Head binding

Meet The Healthy, Functioning Man Who Survived With Almost No Brain

When it comes to our brains, does size really matter? One of the biggest myths about the brain is that bigger is always better. But what about those who sit on the extreme end of that scale? How much of our brain do we actually need to survive? Looking through the archives of medical history, there are a number of people with tiny brains, or brains with huge chunks missing entirely, which defy all odds.  

In a 2007 Lancet study, doctors described an incredible medical oddity – the 44-year-old civil servant who had lived a normal life despite having an incredibly tiny brain. The French man went into hospital after he experienced weakness in his left leg for two weeks. Doctors were quite surprised when they took scans of his brain and found a huge fluid-filled chamber.

The scans showed that the man had a “massive enlargement of the lateral, third, and fourth ventricles, a very thin cortical mantle and a posterior fossa cyst,” researchers noted in the study. In short, while fluid normally circulates throughout the brain, it’s regularly drained. But instead of draining the fluid into the circulatory system, the fluid in this man’s brain built up. Eventually, the accumulation of fluid resulted in only a tiny amount of actual brain material.  

The man’s medical history showed that he had to get a shunt inserted into his head as an infant to get rid of the buildup of fluid on the brain, known as hydrocephalus. The shunt was eventually removed when at age 14, he complained of left leg weakness and some unsteadiness. The man went on to live a normal life and he got married and had two children. Tests showed that he had an IQ of 75 which, though below the average of 100, is not considered a mental disability.  

“What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life,” Dr. Max Muenke, from the National Human Genome Research Institute, told Reuters.

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The New "Werewolf Cat" Highlights The Complicated Ethics of Breeding

The Lykoi cat is a new breed, one that's only been around for a few years. The name is derived from the word "lycanthrope," because its patchy fur coverage makes it look kind of like a werewolf. At Nautilus Magazine, Ian Chant explains how it's all thanks to a genetic anomaly that affects hair growth.

Lykois bear a mutant gene variation that interferes with their hair growth, robbing the animals of much of their undercoat and leaving them with hair follicles that are either unable to produce hair at all, or that can produce it but not maintain it. While they do have hair, it is sparse, and often missing entirely around the face and paws, lending Lykois a lean, slightly mangy look, with eyes that, unhidden by fur, give the illusion of being much larger than normal.

"These are the result of a natural mutation that appeared in the wild cat population," says Johnny Gobble, a veterinarian and breeder of Lykois. "They've been reported for years, but no one has tried to breed them because there were concerns about their health." Though the cats don't project the image of a hale, hearty feline, the unusual variety has caught the interest of cat fanciers recently.

So far, it seems as if Lykois are faring decently, as long as they're kept inside where they can compensate for their lack of fur with artificial sources of warmth. But all the Lykois are still pretty young, and some health concerns might not become evidence until they mature.

Of course, it's not always health that humans are seeking in a new animal breed—often, it's novelty. Breeders look for very specific traits and do their level best to not only bring them out but hone them to their ultimate expression. Pug noses get flatter, corgi legs shorter, and bulldog shoulders so broad that the animals have to be delivered by cesarean section. Rather than being weeded out as they are in nature, these mutations in breeding are prized, preserved, emphasized, and multiplied at grand scales. At its heart, breeding animals represents the industrialization of mutations.

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Danish 'monster' pulled out of Swedish waters

A figurehead from a Danish ship that sunk in the 1480s has been hauled from a Swedish sea bed. The creature is one of the world's oldest preserved wooden carvings of its kind and will go on display later this month.

The wooden face, which resembles a monster or a large grinning dog, had been lying on a seabed off the southern Swedish town of Ronneby for more than five centuries.

 

It is thought to have broken off from the Gribhunden ship, commissioned by King Hans, who ruled Denmark from 1481 to 1513. The ship sunk after a fire.

 

The creepy figurehead - which weighs 300 kilograms - was discovered by divers in June and was dragged up to the surface on Tuesday.

Marcus Sandekejer from Blekinge museum, which is set to put the discovery on display later this month, told The Local on Wednesday: "This figurehead is probably the only one left from a 15th century ship in the world."

 

He said it was a "fantastic feeling" watching expert archaeologists lift the creature out of the water.

 

"520 years under water....and in such a great condition!" 

 

The museum is now on a mission to preserve the wooden animal as best as possible.

 

It will spend the next three months in a bath of sugar water, designed to remove the salt it has absorbed from the sea, by osmosis.

 

"After that, we will look at other ways of keeping it well maintained for the longer term. We have been working with top archaeologists who have worked with other big preservations such as the Kronan ship in Kalmar," said Sandekejer.

 

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Crow Shows Incredible Intelligence During Complex Test

When animal researchers came up with a very special experiment to test a wild crow’s intelligence, they had no idea what to expect. But after it was over, everything they knew about bird intelligence changed in an instant!

Dr Alex Taylor set up a tricky puzzle to test the birds problem-solving abilities – Will the crow defeat the puzzle?

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Adorable Sea Slug Loves Eating Algae So Much It Can Photosynthesize

Known as the Costasiella Kuroshimae also nicknamed "leaf sheep", this type of sea slug species is a shell-less cutie-pie that remains one of the only creatures in the world capable of using algae to photosynthesize.

When they consume algae they suck out the chloroplasts to store in their own bodies for energy using a process known as kleptoplasty. Usually only single-celled organisms are capable of this process but the leaf sheep is a special species that is literally a solar-powered slug.

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When Sweden runs out of garbage, it offers to import excess waste from other countries in Europe

When Sweden runs out of its own garbage, it offers a service to the rest of garbage-bloated Europe: importing excess waste from other countries.

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Man sends messeges in bottles

Over the last two decades, Harold Hackett has sent out over 4,800 messages in a bottle from Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province along the Atlantic coastline.

Every message asks for the finder to send a response back to Hackett, and since 1996 he has received over 3,100 responses from all over the world.

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What's Happening To The Flowers At Fukushima?

They might look like deformed victims of a nuclear disaster, but these daisies are likely the result of a rare, but natural condition called fasciation, or crested growth. This can happen when the parts of a growing embryo fuse abnormally, resulting in a flattened-looking stem. And oftentimes, flowers and leaves will develop unusual shapes and show up at odd angles to that stem. As gardeners will tell you, fasciated plants are not exclusive to disaster sites. The causes of this condition range from infections and severe pruning to hormonal imbalances and (run-of-the-mill) genetic mutations.

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Sleepy Hollow - sleeping sickness solved

The first cases of the "sleeping epidemic" were reported in March 2013. Everyone in the village had a family member or a friend who had fallen asleep for no apparent reason, according to locals. 

For three years people in the Kazakhstan village Kalachi – nicknamed 'Sleepy Hollow'  was hit with a mysterious “sleeping sickness.” Residents were falling asleep at random; they were passing out while walking, in school and even on their motorcycles. Some fell asleep for up to six days at a time and when they woke up they couldn’t remember what happened. Others suffered from bizarre hallucinations, especially children, led one girl to see an elephant trunk on her mother and a boy imagine horses and light bulbs flying around his head. The mystery of the 'Village of the Damned' where a sleeping sickness causes people to fall unconscious for days, mild-mannered pensioners swear and men have unusually-high sex drives has been solved.

 An old disused Soviet-era uranium mine called the culprit is pumping out high levels of carbon monoxide, poisoning the villagers. "Radon and other inert gases which release as a result of the decay of uranium are squeezed out by groundwater and through the cracks in the ground rises to the surface"  says Russian scientist Leonid Rikhvanov. Tests – independently verified by experts in Prague and Moscow – showed levels of carbon monoxide in the air to be ten times normal levels.

'After numerous medical tests, researchers have confirmed that carbon monoxide is to blame for sleeping epidemic in Kalachi village.' The residents will now be evacuated and given new homes. 

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size chart of the Dragons of Middle-Earth - made by @contemporaryelfinchild.tumblr.com/

Ancalagon the Black

“Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin.”

Now in the Atlas of Middle Earth apparently there is a drawing by tolkien that would indicate that Thangorodrim was about 35,000 ft high. For comparison that is a good bit taller than Mt. Everest which is 29,029 feet. I cannot confirm this right now as my copy of the Atlas is on loan to a friend but that seems reasonable to me. 

Anyhow, that means that Ancalagon the Black must have been enormous to crush them under his bulk.

My guess at the size of some of the other Winged Dragons in the War of Wrath

“out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons, that had not before been seen; and so sudden and ruinous was the onset of that dreadful fleet that the host of the Valar was driven back, for the coming of the dragons was with great thunder, and lightning, and a tempest of fire.”

While obviously none of these other dragons were as big as Ancalagon, I imagine that at least some of them were pretty huge by this description.

Glaurung
 “In the front of that fire came Glaurung the golden, father of dragons, in his full might; and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of the Orcs in multitudes such as the Noldor had never before seen or imagined. And they assaulted the fortresses of the Noldor, and broke the leaguer about Angband, and slew wherever they found them the Noldor and their allies.”

Now Glaurung is hard to place size-wise as Tolkien never really says but as Father of Dragons he must have been quite large and so Tolkien seems to describe him. He also looks quite large in Tolkien’s drawing but this is one that could definitely be argued. 

Drake of Gondolin

“but even as Tuor comes nigh driving the Orcs, one of those brazen snakes heaves against the western wall and a great mass of it shakes and falls, and behind comes a creature of fire and Balrogs upon it. Flames gust from the jaws of that worm and folk wither before it,”

So in Tolkien’s early writings on the Fall of Gondolin found in HoME there are a good number of dragons at the Fall of Gondolin and they knock down the walls and stuff. Again, pretty big.  

Scatha

Scatha the Worm was a mighty Long-worm of the Grey Mountains and one of the greatest Dragons to infest that range of the north. He was slain by Fram. Again, not much info so size reflects my best guess.

Smaug assessment of Smaug’s size was based largely off Tolkien’s drawings (picture below) 

So those are my sources, nice and simple. Again if you have anything more specific, send it my way.

Very Peculiar Artifacts Discovered In Ancient Tomb Of A Mochica Ruler

Archaeologists have unearthed several very peculiar artifacts in an ancient tomb that belonged to a powerful Mochica ruler. The tomb is about 1,500 years old and contains among other things odd metal claws and a pyramid-shaped copper scepter.

Two thousand years ago a mysterious and little known civilization ruled the northern coast of Peru. Its people were called the Moche.

The name is taken from the great site of Moche, in the river valley of the same name, which appears to have been the capital or chief city of the Moche peoples. Their settlements extended along the hot, arid coast of northern Peru from the Lambayeque River valley south for more than 215 miles (350 km) to the Nepeña River valley.

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Coyote finds old dog toy, acts like a puppy

 A photographer spotted a coyote as it trotted into her yard and explored a toy left in the snow. What she managed to capture on camera is the beauty of play.

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Crews demolish the wrong house after man switched address with house next door

A man in Michigan whose house was set to be torn down outsmarted demolition crews by switching address numbers with the house next door.

It's not clear why his house was being forcibly demolished, but his plan to save his home initially worked.  

When demolition crews arrived Thursday, they tore down his neighbor Mike's home instead.

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Beauty Products Made From The Skin Of Executed Chinese Prisoners

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company’s products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is “traditional” and nothing to “make such a big fuss about”.

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Cat Takes Accidental Ride On An Airplane

In a video posted on Sunday to YouTube (LINK), the pilot, Romain Jantot, and his passenger, don't notice the cat at first. Then, as she crawls toward them, they realize they've taken on an unwanted passenger.

Jantot immediately starts his descent after spotting the feline stowaway and safely lands the plane.

Pygme Elephant

Palaeoloxodon falconeri (also known as the Pygmy Elephant) is an extinct species of elephant 
that was an example of insular dwarfism, reaching only 90 cm (3 ft) in height. They lived on the islands of Sicily and Malta. 

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Prosecuted for homosexual acts

Alan Turing was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.

Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when such behaviour was still a criminal act in the UK. He accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is equally consistent with accidental poisoning. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013.

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Naked mole rat

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The chrysalis (pupa stage) of the Metallic Mechanitis butterfly from Costa Rica.