Have you ever heard of a bolas spider? Of course not, and even if you have, you need to learn more from Ze Frank in the latest episode of his True Facts series. He follows a bolas spider named Nancy, who can spin a rope with her butt. Video contains adult content, presented in an exceedingly juvenile manner.

Always remember, you are special and unique just like everyone else. Some folks carry that uniqueness around in their bodies every day. Redditor the_cozy_one posted this picture of her father, who has 12 fingers and 12 toes. She inherited the trait.

My dad's thumbs are there and just would not bend at the knuckle, but are fully formed and can be moved at the base of the fingers. That is what happened with mine as well so I had to have my thumbs removed and they moved my extra fingers to where my thumbs were because they would bend and I could use them for thumbs. I had my surgery in the late 80s, and it didn't look the greatest, but most people say they haven't noticed them until I'd say something.

My second toes on my feet won't bend, but I can move them at the base and I guess you can say I can make them "point", but I can't bend them down. The rest of my toes are fine and I've never had surgery on them. My parents didn't think it was a good idea to mess with my feet and possibly cause more issues where there weren't any. My feet don't hurt or have issues because of it, so I'm lucky there.

Imgur member Cohacq has Waardenburg Syndrome. At age 23 (when this picture was taken), he had white hair and half a white mustache. He is also deaf in one ear and his eyes are different colors. Other people have fewer than the normal number of fingers, birthmarks that change their hair color or their eye color, and other anomalies that they posted on the internet at one time or another. Some are based on genetics and others are due to prenatal injuries. Check out a gallery of 30 physical anomalies at Bored Panda.

Carly Rae Jepsen's new video makes it clear that the love song is about a cat. Any crazy cat lady can relate. Starring Shrampton the cat, who you can't help but love. -via Metafilter

This St. Patrick's Day, Mexico will honor the Irish as war heroes, specifically a unit that fought in the Mexican-American War. Following the Battle of Churubusco in 1847, the US Army captured thousands of enemy combatants. Hundreds of the men were whipped, branded, and otherwise tortured, and 50 of them were hanged.

The men who died that day were not ordinary enemy fighters. They were captured soldiers from El Batallón de San Patricio, or the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, who had fought fiercely in the Battle of Churubusco just weeks earlier. Many were Irish immigrants who had come to the United States to escape economic hardship, but found themselves fighting in the Mexican-American War against their adopted country. The conflict pitted many Catholic immigrants to America against a largely Catholic Mexico and these soldiers had switched sides, joining Mexican forces in the fight against the United States. They were, for the most, part die-hard believers in the cause around which they had coalesced—defending Mexico—until those very last moments on that September morning. Though they were on the losing side of the war, their actions are still celebrated in Mexico today, where they are viewed as heroes.

Learn the story of the St. Patrick's Battalion at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Sam Chamberlain)

The carpet from the Overlook Hotel in the movie The Shining has reached iconic status. Just the simple orange and brown pattern makes movie fans think of a demented Jack Nicholson breaking through a bathroom door. The latest use of the carpet pattern is in a cake! The Homicidal Homemaker has the recipe for The Shining REDRUM Roll Cake, sure to impress anyone, even if they don't recognize the pattern. The recipe and instructions are presented in both text and a video.

Some of the sounds we use every day, like "f" and "v" weren't used in early hunter-gatherer societies because they were so physiologically difficult. Those sounds are called labiodentals, as they use the top teeth against the lower lip. A new study describes how the orientation of our teeth had to change to make those sounds possible, and that was startlingly recent. 

Here’s the story, as presented in the new study: Around 8,000 years ago, as humans transitioned from predominantly meat-eating lifestyles to agriculture, the foods our ancestors ate became softer, which had a pronounced effect on the human bite. Instead of the edge-on-edge bite exhibited by hunter-gatherers, who had to tear into tough meat, agricultural humans retained the juvenile overbite that usually disappears by adulthood. With the upper teeth slightly in front of the lower teeth, it became much easier to make labiodental sounds. Gradually, and quite by accident, these sounds were integrated into words, which eventually spread across time and space, most notably within the last 2,500 years.

Imagine being declared an adult because your teeth moved into a different position. The authors of the study consider the change to be a result of developing a modern diet. Read about the research at Gizmodo.

(Image credit:  D. E. Blasi et al., 2019/Science)

In a well-balanced ecosystem, each species fits into a niche that helps maintain that balance. Apex predators keep the deer population from exploding, and too many deer will eat the trees, and the next thing you know, the forest is gone. But the food chain is not just a linear process. For example, pumas (or cougars or mountain lions) often take down prey that are much more than they can eat. A puma will feed and then leave half an elk to rot. Or does it? Puma researcher Mark Elbroch tells us how a puma kill benefits many other species.

In previous studies, Elbroch had already documented dozens of large vertebrates—wolves, foxes, black and grizzly bears—that feed on carrion left by pumas. He also grew interested in the insect populations attracted by their kills. The researchers studied a total of 18 elk and mule deer carcasses killed by pumas in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, returning weekly over the course of six months from May to October 2016 to check beetle traps and observe how populations shifted over time. They collected more than 24,000 individual beetles belonging to 215 different species from the bodies of puma prey—greater numbers and diversity than found in surrounding areas. The results show that pumas as more than predators: They’re “ecosystem engineers,” researchers write in the study, published in the journal Oecologia.

Read about how these different insects take advantage of leftover cat food at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: National Park Service)

Welps, my baby’s first word is Google. @google @nest pic.twitter.com/3YpPSkgWLl

— Clio Chiang (@cliobablio) March 13, 2019

Oh, what a technological wonder our modern world is! A Nest cam caught the magic moment when Clio Chang's infant daughter uttered her first recognizable word. That's great, because mama wasn't in the room; daddy was. The same kind of modern technology apparently shaped what word it was, too. -via Laughing Squid

Why did the equines of the African savannah develop black and white stripes? Is it camouflage against predators, thermal regulation, or a defense against insects? A new study by UC Davis conservation biologist Tim Caro and his colleagues looked at the most promising reason: defense against tabanids, which we know as horse flies, that suck blood and can spread equine diseases. They observed a farm in England where horses and zebras lived side-by-side.

By watching and filming the stable’s horses and zebras, the team confirmed that horseflies were much worse at alighting on the latter. The flies had no problem finding the zebras or approaching them, but couldn’t stick the landing. “You get a quarter as many landings,” Caro said. “The flies just can’t probe for a blood meal with the zebras.”

The team found the same trend when they put striped coats on the horses. Cloaked in stripes, the very same animals suddenly became more resistant to flies, except on their uncovered heads. And uniformly colored coats had no effect; the stripes, specifically, befuddled the flies.

We still don't know the exact mechanism that causes stripes to confuse flies, but scientists have some possibilities, which sets up the team to design further (and more difficult) experiments. But these results should boost the sale of zebra-striped horse coats. Maybe we can re-structure the initial question as "Why don't horses have stripes?" Read more about the research at the Atlantic. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Tim Caro)

One of the highlights of the 2019 Crufts Dog Show was Kratu, a large mixed-breed rescue dog from Romania who entered the agility competition. The division was specifically for rescue dogs, so not much was expected, but Kratu managed to stand out from the crowd anyway. How does such a big dog manage to turn around inside a tunnel and reverse direction? -via Digg

This is an obvious response to occupying apartment 314, but it's not rational. -via TYWKIWDBI

PS: There are other apartment numbers that can be used for lols.

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

                                              -J. Robert Oppenheimer

The first nuclear bomb test was on July 16, 1945, just weeks before the US dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Trinity test took place in the desert near Alamagordo, New Mexico, at 5:30 AM.

The bomb was detonated, producing an intense flash and a fireball that expanded to 600 meters in two seconds. The explosive power was equivalent to 18.6 kilotons of TNT. It grew to a height of more than 12 kilometers, boiling up in the shape of a mushroom. Forty seconds later, the blast of air from the bomb reached the observation bunkers, along with a long and deafening roar of sound. And so began the ATOMIC AGE...

Now we have restored footage from that test 74 years ago. This video shows the explosion three times from different perspectives. -via Boing Boing

Post a picture of your cat and I will guess its name

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) March 12, 2019

The social media department of the company that makes Moon Pies doesn't waste much time trying to get you to buy their product, but they sure know how to engage followers. A Tweet yesterday offered to guess your cat's name by looking at a picture.

Wayne “Hoss” Bigglesby

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) March 13, 2019

Instantly, there's a huge thread of cat pictures.

Skinneth

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) March 13, 2019

If you have a cat with no name, or can't decide between many options, maybe this could help.

Nippy Ki Yay

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) March 13, 2019

Otherwise, you'll just enjoy looking through more than 8,900 replies, many of them cat pictures with ridiculous names. -via The Daily Dot

A young man in Philadelphia finds himself in trouble with the law, and then is sent to live with an uncle all the way across the country in order to be reformed. The short film Bel Air is presented in the style of a trailer, but is self-contained as there is no full-length movie. It was written, directed, and shot by Morgan Cooper, based on a television series from the 1990s. The rest of the credits are at the vimeo page. -via reddit

You can become your cat with a realistic custom-made mask! The Japanese company Shindo Rinka will arrange for your sweet puss to be replicated on a full human-size head covering, and all you have to do is submit a good photo of your cat and ￥300,000 ($2,000). However, they cannot guarantee how your cat will react. See pictures of how they do it at DesignBoom. -via Everlasting Blort