Are figs really full of baby wasps? It sounds like an urban legend, so the answer may surprise you. Wasps burrow into figs to lay their eggs.
While these images may not be all that appetizing, there's no reason to swear off figs quite yet. Those little insects are fig wasps, and they play an essential role in the fig's life cycle as the plant's only pollinator. That means that for pollen from one fig plant to reach another plant, fig wasps must do all the leg work. In return, the plant provides fig wasps with their only sources of food and shelter.
This arrangement is called mutualism. Both plant and wasp depend on the arrangement to survive, and without one, you wouldn't have the other.
But what happens when it's time to harvest the figs? Are the wasps still inside? Do the food companies scrape them out before they turn figs into jam? Or were the 12-year-olds right all along -- are we really eating a mouthful of sweet baby wasp paste?
How Stuff Works lays out the entire story. Link -via Holy Kaw!
Rick Reilly, a reporter for ESPN, entered the Sauna World Championship competition in Finland in 2007. In an excerpt from his book, Reilly describes his experience. It wasn't long before he realized he was in over his head.
You'd be amazed at how much fun it is to watch a grown man come apart like a $9 sweater. A Belarusian started out sane, just sitting there. Every 30 seconds a pitiless stream of water came out from a ceiling shower in the center of the sauna and splashed on the molten-hot rocks, creating a 100% humidity level in the room that would melt gold. About two minutes in our man started rocking a little. At three his eyes started blinking oddly. At four he began twitching. At five his eyes got huge. At six he started swallowing each breath like a gulp of scorching soup. Then he started glancing around wildly, as if to say to the others, Are you mad? Don't you see what's happening? They've locked us in a Crock-Pot! He started wiping his eyes and mouth. He moved his hands out toward his thighs to rub them, then realized that's not allowed and did so anyway, crazily, as though he were covered in lice. The judges flagged him once, then twice. Then he lurched for the door, and he was out.
Mark Ladner makes lasagne (that's how the article spells it) in pans that hold 80 potions portions each, using 50 layers of paper-thin pasta and 50 layers of three sauces. It's part of a nine-course meal at the New York restaurant Del Posto.
Ladner debuted this lofty lasagne a few months ago on his $500 Collezione menu, a lavish, one-party-per-service immersion into the full Del Posto experience (wine included), in which the 6-foot-4 chef serves each of the nine savory courses himself. For the lasagne course, he carries a sizeable hunk into the dining room on a silver tray, places it on a gueridon, and proceeds to carve the thing tableside. That’s right, he carves the lasagne tableside, a technique perhaps never before performed on Garfield’s favorite foodstuff.
You can also get the 100-layer lasagne for lunch the next day, fried with tomato sauce. Link -via J-Walk Blog
It's another list of fascinating facts about something you didn't even know you were interested in, from our friends at mental_floss.
1291: Switzerland is founded, and yodeling gets off to a trilling start!
Early Alpine shepherds discover how to yodel by alternating their voices between natural singing tones and falsetto pitches. Shepherds began using the distinctive calls to round up cattle and communicate with others across the Alps. But these aren't the first people to yodel. Apparently, the Roman emperor Julian was already complaining about the "wild, shrieking songs" of northern mountain people way back in the 4th century C.E. (Image credit: Flickr user carydunn)
1619: Yodeling comes to North America (but not from where you think).
While the Swiss have contributed to America's love for cheese-making and pocket knives, yodeling in the US has nothing to do with the Alps. American warbling traditions trace back to African Pygmy and Bantu tribes, who are known for their pitch-hopping songs. In fact, when people in Nairobi first hear American yodeler Jimmie Rodgers centuries later, they embrace the familiar sound and pen tribute songs in his honor.
1892: Edison records a yodeler.
Singer L.W. Lipp shows off his vocal stylings for none other than Thomas Edison in the inventor's New Jersey Phonograph Company. Whether or not the sound inspires Edison to refine his electric chair is debatable.
1927: Yodeling goes pop.
The Jimmie Rodgers song "T for Texas" sells more than 1 million copies. Jimmie, known as "The Father of Country Music", helps yodeling evolve into blues, and eventually country. He even does his part to spread yodeling to the world of jazz in 1930, when he records "Blue Yodel #9" with a young trumpeter named Louis Armstrong.
1931 Tarzan gets into the swing of things.
To prepare for the role, actor Johnny Weissmuller reaches back to his Allegheny Mountain roots and incorporates his childhood yodeling skills into what will become Tarzan's iconic wail. The sound quickly finds a home on jungle gyms and rope swings everywhere.
1992: A new world record!
On February 9th, Thomas Scholl and Peter Hinnen each yodel 22 tones (including 15 in falsetto) in one second.
2005: The Zen of yodeling.
Yodeling classes at the Zurich Conservatory of Music start attracting abnormal amounts of attention when word gets out that the yoga-like breathing exercises double as a stress reliever. The courses offer hope to 9-to-5ers who would prefer to sing rather than bend and twist their way to inner peace.
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The article above, written by Eric Alt, appeared in the Jan - Feb 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.
Wouldn't you like a Yuk-Man of your own? It might be hard to find, however. The only reference I could find for this toy was a newspaper article from 1986. You might try eBay. -via Tacky Raccoons
The female of the argonaut species of octopus produces a thin shell called a paper nautilus. You may remember these animals from the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Scientists have pondered the purpose of these shells for thousands of years. The octopus lays her eggs inside the shell, but that couldn't be the only reason they developed this ability that is so different from other octopuses. Octopus experts Julian Finn and Mark Norman had a chance to observe argonauts in the wild and found they deliberately filled their paper nautiluses with an exact amount of air in order to keep themselves floating at a particular ocean depth.
This neutral buoyancy is a big boon for animals that live in the open ocean, because they don’t have to expend energy on keeping their place in the water column. Other cephalopods use a combination of fins, jets of water and, in the case of the actual nautilus, chambered shells. The argonauts are the only species known to use bubbles, but it’s clearly an efficient tactic. Finn and Norman observed that once they had trapped their air pockets and reached the right depth, they could swim fast enough to outpace a human diver.
See how the argonaut octopus does it in a video at Discover magazine. Link
This Japanese site takes a long time to load the first time you do it, but I opened another tab and did other things while waiting. When it is ready, enter a Twitter ID or keyword and watch the parade! You (or the owner of the ID you entered) will lead, followed by your followers marching along to some really infectious music. Link -via Gorilla Mask
The week-long Quiz Play Day promotion is half over, and Neatorama is currently in first place! That may change, however, as more people play. If you haven't tried Bazinga! there's still time to play and help Neatorama win the friendly competition between blogs. Go to this link and play a game of Bazinga!, make a donation to to your favorite charity, and then send in an email with your score and donation details. Remember, you don't have to score highly or make a bigger donation than the next person to win fabulous prizes -you just have to play! Get all the details in the game post.
Prizes: An Apple iPad from Neatorama for a randomly-drawn player. Ten Wii games from the Game Show Network for randomly-drawn players. A shopping spree from Breadppig/xkcd for a player coming from the winning blog. Bragging rights for the blog that raises the most money for charity!
Here are Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots for the 2012 Olympics in London, England. Wenlock will represent the Olympic games and Mandeville will represent the Paralympic games. Their names are a piece of history.
Wenlock is named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock where, in the mid-19th century, the Wenlock Games became one of the inspirations for the modern Olympic movement.
Mandeville's name is derived from Stoke Mandeville, in Buckinghamshire, home to Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
In the 1940s Dr Ludwig Guttman came to the hospital to set up a new spinal unit to help former soldiers suffering from spinal cord injuries.
Looking for ways to inspire those in his care he encouraged them to take up sport and the Stoke Mandeville Games was formed, widely recognised as a forerunner of the modern Paralympic movement.
The characters' appearances are loaded with symbolism, explained at The Daily Mail. Link to story. http://www.ourlondon2012.com/mascots/ to website.-via Holy Kaw!
What of The Empire Strikes Back were a 3D movie from the 1950s? It would look somewhat like this. A list of the video sources can be seen at the YouTube link. -via The Daily What
A mouse doesn't have to have experience with a cat to be afraid, be very afraid. But they must have the nose to pick up the chemical signals of danger.
Mice have a specialized organ in their noses that picks up chemical signals, called the vomeronasal organ, which helps them detect pheromones emitted by other mice. These mice pheromones have a direct effect on behavior–most obviously in the realms of mating and fighting. In this new study, published in the journal Cell, neurobiologist Lisa Stowers decided to investigate whether the vomeronasal organ was capable of picking up signals from other species as well.
The reseachers took normal lab mice and mutant mice with inactive vomeronasal organs and presented them with cotton balls laced with predator smells, including cat saliva and rat urine. The normal mice backed into the corners of their cages as if trying to escape a predator’s attention, but the mutant mice showed no signs of concern. The mutants were so relaxed that they didn’t even react when a live but anesthetized rat was placed in their cages.
By process of elimination, the scientists were able to isolate some proteins that spelled "cat" to the mice's vomeronasal organs. Link
Rachael Robinson of Toft, Lincolnshire, England married Duncan Turner while they were on vacation in Canada. For the ceremony, she wore a dress made completely of recycled materials, including 13 feet of bubble wrap!
Primary school teacher Rachael originally had the white dress made for her by parents of pupils for a term time recyclable materials fashion show last month.
But when fiancé Duncan popped the question while on holiday in Canada days later, she knew exactly which dress she would be wearing for the official ceremony.
The dress is made from sheets of carefully stitched bubble wrap, attached to an inner cloth lining, and finished off with white foam packaging material and Haribo sweets.
The couple had a second, more traditional ceremony for the families back home in England. http://swns.com/bubble-wrap-wedding-dress-is-pop-of-the-cloths-for-recycled-bride-171045.html -via Unique Daily
