The giant pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes (previously at Neatorama) were thought to be carnivorous plants that could eat rodents. These pitchers, native to Borneo, are so big they would hold two liters of liquid if filled. However, carnivorous plant expert Dr. Charles Clarke has never seen a rodent inside one. He has seen tree shrew feces in them. Dr. Clarke and his colleagues in Malaysia began to look at Nepenthes in a new way. The opening of the pitcher plant is the same size and shape as a tree shrew. One end of the opening exudes delicious nectar.

"In order for the tree shrews to reach the exudates, they must climb onto the pitchers and orient themselves in such a way that their backsides are located over the pitcher mouths," explains Dr Clarke.

If the plant is a toilet, it receives nitrogen and other plant nutrients from shrew feces. Species of pitcher plants that do not attract tree shrews have different shapes.

Dr Clarke says it is the "neatest" discovery he has made in more than 20 years of studying Nepenthes meat-eating plants.

"The findings should radically alter how we look at these plants," he says.

Pretty neat indeed, especially if you are a tree shrew. Link -via Zooillogix

American architect Bryan Berg has succeeded himself as the world record holder in number of cards stacked. He built a replica of the Venetian resort in Macau inside the hotel itself. The creation is composed of 218,792 cards (4,051 decks) with no glue or other aids to hold them together. The feat took Berg 44 days. The hotel replica stands almost ten feet tall and is 33 feet long!

'This has been the most ambitious project I have undertaken to date,' Berg said.

'It's really like a real construction project because you have to engineer every single adjacency and every support that's supporting everything above,' he added.

'I was inspired to stack cards by my card-playing grandfather; maybe I can inspire some visitors at The Venetian Macao to try their hand at building their own structures.

'There couldn’t be a more fitting place to build the world’s largest house of cards than at the world’s largest resort hotel,” he added.

Link -via Unique Daily

A van belonging to LBS Enforcement, a private company that enforces parking regulations, was out and about ready to put a wheel clamp on cars in violation in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. However, the Southend Council found that the vehicle's owners had not shown proof of taxes paid, so government officials clamped and towed the van! A neighbor took pictures of the incident.

The resident, who didn’t wish to be named, said: “It was such a fiasco and so funny.

“The clampers obviously hoped to take the van away, but the council beat them too it!

“I don’t think they were amused as one of them stuck a finger up.

“I took the pictures because it was so hilarious and I think a lot of people will be very pleased to see them get clamped for a change.”

An employee of LBS Enforcement blamed the matter on a clerical mixup. I'm sure they've heard that story before themselves. Link -via Arbroath

The Royal National Library of The Netherlands has a collection of over a thousand hand-bound books dating back as far as 800 years. A portion of those books have been converted to digital images, and BibliOdyssey has posted thirteen of the nicest. The book shown is a 1914 edition of Das Unheimliche Buch. Link

Forbes has posted their annual list of the twenty richest people in the world. Number one is not Bill Gates, nor is it Warren Buffet. Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu edged out Gates with a net worth of $53.5 billion, which is $18 billion more than he had a year ago.

This year the World's Billionaires have an average net worth of $3.5 billion, up $500 million in 12 months. The world has 1,011 10-figure titans, up from 793 a year ago but still shy of the record 1,125 in 2008. Of those billionaires on last year's list, only 12% saw their fortunes decline.

U.S. billionaires still dominate the ranks--but their grip is slipping. Americans account for 40% of the world's billionaires, down from 45% a year ago.

Bill Gates was the world's richest person fourteen of the past fifteen years. Link -via Slashdot

On Tuesday, folks in the Stavropol Region in Southern Russia found their countryside covered with purple-tinged snow!

Having analysed the samples, climatologists ruled that the snow is perfectly safe. However, eating purple snow is still not recommended as scientists say it is full of dust from Africa.

A massive dust cyclone rose to upper atmosphere layers and then mixed with regular snow clouds in Russia's South.

This is not the first time the country has seen such a snow. Link -via Fortean Times

Michelle Bese of Salida, Colorado was sitting at the table with her five-year-old while her other child slept in another room. One her five dogs came in through the dog door and was followed by a cougar! Bese grabbed her son and hid in the bedroom where the two-year-old was and called 911. Sheriff's deputies helped the family escape through a window.

"I looked in a bedroom window and could see a dog which I believed to be dead," said Division of Wildlife area manager Jim Aragon. "The lion was in the same room, so I pounded on the window and side of the house in an attempt to get the lion to leave through one of the open doors."

Eventually, Aragon and wildlife officer Kim Woodruff, along with Chaffee County Sherriff's deputy Rod Lane, entered the home through the back bedroom window. They found the cougar in a room directly across the hall.

"We cracked the door open wide enough to see the lion and were able to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart," Aragon said.

One dog died from injuries and two dogs lost one eye each. The cougar, believed to be starving, was euthanized. Link -via Arbroath

In the opening sequence of the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker, a soldier wears an explosive ordnance disposal (OED) suit pretty close to the spot where a bomb goes off. Can a soldier survive such an incident? Dvice contacted the manufacturer of the suit to get the lowdown on how it protects a soldier from both the shockwave and the shrapnel of an explosion. The 60-pound suit contains a lot of modern technology at work. Link -via Unique Daily

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) were volunteers who learned to fly during World War II to supplement the US military, which was suffering from a shortage of pilots.

A few more than 1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, flew almost every type of military aircraft — including the B-26 and B-29 bombers — as part of the WASP program. They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting — with live ammunition. The WASP expected to become part of the military during their service. Instead, the program was canceled after just two years.

They weren't granted military status until the 1970s. And now, 65 years after their service, they will receive the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. Congress. Last July, President Obama signed a bill awarding the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal. The ceremony will take place on Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Fewer than 300 WASPs are still alive to receive the honor today. Read the story of the program and a few of the pilots at NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123773525 -via Digg

(image credit: Texas Woman's University)

(YouTube link)

Teddy bears attempt to cross a busy street. Another gem from the incomprehensible but fertile mind of Cyriak. Link to artist's website. -via Arbroath

This chart from the utility company EPCOR contrasts water consumption in Edmonton, Alberta on two different days. February 27th is charted to show a normal day. February 28th was the day Canada won the Olympic gold medal hockey game. As you can see, a huge percentage of their customers waited for breaks in the game to "go". Link -via reddit

Giants once roamed the earth, meaning many species of animals that are familiar to us have enormous extinct ancestors. Cracked looks at seven of them, some of which have been previously featured individually at Neatorama. Take a look at Argentavis magnificens.

As if answering the dare to make us feel more inadequate, the world gave us Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird in recorded history. These beasts possessed a wingspan between 19- and 26-feet, and a wing area of 75-feet, which you may notice is only slightly smaller than a Lear Jet. In addition to its staggering size and 240-pound weight, the bird is believed to have swallowed prey as large as cattle in one fell swoop.

Link -via Gorilla Mask

If explorer Amerigo Vespucci were alive, he'd be 556 years old today. Born on March 9th, 1454, Vespucci was neither the first European to reach the New World nor the first to take back news of it, but he was the first to realize that the western hemisphere was not part of Asia or any part of the world known to Europeans. Vespucci's discovery coincided with the rise of the printing press, which made world maps available to more than a few people.

Martin Waldseemüller, a modernist-humanist German clergyman and cartographer, reprinted “The Four Voyages of Amerigo” in 1507 with his own “Cosmographic Introduction.” He opined:

I see no reason why anyone should justly object to calling this part … America, after Amerigo [Vespucci], its discoverer, a man of great ability.

Waldseemüller included a map of the the new lands, on which the name “America” makes its earliest appearance.

The map was popular. The name caught on, and it stuck.

And it spread. America was first used as a name for only the southern continent of the New World, but Gerardus Mercator’s 1538 world map included both North America and South America.

And that is precisely why many of us live in America instead of Christopha or Columbia. Link

We know that scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C. In the Middle Ages, ship captains knew that fresh fruit, particularly citrus, would fend off scurvy, which had been the scourge of long sea voyages. Scottish physician James Lind uncovered the citrus cure scientifically in 1747, but vitamin C was still unknown. In 1799, all British Royal Navy ships were ordered to serve lemon juice, but in time the method of preventing scurvy was changed until it was no longer effective, and no one knew why.

It fell to the unfortunate George Nares to discover this fact in 1875, when he led the British Arctic Expedition in an attempt to reach the North Pole via Greenland. Some oceanographic theories of the time posited an open polar sea, and Nares was directed to sail along the Greenland coast, then take a sledging party and see how far north he could get on the pack ice.

The expedition was a fiasco. Two men in the sledging party developed scurvy within days of leaving the ship. Within five weeks, half the men were sick, and despite having laid depots with plentiful supplies for their return journey, they were barely able to make it back. A rescue party sent to intercept them found that lime juice failed to have its usual dramatic effect. Most damning of all, some of the men who stayed on the ship, never failing to take their daily dose, also got scurvy.

Afterward, some doctors thought scurvy must be due to food poisoning or even a contagious infection. Vitamin C was finally isolated in 1932. The tragic story of how the cure for scurvy was lost and then found again is detailed in a fascinating article at Idle Words. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker)

The spelling challenges in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will not be found in your local school bee! However, if you are really familiar with American TV and movies, you should do well. Luckily, it's a multiple-choice quiz. I scored 75% -try to beat that! Link