Last Father’s Day, we brought you a list of the world’s greatest animal dads, but now it’s time to thank the ladies for all their hard work. These matronly critters show just how much a mother’s love can mean to the success of her little one.

Elephants

After a 22 month long pregnancy followed by delivery of the world’s largest babies (around 250 pounds), elephants deserve to be on this list even if they immediately abandoned their babes. But they don’t just say “thanks for all the stretch marks,” and get on their merry way, elephant mothers continue raising their babies. Baby elephants are born blind and completely dependant on their mother and the rest of the herd. While the baby is growing, they are fortunate enough to have a great support system consisting of multiple full-time babysitters, called “allmothers.” While the allmothers take care of the precious little one, the mother will work to eat as much as she can so she can make the most possible milk for her bundle of joy. Image by Googie man [Wikipedia]

Alligators

We don’t tend to think of cold-blooded animals as the most caring parents, but alligators certainly break that mold. The female alligator creates nests of rotting organic matter that not only self-incubates, but also determine the sex of the babies. Nests that are constructed with leaves are warmer than those made with wet marsh, and thus, produce more males than cooler nests. Once mama gator has planned the sex of her litter, she will guard her nest from threats, including other alligators, who love to munch on baby gator nests. When the eggs hatch, she will load them into her mouth and then carry them into the water where she will continue to care for them for the following year, assuming they decide to stay near home. Image via Catholic 85 [Wikipedia]

Orangutans

Female orangutans have to wait eight years between births (the longest interbirth time of any great ape), so they make sure their time with each baby counts. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mother for their first two years of life. In fact, during the first four months of a baby’s life, it will never break physical contact with its mother, clinging to her belly the whole time. Each night, the mother will make a nest and she and her baby will cuddle in bed during the duration of its infancy. Even as they mature, they continue to stick close to mother and even breastfeed until they are five years old –making them the species with the longest dependence period. The girls stay with their mothers longer than the boys, sticking around to learn necessary baby rearing skills. Image via JohnBurke [Flickr]

Greater Hornbills

By now, alternate endings on movies are rarely shocking. After all, practically every DVD special feature area seems to have at least one, if not multiple story endings and they usually are at least a little predictable. That’s why it’s up to the fans, or enemies, of a particular picture to make their own alternate endings to really give us something to think about.

Yogi Bear

The best thing about this 3D animated ending is how amazingly perfect it looks. If I was hiring animators, the creator of this one would be up there on my list. It actually looks like it could be part of the movie, which is what throws you so hard when the loveable characters turn so dark so fast. In case you’re wondering, yes, the scene is from another movie, The Assassination of Jessie James. If you’re interested, you can watch the original scene here.

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The Truman Show

Yes, Jim Carrey has been in two movies about the possible effects of our current media over-saturation. Never has that been more obvious than when you take scenes from The Cable Guy and cut them in to the ending of The Truman Show to make a much, much darker alternate ending.

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Wall-E

I’ll admit it…I cried at the end of Wall-E, even tough I knew that as a Pixar movie they’d never let it end that depressingly. If this really was the ending, EVE wouldn’t be the only one blowing her brains out because she couldn’t deal with the pain.

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Inventing is a great way to leave your mark on the world, but in some unfortunate circumstances, inventions have been known to leave the mark of death on their inventors. A few years ago, we wrote a post about five inventors who were killed by their own inventions, but that is not the full extent of these poor creators. Here are five more people whose own inventions resulted in their untimely demise.

Marie Curie

Perhaps the most influential inventor on this list is Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Maria co-discovered both radium and polonium and revolutionized modern chemistry when she discovered a method to isolate radioactive isotopes. She was so well-respected that she became the first female professor at the University of Paris. If that weren’t impressive enough, she was not only the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, she was also the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes. Even the word “radioactive” was her creation. Unfortunately, being one of the first researchers to work with radioactive particles, she did not understand the dangers they presented to the human body. Most of her work was carried out in a shed without any protective measures whatsoever. Eventually, she died from aplastic anemia caused by extensive exposure to ionized radiation that emanated from her research materials. Her shed has now been converted to a museum, but her paperwork, even her cookbook, is so radioactive that they are too dangerous to handle without protective gear and are stored in lead-lined boxes.

Horace Lawson Hunley

Horace had a number of careers, serving as a legislator, a lawyer and a confederate marine engineer in his short 40 years, but it was his role as a marine engineer that he will be best remembered for. Horace was the inventor of the first combat submarine. His creation, the H.L. Hunley, was known to be dangerous after five out of nine crew members died on the device’s first run in an attempt to attack the Union blockade in the Charleston Harbor, but that didn’t stop the inventor or the confederacy from investing more time and manpower into the device. Like any good inventor, Horace knew he couldn’t quit. He kept working on the sub and was so willing to stand by his work that he served on the second run to attack the blockade. Again the sub sank, this time killing all eight crew members, including Horace.

If you don't watch Doctor Who, then the name Sarah Jane Smith (and, consequently, the actor's real name, Elisabeth Sladen) will mean nothing to you. But for those who are fans of the show, this K-9 tribute to the late Ms. Sladen, who passed away on Tuesday, will agree this is perhaps the most fitting dedication to her.

Link Via The Mary Sue

IKEA is the world’s largest furniture store. In fact, the company is so big, it is estimated that around 10% of all Europeans alive today were conceived on an IKEA bed. Despite its success though, the company still has quite a few dark secrets, as well as a number of interesting trivia bits. Whether you love the flat-pack manufacturer or hate it, these 10 facts about the company are certain to spark your interest in the things that happen behind the scenes of IKEA.

Image via Calvin Teo [Wikipedia]

1. The Store Was Created By A Nazi Sympathizer. Founder Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943. He was only seventeen at the time. At the same time, he was also directly involved with fund-raising and recruitment for the New Swedish Movement, a pro-fascist, anti-Semitist group that emphasized Swedish Nationalism. When the matter came out in 1994, Kamprad claimed it was the biggest mistake of his life. He apologized for his involvement with the group and wrote a letter to every Jewish employee on his staff to personally apologize for his actions. Even so, the issue caused a minor controversy when IKEA opened its first store in Israel. In the end, the country seemed to forgive him and IKEA is now one of only a handful of companies to have stores in both Israel and other Muslim Middle Eastern countries.



Image via yassan-yukky [Flickr]

2. It Is Technically A Charity. If Nazism wasn’t bad enough, IKEA is also has one of the most elaborate tax evasion schemes of any company that still manages to operate within the law. IKEA is owned by INGKA Holding B.V., a Dutch corporation that is controlled by a non-profit Dutch foundation known as the Stichting Ingka Foundation, which was founded by Kamprad in 1982. This Foundation is headed by a five-person committee that includes Kamprad, his wife, and his attorney. IKEA’s intellectual property is owned by Inter IKEA Systems, which is owned, indirectly, by the Inerogo Foundation, which is also controlled by Kamprad and his family. IKEA has to pay 3% of its profits to the foundation to license its own trademarks. Because IKEA is owned by charities, none of its profits are taxed, making the Ingka Foundation the largest charity in the world, with a net worth of $36 billion. Of course, the charity isn’t nearly as generous as most (being as how it’s mostly just a tax evasion strategy), so it only gave away $65 million in 2010. To put that in perspective, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a net worth of $33 billion and they give away around $1.5 billion per year. The whole scheme is pretty complex, so if you want to read more about it, I recommend checking out this great Mental Floss article on the issue.


3. The Name Is Actually An Acronym. While most people assume IKEA is just a Swedish word or a nonsense word like Kodak, it is actually an acronym with close ties to Ingvar Kamprad’s heart. The letters stand for his initials, the initial for the farm he grew up in, Elmtaryd, and the town the farm was located in, Agunnaryd.



Image via DrJohnBullas [Flickr]

4. They Have A Very Specific Way Of Naming Products. Because Kamprad is dyslexic, he found it extremely difficult to manage an inventory that was made up of product codes, so he instead decided to name everything with words instead. I always thought that the products names were all Swedish words describing the objects, but as it turns out, that only applies to a handful of kitchen items. For the most part, all items are named according to a system developed by IKEA where each type of item carries a different name origin. For example, dining tables and chairs generally are named after places in Finland. Carpets are named after places in Denmark. For more examples, check out this article in The Guardian.


5. They Also Sell Houses. Ready to buy a new home? If you live in Scandinavia or the UK, don’t head to a real estate agent, head to IKEA and grab a flat-pack house for a fraction of the cost. The BoKlok houses were originally released in Sweden in 1996, and have since expanded to IKEA stores across Northern Europe.


6. Their Catalog Is More Popular Than The Bible. Ok, maybe that’s a little misleading, but every year, there are almost three times more copies of the catalog printed than the bible. They started printing the catalog in 1951 and it has since taken on a life of its own, consuming a full 70% of the companies marketing budget every year and developing a devoted fan base of people who analyze the images looking for obscure books in the bookshelves, Mickey Mouse references and cats hiding in the fake households. There are now 55 editions printed in 27 languages every year.


7. You Can Buy Their Merchandise For Your Virtual Family. If you’re running out of space in your home for all the great IKEA stuff you want, maybe you should consider shopping for your virtual home instead. Since 2008, players of The Sims 2 have had the chance to purchase the IKEA Home Stuff pack and deck out their character’s houses with the décor.


Image via thekellyscope [Flickr]

8. The Store Really Is A Big Deal. Most of you have probably become used to IKEA and no longer consider the store all that special, but for many people, the chance to shop in the Swedish furniture store is an exciting occasion –particularly when they are offering $150 gift certificates to the first people who shop there. This exact promotion actually lead to the trampling deaths of three people when the store opened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2004.


9. It Can Be A Great Way For Parents To Get A Break. Many stores offer free daycare centers with playgrounds and beepers that can be used to contact the parent if the child needs mommy or daddy before they finish shopping. Stressed out parents can then easily enjoy a nice meal, a nap in one of the bedroom displays or, you know, an actual shopping trip knowing their little ones are safe and secure within the same building.


10. They Were The First Company To Feature A Gay Relationship In a Commercial. While the commercial only ran once in 1994, it was still a big deal for such a major company to release an ad with a homosexual couple. Since then, the company had ran a number of ads targeting the gay community, including one of the first ads to feature a transgender person.

Do you like the company or hate it? More to the point, have you changed your opinion after learning about Kamprad’s dirty secrets or about their progressive ads targeted to homosexuals?

Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss

I don't know about you guys, but I have a soft spot for seriously strange and seriously niche blogs. Paula Deen Riding Things is one of those blogs.The name says it all. The entire site consists of images of Paula Deen riding on things. Enjoy.

http://pauladeenridingthings.com/archive

When you order a pizza online, a lot of the places have a text area for you to include any special instructions you might have, like extra sauce or a code to get in to your apartment complex. When the blogger who writes for Awesome Robo got to this section on the Domino's online order form though, he decided to ask for a drawing of Yoda riding a tauntaun. Surprisingly, the Domino's staff was happy to oblige with this little doodle.

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Did you know the third Thursday of every April is National High Five Day? That would be April 21 this year. While the best way to celebrate High Five Day is simply to give out your fair share of celebratory slaps, it can also help to know your history and when it comes to the high five, that history is actually rather recent.

The Gesture’s Low Reaching Roots

Long before the high five, there was the low five, although, at the time it was known as “giving skin” and “slapping skin.” The low five started way back in the jazz age and while there seems to be no detailed record of how it was started, it was a fairly popular gesture amongst jazz musicians. This was immortalized throughout history when Al Jolson gives a low five in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. The 1941 Abbot and Costello film In the Navy takes note of this with the Andrews Sisters song, “Gimme Some Skin, My Friend.”

Slapping five continued to be a popular gesture in the African American culture and you can see black characters slapping hands in movies all the way up to blaxploitation films from the seventies

Making the Five High

Image via Outsports The high five that most people credit as the first took place in 1977. It was exchanged between Dusty Baker and Glen Burke at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. Burke gave Baker a raised hand to slap in celebration after Baker scored a home run. Murray State University basketball player Lamont Sleets has challenged this story though, claiming that he developed the gesture while playing on his college team in the 1960’s. This isn’t the only high five challenge between basketball and baseball players. A number of basketballers claim to have started using the term “high five” during their 1979/1980 season. University of Louisville baseball player Derek Smith disputes this though and claims that he is the originator of the term. No matter who originated or named it though, the gesture was an immediate success in sports circles as soon as Baker and Burke’s slap was seen around the country. It was soon being used by teams across the country, most notably the 1980 Louisville Cardinals basketball team, who high fived each other throughout their run for the title and helped bring it to the forefront of American consciousness. Image via bgubitz [Wikipedia] By 1980, the noun “high five” was in the Oxford English Dictionary and by 1981, it was added as a verb as well.

Making A Good Thing Into A National Holiday

In the eighties, the gesture took on a life of its own and it seemed like every sitcom character was high fiving someone at least once per episode. It isn’t surprising that the high five took a dive in popularity through the nineties and popular culture tried to cleanse itself of the over saturation of the gesture. Even so, the high five has always continued to have its fans and in 2002, three University of Virginia Students decided to give the high five its due. The three students decided they wanted to start their own holiday and they agreed that honoring the lost art of the high five would be the perfect reason to celebrate. The ultimate goal of the holiday was to better people’s days by giving high fives to strangers, who might then be inspired to give high fives to others. While the headquarters of the holiday started on the university campus, it quickly spread thanks to the power of the internet. By 2005, the idea had gained enough momentum that the City of San Diego actually agreed to recognize National High Five Day as an official city celebration. (Being a long-term resident of America’s Finest City, I admit that I was highly upset that I had never heard of the city’s decree until I started writing this article.) So now that you know about National High Five Day and about the gesture’s respectable origin story, it is up to you, dear readers to spread the word, and the skin. Share your support of high fives on April 21 and every day. Just remember to do it sparingly. After all, an overused high five is worse than no high five at all and we don’t want this great cultural connection to fade away every again. Sources: Wikipedia, High Five Me, National High Five Project

While there are plenty of bizarre Blogger and Word Press pages, the number of off-the-wall Tumblr accounts is a little astonishing. I don’t know what it is about Tumblr, as opposed to all the other blog programs out there, but something about it just seems to inspire people to create some of the weirdest sites around the net. Here are a few of my favorite strange, niche and just plain silly Tumblr blogs.

Selleck Waterfall Sandwich:

Perhaps one of the strangest Tumblr blogs around, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich is exclusively dedicated to three things: Tom Selleck, waterfalls and sandwiches.  You’ll be amazed just how many ways these three things can come together in an image.

Citation Needed:

Have you ever seen a citation needed tag on Wikipedia and thought, “really, they need a citation for that?“ Well, that's the whole point of Citation Needed. One of my personal favorites on the site is this gem, "The band March Hare is named after the March Hare. [citation needed]“ Unfortunately, many of the funny bits on this site are removed from Wikipedia, making Citation Needed the only archive of such comments.

Hungover Owls:

There’s a reason owls are nocturnal creatures –they’re too hung over to be awake during the day. But while hungover humans tend to look downright disgusting, Hungover Owls look absolutely adorable –in a slobbish, grumpy and tired kind of way.

Captcha Art:

Have you ever read a captcha and laughed at how humorously the words seemed to go together? Captcha Art asks you to take a screenshot of the captcha and then submit your artistic interpretation of the message.

I know you Neatoramanauts are a smart bunch, so I know most of you would rather read a book than destroy it. That being said, there are still far too many books in this world that are destroyed or contain terrible stories. Even if you like a book, you might end up with a copy you just can’t get rid of because there have already been 10 million copies of that book printed. So if you have a few extra titles you have no further use for, here are a few ways you can still use your books even after the words inside have lost their value. Before I get started, I want to give a special thank you to WebEcoist and WebUrbanist, who provided a wealth of inspiration and research to this article.

Buildings

Starting on the big scale uses for leftover books, you can build entire structures with them. While Slovakian artist Matej Krén’s building inside The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (above) may not be structurally sound enough to exist outside another building, the Yellow Pages building (below) might be able to hold its own in a storm. Students from the Dalhousie University Department of Architecture in Nova Scotia built the house using a few wooden and metal beams to hold the thick books in place. Of course, even if a book building could survive the elements, it would soon become subject to destruction via mold and insects.

Home Insulation

Just because your home can’t be made completely from books doesn’t mean they can’t improve your home though. According to Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine, books are an excellent form of insulation, so even if you don’t want to read certain titles any more, they still can be useful for filling up bookshelves that line the exterior-facing walls of your home.

Bookshelves

I don't know about you guys, but I would absolutely love to have my own knitted Tardis blanket like this one, created by Flickr user hedoknitstic. Aside from the obviously awesome style it adds to your room, how cool would it be to get to tell everyone that your bed is bigger on the inside than on the outside?

Link via Craftzine

I don't know about you guys, but I wish you could actually order this guy to crash your school or office building. It would be so much cooler than a singing telegram.

BTW, good luck trying to get that song out of your head for the rest of the day.

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For the devout, Easter is an opportunity to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, but for many others, it’s an excuse to munch down on piles of pastel candies and chocolate bunnies. By far the most notorious of these springtime treats is the sugar-coated marshmallow masses known as Peeps. But you don’t have to love the taste of Peeps to appreciate their brilliance. The simple bunny and chick shapes open the candies up to a whole new realm of fun in the form of diorama artworks. Here are a few of the funniest and coolest we could find.

Peep Show

This classic, sexy Peep diorama is probably the most famous ever made as it has spread its way across the internet for years. The oldest version I could find comes from Flickr user Amenhotep4, but I don’t think he’s the creator of the diorama. If you know were it comes from, please let me know in the comments.

Sweety Todd: The Demon Barber of Peep Street

This diorama by Flickr user mreraser’s friends Matt and Teresa is by far one of my favorites. There is so much detail in the decorations and I can’t help but love the blood on the decapitated Peeps and the maniacal look on Sweety Todd’s face.

We Come In Peeps

This adorable diorama was created by Dan Paddock and sent in directly to BoingBoing after the site posted this bizarre and slightly scary fake magazine cover called "Rest In Peeps, Anna Nichole Smith."

Alien Peeps

Of course, not all alien travelers are peaceful as Daniel Spiess made clear in his chest-burstingly scary Peeps diorama, which was based on the movie Alien.

It seems everyone is familiar with the dangers of drug-resistant staph infections and well aware of just how scary they are. As it turns out, they are so terrifying that a woman recently robbed a convienance store using the staph infection on her arm as a weapon.

When a worker confronted her, prosecutors said Slusher showed her Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus-infected arm to the attendant, told him to stay away and then left the store.

She was later arrested and hopefully held in a cell away from the other prisoners.

Link Image via mtsofan [Flickr]

While you may not be able to understand exactly what they are saying, it's pretty easy to see they are commands regarding his voice volume.

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