The illegal wildlife trade is a rapidly expanding industry that's quietly affecting every country in the world. But why has the market gotten so big? And why are so many criminals getting into the game right now? Mental_floss has the answers.

Just how big is the international animal racket?

The black market for wildlife is second only to the illegal drug business in size. It's currently estimated to be worth more than $20 billion. Yes, that's billion with a "b." And it's not just elephant tusks that are changing hands under the table. For every type of endangered species out there, there's an eager collector waiting to shell out a lot of cash. For example, a pair of Queen Alexandra's Birdwings—the world's largest butterflies, with wingspans of up to 14 inches—sells for about $10,000. A baby chimpanzee goes for as much as $50,000. But the black market isn't just for cute critters. In March 2009, New York officials broke up a huge smuggling ring that specialized in snapping turtles, rattlesnakes, and salamanders.

Why are so many criminals getting into wildlife smuggling?

In addition to being extremely profitable, it's pretty difficult to get caught smuggling endangered animals. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is staffed with fewer than 400 law enforcement agents; by comparison, the Drug Enforcement Agency has 11,000 employees. And if you do get nabbed, the punishments are much less severe than in the drug trade. Let's say you're a narcotics dealer, and officials find you with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of heroin. Even if it's your first offense, you could face a minimum of 10 years in prison, and you'll be a convicted felon. But if you're an animal smuggler with no prior convictions and you get caught with an equivalent cache of illegal butterflies, you might not even spend the night in jail. And if you're a repeat offender, the consequences still aren't so bad. When Hisayoshi Kojima, the world's most wanted butterfly thief, pleaded guilty to 17 smuggling-related charges in 2007, he received 21 months in prison and a fine of just under $39,000. Such low-risk, high-reward conditions have led many drug traffickers to diversify into the wildlife business.

But what's so bad about dealing butterflies?

Who would bother making a souped-up bumper car? Why, it's Colin Furze, of course! He installed a 600cc motorcycle engine in an old bumper car, and off he goes!

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It was a dare from the TV show Top Gear. They picked the right guy to goad into such a project. Don't try this at home. You'll find a more technical explanation of how he did it in these two videos. -via Tastefully Offensive

See more of Furze's insane projects here.

Photoshop (and other graphics software programs) made photo manipulation accessible to everyone.  Outside of professionals, no one has taken to it like amateur internet comedians. We see so much in our daily web surfing, so eventually you'll see a movie screenshot and think, "You know what would go with this picture? This other picture!" Thanks to the folks who have time to do it, we can all enjoy those moments.

Check out a gallery of clever and funny movie scene manipulations at TVOM.

You may have seen one of the trendy fancy wedding cakes that incorporated a sugar crystal geode, but this goes a step further. Alex Yeatts created what appear to be natural geodes, but they're entirely edible! Just watch him crack open this amethyst:

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Yeatts worked for six months to perfect his chocolate and candy crystal geodes. See more images of Yeatts' edible geodes at Teen Vogue. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Phillip)

They were once grand halls of a secret society, many with an opulent architecture that befitted a club descended from a stonemason's guild. After peaking in 1959, the number of Freemasons has fallen dramatically, and declining membership makes it difficult to fill large temples, much less maintain them. Once a man cave for the entire community, they now sit empty and unused.

(Image credit: Flickr user Phillip)

Many of these buildings, long ago erected with pride, have fallen in ruin. Some have been repurposed, and some have been demolished, but they've also been photographed by urban explorers so we can view them in their twilight state. See a selection of abandoned masonic temples from around the world at Urban Ghosts.

Social Security numbers are confusing. The SSA tells you to never give your number out except to your employer and the government, but then the bank, the utility office, schools, and every store to visit want to know yours. And what do those numbers mean, anyway?     

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CGP Grey (previously at Neatorama) explains social security numbers from their beginning to us in a way we can all understand, which is what he's good at. Meanwhile, Social Security is not so good at security. -via reddit

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This is just silly enough to be satisfying. Erwin Trummer recorded candy as it melts, reversed some of the sequences, and then set them to classical music. It doesn't make a bit of sense, but it's fun to watch. -via Tastefully Offensive

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What's been going on in the world of archaeology? John Green fills us in on new stuff, big stuff, and fascinating stuff in this week's episode of the mental_floss List Show. To be honest, it's mostly old stuff, though -very, very old stuff, even if it's new to you and me.

Around the turn of the 20th century, people were nuts about new technology, even stuff that now seems so odd you have to wonder what they were thinking. Take kites: if you had enough of them, one could lift a man high in the sky, as if he were flying. It was fun! But could it be used for military purposes? Armies used weather balloons for surveillance. Surely a man-lifting kite would be better… at least that was the view of one Samuel Franklin Cody, who modeled his Wild West Show career after Buffalo Bill Cody. Kite designer Scott Skinner, who researches the history of kites, tells us about Cody.  

“While touring Great Britain he became enamored with kites,” says Skinner. Kite enthusiasm in Europe was flourishing; serious hobbyists and scientists alike read kiting magazines and gathered at annual fetes. Cody built and flew them, and finally decided to throw his effort into designing a man-lifting kite that could be turned into dollar signs and prestige.

By 1901, Cody had patented a version of a man-lifting kite, and according to biographer Garry Jenkins, was flexing his entrepreneurial muscles. “By then he has already written to the war office, offering them first option on ‘SF Cody’s Aroplaine [sic] or War-Kite: A boy’s toy turned into an instrument of war,’” he wrote in Colonel Cody and the Flying Cathedral.

The military use of man-lifting kites soon faded with the rise of the airplane, which even Cody preferred. Besides, we eventually figured out how to use airborne cameras without a photographer. Read about the fascinating Samuel Franklin Cody and his kite scheme at Atlas Obscura.

Scribes decorated medieval manuscripts with all kinds of weird thing, like rabbits, cats, Star Wars characters, and lots of snails. Snails very often appear to be doing battles with knights -or, more accurately, the knight is attempting to do battle with the snail. Vox takes a closer look at this phenomena.  

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It could have been a political insult at the beginning, which turned into an inside joke over time. A medieval meme, as it were. -Thanks, Phil Edwards!  

After 12 seasons, the TV series Bones came to an end last night. The show focused on forensic anthropologist "Bones" Brennan and FBI agent Seeley Booth and the crimes they solved together. The series was based on the work of Kathy Reichs, a forensic anthropologist turned crime writer turned TV producer, so it had a sense of authenticity other crime procedurals lack. Fans of Bones will want to check out the list of the most dramatic moment of each season at TVOM. And of you haven't followed the show, it might set you up for binge-watching with home video.

Janelle Shane spent some time teaching a neural network how to generate recipes. She set it to learn from 30,000 existing recipes, but learning to cook is hard. After all, it can't taste the results. But even before the recipes are completed, it had a difficult time learning ingredients, measurements, and processes. The results are quite interesting. For example, here are some ingredients the machine suggests.

1 ½ teaspoon chicken brown water
1 teaspoon dry chopped leaves
1/3 cup shallows
10 oz brink custard
¼ cup bread liquid
2 cup chopped pureiped sauce
½ cup baconfroots
¼ teaspoon brown leaves
½ cup vanilla pish and sours
½ cup white pistry sweet craps
1 tablespoon mold water
¼ teaspoon paper
1 cup dried chicken grisser
15 cup dried bottom of peats
¼ teaspoon finely grated ruck

And this is a thing that it came up with repeatedly for some reason, and was quite adamant that I use:

1 cup plaster cheese

Shane also fed recipes into a different neural network that had already been trained on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 32 minutes. Test corners to see if done, as center will seem like the next horror of Second House.

Whip ½ pint of heavy cream. Add 4 Tbsp. brandy or rum to possibly open things that will never be wholly reported.

Cook over a hot grill, or over glowing remains of tunnel mouth.

With blender on high speed, add ice cubes, one at a time, making certain each cube is the end.

Dice the pulp of the eggplant and put it in a bowl with the vast stark rocks.

NOTE:  As this is a tart rather than a cheesecake, you should be disturbed.

She later fed her cooking network some text from H.P. Lovecraft to see what would happen. Yeah, that was just as funny. Read an archive of the experiments at Postcards from the Frontiers of Science. -via Metafilter 

A Japanese photographer who goes by Nyan Kichi has made friends with a colony of feral cats. He's found that the cats particularly love to play in an area where the street has a lot of drain holes.



They've made a game of jumping into and peeking out of these holes!  



They don't seem to enjoy Nyan Kichi's attempts at a gentle game of Whack-a-Mole, but they don't mind having their pictures taken at all. See a selection of the best pictures at The Dodo, and see all the pictures at Instagram. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Urban Spree)

Tequila Cloud is an art installation that is a cloud made of tequila, that rains tequila on command. In case you're thinking of renting one for your next party, there's only one, and it was on display earlier this month in Germany.

The Mexican Tourism Board installed the cloud in Berlin at the Urban Spree compound in an art gallery and said “real tequila was turned into gas to create a floating cloud that rains tequila on command.” The art installation seems to be a cloud with lights to simulate lightening that is filled with tequila gas vapor that then rains down and fills a basin with tequila. If you’re not patient enough to collect your shot from a freakin’ cloud, there’s a handy tap that dispenses them, too.

Lucky visitors got to drink for free. Now, if the relations between the U.S. amd Mexico ever improve, we might get a chance to see it ourselves. See more pictures of the Tequila Cloud at Uproxx.

The first movie in the expanded Harry Potter universe is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which made over $800 million in 2016. But it doesn't matter how much people love a movie; Screen Junkies will find a way to turn that enthusiasm on its head with an Honest Trailer.

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set in the 1920s, earlier than the Potter films, and is supposed to set up a series of several movies based on wizards in America. I don't think there's spoilers in this Honest Trailer. I haven't seen the movie, and I still have no idea what the plot entails.