Scientists took a survey of Pacific green turtles off Ingram Island in northern Australia. It's not a simple task to determine the sex of a sea turtle, but blood tests for testosterone levels helped. While they expected to find more females than males, the results were pretty shocking.

Since the sex of a sea turtle is determined by the heat of sand incubating their eggs, scientists had suspected they might see slightly more females. Climate change, after all, has driven air and sea temperatures higher, which, in these creatures, favors female offspring. But instead, they found female sea turtles from the Pacific Ocean's largest and most important green sea turtle rookery now outnumber males by at least 116 to 1.

"This is extreme—like capital letters extreme, exclamation point extreme," says turtle scientist Camryn Allen, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. "We're talking a handful of males to hundreds and hundreds of females. We were shocked."

Further studies show that the sex imbalance in sea turtles has been there for some time, but it's getting worse quickly. The effect is more pronounced near coral reefs that are dying, and less near healthy reefs. While fewer males than females are needed to continue a species, what happens when there are no males left? Temperature fluctuations affect sex imbalance on other species, too, particularly reptiles and fish. Read about the latest sea turtle research at NatoGeo News. -Thanks, Kelsey!  

(Image credit: David Doubilet/National Geographic Creative)

An hourglass shape is only guaranteed by the supporting attire, as every bride is told by her fashion consultant. If you thought corgis were fat little dogs, this should set your mind to rest. They're not necessarily fat, just extra fluffy! And this little guy doesn't need a sweater to stay warm, he is just being fabulous and fashionable. Redditor Momzadork24 is a yarncrafter who loves dogs, so it's only appropriate that she would post this gem.

In 1977, I went to see a movie called Star Wars and liked it very much. Forty years later, I went to see The Last Jedi and liked it very much. Checking the internet for film discussions, I was disappointed to see that many people did not like the new movie. But I was not surprised. The most avid Star Wars fans have always been known for hating Star Wars, unlike fans of, say, the Harry Potter movies or Star Trek. What makes this fandom different?     

Star Wars was quite unique as a film franchise that actively encouraged engagement from its fans. Little wonder, then, that Lucas' later decisions, from the infamous Holiday Special to the Ewoks to Caravan of Courage, caused so much debate and consternation among fans. By the time Return of the Jedi came out, kids had played with their Star Wars toys for years. They'd already formulated an entire sequel to The Empire Strikes Back in their heads. Little wonder that what emerged in cinemas could never quite match up.

The majority of those fans who are daily internet users now were introduced to Star Wars as children, leading to the cries of "you ruined my childhood!" with every new installment. In short, Star Wars fans feel ownership of the franchise. Read how all this came to be at Den of Geek. 

It's hard to believe the 1989 movie Driving Miss Daisy came out 28 years ago. The charming film about a Southern woman (Daisy, played by Jessica Tandy) and her chauffeur (Hoke, played by Morgan Freeman) tackled the subjects of racism, antisemitism, and aging in a gentle yet emotional manner. We are led to believe it may be a redemption story, but the change in Daisy's outlook is less dramatic and more realistic than it could have been. The movie won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Jessica Tandy. Let's learn some more about Driving Miss Daisy.

9. Three men crossing the railroad tracks in the movie are descendants of the character of Hoke was based on.

That’s pretty cool to find the descendants of the actual person that was used as a basis for the movie.

8. The author based the story on his grandmother and her driver.

Will Coleman was the driver’s name and his grandmother’s name was Lena Fox.

Oh, you didn't know Driving Miss Daisy was based on real events? Learn more about the film at TVOM.

An artifact from the 4th century was discovered in Vinkovci, Croatia, in 2012. At first thought to be just another dish used by the occupying Romans, its inner workings have been determined to be a joke cup. Archaeologist Dr. Richard Hobbs of the British Museum calls it the earliest known example of a practical joke. The cup has an image of the Greek mythological figure Tantalus, who was doomed to stay in sight of fruit he couldn't eat and water he couldn't drink. Similarly, anyone who drank from this cup would see wine spill onto their clothing instead of reaching their lips. 

The Tantalus cup sounds like a dribble glass, but that prank simply has holes hidden in a design on the side so that the liquid leaks when the cup is tipped. The Tantalus cup has a much more elegant design based on the physics of a siphon and can be traced to the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who is more famous for his theorem: “In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal [to the sum of] the squares of the two other sides” or  a2 + b2 = c2. Pythagoras wasn’t exactly a prankster and his invention was better known as the Greedy cup after its true purpose – to keep drinkers from imbibing too much.

The image shows how the Pythagorean cup works. You can see the Tantalus cup here. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Nevit Dilmen)

One of the many satisfying scenes in the movie Wonder Woman was watching an army of women warriors defending their homeland from intruders. The Amazons on Themyscira were played by a variety of athletes from all walks of life: actresses, boxers, policewomen, Olympians, martial arts experts, etc. who were brought together to train for the movie under Mark Twight, who also trained fighters for the movie 300. Watch them work out in this featurette.

(YouTube link)

-via The Mary Sue

Parts of the US are dealing with temperatures way beyond their comfort zone this winter. If your four-footed friend is used to going outside at regular intervals, you might be worried about his safety. Here's a handy chart from veterinarian Dr. Kim Smyth that may help you out.

Of course, there are some caveats. You can see those in blue. Wet weather and breed of dog can tip the scale one or more points in either direction. Acclimation to the cold is an important factor, too. For instance, dogs who are training for the Iditarod in Alaska are conditioned to be in the cold over time. If you took an average Husky and dropped it off on an icy tundra, he would likely perish. If your dog is acclimated to cold weather, like many hunting and working dogs, his number on the TACC scale is different than if he’s used to lying in a warm bed all winter like my dog.

There are other variables. If you have a dog sweater or coat and/or boots, that will help your pooch brave the short time he must be outside to do his business. Read more about pets and cold weather here. -via Lifehacker

(YouTube link)

This is not Antarctica, Greenland, or anywhere near the poles. The ocean developed a layer of ice on top in Massachusetts! This video was taken at Old Silver Beach in North Falmouth this past weekend. Don't be nervous watching Ryan walking out on it. He explained at reddit:

I haven’t seen any boats yet, I hope people got them out of the water in time. I took this video at low tide so the ice closest to shore was hollow underneath it, you had to walk out 10 - 15 feet to be over water.

Then he sent his drone out to get more footage.

(YouTube link)

-via Digg

A parent's twist on the classic game of hide-and-seek is to be the seeker who doesn't seek. How many times you can get away with that depends on the age of the kids, but it works best when they're just old enough to think that they win when you can't find them. Mom and Dad will let them think that, so everyone's happy. No need to tell them you weren't looking all that hard! This comic is from Chris Grady at Lunarbaboon.

You go through life wondering how all these people around you can be so clueless. Do they have no situational awareness? Did their parents not explain everyday manners? Do they never learn from experience? I jerked my kids back dozens of times before they learned to let people get out of an elevator before they stepped in, and I hope they retained that. But I still encounter people who want to jump in and trap me in the elevator when I'm trying to get out.

Here's one that I both complain and joke about. If a party starts at six, and I show up at seven, I'll be the only guest there until at least nine. It's even worse when you're the hostess, and your shindig starts to swing about the time you hoped it would be over.

You should go through all 24 of these social rules that clueless people break all the time and wonder at the lack of common sense (although there are a couple we could argue over). Somewhere along the way, you may come across one you didn't know about. Oops. And even if you don't, you'll start to think, maybe we all are clueless about something or other that bothers other people around us. That's a scary thought.

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

(Image credit: Linda Makiej)

The history of military identification tags.

Only 58 percent of the soldiers killed in action during the American Civil War were positively identified. Soldiers had a legitimate concern that if they were killed, their families would never know what happened to them -other than that they were missing in action. As a result, soldiers started writing their name on a piece of paper or a handkerchief and pinning it to their clothing before going into battle. Some soldiers went to the trouble of carving small wooden disks with their names on them, then drilling a hole in the disk and hanging the disk from their necks with a piece of string. Others made their own ID tags by grinding off one side of a coin and then etching their name on it.

Voila! The first modern military ID tags (the Ancient Romans had their own version known as the signaculum) -not called dog tags yet, though.

IF YOU MAKE IT, THEY WILL BUY

A Hercules ROV operated by a team from E/V Nautilus off the coast of Mexico was trying to catch a crab when a beautiful distraction came into view. This is Halitrephes maasi, a deep-sea jellyfish that resembles a fireworks display in the dark waters.  

The frilled tentacles of the Halitrephes maasi jelly came into view at 1225m in the Revillagigedo Archipelago off Baja California, Mexico. Radial canals that move nutrients through the jelly's bell form a starburst pattern that reflects the lights of ROV Hercules with bright splashes of yellow and pink--but without our lights this gelatinous beauty drifts unseen in the dark.

(YouTube link)

This video, posted just a week ago, pretty much makes all the information for Wikipedia's entry on the species. -via Madam Jujujive

Is this the soon-to-be announced remake of Dr. Doolittle with an all-woman cast? Or maybe the new Steve Irwin-type wildllife TV show? Maybe sometime in the future. This is Taylor Francis, who works at Everglades Outpost Wildlife Rescue in Homestead, Florida. The gator is Caspar, who is well-fed and used to his human handlers. Caspar weighs 250 pounds; Francis, not so much. Francis works with many different kinds of animals.

Grateful for the little moments Happy Thanksgiving from my animal family to yours! (Also grateful my hair grows fast cause I miss when it was this long ) . ALSO ALSO grateful to @gabbynikolle for catching this shot . . . . . . . #travelflorida #thanksgiving #happythanksgiving #grateful #evergladesoutpost #notapet #wildliferescue #animalsdaily #animalsco #animalsofinstagram #wolves #wolf #doggo #pupper #instagood #instadaily #tbt #wildernessbabes #stark #florida #wildchild #animalrescue #dogsofinstagram #wolvesofinstagram #longhairdontcare #kisses

A post shared by Taylor Francis (@francisferox) on Nov 23, 2017 at 11:30am PST

You may be wondering how a rescue operation has alligators and other exotic animals. Francis is glad to explain.

Not at all a dumb question! I’m happy to answer.

So on it being a rescue, all of our gators are what’s called “nuisance” caught gators. Meaning they were in someone’s pool, a golf course, basically too close to humans to the point that the animal clearly no longer feared humans, and is therefore a threat to the community and itself. So once captured they’re either sent to a sanctuary like ours, or put down. A life in captivity isn’t ideal, but it’s better than being served up at the local gator grill.

On the tigers, South Florida is one of the biggest places for the exotic animal trade, mainly cause it’s such a major hotspot for drug trafficking and black market stuff. A lot of drug dealers get exotic animals as pets, as like a status thing (when they get bored of Ferrari’s and mansions, they buy big cats, for example) so the DEA will do a bust and then be like “oh shit what do we do with the tiger?” That’s where we come in. Obviously the animal is already used to humans and therefore cannot be released (even if we could afford to fly it out wherever it’s native to, find a safe place to reintroduce it that isn’t territory already claimed by another individual of the same species etc.)

Hey, my eyes are up here. . . . . . . . . . #wildlifeaddicts #girlsjustwannahavebugs #spider #nachothespider #tarantulasoftheworld #tarantula #mexicanredknee #brachypelmahamorii #evergladesoutpost #whppets #petsofinstagram #girlswithtattoos #animalsdaily #animallovers #selfie #igers #photooftheday #picoftheday #whppetproject #instagood

A post shared by Taylor Francis (@francisferox) on Nov 5, 2017 at 1:49pm PST

You can see more of Francis' images, featuring her coworker Quinton Glenn and lots of animals at Instagram. -via reddit

You are probably familiar with Ötzi the Iceman, the Neolithic mummy found in the Alps in 1991. Every aspect of his remains have been studied extensively for clues about the culture and time period he lived in, including his shoes.

Petr Hlavacek, a Czech academic and calceology expert from the Tomas Bata University in Zlin, eastern Czech Republic, has taken his research into prehistoric footwear to another level by re-creating  Ötzi ‘s boots. Hlavacek’s expertise in calceology (from “calcei” meaning shoes in Latin) studies the archaeological and historical aspects of footwear.

Initially, Hlavacek faced torn and partly decomposed leather, mixed with blackened hay and tiny bits of twine, like a clump of horse dung. Along with his university colleagues, Hlavacek spent a great deal of time and effort trying to source the right leather for the authentic reconstruction. Microscopic studies of the leather showed that it came from calf on the bindings, deerskin on the uppers, and bearskin on the soles. The team of experts had to hire a bear hunter in Canada and have him send his prey to the Czech Republic.

That's only the beginning of the long and painstaking process of building new shoes to be just like the ones Ötzi wore in his lifetime. Read about the recreation project and the results at The Vintage News.  -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Josef Chlachula)

You know, one you've consulted with your engineers, you might want to talk with your designers. If that doesn't pinpoint the problem, maybe there could be some way that the actual target audience, you know, users, could leave feedback and let you know why they aren't using your app or visiting your website. But first, you have to respect your users. Decision makers often get too far away from what they're really supposed to accomplish. This is the latest from CommitStrip.