Nine chimpanzees who grew up in a Dutch safari park would issue what BBC News calls “an excited, high-pitched” sound when asking for apples. In 2010, when they arrived at their new home in a zoo in Edinburgh, Scotland, they found that phrase ineffective. Scottish apes apparently use “a disinterested grunt.” But within 3 years, these chimpanzees were grunting the Scottish way. This indicates that chimpanzees can use grunts as human words--changeable expressions representing concepts:
The findings, reported in the journal Current Biology, suggest that when chimp grunts refer to objects, they can function in a surprisingly similar way to human words - instead of simply being governed by how the chimp feels about the object.
Indeed, our ability to learn new "words" from our peers might date back to a shared ancestor with chimpanzees, some six million years ago.
Of course, we'll only know that they're true Scotsmen if they wear their kilts regimental style.
Three small limestone islands off the Amalfi coast of Italy are known as La Galli or The Sirenusas (The Sirens). Tradition holds that it was here that Odysseus of Homer’s Odyssey encountered the tempting songs of the Sirens. Now the islands hold privately owned resorts and luxury homes. Some of the wealthiest people in the world own seaside homes on these islands or spend time at the expensive rental estates there.
When viewed from the right angle, one of those islands looks like a dolphin.
On Christmas Day of last year, Okaloosa County, Florida Sheriff’s deputies responded to reports of a car fire. Officers Joseph Trimboli and Eric Keyes were wearing body cameras which recorded the encounter. They found an intoxicated and incoherent man inside a car that was burning and filling with smoke. The cops smashed open the driver’s window and pulled him out of it. Paramedics took him to a hospital, where he was treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns.
On Thursday, Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley presented Deputies Trimboli and Keyes with medals of merit in recognition of their work on that Christmas Day.
The wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) is a resilient creature. You can find it as far south as Alabama and as far north as Alaska and northern Canada. It's the only frog that lives in the wild north of the Arctic Circle.
How does an amphibian survive the harsh winters of those frozen lands? It freezes. Scientists working in Alaska found that local wood frogs can freeze solid for up to 7 months. When the ice melts, the frogs thaw and, amazingly, are still alive! Deborah Netburn wrote about this phenomenon last year in the Los Angeles Times:
"On an organismal level they are essentially dead," said Don Larson, a graduate student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks who studies frogs. "The individual cells are still functioning, but they have no way to communicate with each other."
Larson is one of several researchers who published their findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology. They found that the frogs produce a lot of glucose during the winter, which keeps their cells viable:
Nicholas Gurewitch rarely updates his brilliant webcomic Perry Bible Fellowship. You can go through the archives and laugh, over and over again. But sometimes, at special moments, you can read new, freshly baked PBF. When you can do so, always seize the opportunity.
Last October 19, skydiver Forest Pullman and his passenger jumped out of an airplane at 13,000 feet of elevation over Thailand. They were having a good time for a few seconds. But right after they jumped, the pilot turned the plane around 180º and flew right at them. At the 0:15 mark in this video, the plane hits part of their chute and comes within a few feet of hitting them.
Pullman captured the entire event on a GoPro camera. His passenger seems unaware of how close they came to dying.
They're not Federation credits or gold-pressed latinum, but if you're in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, you can use these coins as legal tender. On one side of each dollar coin is the face of Elizabeth II, the Queen of Tuvalu. On the other is either Captain Kirk or the USS Enterprise. The Perth Mint of Australia offers these collectible coins made of almost pure silver.
P.S. If you know of a bank that will exchange quatloos for US Dollars, please let me know promptly. I need a good rate or I'm going to take a big hit unloading these thralls.
Cafes where you get to pet animals while you eat are all the rage, especially in East Asia. There are cat cafes, dog cafes, owl cafes, and goat cafes, among others. On February 19, the Year of the Sheep in the Chinese zodiac begins, so one clever restaurater in Seoul is bringing sheep into his cafe.
In the South Korean culture, On Demand News informs us, sheep symbolize "kindness, humility, and respect for parents." Many Koreans visit sheep farms at this time. Lee Kwang-ho, the owner of the Thanks to Nature Cafe, saw this tradition as a great opportunity to draw in customers.
In the 2012 movie The Avengers, some of the greatest heroes of the Marvel Universe join forces to battle an alien invasion from a wormhole that opens in New York City. At the end of the film, the heroes rejoice in their triumph, which is a reasonable reaction. But most of them aren't property owners in New York City. People who are did nothing but suffer in that film because the city was thoroughly ravaged during the battle.
Although many buildings in the fight's East Midtown arena suffered extensive structural damage, most were limited to the more superficial destruction of windows, facade and some interiors. Those buildings that had their tops crushed, though, would be especially costly and time-consuming to fix, as would be Grand Central Station, through which a warship crashed.
"The extensive damage to Grand Central Terminal could prove highly disruptive, depending on the subsurface damage to the subway system," KAC notes. "Although such damage is unlikely, as the 9/11 events showed, collapsing buildings can cause significant damage to subsurface infrastructure such as gas, communications and electrical systems. Detailed site surveys will be required to assess the state of the subterranean infrastructure."
I found this article via The Geek Twins, with whom I had a lively discussion on Twitter. I have strong opinions on these matters. In short, if you live in the Marvel or DC universes, don't live in a large city. Don't live in a city where there are superheroes. If a superhero begins operations in your city, move. Superheroes attract supervillains and supervillains will kill you or destroy your property. Superheroes are nothing but trouble, so avoid them as much as practically possible.
Ryan Bruxvoort designed a home for sparrows that are ready to set new, higher standards for elegance. He tells Design Boom:
my goal is to create a shelter that compliments its environment while at the same time attracting sparrows to inhabit it. ultimately I wish for this to culminate into a form that shows empathy for the sparrow, in a serene, carefully crafted manner. this led to the development of a delicate, almost fragile look that has been constructed in a manner that affords tremendous structural integrity. this light yet resilient quality of the house is to be reflective of the sparrow itself.
Bruxvoort's birdhouse consists of maple panels cut into 65 strips for the outside covering and 24 blocks for the interior structure. 2 strips of wood veneer help hold it together.
This natural wonder is located in Silver Falls State Park in Oregon. I think that it is specifically the 177-foot South Falls, one of the 10 waterfalls in that park. Photographer Jared Decker climbed inside a cave behind the waterfall and snapped three shots, which he stitched together into this beautiful image. It is as if Nature herself has an eye and she gazes back at you.
Carter Asmann, an artist in Encinitas, California, is incredibly skilled at producing precise renderings of machines in pencil. Lately, he's been staining paper with coffee cup rings, then filling in images of motorcycles around them. His command of the details of his craft is impressive! Asmann's drawings are so technically good that they looks like photographs of the motorcycles. You can see more at his Instagram account.
One popular take on this concept is that terrible yet persistent idea: the standing desk. A standing desk requires that you stand whenever you need to do work, instead of sitting in a comfortable chair. If you're in reasonably good health, you can probably stand up for a long time. Maybe even an entire work shift. Perhaps the experience isn't so awful after all.
There ain't no party like a manatee party! When the manatees show up, you know that the party is going to rock all night.
And they showed up in numbers at the Three Sisters Springs north of Tampa, Florida on Monday. About 300 manatees swarmed a 1 acre area, forcing managers to shut down boating and swimming to make room for them. This is about double the largest number of manatees they've ever seen at the site at the same time.
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