The baby boy lived for only a day, and 150,000 people came to see him.

Monkey-Faced Piglet Born



Sure it's a mutant, but this kid doesn't care :

“Our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk,” said Mr Feng’s wife.

Beastly And Beaky



BoingBoing has a good discussion on what the hell this creature washed up on a beach actually is. Equal votes for escaped experimental mutant and excellent Photoshopping exercise.

Did whatever-this-is really die giving the finger?

UK Ministry Of Defence : "Don't Chase UFOs"

An unidentified flying object is reported to have "attacked" a police helicopter over Cardiff, Wales, earlier this month.

The helicopter pilots reported seeing a flying disc edged by lights. The official report on cited an incident with an "unusual aircraft" :

"The pilot banked sharply to avoid being hit, then launched into a high-speed pursuit," the tabloid reported.

"But he was forced to give up the chase as the helicopter's fuel ran low - and the UFO escaped."

The helicopter crew had described the object as "flying saucer-shaped and circled by flashing lights," it added.

That description was rather more dramatic than the official police version, which said: "South Wales Police can confirm its air support unit sighted an unusual aircraft."

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said...."it is certainly not advisable for police helicopters to go chasing what they think are UFOs."

Pig Wears Wellington Boots...Because It's Afraid Of Dirt

The story is in the headline, but here's some more details from the UK Guardian :

Few pigs turn their snouts up at the chance to roll around in mud. But Cinderella the six-week-old saddleback has adopted a different motto - four wellies good, four trotters bad - after being diagnosed with mysophobia, a fear of dirt.

The piglet's owners, Debbie and Andrew Keeble, who run a farm near Bedale, North Yorkshire, were baffled by her reluctance to hit the mud when she and her siblings were let out into the fields. "When the batch ventured away from their mother, Cinders just stood at the edge of her sty shaking while the others explored," said Debbie.

Andrew, 42, said: "We scratched our heads a bit but then we thought, we wouldn't go in the mud bare-footed, so why not try some wellies?" The couple asked a designer friend come up with a bespoke pair of piggy boots. Cinderella's green wellies are made of rubber and have been created with no footwell so that her trotters slip straight in.

Can Sharks Get A Taste For Human Flesh?

The majority of shark attacks on humans are written off as mistaken identity. The shark thinks the swimming human is a seal, or something else it usually eats. But a recent spate of attacks have some scientists thinking that "packs of bull sharks are now actively hunting humans for the first time after a series of horriifying attacks in the waters off a popular resort."

The theory emerged after two surfers were killed and one badly injured in a month. A fourth swimmer is missing at the Mexican seaside town...

Locals fear one rogue shark is responsible but experts believe a pack of deadly bull sharks are actively targeting humans for the first time.

They think the 3m fish could have developed a taste for human flesh after devouring hundreds of corpses dumped into the sea by mobsters.

The beach at Zihuantanejo – near Acapulco and popular with international tourists – had not previously recorded a shark incident in more than 30 years.

And, with an annual average of only four fatal shark attacks globally, the fact that two people have died along the same stretch of coast within weeks has astonished international experts.

The Zihuantanejo deaths come halfway through what is already turning into a bumper year for shark attacks.

Zihuantanejo is now gripped by fear. Police have been guarding beaches and signs warn against going into the water.

Local businessmen, worried the deaths will devastate the tourist industry, hired fishermen to kill the sharks.

Mexican navy vessels were brought in last week to scour the waters for sharks.

Jose Leonardo Castillo, chief shark investigator for Mexico’s National Fishing Institute, said yesterday: “One theory we’re investigating is that a group of sharks have developed a taste for humans.”

Bees Can SMILE?



Uh, well no, actually :

"They have a rigid exoskeleton around the mouth.

"They can open their mandibles (jaws) but that's about it.

"A fortuitous light has reflected off the compound eyes, which makes them look that they have pupils.

"The light is also shining on the clypeus (a shield-like plate on the face) making it look like a nose and reflecting on the mandibles, which makes them look like a pinkish mouth."

Great photo though.

Save The Planet : Eat Squirrels And Bugs



In the UK, Brits are supposedly "going mad" for a squirrel dinner. Not because squirrel is particularly nutritious, but for ethical and green reasons :

It's low in fat, low in food miles and completely free range. In fact, some claim that Sciurus carolinensis - the grey squirrel - is about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve on a dinner plate.

The grey squirrel, the American cousin of Britain's endangered red variety, is flying off the shelves faster than hunters can shoot them, with game butchers struggling to keep up with demand.

...its new-found popularity is partly due to its green credentials.

'People like the fact it is wild meat, low in fat and local - so no food miles,' says Simpson.

Ridley reckons that patriotism also plays a part: 'Eat a grey and save a red. That's the message.'

Don't worry if you're repulsed by the idea of nibbling on all those tiny squirrel bones. Perhaps insect flesh is more to your fancy :

David Gracer lifts a giant water bug, places his thumbs in a pre-sliced slit in its underside, and flips off its head. “Smell the meat,” he says, sniffing the decapitated creature, and the people gathered around the table willingly oblige. Members of the New York Gastronauts, a club for adventurous eaters, they murmur appreciatively as they scoop out and swallow the grayish, slightly greasy insect flesh.

“Perfumey, tastes like salty apples,” one says. “Like a scented candle blended with an artichoke,” another adds.

The giant water bug, or Lethocerus indicus, a three-inch-long South Asian insect that looks uncannily like a local cockroach, is just one of the items on the menu of this bug-eating bacchanal.

Gracer, a self-described “geeky poet/nature boy” who teaches composition at a community college in Providence, Rhode Island, has made it his duty to persuade ordinary Americans to eat insects.

Gracer wants people to move away from getting their protein from traditional livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens because raising livestock has a huge negative impact on the environment...,

“Americans have no idea how wasteful these large mammals are,” Gracer says. “If you want to feed a lot of people, insects are the best choice in terms of getting the biggest bang for your buck.”

It takes 869 gallons of water to produce a third of a pound of beef, about enough for a large hamburger. By contrast, to supply water to a quarter pound of crickets, Gracer simply places­ a moist paper towel at the bottom of their tank and refreshes it weekly.

Insects, he says, also need less food and space than vertebrate sources of protein and therefore could replace or supplement food resources that may become scarce in the future, such as fish stocks, which a recent study indicates may collapse by 2048.

Double-fist sized hamburgers dripping with cheese and lashed with bacon versus ground beetle dip. Dave Gracer has one hell of a sales mission on his hands.

Series Of Bizarre Natural Events Preceded Massive Earthquakes In China

This story from the Times Online pings the word 'conspiracy' to these stories of weirdness before the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit China a few days ago, but such stories are not rare. In fact, animals acting strangely before earthquakes hit is fairly common.

From the London Times :

One blogger from Shandong province, in eastern China, wrote that more than a month ago, he went to his local earthquake resesarch centre several times to report that his animals had been disturbed and restless.

But, he wrote: "They not only ridiculed me, they accused me of making up stories."

The Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that on April 26, 80,000 tonnes of water suddenly drained from a large pond in Enshi, Hubei province. The province shares a border with Chongqing Municipality, which was devastated by the earthquake on Monday.

On May 10, a Sichuan-based newspaper, the West China Metropolis Daily, reported that hundreds of migrating toads descended upon the streets of Mianyang, the second largest city in the province which neighbours Wenchuan County, the epicentre of the earthquake.

In the city of Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicentre, bloggers pointed to reports just weeks before the earthquake of a mass migration of more than one million butterflies.

The quakes are expected to have killed more than 15,000 people, more than 20,000 remain trapped under collapsed buildings, schools and apartment blocks as this is written, and more than 40,000 people are missing.

One Big Cow



The name is Chilli, and that isn't an optical illusion. He's the world's tallest, or almost tallest, bovine, peaking at 6ft 6inches.

More photos of Chilli here.

Too Much Clean Air Bad For 'The World's Lungs'

Climate science, particularly the science backing the theory of man-made climate change, is fairly new and extremely complicated. As this story makes clear, what you think would be good for a region like the Amazon, may actually turn out to be bad news :

...the Amazon could be wiped out within half a century as a result of too much clean air...

The vast rainforest, so crucial to the Earth's climate, is coming under threat from attempts to curb the pollution that causes acid rain, warn UK and Brazilian climate scientists.

The drying of the Amazon is caused by a combination of increasing greenhouse gases and efforts to remove sulphate aerosol particles arising from the burning of coal in power stations.

Emissions of the particles in the 1970s and 1980s partially reduced global warming by reflecting sunlight and making clouds brighter. This pall of pollution has dominated in the northern hemisphere and has acted to limit warming in the tropical north Atlantic, keeping the Amazon wetter than it would otherwise be.

they found that the trend to cut sulphur emissions in North America and Europe to curb acid rain, which has harmful effects on plants, aquatic life and buildings, will see tropical rain-bands move northwards as the north Atlantic warms, resulting in a sharp increase in the risk of Amazonian drought, like that experienced in 2005.

"These findings are another reminder of the complex nature of environmental change," says Prof Cox.

Is this story actually claiming that significant pollution in the 1970s and 1980s reduced the effects of global warming by reflecting back sunlight that would have otherwise reached this planet's surface? And that the effect of this increased rainfall in the Amazon, making it healthier and lusher than it otherwise would have been?

Yes.

Hail Spud

There's ordinary potatoes, and then there's the really extra special potatoes :

The home of a Berlin woman has become a destination for pilgrims after the likeness of a cross was found in one of the potatoes she was cutting to make french fries, Germany’s The Local reported.

Birgul Balta, 49, said she invited family and neighbors to see the spud and soon a steady stream of the curious had lined up at her door, the paper reported.

"Everyone was deeply stirred," said Balta, a Muslim. "Some of them even began to weep and to pray."

Over a potato...

Fire, Lava, Lightning



io9 has the explanation for this spectacular, but thoroughly, destructive display of nature :

Several days ago, a volcano that had been dormant for 9,000 years near the coast of Chile erupted spectacularly, hurling liquified metals and lightning many miles into the sky. The results, which you see here, are called a "dirty thunderstorm," and are quite rare. Nobody is certain what causes them, but according to National Geographic it's believed to be "the result of rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collid[ing] to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms."

Big Bugs



Divine Caroline takes a fascinating look at some of the biggest insects on the planet.

Here's some background on the Atlas Moth (above) :

Found only in Southeast Asia, the Atlas Moth is the largest of the moth species with the largest wing surface area—close to sixty-five square inches—and a wingspan of up to a foot long. Named after wing patterns that resemble maps, the moth’s wing tips resemble a snake’s head in order to ward off predators. With no mouth, it feeds off fat reserves built up during their caterpillar stage. Females secrete a pheromone through a gland at the end of the abdomen that males can detect several miles downwind. Adults mate quickly, since a total lifespan of a female is only one to two weeks. Females lay their eggs, use up their fat reserves to feed themselves, and then quickly die.

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Mobile Phones Killing Off Bees?

Without bees, we lose much of our food production. More than a million bee colonies are believed to have died out in the United States in the past year alone. While the bizarre phenomenon of dying bees is mostly contained to the US and Europe, not knowing what is responsible means it will be to stop it from spreading.

The UK Independent asks if mobile phones are somehow responsible :

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers...,The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Desert Vs Highway



Some remarkable images from Fogonazos of a desert highway in China and the battle to keep the sands from swallowing up the road :

The Tarim Desert Highway crosses the Taklamakan desert from north to south. The total length of the highway is 552km; approximately 446km of the highway cross uninhabited areas covered by shifting sand dunes, making it the longest such highway in the world. To prevent the road from being buried by sand, China authorities have built a 60-meter-wide tree belt along the route provided with a massive irrigation system which pump water for the vegetation.

The highway was built in 1995 to move oil from the Tarim Basin, China's largest inland basin. Though the highway was built using sand-control meshing, the most effective method a decade ago, many sections of the highway were buried by floating sand, which moves at an annual rate of five meters.

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Birds Can See A World Invisible To Us

It's not a new theory by any stretch, but scientists now believe they have proof that birds can find their way across vast distances of our planet's skies because they can see Earth's magnetic field :

Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, proposed forty years ago that some animals – including migratory birds – must have molecules in their eyes or brains which respond to magnetism.

The problem has been that no one has been able to find a chemical sensitive enough to be influenced by Earth's weak geomagnetic field. Now Peter Hore and colleagues at the University of Oxford have found one.

Cryptochromes are a class of light-sensitive proteins found in plants and animals, and are thought to play a role in the circadian clock, in regulating plant growth, and timing coral sex.

A few years ago, Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany showed that they were present in the retinal neurons of migratory garden warblers, and that these cells were active at dusk, when the warblers were performing magnetic orientation.

Birds appear to orientate at dusk, and cryptochromes form their pair of free radicals when "activated" by the blue light typical of dusk.

Hore suggests that dusk might activate the birds' magnetic sense, producing the radical pair. The concentrations of each free radical would be controlled by the Earth's magnetic field, which is known to vary with latitude. As a result, he speculates, the radicals would bind in varying degrees with other signalling molecules, depending on how far north or south the animal is.

How birds decode their "magnetic sense" is another topic of debate. Mouritsen believes they have an additional layer to their vision, which when switched on allows them to visually "see" the Earth's magnetic field. The situation would be similar to "head-up displays" in fighter jets and some cars, where transparent screens displaying information are built into windscreens.

"Having that on all the time would be distracting, so you can see why it would be desirable for the system to switch on and off," says Hore.

Magnetic Suicides

It's one of the more unusual questions you will come across today :

Does The Earth's Magnetic Field Cause Suicides?

Bizarrely, the answer might actually be yes, according to this story in New Scientist :

Many animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field, so why not people, asks Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia.

Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth's geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October.

Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk over the same period.

Shumilov acknowledges that a correlation like this does not necessarily mean there is a causal link, but he points out that there have been several other studies suggesting a link between human health and geomagnetism.

The review's author, Michael Rycroft, formerly head of the European Geosciences Society, says that geomagnetic health problems affect 10 to 15% of the population.

Psychiatrists too have noticed a correlation between geomagnetic activity and suicide rates.

Geomagnetic storms – periods of high geomagnetic activity caused by large solar flares – have also been linked to clinical depression.

"The most plausible explanation for the association between geomagnetic activity and depression and suicide is that geomagnetic storms can desynchronise circadian rhythms and melatonin production," says Kelly Posner, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in the US.

The pineal gland, which regulates circadian rhythm and melatonin production, is sensitive to magnetic fields. "The circadian regulatory system depends upon repeated environmental cues to [synchronise] internal clocks," says Posner. "Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues."

Geomagnetic storms could disrupt body clocks, precipitating seasonal affective disorder and therefore increase suicide risk, Posner told New Scientist.

Go Here To Read The Full Story

Orang-utans 'Discover' Spear Fishing



Saying that orang-utans in Borneo are now learning to spear fish is probably not accurate. More accurate would be to state that this is the first time observers keeping records have seen orang-utans making use of sticks to catch fish :

Orang-utans have confounded naturalists by learning to swim across rivers and to fish with sticks.

Naturalists were shocked to see the apes swim across a river to gain access to some of their favourite fruits at a conservation refuge on Kaja island in Borneo. Orang-utans were previously thought to be non-swimmers. The wildlife experts were equally surprised to see an orang-utan pick up a tree branch and stun a fish before eating it. Other apes introduced to the island were seen trying to spear fish with sticks after watching fishermen using rods.

But the orang-utans then found a much easier way to get their fish :

The naturalists also noted that the apes quickly worked out that it was even easier to steal fish from unattended lines used by the humans on the island.

Smart, and resourceful.

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When The Sky Is Your Home

Photograph George Steinmetz has a beautiful, sometimes stunning, portfolio of images from his time with the so-called 'Tree People' of West Papua online here.




Some background on the tree-dwelling tribes can be read here.

Skeksis Washes Up On Russian Beach?

It's probably a whale of some kind, but first thoughts were : Wow, that looks so much like a Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.

Don't you think?

Here's the 'mysterious' creature washed up in Russia :





Here's a Skeksis :





Skeksis in action from The Dark Crystal :

Are Animals Aware Of Time Passing?

Some busy humans are constantly aware of time passing, while animals may not even be conscious that time even exists :

Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time passes. Newly published research from The University of Western Ontario may bring us closer to answering that very question.

William Roberts and his colleagues in Western's Psychology Department found that rats are able to keep track of how much time has passed since they discovered a piece of cheese, be it a little or a lot, but they don't actually form memories of when the discovery occurred. That is, the rats can't place the memories in time.

These results, the researchers say, suggest that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory, which involves retention of the point in past time when an event occurred.

"This research," said Roberts, "supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future."

Full Story Is Here

Maybe we only know what time is, and are aware of its passage, because we gave the concept of time a name, and invented clocks and watches.

Man With Donor Heart Of Suicide Victim, Takes His Own Life

A remarkable story, with a sad ending :

A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Grateful for his new heart, Graham began writing letters to the donor's family to thank them. In January 1997, Graham met his donor's widow, Cheryl Cottle, then 28, in Charleston.

"I felt like I had known her for years," he said.

Full Story Is Here