When he was walking near his home in Brazil, Igor Venâncio noticed some kids gathered in the street. Upon checking what the commotion was all about, he saw that the kids gathered around a tiny baby marmoset (a type of monkey native to the region), who lay helpless on the ground. The next thing he noticed was the baby’s worried mom, who watched from a branch overhead.

Suspecting that the baby’s mother was hesitant to retrieve her because of the crowd, Venâncio asked the children to give her space. But still, Mom seemed reluctant to approach.

So, Venâncio decided to arrange the reunion himself.

“Acting on instinct, I took the baby to her parent,” Venâncio told The Dodo. “A car or a cat could have passed by, and maybe it wouldn’t have been a happy ending.”

Check out the wholesome clip over at the site.

(Image Credit: Igor Venâncio/ The Dodo)

Paw prints and bird tracks that have been carved in concrete are some of the cute little things that you will see in your life. These prints can be found in roads, sidewalks, and in construction sites. For Carl Mehling, however, they are more than cute; these are moments in time that were immortalized as the concrete dried.

When [he] was a second-grader in Queens, his mom walked him to school past a leaf in the sidewalk. “I regarded it as a fossil, and was scheming about getting a hammer and busting it out,” he says. Now, Mehling is a senior museum specialist in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York—and he’s still obsessed with the world around his shoes. When he’s in the field looking for fossils, or in the woods hunting for mushrooms, he says, “my eyes are always slammed against the ground.” He started zeroing in on concrete prints a decade or so ago, when a friend was looking to incorporate some into the endpapers of a book. That “flipped my switch,” Mehling says. “I just never stopped.”

And so find and photograph urban fossils he did.

Learn more about his story over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Carl Mehling/ Atlas Obscura)

A 3D facial reconstruction of an Egyptian boy was revealed by European researchers. The boy was estimated to have been mummified during the first century A.D., and the digital reconstruction resembles a lifelike portrait of the deceased that was buried along with his remains. These “mummy portraits” that were used for comparison to the reconstruction was a popular practice among certain strata of Roman Egyptian society, as the Smithsonian details: 

Compared with the ancient funerary artwork, the modern reconstruction shows “considerable similarities”—albeit with one notable exception, as the team notes in the journal PLOS One.

Analysis of the skeleton’s bones and teeth suggests the boy was roughly 3 to 4 years old at the time of his death. But the researchers point out that “on a subjective level, the portrait appears slightly ‘older,’” likely due to its lithe depiction of the child’s nose and mouth.

This more mature representation “may have been the results of an artistic convention of that time,” lead author Andreas Nerlich, a pathologist at the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, tells Live Science.

Similarities between the boy’s portrait and the digital reconstruction may help answer a question that has lingered since British archaeologist W.M. Flinders Petrie discovered a trove of mummy portraits in Egypt’s Fayum region in the late 1880s: Who do the artworks represent?

Image via the Smithsonian 

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the house where the Banks family lived was made available to rent out through Airbnb. Will Smith took the opportunity to go visit it himself, and he took along DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes), too. The house is set up to appeal specifically to Fresh Prince fans, but it was a nostalgic trip, too. They are eventually joined by other cast members, with the notable exception of Uncle Phil (the late James Avery). You may as well watch the tour, since the actual Airbnb listing is booked for the foreseeable future. -via Digg

For the 6th year, Katmai National Park and Preserve is staging Fat Bear Week, a tournament to crown the bear with the most successful weight gain of the year. While unhealthy for humans, a substantial layer of fat is crucial for sustaining bears through their winter hibernation. Meet the contenders from the bears that live in Katmai, and place your votes in each matchup between September 30 and October 6. Last year's winner Holly is in the running, although not expected to win as she's been raising her cub this summer. But she's a fan favorite, so Holly is in the bracket, as well as her daughter. -via Metafilter

See also: Fat Bear Week 2018 and 2019.

Firefly was a 2002 Joss Whedon TV series that was canceled after only 11 of its 14 episodes were aired. However, later analysis blamed Fox TV for the series' low viewership, as they aired the episodes out of order and promoted it as a comedy, which confused viewers. But Firefly became quite popular when it was released on home video, garnering critical accolades and a growing fandom. It was a case of Fox letting a gem slip through their hands for no good reason, when it could have been a long running series. But was Firefly good? As this Honest Trailer shows, it followed a formula, but it was a formula that works.

How could scientists in the UK hear an underwater explosion 19,000 kilometers away in Australia? It's not an experiment you could reproduce in a pool, even a very large one, because the speed of sound is more variable than you may think, and so are the conditions in different parts of the ocean. MinuteEarth explains. I won't guarantee you'll understand it all, but it does remind us that the world is a very weird place, and there's always more to learn about it. -via Digg

When it comes to a buying laptop, the rule of thumb is don’t go cheap. This means that you really have to save money in order to buy a decent laptop, but it is guaranteed that it will be worth it in the long run.

But maybe this time it’s different. It seems that there are some laptops now that are pretty cheap but powerful enough. And when I say cheap, it’s not just under the $700-range, but also under the $400-range. Ars Technica compares two of Walmart’s finest laptops that are within this range — the $378 Acer Swift 1 and the $350 Gateway GWTN141-2.

Both of these are serviceable if cheap laptops, but the Gateway, despite being the less expensive model, will be the clear winner for most people. It's more powerful, more repairable, more upgrade-able, and in our testing, a bit more reliable as well.

Check out their comparison over at the site.

(Image Credit: Jim Salter/ Ars Technica)

Here’s a writing prompt for you: an alternate universe where we humans did everything in an aggressive manner, whether it’s opening a door, or putting the trash bag into the trash bin. But if you can’t imagine that type of universe, then Daniel LaBelle can show how that looks like through this short video.

(Image Credit: Daniel LaBelle/ YouTube)

Botswana — A few months ago, as they flew over the Okavango Panhandle, conservationists saw a horrifying sight. Around 356 elephants lay lifeless on the ground. Poachers were not to blame for this one, as the tusks of these elephants were still intact. So what caused their deaths?

As much as the government wanted to investigate the case, it could not because of the pandemic.

“Elephants began dying in huge numbers in early May and the government would normally respond within days to an event of this scale,” director of conservation group National Park Rescue, Mark Hiley, told the Associated Press in July. “Yet here we are, months later, with no testing completed and with no more information than we had at the start.”

Hiley also called it “one of the biggest disasters to impact elephants this century, and right in the middle of one of Africa’s top tourism destinations.”

More than two months later, investigations reveal that the mysterious deaths were caused by cyanobacteria, toxic microscopic algae found in larger bodies of blue-green water, the BBC reports.

But Hiley states that they are still investigating as to why the elephants were the only ones affected, and why it was in that area only.

(Image Credit: Yathin S Krishnappa/ Wikimedia Commons)

It is only reasonable to think that past and present employees of Sony Interactive Entertainment could be prioritized when they order the video game consoles that they develop, but it seems that that isn’t the case. They are treated just the same as those who aren't part of the company.

Taking to Twitter to share his sadness was Adam Boyes, PlayStation’s former VP, who found himself unable to pre-order the console.

Former PlayStation head of global second-party games Gio Corsi replied to the tweet saying he hadn’t managed to get his hands on one either adding that the two could ‘sad together’.

Someone else responded to the tweet saying that they were ‘p*ssed off’ Boyes didn’t get a free console after all he did for Sony. Boyes replied to the guy, ‘They don’t owe me anything, my dude. I loved my time there, and my time there is over.’

Love how he’s just cool about it.

(Image Credit: Adam Boyes/ Twitter)

This painting of a Pekingese dog was produced by artrist Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl in 1861. While we don't know for sure whether the dog was male of female, we know its name was Looty. At the time, Pekingese dogs were found in China, where they were bred for their small size and their resemblance to lions.

When Anglo-French invaders stormed, looted, and burned the Summer Palace during the Second Opium War in 1860, they found five of these Pekingese dogs guarding the corpse of a lady who had committed suicide upon hearing the pillaging taking place outside. The dogs were brought back to England, the tiniest of them—historians note she weighed around three pounds—was gifted to Queen Victoria, who renamed her “Looty” in reference to the spoils of war.

The renaming sealed her fate as a stolen object of intense fascination.

To modern ears, the name sounds like a confession of a crime, but the British Empire was downright proud of taking treasures from conquered lands. Read about Looty and what she came to symbolize at Artsy. -via Nag on the Lake  

Why would anyone want to climb a tall pole, such as a flag pole, and stay there for any length of time? Fame and fortune, of course! It wasn't so easy to go viral 100 years ago, so to grab attention, one had to do something that was worthwhile to watch in order to draw a crowd. Once one guy succeeded at that, many others looked, thought "I can do that!", and tried it out.  

We can’t talk about pole-sitting without talking about Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, the original “influencer” for the roaring twenties craze. The aerial stuntman dubiously claimed to have been a survivor of the Titanic and called himself “the luckiest fool in the world.” He was first dared by a friend in 1924 to sit on a flagpole and succeeded in staying up there for 13 hours and 13 minutes. In an era without television, the odd stunt attracted considerable attention, prompting Kelly to travel around America charging admission for the spectacle, as well as earning endorsements for publicity stunts. He helped inaugurate new hotels and shops; attracted crowds for movie premieres and amusement parks, and once sat on a pole for 22 days at Madison Square Gardens during a dance marathon (another endurance fad) until the last dancers dropped.

It didn’t take long before pole-sitting fever had spread across the country, prompting amateur copycats and professional pole-sitters alike to seek out similar fame and fortune….

As the poles got higher and the record time got lengthier, fewer people wanted to compete, and the fad died out. But it wasn't the first time such a fad took hold. Read about pole-sitting in the 1920s and its origin in ancient times at Messy Nessy Chic.

Chick E Poo is a parrot who lives in Woodinville, Washington. She sings her operatic solos constantly. She must have been exposed to lots of arias, but she sings her own version, often incorporating her own lyrics, like her name and "meow." She appears to be quite proud of her vibrato and soaring high notes! -via Laughing Squid

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in the US on September 26, 1975, about six weeks after its British premiere, which means the movie is now 45 years old. It wasn't an immediate hit, but found new life as an audience participation experience, which became almost a rite of passage for a generation of college students. The film was a reworking of the stage version, and there were some differences.   

6. “Science Fiction/Double Feature” had a different singer for the film.

As previously mentioned, Patricia Quinn took the Magenta role just so she could sing “Science Fiction/Double Feature” on the stage, but when it came time to film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it was decided that O’Brien should sing the song instead. Quinn wasn’t happy, but she did get a small consolation: The iconic lips that sing the song in the opening credits are hers.

7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s director agreed to a smaller budget in order to keep the original cast.

According to Sharman, 20th Century Fox offered him “a reasonable budget” if he would cast “currently fashionable rock stars” in the lead roles for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sharman lobbied instead to keep the original stage cast (with some exceptions, like the addition of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon), and instead got a “modest budget” and a very tight shooting schedule. Sharman now calls the decision “crucial” to the film’s cult success.

Read the rest of the fun facts about The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Mental Floss.