Grizzly Bear Eats Airplane
An unnamed Alaskan bush pilot went on a fishing trip and neglected to wash down his plane afterward. The 1958 Piper Cub was just too much temptation for a bear to bear.
The fishy aroma attracted a passing grizzly bear who, clearly frustrated at not being able to see the lovely “noms” it could smell, took the plane apart in an effort to find it. Aircraft fabric is no match for bear claws. The bear also chomped both tyres for good measure, then departed the scene.
Alaskans are a hardy bunch, however – as tough as the aircraft they fly. The pilot radioed for two new tyres, three cases of duct tape and a couple of rolls of cellophane to be flown in so he could repair his craft and get home.
Duct tape: is there anything it can’t do? The story includes a picture of the plane after repair. Link -via Fark
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Corralling Carp with Noisy Bubbles
Invasive Asian carp are populating the Great Lakes and forcing native species out of their traditional habitats. Scientists are taking steps to contain the invaders without affecting other species. They’ve developed an underwater “wall of sound” that takes advantage of the physical differences between Asian carp and native fish.
In a tributary near Havana, about 200 miles from Chicago, ecologist Greg Sass is testing a barrier that injects beeping sounds into an effervescent wall, which captures and magnifies the noise. The chirping bothers only the carp because it hears higher frequencies than native species do; a series of tiny bones connecting the carp’s swim bladder to its auditory system amplifies sound. In hatchery trials, the acoustic “fence” stopped 95 percent of the invasive fish.
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Seven College Pranks
You know all about student pranks – greased pigs in the cafeteria, cows being led upstairs, all of that juvenile stuff. Maybe you’ve even heard about the more complicated college stunts – when M.I.T. students erected a police car on the top of the school’s Great Dome, for example. Its license plate number was pi. Anyway, here are a few lesser-known student stunts. If you’re, um, “inspired” by some of these, I claim no fault… but be sure to take pictures.
Harry Potter and the Scheming Students
In 2007, M.I.T. students pulled two pranks of smaller proportions to commemorate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Since we’re just a couple of days away from the latest movie, I thought it would be appropriate to mention them. The first appeared a couple of days before the final book came out: a broomstick parking area, complete with broomsticks and appropriate signage, appeared in the Student Street area of the Strata Center. Then on the day of the actual release is my favorite: the Death Eaters acknowledged their presence at the school by setting off an eerie, glowing green Dark Mark on the roof of the Student Center. Awesome. This gives me an idea for Halloween… Photo from Eric Schmiedl.
Screwy Scoreboards
Caltech is M.I.T.’s biggest rival in pranks, despite being located at opposite ends of the country. They often take potshots at one another and are especially prone to pranks at football games. Although the Great Rose Bowl prank is pretty well known, another football stunt occurred when Caltech wasn’t even playing. During the 1964 Washington vs. Illinois Rose Bowl game, the audience of 100,000 was rather bored by a somewhat lackluster game. That is, until they looked up and realized that someone had changed the electronic scoreboard to make it appear as if Caltech was putting the hurt on M.I.T. It happened again in 1984 – although the teams were UCLA and Illinois (again), it appeared as if Caltech was stomping M.I.T., 31-9.
“We Suck”
During the Harvard-Yale game of 2004, some students took the Great Rose Bowl Prank to the next level. In case you didn’t click the Rose Bowl Prank link above, the story goes something like this: Caltech students handed out a bunch of colored placards to the opposing team and told them that when flipped over at a specified time, it would spell out the name of their team. It didn’t, of course, it spelled out “Caltech.” Yale students repeated this stunt by handing out similar placards to a group of Harvard students and alumni. When they flipped the cards, which they thought would say “GO HARVARD,” it actually spelled out “WE SUCK.” Photo from Yale Daily News
In Cod We Trust
Another one from our friends over at the Museum of Hoaxes – the theft of the Massachusetts Sacred Cod. Yes, Massachusetts has a sacred cod, and they really refer to it as such. The pine likeness is about five feet long and can be found hanging over the entrance to the House of Representatives chamber in the Massachusetts State House – at least, that’s where it is usually found. In 1933, staff at the Harvard Lampoon decided that the fish was theirs. They simply walked into the State House with clippers and a flower box, snipped the Cod down when no one was looking, hid it in the flower box and strolled on out of there like they owned the place. After a couple of days of drama – allegedly the river was even dragged – the Harvard Chief of Police received a tip that he should show up on a certain road at a certain time and follow a certain car. He did, and when the car pulled into a forest, two disguised men jumped out, handed him the Cod, and fled. Photo from MassMoments.org
Rooftop Ride
Pranks aren’t limited to U.S. schools, of course. In June of 1958, Cambridge, England, woke up to find an Austin Seven sitting on top of the Senate House like it was in the middle of a skyward road trip. It took a week for firefighters, police and civil defense units to figure out how to get the thing down – in the end, they decided just to take it apart piece by piece. And the really great thing about the whole prank is that the perpetrators were never caught. That is, until 2008. Fifty years later, 9 of the 12 guys who participated in the prank had a reunion dinner and told the press how they did it. In the middle of the night, they hitched it up to the roof using a makeshift crane of steel cable and scaffolding pieces. Although they had never revealed their identities, the then-Dean suspected the group of men and had a case of champagne sent to them to congratulate them on such an amazing prank. Click the link for a diagram of how they pulled the stunt off. Photo from the Daily Mail.
Rice Gets More Comfortable
In 1988, a group of students at Rice decided that the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice would probably prefer to face the library instead of having his back to it. So, obviously, they moved it. After a couple of botched attempts, the pranksters got serious. They got plans of the statue from the library to figure out the exact weight, then built some A-frames with one-ton hoists on either side. After practicing with a Toyota a couple of times, they got the hang of things and headed to campus to give Mr. Rice a better view. They were caught moving the A-Frames across campus by some cops, but managed to convince them that they were part of a senior project. They successfully moved the statue, but one of them, Patrick Dyson, was caught and made to pay the cost of moving William back to his rightful position, which for some reason was going to cost up to five times as much as it cost to get him in the new spot. Students rallied behind Dyson, designing t-shirts that said “Where there’s a Willy, there’s a way,” and raised more than enough money to turn Rice back around. Photo from Rice.edu.
Fictional Facebook Fox
Here’s a prank in keeping with our social media-obsessed society. There’s a moral to this one too, if you’re inclined to find one. In 2006, USC basketball player Gabe Pruitt (he’s a Celtic now) was the star during a game against UC Berkeley. He had been cultivating a, um, “relationship” with a girl named Victoria from UCLA – he met her over Facebook and not face to face, but they had been IMing and she sent him pictures. The only problem? She wasn’t real. When Pruitt got up to shoot a free throw, Cal fans started chanting, “Victoria! Victoria!” and promptly followed that up with Pruitt’s personal cell phone number, which he had given to the fictional Victoria. They kept it up for the whole game and Pruitt ended up shooting 3 for 13. There are nine other college sports pranks over at SI.com if you’re interested, including the somewhat sordid history of poor Tommy Trojan over at UCLA.
Photo from BigGreenMachine.
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Bluey, the Transsexual Fish
The Blue Groper fish have a unique way to control their population: they can change their sex!
Bob Harcourt, Associate Professor Macquarie University: "The blue groper is a large fish, but the really sexy thing about Blue Groper is they start off as females. We’ve got lots of blue groper that are small green groper and as an old male dies then the largest most dominant females turns blue and becomes male.
And so one of the really cool things about these fish, is the sex ratio doesn’t really vary, but it is a function of how well protected they are. If you take a lot of males out, then the females have to spend a lot of their time turning into males, which means they can’t breed and they can’t lay eggs."
Now, the blue groper may be in danger. Their population has crashed and scientists are trying to figure out why. National Geographic has the video clip: Link – Thanks Marilyn!
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The First Hotel For Fish
Netherlands residents now have a place to watch their fish when they go on vacation. It’s the world’s only fish-resort. My question is how can they stop the fish from fighting each other?
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Fish Coughs Up Gold Watch
Curt Carish of Kaua‘i, Hawaii was at Port Allen beach when he spotted a fish swimming awkwardly. He grabbed a bamboo pole and beat the fish until it went limp. Carish put the fish in his cooler. When a friend opened the cooler and looked at the fish, it had a gold watch hanging out of its mouth!
“And the funniest thing is that the watch was on time and still ticking,” Carish said.
Carish, who often hangs out at the private Port Allen Club with many other members, said in all of his 30 years on Kaua‘i he has never encountered anything this bizarre.
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Kelpmania: Stunning and Spectacular Kelp Photography
Kelp forests occur in cold, nutrient-rich water and are among the most beautiful and biologically productive habitats in the marine environment.
The coast of California, in particular, is home to one of the most spectacular kelp forests. Within the confines of this massive forest there lies an abundance of fishes, invertebrates and algae, marine birds and marine mammals.
(image credit: Timothy G. Laman)
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Cell Phone Survives a Week in Fish Belly
Businessman Andrew Cheatle lost his cell phone during a visit to the local beach. Believing it was gone forever after his cell phone apparently swept out to sea, he received a big surprise a week later.
Andrew, 45, said: “I was messing about with my dog and my phone must have fallen out and been swept out in the swell.
“I kept calling it but I gave up hope after a couple of days.”
He was shopping for a new phone with girlfriend Rita Smith, 33, when her mobile went off.
She told him: “Your old mobile number is calling my phone.”
Andrew continued: “She said some guy was going on about my phone and a cod so she handed it over to me and he told me where he had found it.
“I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it — a bit worse for wear.
“I didn’t believe him but went to meet him and found it was my phone — a bit smelly and battered — but incredibly it still worked after I let it dry out.”
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British Angler Catches Largest Freshwater Fish Ever
Ian Welch of Aldershot, Hampshire (U.K.), caught the biggest freshwater fish by rod in Thailand, a record 55 stone (770 pound) freshwater ray!
It took 90 minutes to land, 13 men to heave it out of the water… and weighed 55 stone when they finally got it to the scales.
So it’s little wonder that when Ian Welch first hooked the record stingray, it almost pulled him into the river.
Mr Welch, who weighs 111/2 stone, said: ‘It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in, had my colleague not grabbed my trousers.’
The angler, from Aldershot, Hampshire, was fishing in Thailand when he landed the ray, which is the biggest freshwater fish to be caught with a rod.
The biologist was helping with a stingray tagging programme on the Maeklong River, when he hooked the fish.
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Fish With a Transparent Head: The Video Clip
Remember the post about Micropinna microstoma, the fish with a transparent head? In that post, Neatorama reader sniggitysnags told us about the existence of the video clip by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute researchers:
MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler used video taken by unmanned, undersea robots called remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study barreleye fish in the deep waters just offshore of Central California. At depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet) below the surface, the ROV cameras typically showed these fish hanging motionless in the water, their eyes glowing a vivid green in the ROV’s bright lights. The ROV video also revealed a previously undescribed feature of these fish–its eyes are surrounded by a transparent, fluid-filled shield that covers the top of the fish’s head.
This animal is so awesome that we just have to put it on Neatorama’s front page again: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks sniggitysnags!
More info at the MBARI website.
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A Fish with a Transparent Head
Macropinna macrostoma (common name "barreleyes") can rotate its eyes to a vertical position; because its head is transparent, it can then see predators or prey above itself without moving its body!
Two net-caught individuals contained fragments of jellyfish, which must have been their last meal. Such a potentially painful dinner requires incredible stealth, so it’s now thought that barreleyes carefully maneuvers its body near such stinging organisms, keeping its “eyes on the prize,” as the researchers said, throughout the entire hunt. Its tiny mouth then picks at the victim while a transparent shield protects the fish’s eyes.
(image credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
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Whoa: Evolved Superbird Fishes Like a Human
[YouTube - Link]
One small step for birds, one scary pre-Planet-of-the-Apes warning sign for human beings. Watch the bird snag some bread being tossed to its less-intelligent cousins and then use it to attract some fish to snack on.
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7 Symbiotic Wonders of the Seven Seas
So how did we get here anyway? Call it evolution, call it luck, but really the best and brightest creatures above and below the waves found powerful allies. In some cases these are completely unexpected – predator and prey, friend and foe – but the ones that stuck it out and stayed friends through the toughest of times managed to make it to today’s oceans and seas.
Evolution alone is an amazing thing – but species that evolve together can be all the more spectacular, protecting, feeding and cleaning one another in incredible ways. Sharks pair with fish, fish with shrimp and shrimp with sea cucumbers and much much more. From boxing crabs that wield poisonous anemones as weapons to shrimp that scour the mouths of electric eels, here are seven of the most radical symbiotic relationships from the shallowest to the deepest waters of our world.
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PETA Opts to Change "Fish" To "Sea Kittens"
Whether you love PETA or hate them, you still may find the humor in their new campaign to change the word for “fish” to “sea kittens.” Maybe they took the word “catfish” a bit to far, but you have to wonder is a fish still a fish by any other name?
Personally, I find this to be further discrimination against ugly animals. If they con you into thinking fish are like adorable little kitties, will it really get you to stop eating more fish? As for me, go ahead and dish me up some delightful meowing sushi, I’m hungry.
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Weird Walking Fish on the Ocean Floor
Apparently it’s called a frogfish, and while it looks sort of cute from afar, this thing is ugly… and fascinating. DarkRoastedBlend has a whole gallery of different types of frogfish, from the fluffy to the warty.
Link via DarkRoastedBlend
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Fish Has Mirrors for Eyes
Julian Partridge of Bristol University found something peculiar about the brownsnout spookfish: they have mirrors for eyes!
Tests confirmed the fish is the first vertebrate known to have developed mirrors to focus light into its eyes, the team reports in Current Biology.
"In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes – how to make an image – using a mirror," said Professor Julian Partridge, of Bristol University, who conducted the tests.
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Giant, Gross Sandcrabs To Be Displayed in Britain
This disturbing thing that sort of resembles a rolly polly is set to go on display in England for the first time ever. These rare Isopods live deep in the ocean in extremely cold temperatures, but for some reason, fishermen in the Atlantic discovered 9 of them in their lobster nets. They’re ugly, but sure are interesting to learn about.
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Why Men Are Superior to Fish
Got to love those Russian biologists! Dr. M.A. Menzbier (yes, a real person – an ornithologist and zoogeographer, actually) has found the reason why men are superior than fish, as published in the Nov 1931 issue of Modern Mechanix: Link
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This Fish Purse Wants To Eat Your Stuff
This cute, and suprisngly fresh smelling, purse is very well thought out. The bass-mouth opening is very clever and the scales are too authentic.
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Aerial Battle of Eagles
Photo: Jose Hernandez / National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic Magazine has just announced the winners of their 2008 International Photo Contest. Amongst the fantastic entries is this particularly amazing shot by Jose Fernandez:
This is a shot of three eagles fighting over a fish in Homer, Alaska, from March 2008. You can see the fish at the top of the image flying by itself, but it was caught in its fall by another eagle.
See the gallery of winning photos here: Link – Thanks Marilyn!
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