People who work in tropical tourist spots will tell you that monkeys love to finish off anyone's drink if they step away from from it for even a minute. The idea that monkeys seek out fermented fruit for its alcohol content in the wild has been around for quite some time, and now researchers are documenting it.
Christina Campbell and Victoria Weaver's research on monkeys and their alcohol intake illustrates the difficulty of studying primates in the wild. Campbell, Weaver, and her team followed a troop of monkeys all day long, with the monkeys swing through the treetops eating fruit, and the humans trudging up and down hills and retrieving the discarded fruit after the monkeys took a bite or two. And then they got urine samples from the monkeys, which shows a real dedication to science.
What they found is that monkeys do prefer fruit that is fermented, and that they indeed metabolize the alcohol these fruits contain. They are deliberately seeking out alcohol in the foods they select. But while this shows alcohol-seeking behavior is natural and not limited to humans, the monkeys rarely get drunk. Analysis of their diet and their urine shows that over the course of a day, they may consume as much alcohol as one glass of wine. Read about the study and what it implies at Atlas Obscura.
It's a bit nippy out in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Although the temperature is above freezing now, it dipped below long enough that the city acquired quite a bit of snow.
These two enterprising lads understand the Ninth Rule of Acquisition: "Opportunity plus instinct equals profit." They walked around their neighborhood and with snow shovels and offered to shovel driveways for $20 each.
A Ring doorbell camera captured their plans when they approached one home. As the resident searches for money with which to pay the boys, they make plans for what they're going to do with their incoming fortune. Should they wait until they're 16 years old and buy a car? Yes, but which one? The smaller boy prudently suggests a Lamborghini.
Once paid, the boys get to work. Although they play a bit, they're also focused. As the Sixteenth Rule of Acquisition says, "A deal is a deal."
-via Dave Barry
クスノキに運搬中です。
— 京都大学クジャク同好会 (@KU_peacock) April 16, 2022
葉見やってます。 pic.twitter.com/fckPVajv8D
Now you have.
Information is only available in Japanese, but I gather that KU Peacock is student club that raises peacocks. So far, they have 300 humans and 3 peacocks. The birds are named Sakatan, Sky Rainbow Hurricane God Phoenix (hey, that's what the translation software says), and Tanaka-kun.
I suspect that the species imbance will shift when peacocks observe the chauffeur service available to bird members. Why fly when you can ride? This rolling advertising system is bound to attract interest from local peacocks.
-via Super Punch
The Harlem Globetrotters of baseball is a minor league team in Georgia called the Savannah Bananas. Only launched in 2016 after the Savannah Sand Gnats moved away, they've taken the baseball world by storm by focusing on fun and entertainment more than winning (although they win, too).
This. is. Bananas.
— Jesse Cole (@YellowTuxJesse) September 9, 2021
Welcome to Bananaland. #FansFirst #EntertainAlways pic.twitter.com/3yt2lcpv3R
They are always coming up with new stunts, like playing a game in kilts (for St. Patricks Day, which makes no sense). Their dance troupe is called the Banana Nanas. Their cheerleaders are the Man-Nanas, a dad bod cheerleading squad. Their mascot is a banana named Split. You'll find more entertaining links about the Savannah Bananas at Metafilter.
The story of Inês De Castro is so iconic and so well known in Portugal that once you've read it, you wonder why it isn't known as well as Romeo and Juliet. And they were fictional characters! Inês De Castro's story had been made into poems, plays, operas, movies, paintings, and other artworks, mainly in Portugal. The true story behind the tale is quite gripping. Crown Prince Pedro I of Portugal fell in love with Inês De Castro, his wife's lady-in-waiting, around the year 1340. His father, King Afonso IV, exiled Inês to remove temptation. But after Pedro's wife died, the two lovers lived together for years and had several children. Still disapproving, the king had Inês murdered, which led to a civil war between father and son. Two years later, Pedro was king.
That's where the historical record and the popular tale diverged. King Pedro hunted down and killed Inês' assassins and built a royal tomb for her. But as the story grew over the next couple hundred years, Pedro had Inês disinterred and make her queen of Portugal, complete with a coronation ceremony for her corpse, at which all nobles were obliged to kiss Inês' decomposing hand. It's a compelling story, to say the least. Read about the myth of the skeleton queen and how it took over the Portuguese imagination at BBC Culture. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Salvador Martínez Cubells)
The first World's Fair I recall reading about was Expo '67 in Montreal. It seemed so exciting, and I wanted to go, but I was just a kid. Then when the 1982 World's Fair launched in Knoxville, I lived relatively close by, but never bothered to go. Almost 55 million people visited Montreal, but only 11 million went to Knoxville for the fair. So what happened?
The first World's Fair took place in London in 1851. It showcased the reach of the British Empire and astounded people with demonstrations of modern technology and scientific breakthroughs. As other fairs followed, countries around the world came to show off, and there was plenty for visitors to see, including entertainment. A visit to a World's Fair was like a trip around the world. But attendance has declined since Montreal, and cities balk at the expense of reserving the land and building the required architecture. The last World's Fair in America was in New Orleans in 1984- does anyone remember that one? They are still held in other parts of the world. Read about the rise and fall of the World's Fair at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Anthony Conti)
Financial crimes can be irresistible to the greedy and the desperate, and there have always been an awful lot of greedy or desperate people. Victor Lustig got away with so many schemes because he conned people who were willing to break the law themselves, so it would be a problem to report him or testify against him. You might already know Lustig's story, but you'll still want to watch this video because it's quite funny in the way it tells the tale of his outrageously successful exploits that went on for a quarter-century before he actually served any time. Seriously, Lustig's life was like a screwball comedy in which so many things are going on that it's hard to keep up. You have to wonder if he might be in the running for the greatest number of crimes committed by any one man. Don't miss his list of ten rules for conmen. -via Digg
Want to play a game of sorts? Redditor bort-bort-bort shared a picture that his 10-year-old daughter drew. Can you figure out what it is? Leave your guess in the comments, and I'll eventually let you know if you are right. Of course, you can go to the comments at reddit, but that would be cheating and less fun all around. The wrong answers in the forum there are almost as good as what was intended, but remember this is a 10-year-old girl we're talking about. I would have loved to have seen how she presented this to her father, and the laughs that came with it.
I recreated the @netflix intro with $30 worth of yarn pic.twitter.com/dhi6Y5wSTE
— Kevin Parry (@kevinbparry) April 21, 2022
Kevin Parry, a master of stop motion animation, set a challenge for himself: to remake the animated Netflix logo using just ordinary arts and crafts supplies.
Parry created a set with a table and black cloth. Rather than moving the camera toward the N, created a rig under the table that pushed the N up to the camera. The N is actually three separate Ns, which he swaps out in order to create the grainy visual effect of stop motion animation.
As the N moves all the way up, he switches the framing to strands of yarn threaded into slots on boards, which gradually fill the screen and then disappear. The result is a highly effective visual take on an increasingly iconic image.
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. That gives the planet twice as many solar eclipses as Earth (yeah, it's really more complicated than that). And now we have witnesses. NASA's Perseverance rover recorded the transit of Phobos across the sun on April 2. Mars rovers have been recording eclipses since 2004, but this is the highest-quality video sent back to earth yet. NASA scientists, who received still shots from Perseverance earlier, were tickled with the resolution and color of the video.
Phobos is much smaller than our moon, and its orbit is much more eccentric. It's also shaped like a potato. This video is not a time-lapse; the transit only took 40 seconds, much less time than any solar eclipse on earth. Phobos' orbit is slowly disintegrating, which means it will spiral down to Mars' surface, in a few tens of millions of years. So it's a good thing we have video. -via Boing Boing
When your child asks where the Easter Bunny comes from, you can now give them an exact answer: Cincinnati.
The White House has been hosting the annual Easter Egg Roll since 1878, held on the Monday after Easter. The event returned this year for the first time since 2019. If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that the same three recognizable bunnies show every year for quite some time now, and you might have assumed that those costumes belong to the White House. But you'd be wrong. These costumes have enjoyed a continuity of care that would most likely be impossible from Washington. They were designed and built by Cincinnati costume shop owner John Schenz, who had a nationwide reputation for quality costumes. He was first contacted for a White House Ester Bunny costume in 1981.
Shenz's first White House Easter Bunny costume was a hit, but a year later he saw that the National Parks Service did not care for the costume to his standards. So when the government called him again, he not only made new costumes, he took charge of their care from year to year. Buzzfeed uncovered the story of John Schenz and his costumes, which have become an American tradition. Read how that all came about. -via Metafilter
The question at AskReddit was aimed toward restaurant servers: What’s the weirdest reason you’ve had someone send food back? Oh, you better believe the stories came out. They could be many years old, but some customers you never forget.
Lady sent her burger back, because it had sesame seeds on the bun, which she insisted are ‘made from pork’ and she didn’t eat pork…
We all started doubting our own sanity after a few minutes of back and forth, but rest assured folks, there is indeed no pork in sesame seeds. -Bleepbloopblurph
Not all of them were servers. A few were customers with confessions.
I did this once out of ignorance. I sent a plate back because I told the waiter that they hadn't rinsed their dishes properly. The food tasted like soap. The waiter looked puzzled and brought me back another plate, which still tasted like dishsoap.
And that was the day I first tasted cilantro. -LeoMarius
And here's one we should all be on the lookout for.
Someone sent a meal back because it “didn’t taste like anything” and it turned out they had Covid. -MagicPants
You can see a rundown of the 30 funniest stories about food that was sent back to the kitchen at Bored Panda.
(Image credit: www.audio-luci-store.it)
Parenting can be so stressful that sometimes you feel it's all you can do just to keep the kids fed and out of the emergency room. Occasionally, you get to slow down long enough to think about what kind of adults you want them to be: happy, independent, successful, caring, or maybe some other goals. But you can't just encourage a kid to be successful, or even nag them into it- you have to teach specific skills that will combine to give your children the best shot at making their own successful life, however they define that. And it's a long, slow process that takes modeling, repetition, practice, and seizing the teachable moment.
Educational psychologist Michele Borba lays out seven factors that have been identified as skills that children can learn that will lead to a well-adjusted adult life. They are self-confidence, empathy, self-control, integrity, curiosity, perseverance, and optimism. She has some tips on how to teach and nurture each these qualities in your children as they grow up that you can read at CNBC. -via Digg
(Image Credit: Dominic Chavez/World Bank)
The average adult in Japan consumes about twice the sodium recommended by the World Health Organization. But since salt is such a part of traditional Japanese cuisine, reducing the salt in recipes makes food just taste wrong. The food company Kirin teamed up with scientists from Meiji University in Tokyo to tackle the problem. Their latest idea is a set of electric chopsticks. One of the chopsticks, powered by a device worn on the wrist, delivers a weak electrical charge that boosts the flavor of salt in reduced-sodium foods.
The chopsticks use “very weak electricity – not enough to affect the human body – to adjust the function of ions such as sodium chloride and sodium glutamate to change the perception of taste by making food seem to taste stronger or weaker”, Kirin said in a statement.
Taste tests show that people on reduced sodium diets experienced enhanced flavor when using the chopsticks. Read more about electric chopsticks at the Guardian. -via Boing Boing
(Image source: The Guardian via YouTube)
We've brought you some lovely videos of Theo Jansen's amazing Strandbeest kinetic sculptures over the years, but now they've taken the next step. Jansen spends his winters designing and testing new ways to make huge artworks glide across the earth, and then takes them out for a walk in the summer. Last summer, Jansen took his latest set of creations called Strandbeest Evolution 2021 out to the beach to see what they would do. Impelled by the wind, many versions of the walking sculptures gracefully trod the sand, and one even took to the sky on gossamer wings! That moment reminds us of the day the Wright Brothers first flew, although the Strandbeest was unpiloted and had to be tied down to prevent escape. -via Nag on the Lake
