If you think you’re good at being a couch potato, I’m sorry to tell you that these blind, foot-long aquatic salamanders would beat you at your own game.

In order to survive inside caverns that have very little food, these creatures, called olms, don’t move much in order to conserve energy. One such olm was reported to not have moved from the same spot for seven years!

In addition to the one extremely sedentary olm, most of the others didn’t seem to move more than 10 meters from their original spots over several years, the scientists found.

Olms could be considered extreme couch potatoes. A slow pace of life — punctuated roughly every 12 years by the need to reproduce — helps to conserve energy over a life span that can last for roughly 100 years, the researchers say. Energy conservation is paramount in these caves. With little to go around of the crustaceans and snails that olms eat, the salamanders can go 10 years without eating.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: Balázs Lerner and Gergely Balázs/ Proteus Project/ ScienceNews)

In 1966, the idea of a transporter, the way Star Trek characters beamed down to various planets, was amazing. The explanation was that the device disassembled all the atoms of one's body, converted them to energy, zapped that energy to a destination, and then re-assembled them in precise order. And the person traveling didn't even lose consciousness! We later learned that the special effect was invented because it was so much cheaper and faster than sending people off in a shuttle. But how plausible is the concept, anyway?

A team of fourth-year physics students at the University of Leicester crunched the numbers on how long it would take to transmit the necessary information to build a person, and the news isn't good. They even took a shortcut.

Instead of capturing all of the information down to the atomic level, they suggested transmitting just the DNA information of a person, along with a brain state. If you had that information, you could presumably clone a person and then implant them with the mental state of their previous self. It's not exactly teleportation, but it gets the job done.

Only, even that fraction of what makes up a person comes in at 2.6 tredecillion bits. Which is, in scientific vernacular, several boatloads.

The estimated time to transmit, using the standard 30 GHz microwave band used by communications satellites, would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe.

That's only the actual transit time. The hard part would be putting all that information back together in the same order. Just ask Seth Brundle. Read more about the real-world aspects of Star Trek's transporter at SyFy Wire. -via Real Clear Science

People win the internet love to argue about proper word usage. The word "irony" has fueled such arguments since at least 1996, when Alanis Morisette released the song "Ironic." The lyrics are a list of examples of irony, each one subject to debate as to whether it is true irony, situational irony, or not irony at all. Psychology professor Roger J. Kreuz defines irony as a clash between expectations and outcomes, but it's not always that simple. Sometimes it's just sarcasm.  

Some cases, however, are relatively straightforward. Consider situational irony, in which two things become odd or humorous when juxtaposed. A photo of a sign in front of a school with a misspelled word – “We are committed to excellense” – went viral. And the January 2020 rescheduling of an annual snowball fight at the University of British Columbia was correctly described as ironic because of the reason for the cancelation: too much snow.

In other cases, however, a situation may lack an essential element that irony seems to require. It’s not ironic when someone’s home is burglarized, but it is if the owner had just installed an elaborate security system and had failed to activate it. It’s not ironic when a magician cancels a show due to “unforeseen circumstances,” but it is when a psychic’s performance is canceled for the same reason.

It's gotten to the point that many writers just avoid the word "ironic" in order to fend off the inevitable derail about whether it was used correctly. Is that in itself ironic? Read about irony at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

Nigel Hill found a glass bottle on the beach that contained a letter dated Sept. 5, 1938. Hill was walking his dog when he found the bottle that had been drifting in water for nearly 82 years! Hill found an address and a name on the letter, and aims to reach out to the family of the person who signed the letter, as UPI detailed: 

The letter, which was signed John Stapleford, included an address in Hertfordshire, England, and asked that the person who finds the bottle get into contact with its author.

Hill said he managed to get into contact with the current resident of the listed address, but they were not related to the former resident and didn't know how to contact his family.

Hill said he thinks it's unlikely that Stapleford is still alive, but he would like to find the man's family and present them with the message in a bottle.

image via wikimedia commons

The six scents are sesame seed bun, ketchup, onion, ground "beef", pickles, and cheese. If you light them all, you have simulated the experience of eating a McDonald's Quarter Pounder hamburger. Fox News reports that this is one of many products on sale from McDonald's to promote its lifestyle.

Our own company, Neatorama, really should do the same thing by selling a line of candles, each of which smells like a particular author. Burn them together for the supreme Neatorama olfactory experience.

-via Aelfred the Great | Photo: McDonald's

One of the not-so-secret things in living a good and healthy life is eating the right food. Eating the right food would help us avoid diseases and illnesses.

Perhaps the most dangerous and most depressing diseases of all are those related to our cognitive function. After all, the brain is the body’s command center, and therefore, one should protect it, and fortify it, as best as he can. Thankfully, there are certain types of food that help us in taking care of our brain — a literal food for thought.

UTS research fellow Dr Luna Xu has studied data from 139,000 older Australians and found strong links between certain food groups, memory loss and comorbid heart disease or diabetes.

Dr Xu found high consumption of fruit and vegetables was linked to lowered odds of memory loss and its comorbid heart disease. High consumption of protein-rich foods was associated with a better memory.

Check out more details about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Found drifting in the water on the beach in the Bel Royal area on the English Channel is a bottle. Inside a bottle was a message dated Sept. 5, 1938, which meant it floated for almost 82 years. A man named Nigel Hill found the aforementioned bottle.

The letter, which was signed John Stapleford, included an address in Hertfordshire, England, and asked that the person who finds the bottle get into contact with its author.

Hill said he managed to get into contact with the current resident of the listed address, but they were not related to the former resident and didn't know how to contact his family.

While Stapleford might no longer be in this world, Hill still would like to find Stapleford’s family to present the message to them.

Have you ever picked a bottle with a message inside from the ocean before?

(Image Credit: Centre Point Trust/ Facebook)

Korean artist @nanankang offers a delicious take on a classic. Johannes Vermeer's iconic 1665 painting Girl with a Pearl Earring is immediately recognizable in cereal form.

-via Colossal

It appears that Ze Frank read the article Fourteen Fun Facts About Love and Sex in the Animal Kingdom, which we linked here just a couple of days ago. He then ran to get some peacock spider footage from Jürgen Otto (previously at Neatorama) and wrote a little song about the peacock spider's sex life. This amusing video might possibly contain NSFW language, depending on your workplace.

Last week, we shared a map of the Americas by Anna Calcaterra, which made Ohio 2 a viral meme. It turns out that Anna has a long history of spreading chaos. Her father shared some of her earlier projects, including the note above that appeared when she was five years old. A few years later, she was reported for vandalizing Wikipedia in the most delightful way.

After interrogations, I discovered that Anna, then 12 years-old, had done it. I asked her why. She did not have a satisfying answer, but the real answer revealed itself in her non-answer: she is basically just an agent of chaos. She's the dog who doesn't know what she'd do if she ever caught the car she was chasing.

And her brother Carlo has gone viral a couple of times already. Both have outshone anything their father has posted on social media. "Which, given that I have been a professional journalist for an international media company for a decade, is quite the damn thing." And both have managed to leverage their work for their own benefit. Read about the viral family at Craig Calcaterra's blog. -via Metafilter

After ten years of testing every box possible, it looks as if Maru has found the perfect one- a box he can fit into, sort of, and carry around with him. A box he can wear while doing other things. And one he can get out of when he wants to!

See more of Maru in previous posts.

Don Merton with the kakapo named after Richard Henry.

The kakapo is native to New Zealand, a flightless and rather friendly bird that smells like papayas. They evolved under no threat from predators until humans arrived, yet they weren't endangered until weasels and ferrets were introduced in the 1860s to control the invasive rabbit population (the best-laid plans and all that). The kakapo's declining numbers alarmed taxidermist Richard Henry.    

In 1893, in Auckland, New Zealand, 48-year-old Richard Henry was going through a peculiar midlife crisis. It wasn’t for any of the usual reasons, such as a failed marriage (though he had one) or a failed career (though he had been chasing a dream job for several years), but rather it was over his obsession with flightless, moss-colored parrots called kākāpōs. Henry had observed the birds’ steep decline after mustelids, such as ferrets and stoats, were introduced to the country, and had spent much of the previous decade trying to convince scientists that the birds were in real danger of going extinct, write Susanne and John Hill in the biography, Richard Henry of Resolution Island. But Henry, who did not have traditional scientific training, went unheard by scientists. On October 3, a deeply depressed Henry attempted to shoot himself twice. The first shot missed and the second misfired, and Henry checked himself into the hospital, where doctors removed the bullet from his skull.

Henry recovered, which was good news for the kakapos. He spent years hunting the birds and taking them to safety. While Henry's efforts were akin to sticking one's finger in a dyke to hold back a flood, his ideas are being resurrected today in order to save the last 211 kakapos in existence. Read about the kakapos of New Zealand and the man who tried to save them at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Errol Nye, National Kakapo Team, DOC. enye@doc.govt.nz)

Do you see the pair of tits in the above photo? Pretty nice, right? Well, they're not Japanese great tits (Parus major), which use syntax. They're Eurasian blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), which scientists find fascinating for other reasons.

After carefully observing these tits for a long time, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology concluded that the females among normally monogamous birds sometimes stray and mate with male birds other than their social mates. ITV reports:

Scientists found that birds which often foraged together in the colder months were more likely to end up as breeding pairs or partners outside of their couple.

They say many socially monogamous bird species engage in sexual behaviour outside their pair bond, often resulting in chicks. [...]

They studied blue tits that typically form monogamous pairs, but frequently mate outside their pair.

First-author of the study, Kristina Beck, said: “As most extra-pair sires are close neighbours, one could think that extra-pair paternity in blue tits might simply be the result of coincidental meetings between neighbours, and not a social preference for specific mating partners.”

About half of all nests contain at least one young with a genetic father other than the social one, and up to 15% of all offspring are sired by extra-pair males.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: David Aiken

A King Cake is a cake traditionally eaten by communities in the United States that celebrate Mardi Gras. The sugary purple and yellow cake is consumed on the Christian feast day of Epiphany, which is often celebrated on January 6. Inside the cake is a tiny figurine of a baby. The lucky person whose slice of King Cake contains that baby is the honorary king of the day.

Learn from my mistake: the royal position is purely ceremonial and lacks any power whatsoever, so do not make any dictatorial commands upon friends and co-workers.

Anyway, Calandro's grocery store and the Burgersmith restaurant, both culinary institutions of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have joined forces to offer the Mardis Gras Mambo Burger. This bacon cheeseburger is wrapped around twisted King Cake dough. You can read more about it courtesy of local news reporter and meteorologist Steve Caparotta.

-via Rod Dreher | Photo: Burgersmith

Violinist Dagmar Turner needed to have a brain tumor removed. She was very concerned that the surgeons at King's College Hospital in London might accidentally damage the brain tissue which controlled fine motor movements. So the surgeons allowed her to play her violin while they operated on her. The Washington Post reports:

The scene was a testament to the success of a once-contentious procedure now embraced in hospitals around the world. Surgeons working close to parts of the brain that control important functions such as speech or movement routinely keep patients awake to best determine where tumor gives way to something vital. [...]

Turner went under general anesthesia while they opened her skull. But the brain itself does not have pain receptors, and she was wide-awake for the tumor’s removal, playing Gershwin, Mahler and more.

-via USA Today