There are some things even your best fart noises can't possibly compete with. I wouldn't read too much into this bit of one-upmanship. Moishe's parents spend most of their time lifting each other up in love and togetherness, so the occasional zinger doesn't hurt too badly. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.

Raccoon are clever, but are they as smart as a crow? The Aesop's Fable test is an intelligence test named after the story in which a crow adds pebbles to water he can't reach in order to bring the water level up to him. Researchers wondered if raccoons could learn the concept. They were given a cylinder too tall for them to reach the bottom. There were marshmallows floating on the water. The experimenter showed the raccoons how to add stones to bring the water level up so they could reach the treats. Two of the eight animals learned to do it that way, but the researchers learned that you shouldn't try to out-think a raccoon. One raccoon jumped on top of the cylinder and rocked it back and forth until it tipped over! In another experiment, the same raccoons were given the same task, but the pebbles were now balls, some that would float and some that didn't. Would the raccoons be able to tell which ones were more useful for water displacement?

The floating ball shouldn’t work, “unless you’re a raccoon, and can turn a non-functional object into a functional object,” says study co-author Sarah Benson-Amran, director of the Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab at the University of Wyoming.

The two raccoons that aced the other tasks excelled yet again, discovering that pushing up and down on the floating balls “would splash bits of marshmallow up the sides of the tubes,” says Stanton, whose study appeared in the November issue of the journal Animal Cognition.

One literally put his own spin on things, seeming to "spin the ball in place" and eating the marshmallow that collected on the ball, Stanton says.  

Clever little trash bandits. Read more about the experiments and see a video at National Geographic News.

(Image credit: Lauren Stanton)

The Tompkins Square Halloween Parade is where New Yorkers take their dressed-up dogs to show off their Halloween costumes! The annual event was more crowded than ever yesterday, with people being turned away at the park gates. Still, there were thousands of dogs, and Scott Lynch was there to capture portraits. See 69 of his best pictures of some really good dogs dressed as spooks, politicians, clergy, food, wild animals, and pop culture characters. Or even plants, like the Corgi here dressed as a chia pet! You'll find the gallery at Gothamist.

(Image credit: Scott Lynch/Gothamist)

Sesame Street brings us another parody, this time putting the Muppets into a scenario that will remind you of The Walking Dead. The style is there, but the zombies are bad cookies called crumbies, their prey is the good cookies (which is redundant), and the sheriff is Cookie Monster. That leads to some issues, as you might guess.

(YouTube link)

The YouTube release of this video is well-timed, because the season of gingerbread temptation is coming up soon. Oh yeah, and The Walking Dead season eight begins tonight. -via Uproxx

Have you ever done something so stupid that you didn't want anyone to know, but you had to ask for help anyway? This guy has to put up with laughter and humiliation to get his problem solved. The real punch line is that this comic was inspired by a real life story. But instead of one trusted geek, he was the target of hundreds of laughing geeks. At least he used a throwaway account for this one post. Maybe he imagined that those who laughed the hardest would one day face their own kind of embarrassing mistake. This is the latest comic from CommitStrip.

The infamous site 11foot8 monitors the underpass on Gregson Street in Durham, North Carolina (previously at Neatorama). Last weekend, another truck driver did not heed the sign warning of the 11 foot 8 inch clearance, nor the flashing lights. The railroad bridge acted like a can opener, slicing the top right off. In a lot of the crashes at this location, the driver doesn't even realize how high their truck is, but this guy ran the red light, too, so he may just be blind, or at least oblivious. 

(YouTube link)

You get to see the carnage from two angles, plus slow-motion. And it's a rental truck, so the driver will have some 'splainin' to do. -via Boing Boing

William H. H. Murray was a wealthy Congregationalist minister and an outdoors enthusiast. Every summer he went to the Adirondack Mountains, often with his wife, sometimes with several friends, to enjoy hunting, fishing, canoeing, and commmuning with nature. He also kept a journal, writing humorous and informative essays on his experiences.

Murray never intended his “narrative exercises” for publication—but when a good friend encouraged him in 1869 to publish a book on any subject with the prestigious Boston publisher of Osgood, Fields, and Company, Murray, who liked the idea but did not have a manuscript, bundled the exercises with an introductory chapter and submitted them. Initially publisher James T. Fields declined Murray’s manuscript, but not wanting to embarrass the minister, he reluctantly agreed to read the submission. Two days later, he called Murray to his office with exciting news: He wanted to publish Murray’s book that spring. “Your method of interpreting nature and your humor are unlike anything that we have ever seen, ” Fields said. “This little book, I am confident, is destined to a great career.”

Adventures in the Wilderness was met with mixed reviews. The Overland Monthly dismissed Murray’s writing as “gorgeous French, badly translated” while The Nation found his practical advice to be “sensible and worth taking.” Nonetheless, the book was immediately popular with the public and a tremendous commercial success, making Murray both famous and wealthy by June. We do not know exactly how many copies were sold, but the numbers probably rose into the tens, and perhaps hundreds, of thousands. The book was in its tenth printing by July 7. Years later, Murray recalled that for a long time Adventures had sold at a rate of approximately 500 per week.

The Adirondacks saw a boom in camping immediately after the publication of Murray's book. It wasn't just Murray's inspiration. His book was the catalyst of many factors that led Americans to go outdoors and camp in the 1860s. Read about how and why camping gained its popularity at Smithsonian.  -via Strange Company

A female swan came down with a case of botulism. She was hospitalized by Dierenbescherming, an animal rescue group in Dordrecht, Netherlands. Three weeks later, the swan had recovered well enough to return to her mate in the canal. He was right there, waiting for her. It was a lovely reunion.

(YouTube link)

Swans usually mate for life. It would have taken longer than three weeks for either of them to give up hope. This is one of those love stories in which only the end is worth watching. -via Tastefully Offensive

The cat and the dog encounter each other on the stairs. It's a common occurrence, but this time, the cat accidentally hit the dog's turbo button and activated his "room zoom."

Kitty accidentally pressed the turbo button pic.twitter.com/zJ9BtMgGUr

— Nature is Amazing (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 6, 2017

(Twitter link)

Cats have one, too, but for them it only lasts long enough to circle the room or get to the other end of the house. This cat is astonished at the dog's behavior, but he won't slow down long enough to hit reset. -via Buzzfeed

BesidesPDX posted this picture of a peanut butter jar at reddit and said, "I know I'm not the only one." I must have missed that Calvin and Hobbes strip, although I read it most days. And I have never heard of anyone using peanut butter like this. While most commenters also had never heard of such a thing, a few said they always tried to eat as much peanut butter as possible without disturbing the smooth surface on top. Megamanfre does the same thing a slightly different way. He's not the only one.

Have you ever done this? Have you even heard of it? Will you start doing it now because of this post?

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

"It plays on the basic fear that people have about what might be lurking below the surface of any body of water. You know the feeling when you are swimming and something brushes your legs down there. It scares the hell out of you, if you don't know what it is. the fear of the unknown. I decided to exploit this fear as much as possible."

-Jack Arnold, director of The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Although it sounds strange, the actual genesis of The Creature from the Black Lagoon occurred during the filming of Citizen Kane. In 1941, producer William Alland attended a dinner party during the filming of Citizen Kane. Alland had a role in the Orson Welles classic as a reporter named Thompson. At the dinner party, Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told Alland about the myth of a race of half-human, half-fish creatures who live in the Amazon River.

Eleven years later, in 1952, Alland recalled the conversation of a decade previous and wrote a story called "The Sea Monster." His memory was jogged and he recalled the 1941 incident, but he also said he was influenced by the story of "Beauty and the Beast." In December of '52, Maurice Zimm expanded the story into a treatment. Finally, Harry Essex and Arthur Ross rewrote this treatment and called it "The Black Lagoon."

The following is an article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy.

With flesh-eating monsters devouring everything from Jane Austen to Louisville, Kentucky, it seems like dead is the new living.

(Image credit: Cicmanma)

THE ZOMBEES ARE COMING!

In April 2009, the BBC’s news site reported that the swine flu virus, H1N1, had mutated into “H1Z1.” It could

…restart the heart of it’s victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believe to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.”

The story prompted a few concerned calls to the BBC, but the bad grammar, along with the date it appeared (April 1st), was a dead giveaway that this was a fake Web site designed to look like the BBC’s real site. No panic ensued.

THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!

(All photos by Andrew Egan)

Neatorama is proud to bring you a post by Andrew Egan, courtesy of Ernie Smith of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

What it's like to keep and maintain a pet horse in New York City, the largest city in the U.S., in 2017. As it turns out, it’s not particularly cheap.

People have powerful connections to their pets. They brighten our day and wrack us with worry when they get sick. Whether it’s dogs, cats, parrots, or snakes, people will go to extreme lengths to accommodate their pets. But there have to be some limits, right? For example, there’s no way someone could keep a pet horse in New York City, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Come along as we head to Queens to get a small look into a dedicated community of New Yorkers that make significant sacrifices for their four-legged friends.

Those who travel the world in ships, whether for the military or commercial cargo, often have souvenirs inked in their skin to show where they've been, what they have done, and their hopes for survival. When sailors meet in ship assignments or far away ports, they don't have to speak the same language to know each other's story, because the tattoos are filled with symbolism known among seafaring men the world over. And now the rest of us can learn what they mean. Some have stories behind them.

The foot tattoos of pigs and roosters were worn by sailors in WWII in the hopes it would keep the sailor from drowning. The Navy shipped these animals in crates at the time. When ships went down, the crates floated, and the animals inside would sometimes be the only survivors

Learn the language of seafaring tattoos at Under the Radar. -via Boing Boing

In the 17th and 18th centuries, upper-class Europeans wore powdered wigs, and aristocratic ladies outdid each other in height and decoration to a ridiculous degree. Russian artists Asya Kozina and Dmitriy Kozin created those wigs, with a modern feel in her art series called Skyscraper on the Head. Her wigs are made of paper, with more modern decorations atop.

Baroque and Rococo wigs used to be adorned with symbols of luxury, sophistication and the romantic spirit of the time. They were frequently bedecked with model frigates and intricate still lives composed of exotic fruits, flowers and even stuffed birds. This historic trend inspired us to link our paper Baroque wigs with the similar symbols of our time.

See a collection of the Kozins' wigs at Flashbak, and the whole series at Behance. -Thanks, Walter!