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.

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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.

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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.