A new species of hero shrew was found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2012 and given the awesome name Thor's hero shrew (Scutisorex thori). How does such a tiny animal deserve such a heroic name? Hero shrews have a superpower -the strongest backbone of any mammal on earth!

Between our rib cage and pelvis, we have five specialised vertebrae called lumbar vertebrae. Allen found that the African hero shrew can have up to 11 lumbar vertebrae, and each is fortified by a unique interlocking arrangement that makes the entire backbone super-strong. This was no news to the locals that lived alongside the species – the Mangbetu people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) named it “hero shrew” long before it was given its scientific name.

In fact, the Mangbetu would show off a parlor trick in which a grown man would stand on a hero shrew and then watch it walk away uninjured. The newly-found hero shrew is the second species of hero shrew, and is even smaller than its cousin. Scientists aren't sure, but think the strong backbone may help the shrew pull tree parts apart to find grubs to eat. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: William Stanley)

(YouTube link)

Conlett White of Hove, East Sussex, UK, planned to play a prank on his housemate, Richard Hammond. White made a special tuna salad meal for Hammond and left it on the counter. It was "special" because all the food was laced with lots of pepper. Since he couldn't be there to see Hammond's reaction, White rigged a camera to catch the scene. Instead, the camera caught a seagull who came in through the window for a free meal. Now, pepper doesn't bother birds, but after the seagull ate an entire plate of food, he got his payback while trying to escape the kitchen. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

Back in the 1960s, when adults were still under the delusion that children loved clowns, Post advertised their Sugar Rice Krinkles with a clown apparently named Ka-rinkle. The stuff that fueled our nightmares. For another dose of surreal advertising, see the first Ronald McDonald ad.

-via Laughing Squid

A new meme compares the awful things that happen in the Star Wars saga and the HBO series Games of Thrones. Continue reading to see a lot more, but be warned they contain spoilers, if you're not current on both series. However, if you don't know what happens in Star Wars, you are too young to confront these issues anyway.   

(YouTube link)

One of the most popular Neatorama posts ever was 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits in 2007. We've told you about quite a few more since then. Now mental_floss video has Johnn Green quickly explaining some very strange ways Mother Nature gets different animals to reproduce. It all probably makes perfect sense if you're one of these animals. At least we hope so.    

Hey look! It's time for our collaboration with the wonderful What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? It doesn't really matter if you do, because we are looking for the funniest guesses. You can win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But first, read the rules:

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners who submit funny and/or clever (albeit ultimately wrong) answers will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

If you guess the correct answer, you'll get a big pat on the back.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

There is another picture of the whatisit item at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: the pictured tool is a buffing wheel rake, for removing excess buffing compound from a cloth buffing wheel, a photo of one in use can be seen here. Steve Pauk guessed that right, and as promised, wins a virtual pat on the back. We have t-shirts for the two funniest answers this week, one for Trish Schroeder, who declared it to be the hairbrush that Kid's stylist (from Kid n' Play) used to create his hair in the 90's. The other shirt goes to Sam Bacon, who said it's a corn remover for the Hulk's feet! See the answers to all this week's mystery objects at the What Is It? blog.

(YouTube link)

The latest in Ze Frank's "True Facts" series is about owls. You'll see cute, creepy, and weird owls, as expected, and just a little gore, because they are predators. -via Buzzfeed

You've probably seen sensory maps (homunculus) that show how much of the brain is devoted to the senses from different parts of the body. This picture shows a sort of sensory map for a mouse in that the body parts are resized to show how much of the brain is devoted to each. The face spots represent the whiskers. It looks like a children's cartoon version of a mouse, doesn't it? An article at The Loom shows the same mouse drawn in normal proportions, and also a sensory map in which scientists manipulated the genes of baby mice to see how the map would be affected. They already knew that experience shapes the sensory map as an animals grows, but genetics and therefore chemistry also play a part. Read more about this research in the article by Carl Zimmer. Link

(Image credit: Andreas Zembrzycki and Jamie Simon, Salk Institute for Biological Studies)

Heritage Auctions in Dallas had a photo album in their June auction featuring 40 photographs from the Yukon Gold Rush. It once belonged to Patterson Billups, who lived in the Klondike from 1898 to 1910. Some of the pictures, published at Observatory, show boomtowns, wealthy landowners, hard working miners on site, First Nations people, landscapes, and formal group pictures. Link -via Everlasting Blort  

Artist Nickolay Lamm (previously at Neatorama) wondered what Wi-Fi would look like if it were visible. He partnered with NASA astrobiologist M. Browning Vogel to illustrate it.

"She provided all the details. I made sure that she approved of the images, and essentially what happened is that she guided me through the whole illustrated process to make sure they were scientifically accurate as possible," Lamm says.

Vogel explains that Wi-Fi is an energy field with a frequency shorter than radio waves but longer than microwaves. Wi-Fi waves are about three to five inches between crests, which a computer reads as "1." (The troughs of the wave are read as "0"). That information then translates into the chains of binary code that dictate the Internet. Lamm and Vogel decided to use red, orange, and yellow to show the distinct Wi-Fi channels, or segments, that make up a spherical field, which can reach 20 to 30 meters from a typical Wi-Fi box.

See several different ways Lamm illustrated the information at Fast Co. Exist. Link -via
Summer Rayne Oakes

Silicon Valley got its name from from its industry, but that wasn't just the brain trusts that call the area home now. From the mid-'60s to the mid-'80s, its towns were booming with factories, making hi-tech components for the computer age. Alexis Madrigal found a copy of Rich's Guide to Santa Clara County's Silicon Valley, published in 1983. This inspired him to find out how the area had changed in the past thirty years, from the computer chip manufacturing center it once was to the office space it is now. He found out the transformation of Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View, and San Jose didn't come about just from global outsourcing. See, when those factories were built, they were revolutionary in that they didn't "look" like factories.

"Companies had to follow strict building codes, which included 'complete concealment' of things like smokestacks, generators, transformers, ducts, storage tanks, and air conditioning equipment," environmental historian Aaron Sachs wrote in 1999.

Other municipalities wanted to encourage similar developments, and as Sachs concludes, "Stanford Industrial Park essentially replicated itself several times over--each time spurring the construction of new expressways and strip malls in neighboring areas." What began as Stanford dean and Silicon Valley godfather Fred Terman's dream to build "a community of technical scholars" in pleasant industrial parks became the architectural standard for the entire high-tech manufacturing world.

But the manicured look and feel had consequences. Storage tanks were placed underground, out of sight and out of mind. Until suddenly, in 1981, people in south San Jose living near Fairchild Semiconductor and IBM realized they were drinking water contaminated by the two firms' manufacturing plants.

That touched off a search to see if similar leaks were occurring at other sites. "Anyone who looked for leaks found them," Will Bruhns of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Board told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. The final count found that 75 of the 96 underground tanks in the south Bay had contaminated the ground and/or water around them.

So Silicon Valley became dotted with Superfund sites. Read more about it at the Atlantic. Link

(Image credit: Alexis Madrigal)

(YouTube link)

Game warden Adam Smith had to rescue a bear cub from a bear-proof dumpster in Azusa, California. The problem was that someone had left the lid open. When the lid somehow slammed shut during the bear family picnic, one of two cubs was inside. His mother tried to lift the lid, but …it's a bear-proof dumpster. Smith used his lights and siren to keep the mother bear away while he raised the dumpster lid. The cub jumped out and headed off into the darkness with his mother and sibling. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

Here's the topic for your cartoon short: balloon dogs in a cactus patch. Yes, it's as delightful as it sounds. -via the Presurfer  

Graphic designer Khoa Ho's minimalist illustrations reveal the motivations and inner conflicts of your favorite comic book superheroes. See Superman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and more in his series called Superheroes - Past/Present. Link -via Flavorwire

Mark Bryan paints lovely pictures, many of them with UFOs or aliens incorporated into pastoral settings. The encounter with Bambi has to be my favorite! See more of them at his website. Many are for sale. Link -via Boing Boing