Warning: This Article is Full of Rabies
Let’s demystify a scary thing with knowledge and give you the real facts about rabies.
Tag: nature
Plants Gone Wild!
Plants, trees, flowers, and fruits: They can behave very strangely, all in the name of survival.
Hobbies: Costly, Hard, and Tough to Find
Those who participate in the most popular hobbies seek out these things the most.
The Science of Fall
Nothing looks or feels quite like fall — and here’s the science behind why that is.
The World’s Smallest Movie
This tiny film doesn’t feature any big stars like Brad Pitt, or even any littler stars—because there literally wasn’t enough room for them. Instead, A Boy and His Atom stars, amazingly, just a few microscopic particles. Guinness World Records has declared the stop-motion-animated short film “the world’s smallest movie.” The 90-second film consists of a “boy” bouncing an atom-sized ball while dancing and jumping around. There’s not much of a plot but given the methods involved, it’s pretty incredible.
IBM scientists created the film with a “scanning tunneling microscope” that manipulated a few dozen carbon atoms placed atop a copper surface. First they had to chill the microscope to just above absolute zero (-450° F) because at a higher temp, the “excitable” atoms would have ignored their stage directions.
Cat Dumping Woman Gets Animal Cruelty Charges
We told you the story about the English woman who thought it was “funny” to dump a neighbor’s cat in a garbage can – where it was stuck for fifteen hours.
Waiter: We’ll have the just desserts, please. Thanks.
Extra: Some cat dumped a woman in a garbage bin in revenge! Watch!
Cat-Trashing Lady: “It Was a Joke”
If you haven’t seen this story, get a wallet or something to bite on first:
Mary Bale, 45, was caught on CCTV petting four-year-old tabby cat Lola before picking her up, tossing her into a trash can and closing the lid.
Gulf Oil Spill: How You Can Help [updated]
Over at our Facebook page a commenter left an email address where people could send ideas to help with the Gulf oil spill – and what a great idea! (Thanks, Krazy Wild Mann.) That led us to do some snooping, and we found several places where people can find out how they can help, whether by reporting finding oiled birds if you’re in the Gulf region, or contributing to cleanup funding efforts. So here goes.
• Here’s the official Deepwater Horizon Response Web site:
Mama Bear: Shaking the Tree!
This is very cool video of a mama grizzly at Bärenpark (Bear Park, naturally) in Bern, Germany. Her cub is caught in thin, not so tall tree, and she’s trying to help. Very persistent:
Kangaroos in the Noos
News, we meant news. Anyhoo:
• “What is a kangaroo doing in the middle of the road in Bemidji, Minnesota in November?” Luke Havumaki said. (Uncle John said, “In November?”)
• Solving the mysteries of the elusive tree kangaroo. (With video.)
• A motorcycle rider was injured when he ran into a kanagroo. In Texas. (Texas, Asutralia.)
• Hankering for a new flavor potato chip? How about BBQ Kangaroo?
• The hunt for a phantom kangaroo…in Japan.
• Shark attacks kangaroo. (Whu-huh?)
• And, finally, more ocean-going kangaroos, with less shark.
Suicide-Committing Grasshoppers
Just found this on the intertubes. It’s a fascinating (and creepy) YouTube video about nematomorpha, parasitic creatures more commonly called “hairworms.” We wrote a short piece about them in Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Bathroom Reader (2007, p. 172). An excerpt:
Tests on grasshoppers that had contracted hairworms by drinking water containing hairworm larvae revealed that the lavrae feed off grasshoppers’ insides and grow until one takes up most of its body cavity. When that worm is ready to reproduce, it secretes a protein concoction that affects the grasshopper’s central nervous system, mimicking messages to its brain. The messages drive the grasshopper to water, where it doesn’t stop for a drink…it jumps in and drowns. It is effectively induced to commit suicide. The worm, which by this time can be three times the length of the grasshopper, then crawls out of the carcass and swims off to find a mate.
Yum!
Here’s the video:
Related Extra: A fungus that brainwashes ants into sacrificing themselves…for the fungus.
And this just in: Yay toads!
