I don’t know who created these little comics using dead flies, as the source site is not in English. Some are very funny! Link -via Unique Daily

Update: Some of the comics have dialog in Swedish. Lexi has provided a translation in the comments here at Neatorama. -Thanks, Lexi!

An Israeli woman paid $32,000 for the entire Business Class of an El Al flight to allow her dog (and an accompanying vet) to fly with her. She told reporters any price was worth it to keep her pet free from the stress of cargo travel:

“All that mattered to me was to have my baby with me during the flight so that I can take care of him.”
El Al told the Haaretz newspaper in Israel it had never had such a request before. “But after the lady explained her special relationship with her dog and expressed her willingness to pay extra in order to fly with him, we agreed.”

Link – via boingboing

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by coconutnut.

It goes without saying that the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has some of the neatest collection of planes in the world, but this one is particularly intriguing: fly-powered aircrafts built by famed aircraft modelered Frank Ehling in the 1970s.

The AirSpace Blog has more:

Designed and built by famed aircraft modeler Frank Ehling in the 1970s, they are the smallest flying models the Museum owns. But more unusual than their size is that they are powered by flies – yes, you heard right, houseflies, the insect. Constructed from balsa wood and red tissue paper, the one-fly design has a wingspan of two inches, and the two-fly version, which features a delta-wing design, is four inches wide. In both cases, contact cement was used to attach the live powerplant to the fuselage.

Link

If you’re skeptical, there’s a video clip of another fly-powered airplane, this time by inventor Thomas Fetterman (oh, you can also buy the kit from his website)

Enter PETA to the fray: the animal rights group decried Obama’s display of unchecked executive power and suggested that next time he used a humane fly catcher instead:

“We support compassion for the even the smallest animals," says Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA. “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt."

Friedrich says PETA supports "brushing flies away rather than killing them" and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.

This afternoon PETA sent a Katcha Bug, a device which traps bugs and allows their safe release back into nature to the White House.

Good thing it didn’t happen to Cheney – he’d have used his shotgun fo’ sho’: Link

A new article released today in the journal of African Inverterates by Alex Wild and Irina Brake details the unusual behavior of a group of kleptoparasitic flies in South Africa. They lay in wait for ants, and mug them, literally stealing food from their mouths!

Last July, while wandering about the coastal forests of St. Lucia in eastern South Africa, I happened across an intriguing scene half-way up a spiny Acacia trunk. Some diminutive gray flies were pestering a trail of ants as they walked along the tree.

The flies’ exact activities were hard to observe with the naked eye, but it looked like nothing I’d ever seen. They seemed to be grabbing ants, pinning them to the trunk, and after a few seconds letting them go again.

The macro lens on my camera serves as a handy field microscope. Conveniently, the flies were so focused on attacking the ants I could place the lens nearly on top of them and observe the details of their activities without spooking them. On inspection, it turned out that the flies were stealing food.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by liquidanbar.

Jeb Corliss has leaped from buildings and other places in a single bound. Now, he plans to do it without the aid of a parachute.

Corliss, who is a base jumper, has made jumps in 16 countries and five contents, more than 1,000 in all, from the likes of the Eiffel Tower and Golden Gate Bridge.

His latest venture is trying to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute.

Corliss says he’ll wear a wing suit, which makes him look like a flying squirrel. He plans to landing on a specially designed runway he designed. It will cost up to $2 million. Once he gets the funding for his project, he says it could take up to four months to actually pull off.

He added, “A wing suit, basically, is fabric that goes between your arms and between your legs and it changes the shape of your body. So you become, in essence, a flying squirrel.

He explains that he plans to land on his belly, suggesting, “Imagine an aircraft — aircraft don’t land on their tails, they land on their bellies. That’s exactly what I’m gonna become. I’m gonna become an aircraft’ I’m gonna be landing on my belly.

Why in the world would Corliss try this?

“I wouldn’t I’m doing this because I’m a thrill-seeker. I’m a person who has dreams and my life is based on making those dreams come true. And that’s what I focus on.”

Source: CBS News
Video: Breitbart