Category: Animals & Nature

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A Corpse on a Body Farm Was Caught Moving

This can safely be filed under: Nightmare Fuel.

Apparently, corpses don’t stop moving for up to a year after death, due to the various decomposition processes they go through.

Which makes me wonder how many of those bells rang at Victorian gravesides even though the people in the coffins were, in fact, dead.

Yikes.

The research that brought you this lovely tidbit of macabre information comes from an Australian body farm (a place where scientists study how bodies decompose in order to improve forensic techniques.

In a time-lapse video containing images taken every 30 minutes over a period of 17 months, researchers saw movement for far longer than they expected to – over a year and a half in some cases. In an interview with ABC News Australia, the authors said they believe the movements were mostly the result of drying ligaments.

“What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body.”

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So from Obesity TV programmes I go straight onto food!!: This is an amazing "5 Stages of Decay Cookie" by Claire Ratcliffe for the special Halloween event I'm holding at Barts Pathology Museum where I work: "Delicious Decay – The Edible Body Farm!!! The event (Friday night 28th and all day Saturday 29th) will feature edibles – savoury and sweet – based only on human decay and decomposition. The point is to raise awareness for the need, in the UK, for a Body Farm (or Taphonomy Research Facility) that actually uses human remains, like the one in Tennessee. We use pigs at the moment and they're consistently unreliable. That's why I'm working with @conjurers_kitchen (amazing food artist) and Dr Anna Williams (Forensic Anthropologist) to make this incredibly realistic. We even have the scents used to train cadaver dogs and a make up artist to make you look "decomposed"! www.deliciousdecay1.eventbrite.co.uk and www.deliciousdecay2.eventbrite.co.uk (I'll talk about the 5 stages in another post 💀⚰) #humanremains #decomposition #remains2beseen #ediblebodyfarm #decay #deliciousdecay #taphonomy #bodyfarm #anthroplogy

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They’ve yet to publish their study, but hope their findings will continue to add to a body of research that helps police solve murders, among other things.

“This research is very important to help law enforcement to solve crime and it also assists in disaster investigations. It’s important for victims and victims’ families, and in a lot of cases it gives the victim a voice to tell their last story.”

Just an FYI: Body farms exist all over the world, and they depend on body donations from people looking to assist science after they’ve expired.

I say you might as well be helpful. Either way, you’re just going to be decomposing.

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A Tree-Planting Search Engine Saw a 1150% Increase in Use After the Amazon Rainforest Fires

Step aside, Google. An eco-friendly search engine saw a 1150% increase in daily downloads in a single day after the Amazon rainforest fires.

Ecosia is a search engine that uses 80 percent of its profits from advertisements to plant millions of trees in Brazil, Ethiopia, and other emerging economies, Business Insider reports. The website claims to have planted 65 million trees to date – an impressive number.

Usually, Ecosia sees about 20,000 downloads per day. But recently, large swaths of the Amazon went up into flames in an urgent environmental disaster. As more people became aware of what was going on, people began using Ecosia en masse in an attempt to help combat the damage.

Photo Credit: iStock

On August 22, the company experienced 250,000 downloads in a single day, but the record-breaking moment was bittersweet for Ecosia.

“We had our team meeting and people were, on the one side, very happy because of the numbers but also very sad because of the forest fires,” Christian Kroll, Ecosia’s chief executive, told Business Insider. “So it’s both exciting and a tragic occurrence.”

The sudden burst in popularity is largely thanks to word-of-mouth. The app is frequently mentioned by Instagram and Twitter users who are spreading the word about the rainforest fires. Ecosia is now the top-ranked iOS app in Brazil.

Photo Credit: iStock

The Amazon rainforest experienced over 72,000 fires this year so far, an 83 percent increase from 2018. This is partly because of dry weather, and party because Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has walked back a decade’s worth of environmental protections. His actions have given cover to thousands of illegal farmers and ranchers to light fires to burn down forest to create more arable land for them to use. It’s a difficult situation because many of them have no other way to earn income, but the damage they’ve done to the forest – and thus to the world – is enormous.

Christian says he was inspired to start Ecosia after learning about environmental damage during his travels to South America and Nepal.

“In my opinion, planting trees helps people and the environment at the same time,” he said. He’s right.

He founded Ecosia in 2009, but it doesn’t do all that search work on its own. It partners with Microsoft’s search engine Bing to power its search results and display ads.

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Enjoy These Photos of Spiders Wearing Water Droplets as Hats

The Butterfly Babe takes amazing images of all sorts of creepy crawlies. But of all the bugs out there, perhaps the most adorable (it’s an arachnid, technically) are these tiny jumping spiders wearing droplets of water as hats.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Yes, I just used the word “adorable” when describing spiders, and once you see these pictures, you’re not even going to be able to argue.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Jumping spiders are part of the family Salticidae, which is the largest family of spiders. They have amazing vision (look at those eyes!) and, as their name suggest, jump when hunting or in response to a perceived threat.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Chances are, there are some of these spiders near you right now (maybe they’re even sporting this fashion right on your porch!). They live in all manner of climates, from tropical forests to deserts – even on the slopes of Mount Everest.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

They’re active, capable hunters (maybe they disarm the prey with their cute fashion choices!) and often nab prey by jumping several times the length of their own bodies.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

The spiders are smart as well as cute; their expressive faces hiding brains capable of learning. They’ve been shown to recognize and remember colors, and they use the ability to make themselves better hunters.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Which is all interesting, but my favorite thing about them is still the water droplets on their heads in these pictures.

Posted by Butterfly Babe on Sunday, September 8, 2019

Is there a spider haberdashery? Is it pure, sweet chance? Are they saving a drink for later? I need to know more!

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Civil War Cannonballs Were Uncovered on South Carolina Beaches Because of Hurricane Dorian

Hurricane Dorian was huge and powerful, leaving death and destruction throughout the Bahamas before moving to brush the southeastern coast of the United States.

There, it brought carnage and left floodwaters and debris, but it also uncovered something pretty special: two Civil War cannonballs that experts are saying are well over 150 years old.

Aaron Lattin and his girlfriend Alba stumbled on the find when they were walking on Folly Beach (near Charleston) on September 6th. They first thought the objects were rocks, but soon realized they’d found something pretty cool and very historical.

In 2016, Hurricane Matthew uncovered 16 similar cannonballs around the same area; it’s not unusual, since Folly Island was used as a Union base during the war. More than a few items left from their artillery battery can be stumbled upon up and down the shoreline.

Like unexploded WWII bombs uncovered in Britain, old cannonballs need to be treated with caution. In this case, police and bomb disposal technicians were called to the most recent scene to ensure the cannonballs were no longer a danger.

Mother Nature taketh away, but sometimes she gives, too. And for lovers of history everywhere, we’ll take what we can get.

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A Woman Was Found Pecked to Death by Her Pet Rooster

People are killed and eaten by their pets more often than we’d like to think. That said, I bet you’ve never considered the ways your pet fowl could spell the end of your life.

This 76-year-old Australian woman probably didn’t. She probably also didn’t think about the fact that the varicose veins on her legs ran right at beak-level – ripe for the pecking.

Apparently, she was out collecting eggs when her rooster pecked her lower left leg. It caused “significant hemorrhage with collapse and death,” and the autopsy showed two major lacerations – one of which was over a “perforated large varix.”

The official cause of death was exsanguination due to bleeding varicose veins.

Before you go and sell your chickens, know this woman did have a medical history that created a perfect storm that helped the rooster along. She had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and, yes, varicose veins.

Uncontrolled bleeding from varicose veins has caused people to die before, and one being punctured can be considered a medical emergency.

Pressure can build inside the veins, a condition that affects about 25% of adults 50 and older, and has led directly to several other elderly patients’ deaths.

Fatal rooster attacks are, as you probably expect, very rare, but this instance should serve as a reminder that even relatively small and harmless animals can pose a threat when all of the other factors line up just right, say the researchers who wrote up the case study.

“This case demonstrates that even relatively small domestic animals may be able to inflict lethal injuries in individuals if there are specific vascular vulnerabilities present.”

Another option, of course, is to have your veins treated. If you choose not to, though, you’ll want to avoid minor injuries and, if you sustain one, make sure to take it seriously.

“Apply pressure to the bleeding point, lie down, elevate the leg, and get help,” advises one expert.

Good advice, my friends. And now you know.

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Some Plants Can Hear When They’re Being Eaten and They Fight Back

Ready to be weirded out? There are some plants that can hear when they’re being eaten.

Yes, they can actually hear the chomp, chomp of a caterpillar munching.

If I were a plant I would be losing my mind!

Photo Credit: Unsplash, Bankim Desai

How can we tell?

Scientists have long known about vibrations affecting plants. Think about your elementary science project where you talked to your plants or played music for them and compared their growth to that of a “control” plant. Remember that? Well, sound is really just vibrations that get carried through the air.

Two researchers from the University of Missouri wanted to dig deeper into this effect. So Rex Cocroft and Heidi Appel brought in some insects to help them out.

In their study, they used caterpillars known to eat “Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard.” This plant was chosen due to its known production of mustard oil.

Arabidopsis plant
Photo Credit: iStock

“A caterpillar that eats nothing but mustard oil plants can get poisoned if the levels get too high,” Appel told Farm Journal.

Interesting…

The next step was to set up a small vibration microphone to pick up the munching sounds of the caterpillars having lunch. Next, they played back these sounds for the poor Arabidopsis and, lo and behold, the plant began to excrete more mustard oil than typical when it wasn’t “under attack.”

“This indicates that the plants are able to distinguish feeding vibrations from other common sources of environmental vibration,” Cocroft said.

In addition to the oils, the plant produced more anthocyanins, a specific chemical that gives its flowers a red color.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

What does this mean?

While it does take time for the plant to build up the oil (a few hours to days), the researchers stated that one should think of it as the plant going to war. If the caterpillar keeps eating, it will be poisoned, leaving it dead. The oil is the plant’s defense mechanism.

“This research also opens the window of plant behavior a little wider, showing that plants have many of the same responses to outside influences that animals do, even though the responses look different,” he said.

Smart plants…I think I’ll become a strict carnivore.

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10 Fascinating Facts to Get Your Juices Flowing

If you’ve been in a rut lately, let’s put an end to that RIGHT THIS INSTANT!

You know why? And you know how? Because of this stellar fact set!

It covers all kinds of topics and it will give you a big BOOST.

Let’s dig into these facts.

1. Get busy, over 50 folks!

Photo Credit: did you know?

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2. Beware of the Zone of Death

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3. That’s one way to go out

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4. Folks, I really hope this is true

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5. “He was…an American Gravedigger”

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6. Smoke ’em if you got ’em!

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7. I’ll do it if you do it

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8. I did not know that!

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9. Do you see the world differently?

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10. I think women were happy about that

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Now that’s better, wouldn’t you agree!

Work your brain out folks, it’s good for you!

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A Girl Sent an Adorable Apology Letter for Taking a Rock from a National Park

I bet you didn’t know that you’re not allowed to take rocks — or any other specimens —out of a U.S. National Park. It’s against the rules, but unsurprisingly, a lot of people sneakily do it anyway. It’s hard to resist carrying home a memento, which is how one young girl ended up taking a rock home from the Great Smoky Mountains.

The girl, Karina, felt so bad afterward that she sent the rock back along with an apology letter, which has since gone viral on Facebook.

“Dear Park Ranger, Deep Creek was awesome! I especially liked Tom Branch Falls,” Karina wrote in her letter. “I loved it so much, I wanted to have a souvenir to come home with me.”

Posted by Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Saturday, August 17, 2019

Karina went on to apologize: “I’m sorry, and I want to return it.”

She also included a donation to the park, plus a lovely drawing on the back of the letter.

Posted by Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Saturday, August 17, 2019

The park rangers were so charmed by Karina’s letter that they wrote her back and shared her note on Facebook. They explained why it’s so important not to take rocks from parks.

“Thank you for recognizing that what is in the park should stay in the park. If every visitor took a rock home, that would mean 11 million rocks would be gone from the park every year! The park would definitely not be as beautiful as it was before,” they wrote.

Posted by Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Saturday, August 17, 2019

“Rocks in the Smokies also provide homes for hundreds of creatures, including salamanders! By leaving rocks where they are, we’re helping protect these special homes as well as the beauty of the park.”

The exchange has likely left a lasting impression on Karina — and for the thousands of people who have reacted to the letter on Facebook. Lesson learned: never take rocks from a national park, and if you do, mail it back with an adorable letter and all will be forgiven.

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Canadians Crowdfunded $3 Million to Save Pristine Land from Development

Hey, people in the U.S.: take the time to read this article and maybe we can follow the lead of our neighbors to the north on this, okay?

It’s always incredibly depressing to see untouched, pristine wilderness get purchased and developed by huge, wealthy corporations. Which is why people in Canada decided to take a stand to save 2,000 acres of beautiful coastline in British Columbia.

A crowdfunding effort raised $3 million to purchase the area of coastal wilderness in the Princess Louisa Inlet in British Columbia. The land is virtually untouched and citizens knew they only had one shot to make this work.

The crowdfunding was organized by the B.C. Parks Foundation, a group that works to protect natural landscapes. Logging companies and developers expressed interest in buying the gorgeous land after it was put up for sale by a private owner.

This crowdfunding effort wasn’t just a couple of wealthy people chipping in, either. Average Canadians paid $10 or $15 here and there to contribute to saving the 2,000 acres – and clearly it worked!

The B.C. Parks Foundation will make the land a protected park for all to enjoy.

Dear Park Supporters, You did it! Your love for British Columbia and beautiful places like Princess Louisa Inlet has…

Posted by BC Parks Foundation on Tuesday, September 3, 2019

The organization wrote a letter expressing its gratitude to all the people who donated money.

“Dear Park Supporters,

You did it! Your love for British Columbia and beautiful places like Princess Louisa Inlet has done something miraculous. In just a few short months, you have raised $3 million to protect a jewel in B.C’.s coast.

We still have to finalize the sale with the vendor (now September 3rd), and there are more steps to come, but in donating the funds you have scaled a substantial peak on this amazing expedition.

We know people want to keep B.C. beautiful, and we know our parks are the core of our identity. They are our cathedrals, our towers, our pyramids; the wonders of our world. But we couldn’t have predicted such a fabulous outpouring in such a short time from so many different people and places. We are in a state of awe and gratitude.

We will keep you posted when the deal is finalized. Any funds that continue to come in will be put in our Parks Bank to protect more areas in Princess Louisa and British Columbia.

With our deepest appreciation and admiration,

Ross Beaty, Board Chair
Andy Day, CEO”

Well done! More of this throughout the entire world, please!

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The “Punxsutawney Phil” of Maine Predicts an Early Winter

All hail Passy Pete!

For the last four years, a lobster in Belfast, Maine, has correctly predicted whether summer would continue or winter would arrive early for her yearly visit.

His name is Passy Pete, and he forecasts the future by choosing between two scrolls – one that predicts six more weeks of summer (he’s kind of the anti-Punxsutawney Phil), and one that says winter is coming (soon).

For the first three years, Passy said we had six more weeks of summer to enjoy the warmth (and he was correct!). He also guessed (???) correctly in 2018 that an early winter was on the horizon.

He says the same for 2019, so maybe you can go ahead and swap out your closet.

It falls to Belfast baron Dave Crabiel to read from the scroll chosen by the lobster.

“Friends of Belfast, on this second day of September – Labor Day in the year 2019 – it’s in your best interest to collect your coats, tell your sister to return the ones you lent her, tell Cathy, the harbormaster, to remove the boats, and everyone get ready for winter.”

The crowd groaned at the news.

Crabiel and the other Belfast business owners came up with the idea when they noticed how steeply tourism dropped off after the July 4th holiday.

“While Belfast is a great community year-round, we certainly do see an increase in business in the summer with the tourists. So we thought, what if there was an anti-groundhog, somebody who could predict a longer summer, rather than predicting winter?”

It seems to be working; crowds gather to see the crustacean choose a scroll. As long as he keeps picking right, I imagine his legend will increase and more people will descend on Belfast to watch him do his magic every year.

Crabiel hopes the same.

“All four years up to this point he’s been accurate. So I don’t know – we’ll see. It’s not the result we wanted.”

A longer summer means more travelers, and more business for the town, of course, but what can you do? The lobster has spoken.

If you want to see the ceremony in action, check out this video:

As for Pete, he’s returned to the bay each year no matter which scroll he chooses, so you can’t pick your bone with him.

Take it up with Mother Nature, I guess. Or just get out your coats, gather some firewood, and settle in.

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