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If you think that all you need to pitch a baseball are an arm and a ball, you’d be half-right. As Tom Willis proved, you actually don’t need any arm:
He’s Tom Willis, and he’s a San Diego-based motivational speaker who has made it his goal to throw out the first ball at every major league baseball stadium.
So far, he’s up to nine — including eight this year — and will add No. 10 to his resume when he throws the first pitch for the Texas Rangers on Sept. 30.
What makes Willis extraordinary? He doesn’t have any arms, just a small left hand with two fingers that aren’t very strong.
A new species of pitcher plant has been discovered in the Philippines. The giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii) lives high on Mount Victoria, and was reported by missionaries who were lost in the mountain area in 2000. An expedition to find the giant pitcher was held in 2007 by natural history explorer Stewart McPherson, botanist Alastair Robinson, Andreas Fleischmann, and three guides.
Pitchers create tube-like leaf structures into which insects and other small animals tumble and become trapped.
The team has placed type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University, and have named the plant Nepenthes attenboroughii after broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough.
“The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats,” says McPherson.
(image credit: Stewart McPherson)
