A litter of four baby armadillos have been taken in by environmental activist Kamilo Lara after their mother was killed by poachers in Nicaragua. When the pictures in this article were taken, they were a mere four days old.

When they are old enough - in about two months' time - Mr Lara will release them back into the wild.

The tiny creatures, who are being bottle-fed, are Common Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), an endangered species, and were found and rescued by Mr Lara of environmental organisation Alerta Mundial (World Alert).

Mr Lara eventually wants to create a rescue centre that will focus on restoring the natural habitat of the armadillos and other at-risk creatures.

Link -via Unique Daily

In 1989, ABC’s block of Friday night programming became collectively known as TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Funny). Do you remember the shows that have aired under the TGIF slogan throughout the years? Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will refresh your memory! I didn't know any of the answers, and still scored 58%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/26401

The Maryland Zoo recently unveiled a new prairie dog exhibit. The zoo's prairie dogs had not been on display for four years, until a new $500,000 enclosure was designed and built. Despite a concrete base, aircraft wire, and slick walls, several prairie dogs got out of the habitat within a few minutes! None got away, as zookeepers responded with nets.

Zoo staff members say the animals cannot burrow their way out because the former Kodiak bear environment is essentially a large concrete swimming bowl. The soil depth at Prairie Dog Town ranges from 6 feet to 8 feet.

"The dirt must be deeper than 36 inches in order for the prairie dogs to make their burrows under the frost line," Kranz said. "We took soil samples from the old exhibit so the soils could be matched exactly to what they were used to having."

After foiling the escape attempt, zoo workers adjusted wire fencing and installed more slippery plastic on the walls.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.ci.zoo12jun12,0,685569.story -via Boing Boing

(image credit: Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)

Comfy furniture envelops you like a hug from a trusted friend. Then there are new designs that may haunt your nightmares! Pictured is a bench called Evolution by Nacho Carbonell. There are eleven more pieces that might be even more frightening! Link -via the Presurfer

Rugby players aren't afraid of anything, including playing naked! A match in the nude over the weekend in Dunedin, New Zealand went off without a hitch, except for chilly weather and a streaker!

The nude rugby international, which started as a celebration of New Zealand's national nude day, was held yesterday as a warm-up – although temperatures were reportedly cold enough to prove embarrassing – to the forthcoming match between the All Blacks and France.

Needless to say, there were plenty of tackles flying about with only one interruption … when a fully-clothed streaker ran on to the pitch.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Stephen Jaquiery/Otago Images/Otago Daily Times)

Laugh with Your Fingers is a soundboard of laughs; all different, but all apparently from the same guy. Press them all as fast as you can and create your own laugh track! Link -via the Presurfer

Photographer Dina Goldstein gives a preview of a series featuring Disney princesses portrayed in their later lives, or what happened after "happily ever after". The complete series will go on exhibit in October. Link -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)
Bang-Yao Liu created this stop-motion animation for his senior project at Savannah College of Art and Design. It's cute and clever, and I really relate to the pressure of working on deadline and dealing with distractions. There's also a "making of" video. Music by Röyksopp. -via Digg

In the not-too-distant past, it was against the law in many states for people of different races to marry. Richard and Mildred Loving got married in Washington, DC in 1958 and returned to their hometown in Virginia as criminals.

When they went to trial, the judge found them guilty and sentenced them to a jail term of one to three years. However, the judge told the Lovings that he would suspend the sentence if they agreed to leave Virginia for a period of twenty five years. Given the choice between imprisonment and banishment, they chose banishment. The Lovings moved to Washington, DC.

The Lovings filed a suit challenging the law. After a nine-year battle, on June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Loving vs. Virginia that did away with the remaining miscegenation laws. The Loving Day project promotes the celebration of this milestone on or around June 12th. Link -via Drug Monkey

Insecta Fantasia is an art installation at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, which includes the restored historic Ballentine House.

It is fitting location for artist Jennifer Angus to show her work. Nestled within the Ballentine House, Angus has taken two rooms, the former rooms of the two Ballentine children, and covered them in insects. From a distance it looks like wallpaper, but upon closer inspection, the walls have been covered in thousands of precisely pinned bugs. Giant pink grasshoppers, perfect replicas of leaves and iridescent jewel beetles all swarm the walls in orderly geometric patterns.

Curious Expeditions visited the exhibit, and interviewed the taxidermy-inspired artist. Link

The blog My Milk Toof features the pictorial adventures of ickle and Lardee, two baby teeth. Here's the backstory:

When I was young, I placed my baby teeth under my pillow and when i woke up I'd find a shiny new quarter. But whatever happened to those little teeth? Where did they go? Would I ever see them again?

Many years later, a little tooth was standing at my door. It looked familiar. It's name was ickle. Welcome home, my milk toof!

The simple stories and photographs are just plain adorable. Link -via Metafilter

Several movies and TV shows have featured the plot line of someone heading to Washington, DC to become involved in the business of running our nation. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss features trivia about nine of these stories. I scored 67%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/26287

In Pixar's new film Up! a homeowner refuses to sell when development moves in to the neighborhood. This situation occurs quite often in real life, and the remaining property is called a "nail house" because it sticks out like a nail among the newer (and almost always bigger) buildings. deputy dog has the stories of six such property owners. Shown is the home of Edith Macefield in Seattle (featured previously at Neatorama) which was festooned with balloons recently as a promotion for the Pixar film. http://deputy-dog.com/2009/06/6-extraordinarily-stubborn-nail-houses.html

A bottle has been unearthed in Greenwich, England that contains urine and objects believed to have been put there to combat witchcraft. It was completely corked, so the contents were available for analysis, unlike other bottles found from the period.

An Old Bailey court record from 1682 documents that a husband, believing his wife to be afflicted by witchcraft, was advised by a Spitalfields apothecary to "take a quart of your Wive's urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin."

The excavated bottle appears to have been made according to those, or similar, instructions.

CT scans and chemical analysis, along with gas chromatography conducted by Richard Cole of the Leicester Royal Infirmary, reveal the contents of the bottle to include human urine, brimstone, 12 iron nails, eight brass pins, hair, possible navel fluff, a piece of heart-shaped leather pierced by a bent nail, and 10 fingernail clippings.

So far, they've found the urine was from someone who smoked, and the fingernails were in good shape, indicating a person of high status. Link -via Unique Daily

(image credit: Mike Pitts/British Archaeology)

Scientists have found a new way to track colonies of penguins in the Antarctic by satellite. Normal satellite imaging doesn't show penguins well because of their natural camouflage. So instead, British penguin-trackers are looking at penguin poop.

"We can't see actual penguins on the satellite maps because the resolution isn't good enough," said mapping expert Peter Fretwell. "But during the breeding season the birds stay at a colony for eight months. The ice gets pretty dirty and it's the guano stains that we can see."

The method helped scientists identify 38 penguin colonies -- of those, 10 were new. Of previously known colonies, six had re-located and six were not found.

Link -via Simply Left Behind

(image credit: Flickr user Carles-FlashOnTheBlog)

Previously at Neatorama: Penguin Poop.