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Photo: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters
Afghan calligrapher Mohammad Sabir Khedri worked for five years to create the world's largest Koran, and man, is it large:
LinkThe lavish book has pages 2.28 meters (90 inches) by 1.55 meters (61 inches) in size ... The Afghan Koran weighs 500 kg (1,100 lb) and its 218 pages of cloth and paper, bound inside an embossed leather cover made from the skins of 21 goats, cost half a million dollars to create.
This is Quaver, a baby Pygmy goat, learning to jump and climb. Her mother is on the left. -via Nag on the Lake
Hang this illusion plaque in your home and just go about your business. Sooner or later, a guest will freak out, and you’ll have a laugh that’s well worth the $30 this artwork cost. Designed by Brooklyn artist Dan Witz. Also available in human and Tazmanian Devil. Link -via Dangerous Minds
Nature is always throwing weirdness at us, and today’s helping comes in the form of a hermaphroditic goat–a breedable male that can be milked.
A visitor to a goat show in Brazil did not hesitate to buy a hermaphrodite goat – a male goat that can be milked – when he first came across it. The goat is a clearly a Billy goat. And, translating the colloquial phrase “pai de chiqueiro”, implies that it can be mated with a female goat. But, as seen in the video, the scrotum region apparently serves a dual purpose of being a set of udders that can be squeezed to get milk.
The interview is in Portuguese, but is subtitled for the non-Brazilian. Click through for more information than you’ll ever need.
Link | Image: TV Tambaú, Brasil
“This guy is crazy!” …crazy like a fox. This is apparently a vending machine at a petting zoo from which people can buy treats to feed the animals. But Billy here has figured out how to “tap” into it himself! -via Buzzfeed
Update: purple_phoenix, who works there, tells us this is not a billy goat, but a female sheep! That’ll teach me to go by YouTube titles.
Because if you don’t follow Rule #1, apparently there’s no need for Rule #2. A fantastic photo taken by Flickr user Gord McKenna in a Petting Zoo in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
A church in West Columbia, South Carolina held a drive-through nativity scene last weekend. The hundreds of people who came to see it got more than they expected when a participating goat gave birth to a kid!
They knew they were awaiting the birth of a baby at a church’s live drive-thru nativity scene, but one of the stars, who was on loan from a local farm, fell to the ground. “Joseph was standing beside her, and he kinda looked at her and said something was wrong,” says the church’s pastor, Charles Westbrook.
Westbrook played one of the three kings, and he says it didn’t take he and Joseph long to realize the Virgin Mary wasn’t the only one who was pregnant. “I could see the head of the goat coming out,” says Westbrook, “She was actually coming. There was a water sac around the baby.”
The female kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes. The music minister named her Beth, short for Bethlehem. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Peggy Peagler)
Finally! After waiting all these years, I can use the bleating title sentence on Neatorama.
And yes, you can see it in action here: Link [YouTube clip]
What a thrill it would be to turn over a page every month and find a new picture of a goat in a tree! You could have that delightful experience in 2011 with the Goats in Trees calendar. Link -via Breakfast Links
[YouTube - Link]
An awesome farmer in Ekton, Maryland created this twisted and towering goat bridge to give his goats access to two separate pens, and no doubt add some enjoyment to his day. This is exactly what I would have designed as a kid, and it’s oddly entertaining for something so simple.
Link via UniqueDaily
Transit officials have been touting the benefits of public transit for years and apparently these goats got the message. But when they tried to board the C-Tran bus in Vancouver (update 11/18/08 – that’s Vancouver, Washington, by the way, as pointed out in the comment – Thanks John Milligan!), they were turned away, as you can see in this surveillance video.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Tiffany!
Let’s have a little fun: punniest comment will win a free Funny T-Shirt from the Neatorama Shop. One entry per comment, please. You can enter as many as you’d like. Good luck!
Forget gas-guzzlin’, smoke-belchin’ lawnmowers. The eco-friendly way to mow grass and get rid of unwanted vegetation is to … rent some goats!
The city of Andover, Massachusetts has some unwanted guests: invasive species like the European buckthorn tree and the strangling bittersweet vine from Asia are shouldering out local wildlife. To make matters worse, in tight times the city can’t always afford the mowing machines and the manpower required to keep the invaders at bay. That was until they brought in the experts–goats.
The mowing “machines are massive, constantly breaking down, [and they] use a lot of fuel so we have actually had to skip several years of the mowing program because it’s very expensive,” says Bob Douglas, the director of Andover’s Conservation Commission.
Luckily, the commission recently hit upon a neat solution when one of their volunteers spoke to Lucy McKain, who tends dairy goats next to one of the city’s preserves. They worked out an arrangement where her animals get to graze the land and the commission saves a few thousand dollars a year. The fix was a win-win for everyone.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by bizwiz27.
Some jobs could be done by a trained monkey. So it’s all the more impressive that an untrained monkey on a farm in India herds 75 goats out to and back from the fields every day. National Geographic reports:
Martin K, Estate Manager- “She takes out the goats for grazing and brings them back. A shepherd is usually required to accompany the goats all day long and bring them back in these hills. But because of her, manpower can be spared. She is as good as a shepherd. The only thing is that she does not speak, but otherwise carries out all responsibilities.”
They say they feel confident that the goats will be safe when Mani accompanies them.
Mani is said to make a strange sound when she discovers a goat is missing or when danger lurks.
There’s a (non-embeddable) video of the monkey at the link.
image by flickr user eirikref used under creative commons license
Now, if only they can teach it to say "WTF" the Interweb will implode with awesomeness!
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrsfosoty.
A vigilante group in Ilorin, Nigeria apprehended a group of would-be car thieves, including one man who turned himself into a goat!
It was a shocking sight yesterday as men of the Kwara State Police Command paraded a goat as an armed robbery suspect.
The goat “suspect” is being detained over an alleged attempt to snatch a Mazda car. The mysterious goat, according to the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Tunde Mohammed, while briefing bewildered journalists at the Force headquarters, is an armed robber who attempted to snatch the said car, Wednesday night, and later transformed into the goat in a bid to escape arrest.
Link -Thanks Geekazoid!
