flickering pictures

Before I read this, I didn’t know that octopuses could navigate mazes, solve problems, and even work the lid off a screw-top jar in search of food.
Wikipedia says:

An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in the nerve cords […]

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At least in South Africa.
Frustrated with Telkom, South Africa’s biggest ISP, the cheeky staff at a South African IT company devised a race to see what would be faster: e-mailing a large file from their Pietermaritzburg offices to the city of Durban, 77 km away, or strapping a data stick to a pigeon’s leg and […]

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Antarctica is cold, barren, and an expensive place to send a research team. So what’s the best way to track penguins on the frosty bottom of the world? You rig a satellite to look for giant smears of penguin poop. Duh.
From the Guardian:

Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have used satellite images, […]

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So the posting here has been a little slow for the last week or so — mainly because the rest of my life has been anything but. I’ve got reams of work to plow through and don’t even really have time to be posting right now, but this story was exactly the kind of […]

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A company called BioArts International has started selling clones of long-lost pets under the slogan “What if you could be best friends again?”, and wants your beloved Mr. Tinkles to be next. From the press release:

BioArts International announced today that they have delivered the world’s first commercially cloned dog, a 10-week old Labrador named […]

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The always fascinating Cool Things in Random Places hosts an article on the Karni Mata Temple in Rajastan, India, based in turn on a feature in National Geographic. Devotees flock from all over to worship and feed the temple’s 20,000 rats, paying their respects to Mother Karni, a 15th-century mystic.
From the official Karni Mata […]

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Researchers at McGill University in Montreal are hoping that mutant roundworms will help the West win its epic struggle with obesity. Led by researchers Patrick Narbonne and Richard Roy, the team discovered a genetic mutation that makes some C. elegans worms burn off fat extremely quickly, and are hoping to apply their new knowledge […]

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What? Why was a moose in a helicopter? Why did he fall out? And what the heck does “DNR” mean?
The CBC reports:

An endangered moose died as a result of a fall from a helicopter sling, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources says.
Department spokesman Dan Davis said veterinarians have confirmed the […]

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Man, you can’t make this stuff up. From the BBC:

An Asian elephant that became addicted to heroin after being fed bananas spiked with the drug is to return home after undergoing a detox programme.
The four-year-old animal, called Xiguang, received methadone injections for a year at five times the human dosage, state media said.
It was […]

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This isn’t the first time Russian president Vladimir Putin has flaunted his manliness for the cameras, and it seems likely that it was staged. Still, I don’t think George W. Bush would have had the guts to take down a tiger. From the Guardian:

While on a visit to a national park to observe […]

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