“He’s not a threat…He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”

He’s not going to pick up your children; carry on.

Video

[Chicago Breaking News via Gizmodo]

Marvel at the various life cycle of the fantastical Turritopsis nutricula, a jellyfish that is, for all practical purposes, immortal. This strange creature reaches adulthood, transforms itself back into a child, then lives through it’s life again. Think of it as Groundhog Day with a jellyfish.

While old age can’t kill it, the creature is still susceptible to disease and fatal injuries.  Read more about this fascinating forever-fish here.

Awesome.

VIENNA (AFP) – Two young ring-tailed lemurs which had escaped from Salzburg zoo five days ago have been recaptured by their keepers in a hotel bar in a nearby village, according to local media reports Friday.

The two-year-old males had escaped from Salzburg’s Hellbrunn zoo on Sunday afternoon, journeying around 25 kilometres (15 miles) over the next four days.

On Thursday morning, they crept through the open window of a hotel in the village of Wals, where staff lured them into the bar with fruits before calling the zoo to collect them.

Disney has already purchased the rights to the story. The big lemur will be voiced by Brad Garret and Bow Wow will play his travel companion. Sam Elliot is already locked as a gruff yet wise gopher.

[AFP]

So you’re a cute little monkey, scampering about the Amazon. For the sake of this discussion, your name is Joe. All of a sudden you hear someone yell, “Hey Joe! Nice haircut!” You look around, but don’t see anyone. What anonymous stranger is shouting compliments through the thick underbrush of the rain forest? Do they really like my haircut, or was it one of those backhanded compliments?

Lost in thought you make a left through a bush only to find yourself face to face with a gigantic jungle cat. You’re paralyzed with fear. The cat repeats his haircut compliment in what you now realize is just an uncanny monkey impression.

“By the way,” Jungle Cat purrs in his natural brogue. “Your hair makes your face look fat.”

And with that, you’re devoured. Victim of a deadly impression.

[Live Science]

Check out this crazy footage from Japanese TV of the Northern White-faced Owl’s amazing transformation defense. Watch it until the end for the creepy Owl-Cat transformation!

Peruvian researchers have pieced together the remains of what could have been the ultimate whale killing machine. Introducing Leviathan melvillei…

A team of researchers recovered 75% of the animal’s skull, complete with large fragments of both jaws and several teeth. On the basis of its skull length of 3 metres, they estimate that Leviathan was probably 13.5–17.5 metres long, within the range of extant adult male sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus).

Its largest teeth, however, are more than 36 centimetres long — nearly 10 centimetres longer than the largest recorded Physeter tooth.

Modern sperm whales lack functional teeth in their upper jaw and feed by suction, diving deep to hunt squid. Conversely, Leviathan had massive teeth in both its upper and lower jaws, and a skull that supported large jaw muscles. It may have hunted like raptorial killer whales, which use their teeth to tear off flesh.

Hard. Core.

[Nature]

In the 1940′s the archetype of The Mad Scientist was prevalent in all media from movie serials to comic books. Most people didn’t think such characters actually existed, but they instilled fear in the audience who were afraid of science after the advent of the atomic bomb.

Little did they know that over in communist Russia Mad Scientists were hard at work on a freaky Frankenstein-lite experiment.  By hooking the severed head of a dog up to a blood pump the head re-animates and reacts to stimuli.

Uber-creepy, but it does suggest that the Jar Heads featured in Futurama might just exist some day.

Many suspect that cats are “up to something.” Turns out that something is serving as a transportation system for parasites that make humans do foolishly dangerous things.

Toxioplasma gondi is a parasite that generally moves through a cat’s digestive system that is passed on to mice through the cat’s feces. Once infected, the parasite burrows into the internal organs of the mouse causing cysts and eventually making the mouse abandon it’s natural instincts and do everything it can to get the cat to kill it. Once eaten, the parasite passes again through the cat and finds a new host.

Unfortunately, Toxioplasma gondi can also infect other mammals, such as humans. That’s right. These parasites are taking over our brains, driving us to dangerous behavior, and causing mental illness! And all because we keep them in our homes and clean up their waste.

In some populations over 60% of the population is infected. Pregnant women and people with immune diseases can have serious side effects to the parasite, but the rest of us only have to worry about randomly trying to kill ourselves.

Explains base jumping.

[The Economist]

After a careful reintroduction program, Bald Eagles are flourishing in the Channel Islands of California. The only problem is there are now so many of them that food resources have become an issue and researchers are worried they might start eating seals that are tainted with the same poison that wiped out the Eagle population in the 1960s.

To make ends meet, the predatory birds may be forced to scavenge on marine mammal carcasses, the blubber of which is still laced with DDT—the same pesticide that infamously led to the near extinction of bald eagles across the United States.

“Eagles are opportunistic, and as their population grows, they might switch their diets … to include carrion from local sea lion colonies, which is a very abundant food source, for sure,” said study co-author Seth Newsome, a biochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C.

The more things change, the more Bald Eagles can’t stop finding new ways to gobble DDT.

[National Geographic]

When the cuddly little bugger is not actually a hybrid between the two animals but rather an (adorably) hairy version of a regular ol’ hog. That hasn’t stopped some media outlets from referring to the beast as a half-breed between the two different species.

Read up on all things Mangalitsa here on the Wikipedia.

[Daily Mail]

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]

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]

If you graduated from high school, there’s a good chance that, at some point, you had your physics acumen tested by way of an egg drop competition. So, you suffocated your egg in old bubble wrap and foam insulation, wrangled a mess of Popsicle sticks into the approximate shape of a box, Koosh-balled the hell out of the whole business and left its fate to gravity’s butter fingers. The brass-balled Niagara daredevils attempted similar feats – except they were the eggs, and while it was blind, stupid courage that brought them to the lip of the falls, it was their makeshift barrels, boats and bathyspheres that ultimately had to carry them over. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 75 years’ worth of stuntmen, performers and sailors challenged the Niagara River before anyone dreamed of taking on the falls.

When people look at a giant waterfall, they instinctually want to send crap over it. Visit Niagara and then tell me you didn’t wish you had a dilapidated schooner full of wild animals to drop over the roaring cataract. I use that example because it’s totally what you wished, but also because in 1827, the owners of the only three Niagara-area hotels had the same collective dream (although their vision also involved lots of flying “No Vacancy” marquees and airborne dollar signs slam-dunking cash wads through money hoops). After procuring a condemned boat called the Michigan, the intrepid hoteliers began rabidly advertising that the “pirate Michigan,” along with a cargo of “animals of the most ferocious kind, such as Panthers, Wild Cats and Wolves,” would plunge over the falls on September 8. Word spread and people gathered. On the publicized date, a crowd of 10,000 onlookers watched as one buffalo, two raccoons, one dog and one goose road the Michigan over Horseshoe Falls (two bears were placed on the boat, but escaped into the river before the vertical drop). Only the duck survived.

The first Niagara daredevils, who may have had the recently pancaked buffalo in mind, avoided the actual falls, preferring instead to take on the surrounding rapids, gorges and whirlpools. Beginning in 1829, when famed stunt jumper Sam Patch (AKA “The Yankee Leaper”) successfully completed a 125-foot feet-first leap into the Niagara River, performers and wannabes from all corners of palookaville began squaring off with the area’s most treacherous geography, and the falls became an incidental backdrop to a vast culture of thrilling death defiance. Swimmers challenged the rushing river waters upstream from the falls. Along the river’s banks, divers flung themselves from makeshift ladders and platforms. Stuntmen and sailors attempted to steer boats and converted barrels through the treacherous downstream whirlpool rapids. But in 19th century Niagara, amid all the varied calculated showmanship and reckless heroism, one type of act reigned supreme– the gorge-spanning tightrope walk.

Of the dozen or so high-wire performers who balanced their way across the 160-foot-drop between tenuously strung cables and a definite, tangible fate (most on foot, though in 1869 J.F. “Professor” Jenkins crossed on a velocipede [all I can picture is Professor Frink riding Mr. Garrison’s IT]), none compared to the nimble Charles Blondin, AKA The Great Blondin, and his well-muscled, business-savvy rival William Hunt, AKA The Great Farini.

The Great Blondin (real name Jean-Francois Gravelet), a French-born acrobat, arrived in Niagara in 1859 with the intention of crossing the gorge on a tightrope. After stringing a 3 ½-inch-thick, 1,100-foot-long rope across the canyon, the svelte, mustachioed performer completed his goal with seemingly effortless aplomb, and immediately began working to up the ante. Over the next two years, Blondin performed a cornucopia of increasingly absurd acts, all while perched high above the Niagara River’s icy water and pummeling currents. He crossed blindfolded. He crossed on stilts. He crossed carrying his manager on his back. He crossed with a portable stove, sat down in the middle of the rope and cooked and ate an omelet.

During the second year of Blondin’s success, a new talent arrived in Niagara. New Yorker William Hunt had abandoned his family, his girlfriend and his name to become the high-wire extraordinaire known as The Great Farini (an unapologetic bid to cash-in on the erotic mystery of a European pedigree). Strong as moonshine and focused as a Ford Focus, Farini had one goal – out-perform Blondin. For his first stunt in Niagara, Farini high-wired halfway across the gorge, used a second rope to descend all the way down to the waiting Maid of the Mist, enjoyed a glass of wine (how European), climbed 160 feet back up to the tightrope and completed his crossing… only to re-cross minutes later, blindfolded and wearing baskets on his feet. Whereas Blondin ended his performances by humbly asking the audience for donations, Farini preceded his stunts with solicited sponsorship deals and publicity campaigns that guaranteed larger crowds and bigger profits. Farini matched Blondin stunt for stunt, carrying a local woman across the falls after Blondin piggybacked his manager, and even one-upping the omelet act by schlepping a washtub out on the line, lowering the basin down into the river, hoisting it back up and washing a dozen handkerchiefs in it. On several occasions, he called Blondin out, directly challenging him to mano a mano competition. The Frenchman never responded.

Eventually, Blondin moved to England where he became a respected acrobatic performer. Farini followed him and ultimately emerged the more successful man, touring much of Europe as an acrobat before eventually teaming up with P.T. Barnum to work behind the scenes as a circus coordinator. Interestingly, despite Farini’s long and varied career, it’s still Blondin whose name is synonymous with Niagara high-wire acts. As they say – life’s a bitch and then you yell at it until you get throat cancer and die a prolonged and agonizing death.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the ropes and platforms and fearsome freestyle strokes of daredevils past would be overshadowed by a new frontier in insane, ridiculous name-making – the journey over the falls.

(Continued on Friday)

What’s more awesome than a giant ancient crocodile? A really giant snake that ate it for lunch.

A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles described recently by University of Florida researchers in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known.

link: Ancient crocodile relative likely food source for Titanoboa, largest snake ever known

Florida is under attack from giant snakes. If that’s not bad enough, in a turn fit for the SyFy channel, authorities now worry that different breeds of python may be merging together into some new kind of “super snake”. From the Sun-Sentinel:

…state environmental officials worry that the rock python could breed with the Burmese python, which already has an established foothold in the Everglades. That could lead to a new “super snake,”…

The rock python, native to Africa is know for eating crocodiles and even children. If it breeds with the more common Burmese python, the hybrid could end up being even meaner and larger than either individual species.

The semi-good news is that the cold weather is bringing them out into the open and killing a few off. The bad news is that we might be left with really hardy snakes seeking out warm places. Did we mention that Weird Things HQ is located in Florida right off a canal?

link: Pythons in Everglades: African rock pythons add to worries about snakes in Everglades – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Just last week, I mentioned the waddling, headless meat mutants that have been erroneously cited as the source of KFC’s chicken. In Florida, rumors of bizarre genetic experimentation are still used to explain the pervasive presence of sex-crazed flies referred to as “love bugs” (in truth, the insects are South American natives that are believed to have hitched a ride on a North America-bound freighter sometime in the 1920s). Urban legends featuring bizarre animal experimentation (and the resulting grotesqueries) are six for a nickel. This Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Weird Things takes a look at the top-shelf stuff – Real animals. Actual experiments.

Today: In Soviet Russia, Dog’s Head Transplants You

Before Soviet scientists began launching dogs into outer space, they spent a couple decades cutting the animals up, reconfiguring them and benefitting science via cruel and twisted experiments. Sergei Bruyukhonenko, for example, was known as the dog decapitator. He earned this fitting (though perhaps sensationalistic) moniker during his quest to introduce open-heart surgery to the USSR. In the 1920s, Bruyukhonenko invented the “autojektor,” a simple apparatus that was designed to fill in for a patient’s heart and lungs while doctors futzed around inside his or her chest cavity. To test the machine, Bruyukhonenko simply lopped the head off a dog, wired all the tubes and vessels up to the autojektor and watched in delight as the pup’s disembodied noggin came back to life (clinical low-brain-function life, not high-enthusiasm Beggin’ Strips-commercial life). The doctor was so pleased with his results, he held a public demonstration of the autojektor, during which he entertained the audience by feeding a dog’s head some cheese, which promptly oozed out of the neck through the disconnected esophagus (some Russians still grate cheese this way).

Thirty years later, an eager young scientist named Vladimir Demikhov showed up with a smile and a sewing kit. Demikhov was interested in perfecting live organ transplants – specifically heart transplants – and set about practicing on animals. While he made several important contributions to transplant medicine, he’s best remembered for a 1954 experiment in which he detached a puppy’s head, shoulders and front legs, and then sutured them, alive, onto the back of an adult dog. Remember the nasty esophagus cheese that leaked back out of Bruyukhonenko’s dog? This time it was milk, and it gushed out all over the host dog (some Russians still bathe dogs this way). Sadly, after only a couple weeks, the pitiable beast died of infection. Supposedly, though Demikhov never found a way to successfully transplant a heart, he did go on to make 19 more bizarre pup-and-dog recombinations, none of which survived longer than a month.

Less than ten years later, Rob White, a scientist in Cleveland (coincidentally, a city that measures its collective morale in units called “Trotskys” [1 Trotsky = -5 smiles]), used Demikhov’s transplantation techniques as a jumping off point to successfully perform the complete transplant of one monkey’s severed melon onto another’s decapitated body. Post-surgery, the plug-and-play primate, though paralyzed, retained use of its core senses. According to White’s notes, the monkey bit several lab techs.

This grumpy, neck-sutured, paralytic simian is the perfect segue into Wednesday’s diabolical (again Soviet) scheme – the monkey/human hybrid.

In the Michael Crichton book Congo and movie by the same name, he describes a race of super-apes almost on par with man in intelligence. Like much of Crichton’s work, he based this on science speculation. For thousands of years there have been stories of ape-men that fell outside our conventional definitions of humans, gorillas, chimps and orangutan.

In 500 BC, Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer described this encounter off the Western coast of Africa:

At the terminus of Hanno’s voyage the explorer found an island heavily populated with what were described as hirsute and savage people. Attempts to capture the males failed, but three of the females were taken. These were so vicious they were killed, and their skins preserved for transport home to Carthage.

The name the intrepreters gave for them was “gorillae”. 2,000 years later explorers would use that word to describe modern day gorillas. But were they gorillas? Hanno described finding these “savage people” in a place far from where gorillas are known to inhabit (the historical version of the story is in Greek and not Hanno’s native Punic, suggesting it’s been repeatedly rewritten). Taking it at face value, it could be that Hanno found an isolated group of gorillas that went extinct. But if it was a distinct population of gorillas on that island, it’s very likely it was a unique species of gorilla with its own behaviors and characteristics (gorillas are now divided into two distinct species with two subspecies each).

By 1847, after the gorilla had been discovered by the West, we had a clearer picture of the major ape species: Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutan. But since then stories of other species have persisted.

The 19th Century French-American explorer Paul du Chaillu described a species of ape whose behavior doesn’t quite describe what we know about chimpanzees or gorillas.

This ape, whose singular cry distinguishes at once from all its cougeners in these wilds, is remarkable, as bearing a closer resemblance to man than any other ape yet known. It is very rare and I was able to obtain but one specimen of it. The face is bare and black. the forehead is higher than any other ape, and the cranial capacity greater by measurement. The eyes are wider apart than any other ape. The nose is flat. The cheek bones are high and prominent, and the cheek sunken and lank. The sides of the face are covered with a growth of straight hair, which meeting under the chin like the human whiskers, gives the face a remarkably human look. The arms reach below the knee. The ears are very larger, and are more nearly like the human ear than those of other apes.

Saying that it was a “gorilla” or a “chimpanzee” isn’t as helpful of a classification as we might think. Natural history museums are filled with interesting specimens that push the boundaries of gorilla and chimpanzee taxonomy, but are still within those boundaries. A skull and a DNA test can tell us something about how a creature lived, but not the whole picture. A modern day Dane and a pygmy bushmen look about as different as you could imagine, but genetically they’re the same species.

Science encounters a lost race of apes
The idea that of a living chimpanzee or gorilla species with much different physical and behavioral traits (like the gorillas in Congo) got a big boost from the scientific community when credible reports began emerging from the Congo of a large ape that displayed both chimp and gorilla like behavior.

Shelley Williams PhD, a specialist in primate behavior had this encounter with the “Bili Apes” in the Congo: From Wikipedia

“We could hear them in the trees, about 10 m away, and four suddenly came rushing through the brush towards me. If this had been a mock charge they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet, and they were huge. They were coming in for the kill – but as soon as they saw my face they stopped and disappeared.”

Williams continues:

“The unique characteristics they exhibit just don’t fit into the other groups of apes,” says Williams. The apes, she argues, could be a new species unknown to science, a new subspecies of chimpanzee, or a hybrid of the gorilla and the chimp. “At the very least, we have a unique, isolated chimp culture that’s unlike any that’s been studied,”.

Genetically, evidence indicates the Bili Apes are identical with known chimpanzees. But there’s more to physiology and behavior than what’s encoded in the genes. While there are conflicting reports about the physical traits of the Bili Apes, the consensus is that they are larger than common chimps and much bolder.

Presently they are threatened by bush meat hunters and gold miners who are encroaching into their habitat.

Conclusion
With the verification that there is indeed a Bili Ape that has its own distinct behavior and appearance, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that there have been other species and sub-species of chimpanzee and gorilla in historic times with their own particular behavior and physiology that have since gone extinct.

That some of these were smart or closer to humans in behavior is not an unreasonable speculation. Given the friction that exists today between humans in the region and other humans as well as primates, it’s not hard to imagine their extinction being at least human influenced.

So if there was a race of super-apes, chances are we killed them. It’s the Planet of the Apes in reverse…

Bili Ape – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From myth to reality – meet the chimps who eat lions

The story of a faraway island still inhabited by legendary creatures has been a captivating idea since before Homer wrote down the Odyssey. Recent incarnations include the works of Jules Verne and stories like King Kong, Jurassic Park and recently Where the Wild Things Are.

When we think of fascinating creatures we tend to put them into two categories, those that came before recorded history and those that came after and are mostly still around. While we can comprehend recent extinction and acknowledge that our caveman ancestors dealt with beasts that are no longer around, we tend to think of things having been the status quo since we started writing stuff down – with the exception of a dodo bird or two.

The truth is a little bit weirder. A number of fantastical creatures continued on well into recorded history and only vanished quite recently. Oddly enough, many of these creatures survived on remote islands (this isolation might explain why they survived as long as they did).

Here’s a list of amazing beasts that survived in remote places well into historical and almost modern times. Some are sure things, others are a little far-fetched. All are just as plausible as another.

The last Wooly Mammoth died on Wrangel Island (Near Russia) probably around 1,700 BCE – close to the reign of Ramesses the Great and over 1,000 years after the Sphinx was built.

The Elephant Bird was a giant bird (a ratite to be precise) native to Madagascar that went extinct in the 1600′s. At 10 feet tall and close to 1,000 pounds in weight, this was no dainty emu. Given what we now know about dinosaurs and their relation to birds, this is one scary creature.

Megalania was a giant monitor lizard that may have survived into historic times. At 26 feet long and 4,000 lb in weight, it’d be the closest you’d come to seeing something that looked like a classical depiction of a dinosaur. Some cryptozoologists claim recent sighting as evidence that that there may be populations still alive in New Guinea and Australia.

The Giant Hutia was a large rodent that got as large as 440 lb – as big as an American Black Bear. Indigenous to the West Indies it may have been hunted to extinction by aboriginal humans but some may have lived into historic times. One smaller species may have survived as late as when the Spanish explored the Caribbean.

Homo floresiensis – “The Flores Man” or “Hobbit” was a possible distinct humanoid species that is believed to have died out 12,000 years ago. However local folklore about creatures called “Ebu Gogo” that match the description of these creatures suggests that they may have existed as recently as the late 19th century.

Sea Monsters are awesome. What’s even more awesome than that? Live blogging your investigation of said sea monster in 1855! How is that even possible? In 1855 the New York Times was on the cutting edge of tech journalism utilizing telegraphs and locomotives to report the news live from the scene:

Having received this morning very private information, a vague account of the discovery of another sea-serpent near our city, we immediately dispatched seventeen of our reporters to the spot, having first “chartered” the “exclusive” right of the telegraph, and eleven locomotives.

By securing an communications connection via telegraph, reporters were able to send back a blow-by-blow account of their investigation as it unfolded.

Two minutes past 10 o’clock A.M – Serpent’s head seen – struck at one of the party with a stick – blow missed – terrible splashing.

One o’clock P.M. – Serpent showing himself frequently; struck at by Zedekiah Hornbush; club hit Zeke Williams; fight; puddle very rily.

Two o’clock P.M. – Serpent hit by a boy with a stone; dove when hit with a triple bellow – (that sounded as if it came from a neighboring pasture,) rose to surface again; hit by Dutchman; blood flowing from Serpent’s nose; awful scene; contortions of reptile; final capture.

What was this mysterious creature that Zedekiah and Zeke fearlessly confronted with their clubs? The report doesn’t quite get into specifics other than to say it may be of the “Garter” species – which suggests that it’s what we call a Garter snake today. They point out that there is no doubt he was in some relation to the Serpent that tempted Eve, “as he looks very wicked”. Wicked indeed. Remember this was four years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.

The story is a fascinating read and well worth checking out: Sea-Serpent in Wisconsin–another Monster–Terrible… – View Article – The New York Times

Inspired by this and recent accounts of a nearby sea monster, the Weird Things staff is contemplating live blogging its own expedition to find such a creature. We’ll keep you posted.

Apparently it’s snake week here at Weird Things, previously we reported on researchers discovering the stomping grounds of the largest snake ever, Titanboa. Now comes some fun news from the U.S. Geological Survey: We’re being invaded by giant snakes!

High-risk species—Burmese pythons, northern and southern African pythons, boa constrictors and yellow anacondas—put larger portions of the U.S. mainland at risk

It gets better!

Two of these species are documented as reproducing in the wild in South Florida, with population estimates for Burmese pythons in the tens of thousands.

That’s right, tens of thousands.

Just how long can a Burmese python get?

According to Wikipedia: A Burmese Python at the Serpent Safari Reptile Zoo in Gurnee, Illinois , USA was billed as the heaviest living snake in captivity. In 2005, it weighed 183 kilograms (403 lb) at a length of 8.2 metres (27 ft).

Get ready for thousands and thousands of giant snakes South Florida. Sidenote: Weird Things is looking for a desert climate to relocate to.

link: Science Daily: Report Documents Risks Of Giant Invasive Snakes In The United States

link: USGS Release: Report Documents the Risks of Giant Invasive Snakes in the U.S. (10/13/2009 12:00:00 PM)

Science Daily reports that a Smithsonian research team has uncovered the first megafossils of a neotropical rainforest.

Titanoboa, the world’s biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods.

While, modern day snakes have been measured over 30 feet in length, it’s been speculated that that the warmer climate contributed to Titanboa’s 42 foot length.

If 58 million years sounds like a good amount of distance to keep between you and a creature capable of swallowing you and all your friends whole, keep this in mind from a recent National Geographic article on the creature:

So could Titanoboa-size snakes return with global warming? “Maybe,” study co-author Jonathan Bloch said. “They definitely could, or maybe … the warming could happen so rapidly that [snakes] wouldn’t have time to adapt.”

Let’s hope this cooling trend continues.

link: First Neotropical Rainforest Was Home Of The Titanoboa — World’s Biggest Snake

link: VIDEO: Biggest Snake Found

Mark your calendars. August 31st, 2009 may have been the day the insects got the upper hand in their war against mankind.

Reportedly, a truck driver for the Minot Air Force Base 91st Missile Wing lost control of his vehicle when a “large insect” flew into the cab and (attacked) landed on his back.

When one solitary bug accomplishes what all of our enemies combined have been unable to do, it’s time to start buying Raid by the bulk.

‘Large insect’ sparked missile truck’s crash – Military- msnbc.com

Previously, this week, on Weird Things.

• A few tips for the novice Bigfoot hunter.

• Could the Son of Sam, a UFO investigating Air Force base and the birth of popular science fiction have helped create the Dover Demon?

• Michael Jackson may be dead, but his ghost is on a world tour.

• What happens, when myriad ghosts, have chosen to haunt a house, stop beings polite and start getting real? They say some really kooky stuff, that’s what.

• Rhode Island has never had a Bigfoot sighting, but that might be about to change.

Enjoy the weekend, as always, send weird photos, stories, sounds and happenings to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail.

Strange bones found in Charlotte, VT in 1849

It was 1849, near Charlotte some ten miles south of the capital city of Burlington. Vermont was slowly industrializing, and the railroad was coming with the promise of connecting this perpetually rural region with the rest of the nation. To keep the railroad level enough for the primitive engines of the time, rail beds were hand-dug by large labor crews. The rocky soil and hilly terrain made work difficult.

The workmen were accustomed to finding unusual things as they made their slow progress towards Burlington. Arrowheads and pottery shards were common; bones, less so. And bones like those found one particular day had never been seen before.

As they dug through a hillside, a skull emerged from the slimy grey-blue clay. It was big, and at first the workmen thought they’d found the remains of a large horse. As they unearthed more of it, they realized they’d encountered something very different, for this horse had no legs.

Legends of a sea monster in the nearby Lake Champlain had persisted since Samuel De Champlain first explored the lake in 1609. He described a large scaly creature thrashing about near the shore, and dozens of sightings since had proven to many Vermonters and New Yorkers that something was lucking beneath the normally peaceful waters.

Work was halted and the entire skeleton was unearthed. At nearly 20 feet long, it resembled a large sea creature, though no one could explain how such an animal could have died and been buried some 250 miles from the ocean. It seemed clear that “Champ,” as the monster is now known, had been proven beyond a doubt.

Up north in Burlington, geologists were alerted to this find a team of men made the journey to Charlotte to investigate. After some assembling and reassembling, the men had a positive identification. While certainly a “monster” in terms of animals normally found in the lake, the bones were that of a creature well known to science. They belonged to a whale.

On display at the Perkins Museum, University of Vermont

The “White Whale” or beluga is a small whale (actually a member of the porpoise family) that is well known today. A pod of these cetaceans calls the St. Lawrence Estuary 100 miles to the north home. This still didn’t explain how the whale ended up buried in Vermont… there was no outlet to the Hudson Bay into the fresh waters of Lake Champlain, and the beluga is a salt water animal.

Though they had no access to carbon dating, the scientists were able to roughly calculate the age of the bones at 11,000 years. Once this was done, the mystery was solved. 11,000 years earlier, the ice age was starting its retreat from Vermont, but Lake Champlain was actually know as the Chaplain Sea, a much larger body of water that covered Charlotte and the surrounding region. Not only that, it connected to Hudson Bay, and was salt water.

“Charlotte,” as the whale has come to be known, swam into shallow water and died, possibly near the outlet of a river. Quickly covered by silt, the carcass was protected from scavengers and left to decompose slowly, which left the bones intact. A phenomenon known as “glacial rebound,” where formerly glaciated land “springs back” after the weight of the ice is removed allowed the land in which Charlotte was buried to rise above the now lower lake level. Though she had died underwater, her bones rose some 200’ to be found by the workmen.

A Beluga Whale

Today, Charlotte’s bones are visible in a glass case at the University of Vermont’s Perkins Museum. There is no admission charge.

Above is a stabilized version of the latest purported video of Champ the Monster of Lake Champlain. Compare that to the video of a common fresh water otter below, and the mystery of Lake Champlain starts to unravel. Check out the updated investigation on Cryptomundo.com, complete with enhanced videos of the sighting.

The Ishikawa region of central Japan has been receiving downpours of baby frogs this month. A number of cities, including Nanao and Hakusan have experienced hundreds of tadpoles falling from the sky.

The bizarre rain is a rare meteorological phenomena that has occurred before in many parts of the globe. The animals are usually fish or frogs and are often alive when they fall to the ground. Scientists have yet to explain the cause of this baffling occurrence, but one hypotheses suggests that the fish and frogs are swept up in strong winds from waterways before being dumped on the cars of unsuspecting Japanese businessmen.

photo credit: phoenixlily

Portobello Aquarium, New Zealand: Sid the Octopus is finally set free after several successful escape attempts from his tank. An article in The Independent reports on his daring escape attempts:

Octopuses are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom, it’s what makes them such good escape artists. Not having a spine doesn’t hurt either.

You can run Penguins, you can hide, but we will always know where you are, because you are swimming birds that poop a lot. We think we can count this as another unconsidered negative effect of being a flightless bird.

photo credit: nicely85

Glowing Monkeys: The gift that all of us have always wanted but never dared admit it. Now our collective dream has become a reality. We are Weirdthings are pleased to announce that Japanese scientists have created transgenic glowing monkeys. Check it out.

Neanderthals were one of our closest genetic relatives. The debate over whether they were a sub species of humans or a different species all together still rages. Knowing our shared genetic heritage, archaeologists like to speculate about interaction between humans and neanderthals.

Did we interbreed? Did we co-exist peacefully? Did we trade and barter? Well according to Fernandon Rozzi of Paris’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique instead of loving one of our closet relatives, we ate them. According to Live Science:

The evidence: a Neanderthal jawbone with marks similar to those left on bones of deer and other animals that Stone Age humans butchered, according to the Daily Mail.

“Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them,” Rozzi says.

Mmmmm….tasty ape man. It’s a tangled ancestral web we weave.

Local fisherman around Vietnam’s Lake Rung suspected changing weather patterns were the culprit when fish started dying off in large numbers last year. When they headed out last month to collect fish they caught around two tons of a strange, blob like, creature. The fish caught along side the blobs perished soon afterward. Touching the blobs brought itchiness and sore eyes Thanh Nien News reports:

“We didn’t know if they were animals or plants and began called them the “strange creature,” Xuan said.

She showed a bucket containing some bryozoans, adding that they had died after being caught a day earlier.

Yen, a worker at the cooperative, said the strange creatures stick themselves to the plants, bags, or the lake floor. He also said some were as small as a finger-tip but others weighed almost a kilogram.

That’s right, the fish-killing blobs are bryozoans. Byrozoans are tiny coral like animals that usually form rigid, calcium carbonate structures in salt water. This particular batch are known as Pectinatella magnifica and are a rare, gelatinous freshwater form of the species that can grow up to two meters. According to Vietnamese authorities, these massive blobs are a first in the nation of Vietnam and the government is working to contain the outbreak from spreading to other village lakes.

We all remember the Montauk Monster that washed up along the shores of Long Island last year. The above video was taken in Southold, NY of Montauk Monster 2. The people over at Montauk-monster.com think the two are the same beast, what do you make of it?

Image Credit: AAP

The crocodile hood ornament these Papua New Guinea men are sporting on the front of their car was not a gift from Pimp-My-Polynesian Ride. It’s a killer 13 foot female crocodile that has been terrorizing their village in Madang Province. They lured the beast to its death in the Gum river with a piece of lamb on a giant hook.

Rumor has it that seven locals have been murdered by the reptile and the young men pictured utilized techniques their people had used for many croc hunting centuries to subdue the brute. They then sent DNA samples off for testing in Australia, hoping to prove that this was the croc who claimed the latest victim, a 17 year old girl.

Steve Irwin would be proud.

Also, a male rumored to be her mate is still at large….could they have caught….the wrong croc?

Image Credit: Visual Culture and BioScience

Penn Bullock reports:

In March 2008, a veterinarian identified a mysterious pig pathogen at two “swine production facilities” (the official euphemism for slaughterhouses) in Illinois. It contained “genes of both swine and avian influenza viruses.”

A government inspector from the USDA-ARS Virus and Prion Diseases of Livestock Research Unit (say that three times) wrote up the discovery in an esoteric trade journal, “Agricultural Research.” The report resurfaced inanely on a news aggregator, AllBusiness.com. It noted the nebulousness of the bird-swine flu and warned that it had the potential for a deadly pandemic. What it lacked was transmissibility to and between humans.

Exactly a year later, the so-called swine flu emerged at an unidentified pig farm in North America. Swine flu is a misnomer for this mongrel virus. According to the CDC, it’s actually a combo of swine, bird and human flues from Asia and North America.

The world’s leading epidemiologists are puzzling over the origin of the new bird-swine-human flu sweeping the world. For clues, they should refer back to that ominous case of bird-swine flu in Illinois. According to the government inspector, pigs awaiting slaughter were being piped contaminated water from nearby ponds – where migrating birds congregated. Some of the waterfowl had bird flu and, to put it impolitely, shat the virus into the water supply. A pig with swine flu drank the adulterated water. That unlucky pig became a laboratory in which the bird and swine flues merged genetically. That was in 2008. Did the 2009 swine flu virus come about in the same manner, through the same agricultural process?

The current 2009 swine flu and the obscure 2008 strain are not identical. The former is part of the H1 subtype of influenza, the latter the H2 subtype. Nevertheless, the 2008 outbreak is worth a long second look.

Queensland, Australia: Massive spiders have been invading the outback town of Bowen in recent days. Heavy, unseasonal rain has driven hordes of usually shy, behemoth Eastern Tarantulas (barking spider/bird eating spider) out of their hiding places in the brush onto the streets of Bowen. Local pest control experts have been hitting payday as thousands of calls ring in from around the town from desperate locals looking to get rid of the gargantuan arachnids. Eastern Tarantulas are among the world’s largest spiders as you can see in the video below:

We were perusing Weird Asia News when we stumbled across this freaky video of two female carp that look all too human.

The eerily humanoid eyes are made up of dots on the front of the fish’s heads. The two carps are female hybrids of the carp and the leather carp that have lived in relative obscurity since 1986 in Cheongju, a small South Korean town.

Only in recent years have they attracted national media attention from South Korean news outlets. Unfortunately, since they are both females, we won’t have any tiny humanoid carp swimming around, but it’s nice to know they got their 15 minutes of fishy fame. The carp will live out their days in a pond behind a 64 year old, Cheongju man’s home. Wait a minute! They say carp and leather carp hybrid, we ask what that 64 year old man was up to a little over 23 years ago.

photo credit: mctheriot

Chillicothe, Ohio is known for many things, it has a cool name, it was the first state capital, but Chillicotheans never expected they’d be known for their wild emu population. For those of you not in the emu know, emus are a large, flightless species of bird native to Australia. That means: Not indigenous to Ohio, how they got there is a mystery. Where do these Ohio Ornthicryptids come from, and have they been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Psychics are no good at finding missing people, but what about missing pets? The almost tragic tale of Tinker Bell the chihuahua begins at a flea market her owners were attending. Tinker Bell was standing on the roof of her owner’s trailer when a sudden 70 mph gust of wind blew the bite sized canine away. Lavern and Dorothy Utley, Tinker Bell’s owners, were distraught and spent two whole days searching Waterford, MI for their pooch. Finally, in desperation they hired a pet psychic, who reportedly lead them to a wooded spot about a mile from where the dog was lost. Tinker Bell was waiting there unscathed.

We thought a dog being blown off of a trailer was a little odd as well, we speculate that Tinker Bell is actually a witch.

Image Credit: CRI Online

We now know which side the dolphins have chosen in the international political game. When suspected Somali pirates attempted to approach a Chinese merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden, thousands of dolphins leaped out of the water blocking their passage in an amazing spectacle. The dinky pirate boats were unable to make their way through the convoy of dolphins and were forced to turn back. Prompting us to ask: Where were these heroic dolphins when Somali pirates hijacked an American ship last week?

A new species of freshwater fish has been discovered in the streams of Myanmar, and it’s kind of freaky looking. What makes the fishy counterpart of Nosferatu so unusual is that the characteristic fangs are not actually fangs at all, but fake fangs developed as an extension of the jaw. According to Live Science:

The newly discovered minnow species called the dracula fish apparently spent 30 million years redeveloping superficial fangs after losing its vampire-looking teeth earlier in its evolution.

Whether the fangs are fake or not they still look like they could put a couple of puncture marks in your neck, if the fish wasn’t a tiny minnow.

photo credit: tamra hays

Turritopsis Nutricula, a species of jellyfish native to the Caribbean, has now spread to all corners of the ocean. Why? Because they don’t die:

Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.

This according to a Telegraph article about the interminable little critters.

Amazingly these jellies can reach sexual maturity, revert to a polyp state, then grow to sexual maturity again ad infinitum. But don’t flee the oceans just yet. The little fellas are only five millimeters long and are harmless….for now.

Photo: CATERS NEWS

The World’s first and only pink bottle nosed dolphin was discovered in an inland saltwater lake in Louisiana earlier this month. Dolphins have never seemed so cuddly.

Strangest Sea Creatures – For more amazing video clips, click here

For those of you who enjoy gawking at some of the more bizarre denizens of the deep. Is that a lobster or an alien?

Astronomers have identified two massive balls of ice, orbiting a dwarf planet on the fringe of our solar system. According to sciencenews.org:

You’d need a mighty tall glass to hold two space objects that researchers have now identified as ice cubes at the fringes of the solar system. The larger of the icy bodies is about the width of Ohio, the smaller about twice the length of Rhode Island. Both bodies are moons of the dwarf planet Haumea.

Now that’s a lot of ice. It’s nice to know that when we finally get around to colonizing the solar system that there will be no shortage of fresh water to be harvested from these two ice spheres and space objects like them.

photo credit: flamesworddragon

Imagine this: You’re in the car, sipping on your morning coffee, jamming along to the radio…then whack…vulture to the face!

Disney’s Junglebook has lead us all to believe that vultures are the inane hippies of the bird family. Vanessa Hurtado knows better. Her pleasant morning was ruined abruptly when a turkey vulture crashed through her windshield. Thankfully she lived to tell the tale. The vulture was not so fortunate. An NBC New York article about the incident informed us that this isn’t the first time a Vulture/Motor Vehicle incident has occurred in New Jersey. In 2004 a motorcyclist took a vulture to the head and did not survive.

If you think those sound like bad days, a woman boating in Florida last year was killed when a 200 pound eagle ray soared out of the water and slammed into her body. Both the ray and the woman were killed on impact. So the next time you feel safe operating a motor vehicle or boat, just remember, you’re not safe on land or at sea.

A big cat, caught on tape, has been attacking livestock in Poland, freaking out local farmers and residents. Poland doesn’t have much in the way of big cat populations, so a mystified group from the Krakau Zoo took hair samples from dead animals to determine the beast’s origins.

Turns out it’s a Snow Leopard. You might recognize the Snow Leopard from the BBC Series ‘Planet Earth’, in which a camera crew spent three months in the mountains of Afghanistan to capture seven seconds of footage of the endangered felid. We bet the BBC team is going to be miffed this week when they find out that some Pole with a camcorder got as much footage as they did without risking life and limb.

photo credit: newagecrap

So how in the world did a Snow Leopard, indigenous to the mountainous Central Asian region, wind up so far away from home?

The above image shows the Snow Leopard’s natural trekking grounds, this particular Snow Leopard is roughly 2500 miles out of its element. So we’re guessing it either walked a very long way without being spotted up until now, or it escaped from somewhere. There are over 230 captive Snow Leopards in Europe and here at weirdthings.com, we’d like to think that someone at an Eastern European zoo is too embarrassed to tell their boss that they lost the leopard.

Our thoughts go out to the frightened farmers of Poland, while local radio continues to give big cat warnings, telling people to stay in doors after dark.

photo credit: Scubabix

A man was attacked and mauled to death by two Komodo Dragons in Indonesia today. Attacks on humans are usually rare but they’ve become more frequent in recent years, prompting us at weirdthings.com to ask, are the Komodos finally on the rise against their human overlords? We hope so.

The latest news from cryptozoology.com links to an article from a local Trinidad newspaper. Apparently a one horned beast washed ashore on the island of Cedros and excited locals claimed that it was anything from a Narwhal to a Unicorn. The local Government Counselor’s explanation for what the creature was is far less exciting.

Link to the article.

No, it’s not Casper the friendly ghostfish. The Barreleye fish is an elusive deep sea creature. Until recently scientists didn’t know that it had a bizarre translucent head, then the beast was observed alive and caught on camera.