Cats normally look dignified and downright majestic in their luxurious fur coats. But occasionally, a cat needs to be shaved for medical reasons, like surgery or a skin condition. That's when we get to see the fat, wrinkles, and lumps that a fur coat hides. Or in some cases, a really skinny cat is revealed underneath all that fluff. I once had a cat I thought was big until she was shaved, and then realized that she was 90% hair. In these seven images, exposed skin can make a cat look like he forgot to put his pants on, or rolled up his sleeves for some reason. They are blissfully unaware of how funny they look to us, except for cat number seven who is daring us to say anything about his condition. Or maybe he looks at his humans that way all the time. Let's hope these kitties recover from whatever caused this outrage and that their fur grows back to normal soon. -via Boing Boing

Most of my life, I assumed that the way you could tell alligators from crocodiles is that alligators lived in Florida and crocodiles lived in other countries. But there are crocodiles in Florida, and in fact there were once a lot of Florida crocodiles. The crocodile population has declined a lot in comparison to alligators, mainly because of encroaching human development on the seashore. But crocodiles still hang on in Florida, with most of the remaining animals living in the canals near the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant south of Miami. The cooling canals transfer heat away from the power plant, and the warm waters created a whole new ecosystem. This warm, salty water with no humans living on the shores is the perfect place for crocodiles and the creatures they feed on.

Ans now that we know about these crocodiles living near a nuclear facility, how long will it be until we get a movie about killer mutant Florida crocodiles? That won't be any good for the crocs' survival.

In the hands of a skilled mixologist, a flaming drink can be a floor show in itself. Making and serving such drinks are a ritual, a ceremony in honor of the person who ordered it. But besides that, cocktails that have been kissed with fire are more than the sum of their parts. After the pyrotechnics, the drink is warm and has a certain caramelized flavor that it wouldn't have otherwise.

If your experience with fiery drinks is limited to flaming shots, you are in for a treat. Atlas Obscura takes a good look at several classic flaming cocktail recipes, including Charles Dickens' punch, which is like a boozy lemonade that's been cooked just enough to make it special. Then there's the hot ale flip, which doesn't exactly involve flame, but cooking a drink with a hot poker fresh from the fire is, uh, flamboyant enough. Or consider the show-stopping Blue Blazer, mixed cup to cup while on fire, and the decadent flaming coffee drink café brûlot. Read about all these, plus the real secret behind getting alcohol to stay lit at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Tom Head)

It's a scary operation, and you may have even tried it yourself at one time or another. It's the kitty transplant. Cats don't always want to go to the place you want them to be, so the transplant has to be done very carefully. Specifically, the cat must be kept in the same position as it is being transplanted. Will the cat take root where it is transplanted? There's no way to predict, and the odds are against it. Adverse reactions range from a violent action during hte procedure to merely wandering off afterward. But if you're lucky, the cat will flourish in its new spot. In this recreation, Abram Engle turns to an expert for advice about getting his orange cat Kurt to relax in bed instead of his usual cat basket. Let's listen in as they attempt a kitty transplant, and sweat it out waiting to see if the operation was a success. (via Nag on the Lake)

When Germany was defeated by Allied forces in 1945, the nation was in chaos. Hitler was dead, his generals either fled or were arrested, and most government agencies were barely functioning. The nation was partitioned into zones, with the American zone comprising 40,000 square miles containing 16 million Germans. What was left of the German police force was diminished by the war and distrusted by the citizens, while corruption, black market trade, and banditry ran rampant. Meanwhile, almost all US soldiers were heading home.

To deal with the situation, the US launched the US Constabulary. It was an elite service meant to cover a large area with as few law enforcement officers as possible. Soldiers were trained at an American police academy in Germany, and then given quite a bit of leeway in enforcing the law. But because of that, each member of the Constabulary was held to the highest ethical standrads. They were trained in the delicate art of winning the German people's trust while resisting the temptation to enrich themselves in the postwar chaos. The members of the US Constabulary were called "Circle C Cowboys" because of the insignia they wore, a yellow circle with a "C" and a lightning bolt. They also wore distinctive yellow scarves that made them instantly recognizable by the Germans. The Circle C Cowboys served as law enforcement in postwar Germany for years, but began drawing back their numbers in 1948. By 1952, the program ended as Germany began to stand on its own feet. Read about the Circle C Cowboys at Military History Now. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: US-Army and Deutsches Historisches Museum)

YouTuber Photo Owl Time Lapse brings us an up close and personal view of what happens to a watermelon as it ages. He carved a hole into the melon, removed a large part of the fruit and juice, and installed a GoPro camera. He also drilled a hole to provide light for the video.

The first thing that happens is due to gravity. We find out that even a watermelon that has been drained retains a lot of water, which pools at the bottom. Then over time, gasses form and bubble up and mold and other fungus moves in. Meanwhile, the juice stagnates and the upper part starts to dry out. We can enjoy it because we aren't subject to the smell. Eventually, the top of the fruit collapses and the camera is drawn back. But the rotting goes on for twice as long -for 128 days in all! By that time the putrid juice is drying up, but it's so toxic that it peels the paint off the inside of the container. Let's hope this happened nowhere near the videographer's living quarters. -via Boing Boing

The year 1975 was just yesterday, but it was also 50 years ago. That was back went you could go into a record store and watch the staff open a case of new vinyl albums with artful and easy-to-see covers. Some of the new releases had been eagerly awaited, like Physical Graffiti. Led Zeppelin's sixth album contained the titled track to their fifth album, Houses of the Holy. It was just the kind of thing they'd do. Other albums were surprisingly good, like Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run. He must've been really young when he recorded it, and it was his third album.

One that I'd looked particularly forward to was the new Queen album, A Night at the Opera. A fellow I admired (who I eventually married) introduced me to Queen with their album Sheer Heart Attack a year earlier. The first single from A Night at the Opera was a nonsensical operatic tune named "Bohemian Rhapsody." Oh, I see now that you're having trouble believing those albums are 50 years old. Well, they will be sometime this year, and so will 17 other classic albums that were released in 1975 that you can read about at Mental Floss.

Have you ever heard of a depressed fish? The Kaikyokan aquarium in Shimonoseki, Japan, closed to the public last month while the facility undergoes renovations. But that doesn't mean the fish and other aquarium animals aren't still there. A large sunfish that lives in a solitary tank began acting strangely. He quit eating his usual jellyfish diet, barely swam, and banged his head against the walls. The fish appeared to be sick. Caretakers couldn't figure out what was wrong, but suspected he might be lonely without the crowds of people filing through to see him every day. They couldn't bring in visitors during the renovation work, but they did the next best thing, by hanging clothing and cardboard cutouts of people on the side of the tank! What's even more impressive is that the scheme works. The fish has started eating again, and all seems to be well.  -via kottke

Just yesterday we had a mini-tutorial on cholesterol, and now we find out a possible consequence of too much of it, featuring that hapless superhero Florida Man.

As reported in the journal JAMA Cardiology, a man in Florida was on a carnivore diet for eight months. He was eating cheese by the pound, butter by the stick, and hamburgers with added fat. His motivations weren't clear, but he reportedly lost weight and improved his "mental clarity." But when he noticed a painless yellow discharge from his hands, he went to a Tampa hospital. It was cholesterol oozing from his skin! His cholesterol level was more than 1,000 mg/dL (high cholesterol is anything over 240 mg/dL). He was diagnosed with xanthelasma, which is when the body is so overloaded with cholesterol that it, yes, oozes out. Read more details on the case at Ars Technica.

(Image credit:  JAMA Cardiologym 2024, Marmagkiolis et al.)

Scientists who keep their eyes on seismographs picked up a unique signal last year that lasted nine days. It went right past most of us, but researchers couldn't figure out what it meant. Did we really have an earthquake that lasted nine days? The signal was too steady for that, besides being strangely sustained. There was also a tsunami in Greenland, a wave taller than any seen before. Did an earthquake cause that? It took almost a year for scientists to figure out what happened to cause the nine-day anomaly, but when they did, it was not only surprising, but almost comical to picture. Yet it's not funny, because these extreme events will only get worse as the temperature of earth rises. Reid Reimers of SciShow explains how the mystery of the nine-day signal was unraveled. There's a 40-second promotional break at the three-minute mark. -via Damn Interesting

In my lifetime, we have gone from zero people ever having been in space (as defined as 50 miles above the earth) to more than 700 people who have been up there. Who are these people? Scientific American crunched the numbers to give us some neat visualizations about space travelers. The graphic above is the latter portion of the chart that tracks the ages of people who have gone to space. When the NASA astronaut program began, all astronauts were military test pilots and those who went to space in 1961 had a median age of 30. In 2024 that median age is 50, and the age spread for flights in 2020, the beginning of space tourism, went from 18-year-old Oliver Daemon to 90-year-old William Shatner. The outlier on the left half above is when 77-year-old John Glenn returned to space in 1998.

Other graphics show us what countries astronauts came from and how they've diversified over time. Then there's a chart of every space traveler with their background, mission type, duration in space, and other information. It's fascinating to get into the details and see how space travelers have changed over time. Check it all out here. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Zane Wolf)

You may have heard that eggs are bad for you because they cause high cholesterol. That was the conventional wisdom since the 1960s, but it's far from the whole story. We've learned a lot about cholesterol since then. It's all about fats, which we need, but not a lot, and come in many different types, some more harmful than others. Then there's HDL, or good cholesterol, which counteracts LDL, or bad cholesterol, and it's hard to keep up with which is which and how to regulate them in your body.

Luckily, we have this new TED-Ed lesson to set us straight on cholesterol and how to keep our arteries in good shape. Sure, it's about what we eat, but also about a combination of foods and other lifestyle choices that all work together to keep our cholesterol at a healthy level. Put another way, cholesterol levels are another reason to exercise and eat your fruits and vegetables. -via Geeks Are Sexy

There's a saying that goes "It's amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." Sadly, in the case of Martha “Marty” Goddard, her idea would never have flown if she hadn't agreed to let others take all the credit.

In the mid-1970s, Goddard was aghast at the minuscule rate of rapes that were reported and the small fraction of those that ever made it to court. Hospitals had no training in evidence collection, and even when they did, police officers did not know how to preserve it. That changed with the introduction of the “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit,” which is the trademarked name of what we know now as a rape kit. It is named after Louis Vitullo, the head of the Chicago Police Department's crime lab, but the idea came from Martha Goddard. Vitullo put the kit together after he dismissed Goddard's idea and threw her out of his office.

Goddard not only invented the kit, but also raised the money to produce it, and designed and taught training programs for using it. Read about the invention of the rape kit and the woman who made it work at the Atlantic. -via Kottke

(Image credit: Vartika Sharma)

We have always loved watching tires rolling around on their own, especially downhill where they can get up some impressive speed. This fascination even gave us a feature-length movie in 2011 titled Rubber. The guys from How Ridiculous had fun rolling tires down a hillside in New Zealand, and in one brief sequence, actually flew a drone through a rolling tire! They were as surprised as we are that it worked. Was it skill or just plain luck? It really doesn't matter as long as you have the footage. Still, you've got to have a bit of confidence to even attempt such a trick. That's special, but if you want more, you can see the extended sequence below.

An extended cut at only 12 minutes surprised me. I would post more of these guys' shenanigans if their videos weren't mostly around a half-hour long. A good time was had by all. -via Born in Space

The unique culture of Japan stands out in many ways. One is that they have the world's most modern mass transit that is used by everyone, especially in the larger cities. Another thing is that those cities have rather compact train cars, sidewalks, passageways, elevators, and apartments in order to serve a huge number of people in the busiest parts of town. Also, Japan is unique for their obsession with kawaii characters that are used for advertising anything and everything.

Now, when humans portray these characters, the costumes are invariably wide to imply their shortness and therefore cuteness. When a mascot goes out in public, there's always the possibility of getting stuck in those narrow turnstiles and elevators. They are forbidden to come out of their costume in public, and often have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make it to work. This series of pictures (click to the right to see them all) documents the hazards of the job. -via Boing Boing