Latest News // Tips

Anyone want a 44-pound cat?

by friver ~ July 30th, 2008

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If you happen to have a little extra room in your life… you might want to make a lot of room for one not-so-little kitty who’s up for adoption.

Her name’s Princess Chunk: 44 pounds of feline tubbiness looking for a home. The current world record stands at a little over 46 pounds, though Guinness World Record officials have discontinued the category in fear of pet owners harming their cats in an attempt to break the record.

Princess was found wandering around Voorhees, New Jersey and is currently in a pet shelter awaiting adoption.

Octopus with 96 tentacles

by friver ~ July 26th, 2008

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In Japan’s Shinma Marine Aquarium is a preserved specimen of a Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) with 96 tentacles. yes, 96 tentacles. How did that many arms fit onto its body? Think of it as a really bad case of split ends, only with tentacles.

The monster octopus lived in the aquarium for five months and gave birth to normal young. Scientists think the extra graspers were due to an aberration in the mollusc’s self-regeneration abilities.

This new foot care procedure sounds fishy to me.

by friver ~ July 25th, 2008

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And yet it would seem to be an honest to goodness trend.

Fish pedicures, is what it is.

You dip your toes into a small fish-tank, where a school of small carp, called doctor fish (you don’t expect them to be called mortician fish or anything, do you?) nibble on the dry and unwanted little bits of flesh on your little piggies.

Yum.

Siamese-twin birds found

by friver ~ July 24th, 2008

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These two barn swallows are conjoined twins, joined at the hip by skin and possibly tissue. They fell out of a nest and were found by a landowner in White County. On of them later died and the other was euthanized.

Unfortunately for the birds, they wouldn’t have stood a chance in the wild even if they were separated, because they never learned to fly.

Awesome photo: surfers and jumping shark

by friver ~ July 22nd, 2008

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Photographer Kem Mc Nair was taking photographs of surfers at New Smyrna Beach in Florida, USA when, by pure chance, he captured this startling image.

In the picture are two surfers in the water, while behind them a spinner shark leaps out of the water, seemingly just at the spot where one of them had been a few seconds earlier.

Did Mc Nair catch on film a near miss of a shark attack? Spinner sharks have been known to occasionally attack humans, with 13 unprovoked attacks on record. None of the attacks, though, have ever resulted in any human fatalities.

This honey tastes like duct tape

by friver ~ July 19th, 2008

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A young adult black bear broke into a Circuit City electronics store in Colorado, USA yesterday. Explain.

  • It was checking out the HD plasma TV sets.
  • It was looking for a job as store mascot.
  • It couldn’t wait for the iPhone 3G.
  • It loves the taste of circuit board

It bear was later scared off by an alarm it had set off in a nearby restaurant.

77-yr-old granny holds off, pins down rabid fox

by friver ~ July 18th, 2008

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Avis Blakeslee was tending her flower garden when she was attacked by a wild fox. Despite receiving seven leg and arm wounds, she clamped the fox’s mouth shut and held it down on the ground until help arrived. The animal was shot by Blakeslee’s teenage son.

After four days in hospital, Blakeslee was sent home ans is now recuperating.

Bigfoot hunter offers services on Ebay

by friver ~ July 17th, 2008

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For hundreds of years, Bigfoot has eluded those trying to find him. But who would’ve known that conclusive proof of Bigfoot’s existence was just an Ebay account and a mouse click away?

So claims Ebay seller “tpeterson6969″, whose is offering his Sasquatch-finding expertise up for auction on the merchant website. Starting bid is $150,000 if you’re interested. So far there has been no bidders.

Lucky, the world’s toughest koala

by friver ~ July 16th, 2008

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Old story: wandering koala bear gets hit by a speeding car.

New story: koala’s head goes through the grille and is dragged for seven miles in that position.

Strangest Science News blog story: Koala survives and is mostly unscathed.

The eight-year old Aussie marsupial, not surprisingly named Lucky, is currently recovering at the Australian Wildlife Hospital. He is also being treated for a chlamydia infection.

Medical horror show

by friver ~ July 12th, 2008

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Check out this assortment of ghouls and nasties, all working for the benefit of medicine.

They’re medical training manikins (not mannequins, which you find in shop windows), and they range from creepy to out-and-out slasher film gory, to kinda SF cool (as in the example above).

And while you’re at that site, you can vote for the most disturbing one, too.




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