Cat in a Freezer for 19 Hours

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animal, Odd News on October 19, 2009 at 1:37 pm

A cat named Krillen survived 19 hours in a freezer in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Sarah Crombie heard a faint meow when she approached the freezer, which hadn’t been used since her partner Sid Sisson shut it the night before. He didn’t realize that Krillem had jumped inside. The freezer was set to -18C, the coldest possible setting. She opened the lid and saw him on a bag of dog food.

“I raced inside to get Sid and as I came out, Krillen rolled off the bag in an attempt to get out, but he was that frozen he just rolled to the bottom of the freezer on his back,” she said.

“At first we thought his eyeballs were frozen. I’ve never seen a cat with such big eyes.”

Fortunately, Sid, 28, knew it was essential to raise the body temperature of hypothermia sufferers slowly. So he put the cat under his shirt and got into bed with him.

It took three hours under the covers for the cat to stop shaking. Krillen appears to have recovered without frostbite. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Bruce Mercer)

 
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Legendary Man-eating Bird

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animal, Science & Tech on September 16, 2009 at 9:52 am

The native Maori of New Zealand tell of a giant man-eating bird called Te Hokioi. Now scientists have identified a real bird that fits the description. Haast’s Eagle has been extinct for only 500 years, and may be the source of the Maori tales. The bird with up to a four meter wingspan was first discovered in 1870, but until recently was thought to be a scavenger. Recent scans show the bird to be strong enough to kill prey much larger than itself.

“It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child,” said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.

“They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine.”

Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.

“In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation,” Dr Scofield said.

Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: John Megahan/PLoS Biology)

 
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The Shweeb -- A Human-Powered Monorail

Posted by John Farrier in Science & Tech on July 22, 2009 at 8:11 am


(YouTube Link)

The Schweeb is an experimental transit system in New Zealand that combines the bicycle and a monorail track. Users lie down individual pods and work the pedals to move forward:

Our proposal to get you safely and quickly from one point in the city to another would be to elevate you onto a network of interconnected monorails where you never have to stop at traffic lights. The ideal vehicle for such a system already exists. Fully faired recumbent cycles, because of their low aerodynamic resistance, are breaking all bicycle speed records and currently reaching speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) in sprints. Suspending these comfortable and highly efficient machines from monorail tracks has the added advantage of taking away the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres. Trains of Shweebs can further reduce the aero drag – ten people travelling at 40 kph will each have a lot less work to do than a single rider at the same speed. A single rider requires only a fraction of the energy to achieve the same speed as a normal cyclist – thanks to the significant reductions in both aero drag and tire friction. The vehicle is completely weatherproof, you can’t derail or fall out while on the cellphone or blackberry!

Link

 
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Bleeding Billboard

Posted by Alex in Advertising, Car & Vehicle on July 4, 2009 at 5:00 pm

To remind drivers to drive carefully during the rain in Papakura, New Zealand, the local government put out a rather disturbing billboard that bleeds when it rains. The billboard may be terrifying, but apparently it’s effective: there hasn’t been a fatality since.

BuzzFeed has the video clip: Link [embedded YouTube]

 
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Naked Rugby Match Interrupted by Dressed Streaker

Posted by Miss Cellania in Sports on June 15, 2009 at 10:13 am

Rugby players aren’t afraid of anything, including playing naked! A match in the nude over the weekend in Dunedin, New Zealand went off without a hitch, except for chilly weather and a streaker!

The nude rugby international, which started as a celebration of New Zealand’s national nude day, was held yesterday as a warm-up – although temperatures were reportedly cold enough to prove embarrassing – to the forthcoming match between the All Blacks and France.

Needless to say, there were plenty of tackles flying about with only one interruption … when a fully-clothed streaker ran on to the pitch.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Stephen Jaquiery/Otago Images/Otago Daily Times)

 
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Twitter Treasure Hunt

Posted by Miss Cellania in Blog & Internet on June 3, 2009 at 8:36 pm

Anthony Gardiner of Wellington, New Zealand bought an engagement ring for his girlfriend, but she turned him down. He can’t return the ring and doesn’t want to keep it as he considers it bad luck, so he’s staging a treasure hunt!

Anyone keen to pick up the ring, valued at NZ$5,000 ($3,268), will need to be in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, on Saturday to join the hunt, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.

Clues to the ring’s whereabouts will start being posted on social networking site Twitter (http:/twitter.com/donoogle_com) at 8 a.m. local time on Saturday (2000 GMT on Friday).

Link to story. Link to Twitter feed.

 
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Penguin Sports

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animal, Sports on May 13, 2009 at 12:05 pm

The Penguathlon is a sporting event for penguins at the Kelly Tarlton Arctic Encounter in Orakei, New Zealand. Penguins compete in five events: football, Frisbee, surfing, swing ball, and waddle races. This is no joke! New Zealand is home to nine of the 16 penguin species, and the colony at the Arctic Encounter has 80 King and Gentoo penguins in its colony. The sports are showcased as an enrichment exercise for the birds.

“New Zealand has the greatest diversity of penguin species and is arguably the best place in the world to see them. As well as being great fun, the Penguathlon gives people a fantastic chance to get up close with them as well as gaining a better understanding about their welfare”, said Gregg Anderson, Tourism New Zealand’s Regional Manager for UK and Europe.

The Penguathlon, which will run the rest of this month, may become an annual event. Link (with video) -via Arbroath

 
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True Blood "Emergency Vampire" Posters

Posted by Queuebot in Advertising on March 16, 2009 at 12:05 am


I spotted these in Auckland, New Zealand (where the show True Blood is only just starting on TV). They’re made of wood, and the stakes are designed to snap off in case a vampire attacks.

They’re screwed down though, which makes them safer but rather counterproductive.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ant8627.

 
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111-Year-Old Tuatara Becomes a New Dad

Posted by Queuebot in Animal on January 30, 2009 at 2:39 am

Henry is a tuatara (lizard-like reptile native to New Zealand) who was living grumpily at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery in Invercargill until vets removed a cancerous tumor on his genitals, after which he became interested in the female tuataras, despite his advanced age of 111.

Henry and Mildred were seen mating last March, and Mildred laid some eggs.  After an incubation of 223 days, 11 baby tuataras hatched (see video here). 

"We basically wrote him off for the past 10 or 15 years, thinking he was going to be absolutely useless," the Southland tuatara curator Lindsay Hazley remarked rather tactlessly.

Tuataras are rare, and most live in predator-free sanctuaries, and are descended from a line of reptiles that hung out with dinosaurs 225 million years ago. 

Photo by Lindsay Hazley/Southland Museum and Art Gallery





Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

 
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The Fiordland National Park in New Zealand

Posted by Alex in Pictures, Travel & Places on January 18, 2009 at 1:36 pm


Photo: James Frankham / NY Times

I’ve always wanted to visit New Zealand ever since I saw The Lord of the Rings movies, and this feature at the New York Times by Robert D. Hershey Jr. just added a lot of fuel to my wanderlust fire:

IN 1908, The Spectator magazine called the 33.5-mile Milford Track through Fiordland National Park in New Zealand “the finest walk in the world,” an honorific still credible to knowledgeable hikers — one fan was Sir Edmund Hillary — a full century later.

The park, part of the Te Wahipounamu Unesco World Heritage Site, is of jaw-dropping beauty, a rare combination of rain forest, rushing rivers and glacially carved alpine heights that yields vistas that make you think you’ve stepped into a picture postcard. What’s more, novices as well as hardened trekkers can fully enjoy the delights of the Milford, which offers as much solitude as you could want and ambient water so pure you’re actually encouraged to drink whatever you can reach.

Wow. Just Wow. Has anyone ever been there? What’s your experience? Link

 
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Whipper

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animal, Video Clips on December 5, 2008 at 11:36 am


(YouTube link)

Whipper is a parakeet in New Zealand. A fluffy mutant parakeet who was abandoned by his mother because of his bizarre looks. No doubt he’ll be quite popular with people! -via Unique Daily

 
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