Authorities stopped a 56-year-old man outside baggage claim after he traveled from Tanzania to Austria. The airport x-ray machine had picked up something remarkable. The first sign something was probably amiss? The guy packed all his clothes in Tupperware containers with fresh-lock tops. Hidden among his socks and sundry were 74 chameleons, ranging from newborns …
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Here’s some good news for a change. Scientists discovered a perfectly preserved dinosaur butthole on the fossilized remains of a Psittacosaurus in China. The Labrador-sized dinosaur was a distant relative of the Triceratops. Both lived during the Cretaceous period. That means this particular butthole has been around for about a hundred million years. You take …
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You hear about the global extinction rate of 150 species disappearing every day, and you figure most of those are probably just gnats and weeds. But then you learn about a single insect who does stuff that’s exceptionally gross/cool, and you have to wonder how much we’re missing out on by trashing the earth. Burying …
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was not a nice man. Although he did use his dirty money to build houses and community projects in poor areas of his country, he was also directly responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of murders. Although Escobar has by now been dead for almost two decades, his legacy lives …
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It’s not every day that a state issues a national death warrant on a single bird. But Australia is a place where rules of normal life don’t apply. Meet Joe, a pigeon named after the U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. Yesterday, on January 14, Joe was sentenced to death. Joe had done nothing wrong – he …
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As anyone who’s ever gotten punched will testify, it’s not fun. Getting served a heaping serving of knuckle sandwich just plain hurts. But imagine if you got pummeled by an assailant with eight arms. It sounds like a nightmare, but now you know what certain tropical fish have to live with. New research has found …
Continue reading “Octopuses Like to Sucker Punch Fish – Just to be Jerks”
Anytime there’s a story about a small furry animal going after a person, the answer’s always rabies. What else would make a creature take on someone so much bigger who has opposable thumbs? This story out of Queens is a friendly reminder that victory against wild animals is never assured. A group of squirrels decided …
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What happens if you scare a small lizard? It’ll likely drop its tail to distract the supposed predator and run off. But as we all know, it doesn’t really hurt the lizard. Before too long, the reptile will have grown a brand new tail. It might look a bit funkier than the original, but it …
Continue reading “Alligators Can Grow Back Lost Limbs, Research Finds”
Who doesn’t love animals? Most of the creatures we see, we would describe as “adorable,” beautiful,” or “majestic.” What about the ones we don’t see very often? The ones that lurk in the dark or in remote places few people visit? There are some hideous creatures out there that you won’t believe exist. Here, we …
This 2011 story about Humphrey, a “domesticated” hippo, has started making rounds on the internet again. It has the broad structure of a parable, about trying to tame wild animals and not having enough personal respect for the massive power of nature. There’s something specific to hippos that makes some people construct bizarre relationships with …