Crows and blackbirds are black, but they aren't super black. In the light, their feathers reflect iridescent colors, often gray or blue, even though we always know they are black. Several species of birds of paradise have take black a lot more seriously. They absorb light, so that their bodies look like holes in the scenery. You can't see their contours at all. The secret is in the structure of their feathers.

A typical bird feather has a central shaft called a rachis. Thin branches, or barbs, sprout from the rachis, and even thinner branches—barbules—sprout from the barbs. The whole arrangement is flat, with the rachis, barbs, and barbules all lying on the same plane. The super-black feathers of birds of paradise, meanwhile, look very different. Their barbules, instead of lying flat, curve upward. And instead of being smooth cylinders, they are studded in minuscule spikes. “It’s hard to describe,” says McCoy. “It’s like a little bottle brush or a piece of coral.”

These unique structures excel at capturing light. When light hits a normal feather, it finds a series of horizontal surfaces, and can easily bounce off. But when light hits a super-black feather, it finds a tangled mess of mostly vertical surfaces. Instead of being reflected away, it bounces repeatedly between the barbules and their spikes. With each bounce, a little more of it gets absorbed. Light loses itself within the feathers.

The result is that a bird of paradise can absorb up to 99.95% of the light that hits its feathers, making the bird almost as black as Vantablack paint. Some butterflies and at least one snake have super-black light-absorbing abilities, too. But why does the bird of paradise need to be so dark? Read about these light-swallowing birds at the Atlantic. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Flickr user Francesco Veronesi)

In 2012, Syrian journalist Mansour Omari was one of tens of thousands of people who "disappeared" under the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. He was taken to an underground military complex, where he lived in a cell with dozens of other prisoners. One of the worst realizations they confronted was that their families had no idea whether they were still alive.

Omari and a handful of other prisoners grouped together spoke about this at length. Ultimately, they made a pact: whoever made it out of the detention center first would take with them a record of who their fellow cellmates were.

Among the men, Nabil Shurbaji, another journalist, had the neatest handwriting. Discreetly, with the understanding that anyone could report him to the authorities, he began the work of collecting the identities of the inmates. The men had no pen or paper to record the names, so they tried writing with watery tomato soup. When that proved ineffective, they tried eggplant. Then, one of them, a tailor, had an idea. Like his fellow detainees, his gums were swollen and weak from malnutrition. He squeezed them until his blood filled a contraband plastic bag. Mixed with rust, the concoction formed their ink. Five precious scraps of cloth torn from a worn shirt served as paper.

Using a chicken bone, Shurbaji stained the names of 82 detainees onto the small strips of clothing. These precious records of blood and rust were then hidden away into the collar and cuffs of one of Shurbaji’s shirts until the day Omari’s name was called to be transferred to Adra Central prison.

Omari now lives in Sweden, and he stills has the cloths. Or, he still owns them, but they are on loan to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum until August. Read what happened to Omari, and about the cloths now on exhibit, at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Look at the face of accomplishment. Kate Grey is already quite accomplished as a Paralympic athlete and sports reporter in the UK. She lost her left hand in an accident when she was two years old. Now, she's got a 3D-printed bionic arm, and it works so well that she can catch a ball with it -something she's never done before.

‘I’ve never caught a ball in this hand before’ - Paralympian @kategrey25 trying out her new 3D-printed bionic arm, just moments after putting it on for the first time #BionicHeroes pic.twitter.com/iKstDmBn6c

— Open Bionics (@openbionics) December 23, 2017

The arm was made by Open Bionics, a company that not only makes affordable prosthetic limbs that do incredible things, but also makes them look like superhero limbs. -via Digg

Tom Mcilwain is an actor, but not a big star. Neither is he an extra. He is a mid-level performer called a day player, one of the many who have a few speaking lines or small specific actions in movies and TV shows that don't come with name recognition. A job may last a day or a week. Mcilwain explains his job, with an example from a recent role in the TV show The Gifted as Guard #2.

I ended up with three days of filming, and I was in three scenes, two of them with dialogue and most making it to air. That’s actually pretty good. First day and scene was me running up to one of the main characters and nodding, then waving a rifle around and pretending I was firing it. Easy day, but my real-life tactical buddies all texted me after it aired to correct my form.

Day Two was my big scene with dialogue and shooting a principal character. My line is embarrassingly simple, but right before shooting, they asked me to improvise some lines with another actor to set the scene up. He’s telling me to take it seriously, as if they use it, our residuals go up. I’m like, “Dude, they’re not using this. Chill out. I’m trying not to forget my three damned lines.” But damned if it didn’t mostly make air. Which officially makes Jesse O’Neill hella right and me hella wrong. And except for my gun jamming twice, it went smoothly.

Day Three was comical. They basically kept me around “just in case.”

Day three ended up being the most interesting. Mcilwain gives us an overview of a showbiz career we don't hear much about at Ozy.

Reporter Alex Dunlop of the BBC was at Banham Zoo in Norfolk to tell viewers about the zoo's annual census. It became a bit difficult for him to stick to the script when lemurs began to show intense interest in the visitor.

(YouTube link)

They not only wanted to jump on him, they also wanted to get a taste! I considered it quite a show of professionalism when Dunlop called the leaping lemurs "little nippers" instead of something that would have been bleeped, but just a moment later they got the better of him. A man can only take so much. -via Metafilter 

Longtime Neatorama readers might remember Hanan Levin of the erstwhile blog grow-a-brain. Hanan gave that up in 2009 to focus on his new daughter. Adora became a muse for Hanan's many artist friends around the world, who drew, painted, and sculpted her in over 2,000 artworks (so far). You can see those works at Instagram. Adora is now eight years old, and has been writing poetry and song lyrics since she was four. Well, Hanan has musical friends, too, so musicians began writing tunes to Adora's lyrics. That led to a new site in the Adora Project, in which musician Doug Haines sings some the songs from Adora's life.

Check them out here. -Thanks, Hanan!

 

The 2004 movie Hellboy features Ro Perlman as Hellboy, a demon turned brawny comic book character fighting against evil supernatural forces to protect Earth. Under the direction of Guillermo Del Toro, the movie did well with both critics and audience. And there was a lot going on behind the scenes of Hellboy. 

3. Perlman broke a rib during the subway scene.

He managed to jump onto a train doing forty-five miles an hour and sustained the injury. It probably wasn’t that great of an idea but it made a great shot.

2. The Right Hand of Doom almost became the left hand.

The producers wanted to make it the left hand in order to give Perlman use of his right hand. But they quickly found out that Perlman is left-handed so it worked out just fine.

Fans of Hellboy and the merely curious will want to learn more trivia about the movie at TVOM.

Time to let the horses out for their exercise! They'll love playing in the snow today. Or maybe not.

(YouTube link)

Horses are pretty hardy, but they're no dummies. It takes the two the exact same amount of time to figure out what's really awaiting them during playtime. Winter horse blankets can only do so much. -via Tastefully Offensive

These aren't your everyday snowflake photos! Don Komarechka photographs snowflakes, which sometimes reflect beautiful colors inside. How does that happen? It has to do with the lighting, the angle, and the shape of the snowflake itself.

Some light will reflect off the surface of the snowflake, but some will also enter the ice (slowing down due to the density of ice compared to air) and reflect off the inner ice/air boundary back towards the camera. If the ice is thin enough, the distance between the two rays of light is close enough to force them to interfere with each-other now that they are out of sync. Some wavelengths get amplified and others get reduced, resulting in a distinctive color emerging based on the thickness of the ice.

The colors are pretty rare, so you can imagine how many snowflakes Komarechka has shot to get the dozen or so in this article, plus those for his book Sky Crystals. At PetaPixel, he explains the conditions necessary for colored snowflakes, the science behind them, and his photographic technique that captures them. Oh yeah, and there are pictures. -via Boing Boing

Doctors in the 19th century had few tools to actually cure diseases and repair injuries, but they had one miracle drug that seemed to make everything better- opium. It was widely used in the American Civil War to treat the pain of catastrophic injuries and amputations, which often meant soldiers went home not only maimed but addicted, too. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.   

Opiates made up 15 percent of all prescriptions dispensed in Boston in 1888, according to a survey of the city’s drug stores. “In 1890, opiates were sold in an unregulated medical marketplace,” wrote Caroline Jean Acker in her 2002 book, Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control. “Physicians prescribed them for a wide range of indications, and pharmacists sold them to individuals medicating themselves for physical and mental discomforts.”

Male doctors turned to morphine to relieve many female patients’ menstrual cramps, “diseases of a nervous character,” and even morning sickness. Overuse led to addiction. By the late 1800s, women made up more than 60 percent of opium addicts. “Uterine and ovarian complications cause more ladies to fall into the [opium] habit, than all other diseases combined,” wrote Dr. Frederick Heman Hubbard in his 1881 book, The Opium Habit and Alcoholism.

As the 20th century approached, doctors began to see what so many prescriptions for morphine had done, and the tide slowly started to turn. Read about the rise and fall of opioid addiction in the 19th century at Smithsonian.

Sketch artist Kells O'Hickey crafted a personal gift for his girlfriend Lindsay. He drew the two of them in the styles of their favorite cartoon characters! Above you see them as Simpsons characters. And here's Kells and Lindsay in South Park.

He drew ten pictures in ten different styles, which Lindsay found wonderful. You can see all ten pictures of them, in styles from Adventure Time, Disney, Rick and Morty, and more at Buzzfeed. See more of KJells' sketches at Instagram. 

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

(Image credit: dozenist)

by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

Neiburger Knows: Bad Finger, Bad Tooth
“A Severed Finger for a ‘Very Bad Toothache,’ ” Ellis J. Neiburger, New York State Dental Journal, vol. 67, no. 5, 2001, p. 36.

Neiburger Knows: Tooth Dust and Asthma Triggers
“Is Tooth Enamel Dust an Asthma Stimulus?” Ellis J. Neiburger, Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, and Oral Pathology, vol. 78, no. 1, July 1994, p.3.

Neiburger Knows: The Teeth of Man-Eaters
“The Man-Eaters with Bad Teeth,” Ellis J. Neiburger and B.D. Patterson, New York State Dental Journal, vol. 66, no. 10, December 2000, pp. 26–9.

Two cases of man-eating lions feeding on large numbers of humans are discussed. The forensic dental evidence from the lions’ remains and eyewitness reports indicate all three lions had serious dental/oral pathology, which may have contributed to their selection of human food over more challenging natural animal prey.

Scientists took a survey of Pacific green turtles off Ingram Island in northern Australia. It's not a simple task to determine the sex of a sea turtle, but blood tests for testosterone levels helped. While they expected to find more females than males, the results were pretty shocking.

Since the sex of a sea turtle is determined by the heat of sand incubating their eggs, scientists had suspected they might see slightly more females. Climate change, after all, has driven air and sea temperatures higher, which, in these creatures, favors female offspring. But instead, they found female sea turtles from the Pacific Ocean's largest and most important green sea turtle rookery now outnumber males by at least 116 to 1.

"This is extreme—like capital letters extreme, exclamation point extreme," says turtle scientist Camryn Allen, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. "We're talking a handful of males to hundreds and hundreds of females. We were shocked."

Further studies show that the sex imbalance in sea turtles has been there for some time, but it's getting worse quickly. The effect is more pronounced near coral reefs that are dying, and less near healthy reefs. While fewer males than females are needed to continue a species, what happens when there are no males left? Temperature fluctuations affect sex imbalance on other species, too, particularly reptiles and fish. Read about the latest sea turtle research at NatoGeo News. -Thanks, Kelsey!  

(Image credit: David Doubilet/National Geographic Creative)

An hourglass shape is only guaranteed by the supporting attire, as every bride is told by her fashion consultant. If you thought corgis were fat little dogs, this should set your mind to rest. They're not necessarily fat, just extra fluffy! And this little guy doesn't need a sweater to stay warm, he is just being fabulous and fashionable. Redditor Momzadork24 is a yarncrafter who loves dogs, so it's only appropriate that she would post this gem.

In 1977, I went to see a movie called Star Wars and liked it very much. Forty years later, I went to see The Last Jedi and liked it very much. Checking the internet for film discussions, I was disappointed to see that many people did not like the new movie. But I was not surprised. The most avid Star Wars fans have always been known for hating Star Wars, unlike fans of, say, the Harry Potter movies or Star Trek. What makes this fandom different?     

Star Wars was quite unique as a film franchise that actively encouraged engagement from its fans. Little wonder, then, that Lucas' later decisions, from the infamous Holiday Special to the Ewoks to Caravan of Courage, caused so much debate and consternation among fans. By the time Return of the Jedi came out, kids had played with their Star Wars toys for years. They'd already formulated an entire sequel to The Empire Strikes Back in their heads. Little wonder that what emerged in cinemas could never quite match up.

The majority of those fans who are daily internet users now were introduced to Star Wars as children, leading to the cries of "you ruined my childhood!" with every new installment. In short, Star Wars fans feel ownership of the franchise. Read how all this came to be at Den of Geek.