I remember when, as a baby, my eldest daughter discovered that she had feet. For a few days, they were to her the most fascinating things in the world.
This week-old baby elephant at Chai Lai Orchid Eco-Lodge in Thailand has made a similar discovery: she has a trunk! Her immediate task is to explore it fully.
-via Tastefully Offensive
As the fish began to die and sink into the water, he cried out, "Why?"
And the frog said, "Because it is my nature."
Okay, Aesop told it better.
-via Tastefully Offensive
Three years ago, the percussion troupe Etnobit visited Lake Baikal in eastern Russia in the middle of winter. There, the wife of one of the members slipped and fell. When she hit the ice, she made a loud booming sound. The drummers instantly recognized what that sound was: not a crash, but music.
They were very lucky. Other parts of the lake didn't produce resonant sounds when struck. It was only this particular spot where the water beneath the ice was shallow.
For 2 hours, they played on camera, striking different parts of the ice as only professional percussionists know how. The results are magical.
Emma Jean Nolan is a midwife and photographer in Brisbane, Australia. Sometimes she gets to combine her trades. When Harper Hoani Spies was born, she took this photo of her along with her intact placenta. Nolan shaped the umbilical cord to spell "love."
Baby Harper is Maori--the indigenous people of New Zealand. In keeping with Maori tradition, her parents will take the placenta back to New Zealand and bury it. Nolan describes this tradition:
As a Maori baby his placenta will now be returned to the land. The word ‘whenua’ relates to the placenta and to the land. Whenua (placenta) is returned to the whenua (land) with the pito (umbilical cord) the link between the newborn and papatuanuku(mother earth). With this affinity established, each individual fulfils the role of curator, for papatuanuku (mother earth), which remains life long.
The little koala has found the perfect tree. Unfortunately, a bigger koala wants it and has the muscle to take it by force.
Little koala cries and tries again. He loses the second scrap and cries some more.
But there's good news! Alicia Alexander, who recorded this video, reports that by nightfall, the little koala had successfully retaken his tree.
(Photo: Frédérique Voisin-Demery)
Pictured above is Beaufort cheese. It's tasty, slices easily for crackers, and goes well with a Cabernet sauvignon. It's also a source of electrical power in Albertville, Savoie, France. Skimmed whey from the cheesemaking process is used as a biogas to generate electrical power for the town. The Daily Telegraph explains:
After full-fat milk is used to make Beaufort cheese, whey and cream are left over. The cream is taken to make ricotta cheese, butter and protein powder, which is used as a food supplement.
The residual skimmed whey is then placed in a tank with bacteria, where natural fermentation produces methane in the same way that the gas is produced in cows’ stomachs.
The gas is then fed through an engine that heats water to 90 degrees C and generates electricity. The plant will produce about 2.8 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, enough electricity to supply a community of 1,500 people, Mr Decker told Le Parisien newspaper.
-via VA Viper
George Lucas didn't plan to have Darth Vader be Luke Skywalker's father when Episode IV came out. But he worked it in and the idea makes sense from a certain point of view--as Obi-Wan later tells Luke.
It gets more complicated when Episodes I-III describe the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. Some fans think that it doesn't make any sense at all. But YouTube user Shahan Reviews edited Obi-Wan's remembrance of Luke's father so that he seems haunted by the past. Obi-Wan isn't lying to Luke. He's just trying to come to grips with what he lost those many years ago.
-via Dorkly
With a brush, tape, and a can of decorative snow aerosol spray, Tom Baker can create amazing winter scenes that look like they're leaping out of old black and white films. He paints them on windows for friends, businesses, and charities. Baker paints these scenes on windows, which is why his business is called Snow Windows.
(Image: Toto USA)
Wait, let me rephrase that. Unfortunately, we have to be a bit more specific.
There are toilets that are cleaned only once a year. Many of them. Far too many of them. But the difference is that this toilet needs cleaning only once a year.
Toto is a Japanese manufacturer of the world's most advanced toilets. The company has revolutionized the pooping experience with toilets that check your health or travel to where you are. Sitting on a Toto toilet is like riding a time machine that takes you into a futuristic technological utopia.
Toto's latest development in toilet technology is a toilet bowl made with dirt-resistant materials, an internal spraying system, and ultraviolet light. This is presumably done by rerouting warp drive power through the main deflector dish. BBC News explains:
Its self-cleaning process uses a combination of a disinfectant and a glaze - made out of zirconium and titanium dioxide - which coats the bowl.
Once it flushes it sprays the interior of the bowl with electrolysed water," explained Toto spokeswoman Lenora Campos.
She said the "proprietary process" essentially turns the water into a weak bleach.
"This bleaches the interior, killing anything in the bowl," said Ms Campos.
Meanwhile an ultraviolet light in the lid charges the surface.
That makes it super-hydrophilic - or water-loving, so nothing can stick to it - and also photocatalytic, enabling oxygen ions to break down bacteria and viruses.
"You don't have to clean the toilet bowl for over a year," said Ms Campos.
-via Dave Barry
Nature is amazing.
Your uvula performs this ballet in your mouth daily. It gracefully flows back and forth in a fantastic display of coordination and power.
The Slow-Mo Guys record unusual events with a slow motion camera, then display the results on YouTube. In the past, we've seen them slice through an egg with a katana, a show a face flapping in the wind, and a fire tornado.
For their latest video, Dan gargles water while Gav records the motion in his mouth. It's simply beautiful--from a certain point of view.
-via David Thompson
(Photo: Abdeljebbar Qninba)
Mogador is an island off the coast of Morocco. In 2014, Abdeljebbar Qninba, a biologist at Mohammed V University in Rabat observed falcons capturing smaller birds, plucking off their tail and wing feathers, then storing them in holes in rocks for later consumption.
Although scientists have seen birds storing dead animals for later meals, this is the first time that anyone has seen birds stocking live animals. New Scientist consulted other biologists on the reported behavior:
“I haven’t heard of anything like it in [non-human] vertebrates,” says Theodore Stankowich at California State University in Long Beach. “Perhaps this innovation of simply immobilising prey prior to caching has caught on and spread through the population.”
“Given the right circumstances – prey availability and habitat for storing the prey – it is reasonable to see how this behaviour could evolve,” says Michael Steele at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.
-via Adam Koford
(Photo of cosplayer Ashlyn Brooke)
Snow Leia and the Seven Droids ended abruptly when the princess turned aside the Evil Queen's proffered apple and instead shot her with a blaster. Then she rescued the Prince, who was sleeping inside a block of carbonite.
Sebastian Errazuriz is an inventive artist and designer whose work we've featured extensively. He's always got a new, usually surreal take on the objects that should fill our lives. In the past, we've seen his coffin that is a functional boat, a coat made of teddy bears, and his seemingly magical wave cabinet.
Errazuriz also made this outright funny piece. He found a taxidermied duck with a broken neck at a museum. It was going to be thrown away, but Errazuriz has instead turned it into a great conversation piece.
-via The Contemporist
(Photo: Ismennt)
Flateyri is a fishing village of 300 people in northwestern Iceland. In 1995, it was devastated by an avalanche from the neighboring mountain of Kollahvilft that killed 20 people. This was the second deadly avalanche that year in Iceland. Another one in a different village killed 16 people. That's a lot for a nation of 300,000 people.
So the Icelanders decided to do something about the avalanche menace. For Flateyri, the country built an enormous earthen wall to shield it from snow. The wedge cuts into a flood of snow, driving it away from the village and into the ocean. Amusing Planet describes it:
In 1998, a special A-shaped earthen dam was built up the mountain to protect Flateyri from future avalanches. The structure consist of two deflecting dams that form a wedge or A-shaped structure in the mountain side. There is a small catching dam that extends between the two deflecting dams in the lowermost part. The walls are 600 meters long and 15-20 meters tall, while the catching dam is 10 meters high and 350 meters long.
The design worked, saving the village from another avalanche the next year:
Only a year after the dam was completed, in February of 1999, a large avalanche from the mountain came crashing down into the eastern side of the dam and went into the sea. The village was saved. The next winter, in March, another huge avalanche from the mountain slammed into the western wall and the village was protected again. Other smaller avalanches have occurred regularly, and each time the protection wall has deflected the snow safely away from the village.
(Photo: Beth Evans)
It's winter, so it's time for some heavy Ugg boots. Ugh at weather and, since this fashion appears to be so widely hated, ugh at these boots, as well.
Cartoonist Beth Evans ughed for this photo. You can read our interview about her work here.
