And you thought that they smelled good on the outside! Just wait until you cut open one of these delicious tauntauns with your lightsaber. It'll keep you warm on a chilly Hoth night.

In The Empire Strikes Back, to keep Luke Skywalker from freezing to death, Han Solo cut open a dead tauntaun and spread its warm organs over Luke's body. You can experience the same thing with this cookie invented by Jenn Fujikawa.

She made it with 3 layers of sugar cookie dough shaped like a tauntaun. The inner one has a body cavity filled with candy, including Skittles and gummy worms. A bit of icing adds definition to the tauntaun, which was thankfully a rental.

-via That's Nerdalicious!

(Photo: Water Rescue Dogs)

Big, brave, and strong swimmers--Newfoundland dogs have all of the natural characteristics of a rescue swimmer. That's why the Italian Coast Guard employs them for that purpose.

Roberto Gasparri, a dog trainer who works with this program, explained to Dog Heirs that these dogs have a great advantage while in the water:

The dog becomes a sort of intelligent lifebuoy. It is a buoy that goes by itself to a person in need of help, and comes back to the shore also by himself, choosing the best landing point and swimming through the safest currents.

The Newfoundlands can jump out of boats and helicopters and swim through dangerous waters to people in need. Once they reach someone in the water, the victim can grab onto the dog's lifejacket and rest while the dog pulls him to safety.

-via My Modern Met

(Photo: dustin1004)

Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku reports that an exciting new hair fashion is sweeping South Korea: bangs that look like upside-down hearts. It's especially popular among teenagers and twentysomethings, who have been styling their hair and uploading photos of themselves on Twitter and Instagram. It requires careful work with a curling iron and hairspray, but the eye-catching results are surely worth it.

(Video Link)

Carina Blofield of Africa Geographic recently visited elephant habitats in Botswana and Zimbabwe. On the safari, she stayed at the Elephant Sands Lodge in Botswana. It's located at a popular elephant watering hole, so it's a great place to see these giant animals up close.

(Photo: Alistair Campbell)

6-year old Charlotte Campbell of Taupo, New Zealand got her first cochlear implant 2 years ago. Now she has two. Her father, Alistair, wanted her to feel less self-conscious about them. So he shaved his head and got a tattoo of a cochlear implant right where it would be if he had one, too. He told the New Zealand Herald that Charlotte loves it:

Mr Campbell had shaved his head completely to get the tattoo done but said he would be letting his hair grow back.

He'd shave it off again and show off the tattoo at "special occasions," or if Charlotte wanted to see it.

When Charlotte saw her dad's version of a cochlear implant she giggled, touched it and told him it was "cool".

-via Fashionably Geek

(Photo: A_M_I_R_)

Once Upon a Cone is an ice cream concession business in Texas. The top inflates to look like a vanilla ice cream cone. This walking ice cream cone would like to get an ice cream cone from the ice cream cone.

Here's a secret: the ice ceam cone isn't a man inside an ice cream cone costume, but a robot controlled by tiny ice cream cones inside.

-via Tastefully Offensive

(Photo: Amalavida.tv)

Butterfly's revenge was sweet. Oh, yes, so very, very sweet. Turtle had finally paid for his crimes in full. He wept at what was to become of him and the life he had built--as the empire he had forged with his own claws crumbled around him.

Butterfly savored the moment in the most literal way possible by drinking the tears of his most hated enemy. Years later, he would, while reminiscing of this perfect moment, claim that he could still taste them in his mouth.

Turtle remembered, too. He couldn't ever forget that time of supreme humiliation while down in the gahenna where Butterfly had left him. It was carved into his soul.

He had learned something from that horrible moment. It was something important. It was something that he would one day teach to Butterfly.

Never leave an enemy behind you.

Actually, there's no reason to think that this Julia Butterfly (Dryas iulia) and turtle in Ecuador know each other. The butterfly is engaging in lachryphagy, which is the insect practice of drinking tears from larger animals. The butterfly is doing this for nutritional purposes only--as far as we know.

-via Twisted Sifter

(Image: Guinness World Records)

Sven Hagemeier’s birthday lasted 46 hours, setting a new Guinness World Record for the longest birthday ever. He accomplished this feat by flying from New Zealand, then to Australia, and then to Hawaii, crossing over multiple time zones (6, by my count) and the International Date Line the process. Rachel Swatman writes for Guinness World Records:

Sven's elongated birthday celebrations beat the previous record set by Nargis Bhimji of Karachi, celebrated her birthday for 35 hours 25min by crossing time zones after flying from Karachi to Singapore and then to San Francisco back in June 1998. […]

The birthday-boy spent the majority of two days in an aeroplane enjoying plane food, working out how to stay comfortable on long-haul flights, and communicating using hand-gestures.

(Photo: Lt. Col. Presley M. Rixey)

Siwash, a duck, was the mascot of the First Battalion of the Tenth Marine Regiment and later the entire Second Marine Division during World War II. He went ashore with the Marines at the Battle of Tarawa in 1943. There he was cited by fellow Marines for fighting a Japanese-owned rooster. The January 17, 1944 issue of Life magazine quotes the citation:

For courageous action and wounds received on Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, November 1943. With utter disregard for his own personal safety, Siwash, upon reaching the beach, without hesitation engaged the enemy in fierce combat, namely, one rooster of Japanese ancestry, and though wounded on the head by repeated pecks, he soon routed the opposition. He refused medical aid until all wounded members of his section had been care of.

The article notes that Siwash was skilled at the Marine sport of drinking beer. After the war, he lived on a farm before working as a Marine recruiter during the Korean War. He died in 1954 in Chicago of a liver affliction.

-via Weird Universe

As you can see, there is a steady progression of thingedness in pop culture. Things become more thing-like from 1957 until 1982. It begins with Dr. Seuss's Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Cat, then proceeds to The Thing from Fantastic Four, Thing T. Thing from The Addams Family, and then inevitably to John Carpenter's The Thing.

Thereafter, there is a pronounced stagnation in thingliness, which is tragic. Illustrator Dan Meth is silent about this fact in his chart, but his implication is clear.

Twitter user Tim Beshara of Tasmania sends along this photo by Gillian Abbot, a wildlife caretaker. It shows Doodlebug, an orphaned wallaby. He doesn’t have his family anymore, so he hugs his teddy bear.

-via io9

Jimmy Two Hands, a musician and cartoonist in Chicago, brings Garfield into the dark and deep world of heavy metal with Hetfield. It’s a parody of Jim Davis’s classic comic that replaces Garfield with a cat version of James Hetfield, the lead vocalist and co-founder of the band Metallica. Hetfield engages in his normal life by kicking Odie, insulting Jon, and eating lasagna—all while quoting appropriate lyrics from Metallica’s discography.

-via Dangerous Minds

The blogger behind Ideas from Everywhere wanted to offer his 5-year old daughter something special on her birthday. He writes “Stop buying your kids crap toys. Believe me, memories last longer than any toy.” And he’s definitely provided her with a memory she’ll cherish for the rest of her life.

While she napped on garden pillows, he built from individual straws an enormous crazy straw fully 50 meters long. When she woke up, the tip was hanging over her. You can see more photos here.

-via Incredible Things

(Video Link)

This very smart Australian Shepherd named Patch gets it: saying the word “Mama” results in food. He’s determined to get it instead of the baby, so he actually says the word! Baby isn’t happy about it.

-via Tastefully Offensive

(Photo: Ian Robertson)

Human sperm cells need to be cooler than the normal internal temperature of the human body, so it's helpful that the testicles are housed externally in the scrotum, which is conveniently air-cooled.

Well, at least it can be--if you wear a kilt! Before humanity was cursed with pants and later with form-fitting underwear, men wore clothing that permitted their testicles to remain cool. E.J. Kompanie writes in the Scottish Medical Journal that men who wish to sire offspring should do likewise. They can do this by wearing kilts, which could increase the likelihood of conception:

Wearing a Scottish kilt in a traditional ('regimental') way may have clear health-related benefits. Kilt wearing likely produces an ideal physiological scrotal environment, which in turn helps maintain normal scrotal temperature, which is known to be beneficial for robust spermatogenesis and good sperm quality. […] Based on literature on scrotal temperature, spermatogenesis and fertility, the hypothesis that men who regularly wear a kilt during the years in which they wish to procreate will, as a group, have significantly better rates of sperm quality and higher fertility.

-via Seriously, Science?