Lately, it is hard keeping track of all the animal die-offs. Thankfully somebody has put together this handy map so that we all can play along at home.

In the Colombian city of Medellin, a local undertaker has started a “ghost census” to count and catalog the spirits of the city. His team of four “properly attired”  funeral parlor workers has spread out around the city in the past few weeks cataloging no fewer than 215 ghosts.

“It’s beyond question that many of the city’s buildings and homes have ghosts. For years, we’ve heard stories about them and we thought the time had come to approach, catalog and classify them through a census,” William Betancur told AFP.

“They’ve reported back with 215 ghosts…. Our video and still cameras have captured 23,” he said with pride.

The idea came about after the undertaker sensed his dead dog still wandering the funeral home.

[AFP via io9] [photo: AFP]

A flightless ibis (Xenicibis xympithecus) that lived on Jamaica until about 10,000 years ago had wings that evolved into weapons. It would use its club-like wings to beat predators and perhaps other ibis in defense of its territory and young. However, these club-like wings proved useless when humans finally showed up and the birds were extinct shortly afterwards.

“Working with Olson, Longrich went to Jamaica and found more fossils – including curved hefty handbones.

He thought the first he found was a deformity, but as he found others, including a couple that had been cracked and healed, he realized they had been used as clubs. The new fossils also showed the wrists were hinged so the hands could swing like flails.

“I would guess that they would try to grab each other using the beak and then just proceed to pound each other using the wings,” Longrich told Discovery News.”

[New Scientist]

In 1875 a body was dug up while building a new train depot in Philadelphia. Thought to have been buried originally in 1800, the entire body has been turned into soap.

“This unusual preservation occurred because water seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in his body to soap through a type of hydrolysis known as saponification.”

[Smithsonian]

Perhaps this guy should investigate what is going on down there.

[Geekologie]

Japanese scientists from Kyoto University have announced that they’ve managed to create a “palladium-like” alloy using what they label as “present-day alchemy.”  They used nanotechnology to combine  rhodium and silver into the new alloy, which they say could eventually replace the real thing in consumer electronics.

Professor Hiroshi Kitagawa and his team used nanotechnology to combine rhodium and silver to produce an alloy with similar properties to palladium, which is located between rhodium and silver on the periodic table. These two metals usually would not mix, as rhodium has 45 electrons and silver 47, and so are stable elements unable to react with each other under normal conditions. The research team overcame this hurdle by mixing rhodium and silver in solution which was then turned into a mist and mixed with heated alcohol. This process produced particles of the new alloy that are around 10 nanometres in diameter.

[engadget and Gizmag]

A natural event that inspired some of the most awesome Norse mythology ever will make an epic return to it’s homeland tomorrow.

Two beasts of Norse mythology are set to trouble the skies of northern Europe on Tuesday for the world’s first solar eclipse of 2011.

Ancient Viking legends recount that a giant wolf named Skoll chases the Moon, and its brother Hati pursues the Sun — and if either sinks their teeth into one and holds it back, an eclipse occurs.

For astronomers, though, eclipses are less superstitious affairs, occurring when the Moon swings between the Sun and Earth.

Tuesday’s event will be a partial eclipse. This occurs when a fraction of the Moon obscures the Sun, and to those in its shadow a “bite” seems to have been taken out of the solar face.

According to legend, humans are encouraged to make as much noise as possible when the eclipse happens, as to scare away the wolves. So, file that under “things to do.”

Thousands of dead blackbirds rained down onto Beebe, Arkansas to help ring in the new year. Welcome to 2011!

UPDATE: 100,000 dead fish have washed up on the banks of the Arkansas River as well.  Get out while you still can.

[KATV via io9]

It only gets weirder after midnight! More podcasts! More livestreams! More YouTube!

A huge thanks to Matt Finley, Bill Meeks and Ryan Crutchfield who have helped make this site so much more interesting with their writing.

From everyone here including publisher and dungeon master Andrew Mayne, constant victim of family-centric horror Brian Brushwood and wild-eyed moron Justin Robert Young, thanks for making 2010 the biggest year in our young history!

Guest starring Ashley Paramore. Subscribe to her on YouTube.

Recently, in the city of Elista in the Kalmykia Republic, spotlights strange lights were witnessed by hundreds of residents.  The former head of the republic, and current president of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, said that he was not surprised because he has met with these aliens before.

“Aliens told me: “You, humans, have not contributed anything to the development of the civilization, and you are cannibals. Isn’t this a manifestation of madness – being a cannibal?” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

[Pravda]

It might be a fake chupacabra but it definitely got real murdered on a front lawn in Kentucky.

[Fox News]

In Kentucky, being unidentifiable and having no fur in winter can be a deadly combination.

Mark Cothren shot and killed an animal on Dec. 18 because he said he feared what it was, since he did not recognize it. He said the animal walked from the woods onto his front yard around 3 p.m. Cothren lives on Mount Carmel Church Road in Lebanon Junction.

“I was like: ‘every animal has hair, especially this time of year!’ What puzzled me is how something like that could survive through a winter with no hair,” Cothren said.

[wave3]

India’s space agency experienced its second launch failure of the year when a rocket carrying a communication satellite exploded shortly after takeoff.

Yashpal, a retired Indian scientist and independent commentator, said he was very disappointed by Saturday’s failure, but other countries too have experienced such problems.

“I hope it’s just one of those things,” Yashpal, who uses one name, told reporters.

Manned spaceflight is planned for 2016.

[MSNBC]

Andrew heroically plots how he can rid the world of all life to spite a master race of alien invaders. The team learns a new ghost hunting technique in the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ graveyard and Spiro & The Fudge return to solve a case involving a mysterious stranger, a fully cooked steak and acres of unknowable wilderness.

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Episode notes:

• Michael Crichton: States of Fear – Science or Politics

• Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist

Recomendations:

Andrew:

Pitch Black

The Keep

Brian:

Moon

Donnie Darko

Being John Malkovich

Justin:

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

New evidence suggests that female chimps in the wild copulate more often with males who share their meat with them on a regular basis. This validates a long held belief that the “meat-for-sex” trade is a key building block in both chimpanzee and early human hunter-gatherer societies.

We are sure there is a Christmas parable in here somewhere. Thanks to WT reader Dan Wheeler for sending this along.

[Science Daily]