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An imaginative begger or a cheap busker? This was recorded at Union Square in San Francisco. -via Arbroath

In a study at Tokyo University, 5-year-old chimpanzees displayed better short-term memory than college students!

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees - young chimpanzees at the age of 5 - have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

Researchers believe that relative youth helped the chimpanzees, so the next step is to match the chimps against young children. http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/CHIMP_MEMORY?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-12-03-12-

The Switch Me salt and pepper shaker has both salt and pepper in the same unit. You flip the switch to change from one to the other. Link -via Dump Trumpet

How well do you know your TV theme songs? Test yourself with this quiz. Choose from 10, 20, or 30 rounds. I scored 585 in 10 rounds. And I don’t even watch TV! Link -via the J-Walk Blog

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You might remember the Mathematical Love Song by the Klein Four Group. From the same performance, here’s their imaginative arrangement of The 12 Days of Christmas. -via Educational CyberPlayground

Get a fun and fanciful wig for your cat! Available in electric blue, silver, blonde, and pink. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Peter at Tesla Down Under built a Tesla Christmas tree! This photo used a 91 second exposure to show it in action. He also details the project at the site. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

One Cold Hand? is “a site for the collection and hopeful reunion of Pittburgh’s dropped gloves.” Maybe this idea will spread to other cities, although Miami would probably pass. Link -via Fark

The ETree is an interactive lamp consisting of ten strands of light that you can bend into different shapes. The ETree was designed by Jesus Felipe and Silvia Grimaldi of Nimble Critters. Link to design site. http://kinetica-museum.org/store2/product_info.php?cPath=72&products_id=306 to purchase. -via Dump Trumpet

After producing a comic on the concept, Randall Munroe of xkcd put a ball pit in his home! How cool is that? Link -via Grow-A-Brain

Try to keep the cat from escaping the field by clicking on a spot. I’ve played this game every time I’ve seen it posted somewhere, and after dozens of attempts, I finally won. Until now, I wasn’t sure if it was possible! Link

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Two crew members for the TV show Scrubs fell in love. When it came time to pop the question, the whole set was ready. I’m a sap for this sort of thing. -via a comment at mental_floss

Vancouver is hosting the Winter Games in 2010. The Olympic mascots will be Sumi the Thunderbird, Quatchi the Sasquatch, and Miga the Sea Bear, all mythical North American creatures. The artwork was designed by Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy of Meomi Design. Even without considering previous Olympic mascots, they hit this one out of the ballpark! Link -via Boing Boing

There are only 26 endangered Brazilian ocelots in American zoos. One of them was born September 23rd at the Lousiville Zoo. They named him El Conquistador.

El Conquistador garnered his name when at 2 days old he wandered from his mother’s side and squeezed through fencing into a hallway for keeper staff on the back side of the exhibit.

“And he did all this when he was unable to see,” McMahan laughed. “He was so young, his eyes were still closed. So, we named him El Conquistador because he is definitely an explorer and conqueror.”

The kitten’s birth is significant because his father Itirapua is one of the very few “founder stock” ocelots, whose genes are critical for survival of the species. Link -via Fark

(image credit: Kara Bussabarger, Louisville Zoo)

Quick -how many movies can you name with a plot that revolved around a gemstone? There have been quite a few! And you’ve probably seen most of these Nine Famous Jewels from the Movies.

Whether they be real, items of legend, or completely fictitious, jewels from the movies are definitely “the stuff that dreams are made of”. With story arches, background, and in some cases almost a personality all their own, these so called “props” could easily be seen as characters themselves.

http://www.abazias.com/diamondblog/?p=825 -via Geek Like Me