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.