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January 4, 2020
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These Flesh Eating Bugs Create Museum Exhibits
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Over the last 12 years, Dan Traynor has cleaned more than 2,000 animal skulls and 100 full skeletons. But, he didn’t do this work all by himself—he had the help of tens of thousands of flesh-eating bugs.
Dermestid beetles are often considered pests. As a larva, these bugs can eat through a multitude of natural materials such as wool and leather. However, this taste for the natural makes them especially useful for cleaning the flesh off bones, as they will always eat the soft tissue first.
“Dermestid beetles are the most common insect for cleaning bones for several reasons,” Traynor explains. “The most important is that large colonies can quickly and completely clean bones of tissue, with large colonies capable of cleaning several deer skulls in less than 24 hours. Another reason is that they are relatively easy to take care of, with their primary needs being plenty of food, warmth, and dry bedding such as wood chips. They can also clean skulls efficiently without damaging delicate bones, such as nasal turbinates.” (Nasal turbinates are the complicated brittle bones inside animal noses.)
Traynor’s Michigan skull cleaning business, El Cheapo Skull Taxidermy, provides fully cleaned and processed animal bones for hunters to be used as a memorial of their work, for pet memorials, for art, and for educational collections. He starts by removing as much flesh from the animal as he can with tools and then passes on the partially-defleshed head to his beetle colonies to finish the job. The tiny creatures strip the bones bare, crawling into all the tiny nooks and crannies of the specimen and feasting on the soft tissue. Once their work is done, only the clean bones remain.
The time it takes to finish cleaning a skull varies based on the number of beetles, the air temperature, and the size of the skull. For example, a de-fleshed deer skull could take about 24 hours for Traynor’s best colony. Then, he removes the grease from the bones and sometimes whitens them to look pristine and museum-ready.
Dermestid beetles and other scavenging insects have an exceptionally important role in nature. Without their flesh-eating larva, dead animals would not decompose the way they are supposed to. It’s a small wonder that people harvest their ravenous nature to create clean bones for collection!
By Kristin Hugo, contributor for Ripleys.com
Kristin Hugo is a science journalist with writing in National Geographic, Newsweek, and PBS Newshour. She’s especially experienced in covering animals, bones, and anything weird or gross. When not writing, Kristin is spray painting and cleaning bones in her New York City yard. Find her on Twitter at @KristinHugo , Tumblr at @StrangeBiology , and Instagram at @thestrangebiology .
Do Sunflowers Always Face the Sun?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ah, sunflowers! They’ve been the muse of countless artists, including Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. They remain the breezy favorite of Farmhouse Country décor, appearing on countless kitchen towels, oven mitts, and cookie jars. And they’ve contributed to Hip-Hop/R&B history, too. In September 2019, Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” became one of only three songs in history to chart in the top ten on Billboard Hot 100 for 33 weeks.
But artists, interior decorators, and musicians aren’t the only ones fascinated by these colorful plants. Scientists continue to study the golden blooms, too. Particularly the sunflower’s tendency to track the sun throughout the day, a quality known as heliotropism.
But do sunflowers always face the sun? The short answer is “no.”
That said, why and when sunflowers participate in heliotropism is leading researchers to understand the 24-hour internal clock better, one that sunflowers share with many other organisms, including humans.
Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh
The Mystery of Sunflowers
Although popular culture has embraced the myth that sunflowers always follow the sun, this is inaccurate. Only young flowers “move” to face it throughout the day. Once they reach maturity, they stop sun-tracking—their blooms forever turned eastward.
Attempting to understand the function of heliotropism in young sunflowers while mature ones stay static remains a fascination for many scientists.
Recent studies suggest that sunflowers share a common mechanism with human beings, circadian rhythms organized around a 24-hour day. Scientists hypothesize these circadian rhythms—behavioral changes associated with an internal clock—explain sun tracking in young blossoms.
Heliotropism and Circadian Rhythms
How does the full cycle work? Young blooms face east at dawn to meet the rising sun. Then, throughout the day, they slowly modulate west as the sun moves across the sky. Once it sets in the west, the plants spend the night slowly turning eastward to start the cycle again.
To make all of this “movement” happen, different sides of the stem elongate during various points of the day. In other words, the east side of their flower stems expand from morning to evening, allowing the bloom to turn from east to west. But at night, the west side of each flower stem grows more rapidly, resulting in a return to the eastward facing position for the dawn.
As sunflowers mature, this process comes to a halt. Overall growth slows, and the flower’s circadian clock reacts most intensely to the sun’s early morning rays than those later in the day. As a result, the blooms gradually stop tracking westward altogether.
Surprising Benefits of Heliotropism
In their attempt to crack the code of sunflower sun tracking, scientists have also discovered some of the critical benefits of heliotropism. When plants were tied up so that they could no longer follow the sun, it resulted in less leaf area and decreased biomass.
As for the 24-hour clock that sunflowers follow? Researchers determined that the same cycle worked when plants got exposed to artificial light. Plants could reliably track the artificial light source so long as it remained close to a 24-hour light period. But when this cycle approached 30 hours, the flowers failed to do so.
So, why do mature flowers gradually give up their heliotropic ways? Blame it on bees and other pollinators. Researchers have discovered that flowers facing eastward are five times more likely to attract pollinators. Why? Because east-facing blooms warm up more quickly, and bees like those warmer blossoms.
Scientists remain excited about these findings and believe they could have implications when it comes to better understanding the circadian clock’s adaptive function, especially in terms of strength of growth response and timing to environmental triggers.
By Engrid Barnett, contributor for Ripleys.com
How Astronauts Are Growing Steaks In Space
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Meat has been successfully cultured in space for the first time in human history. Better yet, no animals were harmed during the making of this 3D, bioprinted “space beef”.
An Israeli food technology startup called Aleph Farm announced on October 7, 2019, that its experiment onboard the International Space Station yielded incredible results of producing the first-ever lab-grown meat in space. The meat was grown 248 miles (399 km) away from any natural resources. In order to produce their scientifically-created meat, the team started by extracting cells from a cow through a small biopsy. After that, scientists placed the cells in a “broth” of nutrients that mimicked the environment of that inside a cow’s body. The cells then multiplied and grew connective muscle tissues, eventually forming a full-sized steak.
This process involved the assembly of “a small-scaled muscle tissue in a 3D bioprinter developed by 3D Printing Solutions, under microgravity conditions,” according to Aleph Farms press release. Bioprinting is a process that incorporates biomaterials, such as animal cells, with growth factors and the material “bioink”, and then “printed” into a layered structured resulting in a piece a muscle tissue. This process is especially beneficial in space as the maturing process of tissues happens much faster in zero gravity.
This is considered to be a game-changing milestone for humankind as it demonstrates our ability to produce slaughter-free meat anywhere, even in the harshest conditions with no dependency on land or availability of water resources. Cultivating food with limited resources can help solve a potential food security crisis caused by population booms on Earth.
In addition to this, this process is not only considered more humane, but it is also better for the environment as it produces a very minimal environmental footprint. The ten foods with the highest impacts on the environment are all cuts of beef. To make two pounds of meat, it takes around 10,000 to 15,000 liters of water. Cows take a long time to grow and reproduce meaning they will take up more land and consume a lot more resources. Beef alone is responsible for 41% of livestock greenhouse gas emissions, which accounts for 14.5% of total global emissions, according to the United Nations. This is even more than direct emissions from transportation. Many recent scientific studies have found that huge reductions in meat-eating are crucial to cut down greenhouse gas emissions and avoid climate change.
With the ground-breaking success of this experiment, Aleph Farms aims to make cultivated beef steaks available on Earth through their “bio-farms” within a few years to help create stable food security for the planet while preserving natural resources.
January 1, 2020
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Grab Your Red Underwear And Get Ready For New Year’s Eve
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While we all have our own personal New Year’s Eve traditions and practices for good luck, some cultures’ rituals date back hundreds of years. In the American south, people consume black-eyed peas in preparation for the new year. In Spain, they consume 12 grapes before flipping the page of the next calendar—one for each month. Still, there’s one tradition that might go as far back as the Middle Ages, and many Americans have never heard of it: wearing red undergarments on the night of New Year’s Eve.
The Dubious Origins of Red Underwear for NYE
Yes, it’s said to be a good luck charm if you wear red underwear the night of the big ball drop. But, where does this concept come from? The tradition is common among the Spanish, Italian, and Chinese cultures, but it’s difficult to pin down exactly who started doing it first. Some think it stretches all the way back to medieval times when women might have worn red undergarments to give themselves luck in love.
However, it’s more likely tied to the practice where medieval men would wear a piece of red fabric over their groins while sleeping. This was so witches could not cast spells on them and take away their fertility. Since it was believed that witches had more power during the winter months, and especially during the solstice or Yule, it’s plausible to assume this tradition could have come from this antiquated practice.
Ensuring Your Own Underwear-Related Luck
As you read this, you might very well be rifling through your own underwear drawer, hoping to find a pair of red, cotton panties or boxer briefs to throw on during the last evening of the year. After all, it couldn’t hurt. But there are a couple of stipulations one must follow in order to get the full New Year’s luck associated with this tradition.
First, most versions state that the underwear must be a gift, which means it won’t work if you buy it for yourself. Second, it must also be a new pair that you wear for the first time on New Year’s Eve. Finally, while some sources state that any kind of red undergarment will work—a sock or a garter, for example—we recommend sticking with the actual underwear itself, as it seems to be the most traditional option, according to its supposed origin.
So, this year, make sure you have your red underwear on to encourage good fortune and, you know, to protect yourself from witches.
By Julia Tilford, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: Grab Your Red Underwear And Get Ready For New Year’s Eve
Unmasking The Dark History Of The Moretta
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
If you’ve been invited to a masquerade ball this year and want to wear something that screams “creepy-casual,” consider adding a moretta to your ensemble.
Old School Sunscreen
When we think of carnival masks of Venice, Rio or New Orleans, we think of bright colors and ornate design. But, if you go waaaay down to the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll find the moretta—a woman’s mask of plain black with no sparkle or flare, and no opening for the nose or mouth. In artists’ depictions, they look decidedly eerie; it almost appears as though someone has cut out the person’s face.
Of all the styles of masks worn at the time, moretta was as sleek and simple as could be. Likely made of a material like cardstock or cardboard, it would have been waxed, painted over, or had black fabric affixed to it for a blank effect.
Popular in Paris and Venice during the mid-to-late 17th century, the moretta was an oval-shaped, black mask of French origin. It disguised the lady who wore it and stayed put with a button held between the teeth, rendering the wearer mute. It’s no wonder the moretta, meaning “dark,” was also sometimes called the “servetta muta,” or “mute servant.”
From the late 1600s until about 1700, women in Paris had a tradition of covering their faces in public. “Women didn’t always wear hats, so they used masks, including the moretta partially to keep their fashionably pale skin safe from the sun,” says James H. Johnson, Professor of History at Boston University and author of Venice Incognito: Masks in the Seren Republic.
The plain, dark mask accentuated the paleness it helped protect. A moretta might be also worn on a visit to a convent for the sake of modesty and, of course, the quiet created by that button.
Hiding In Plain Sight
Masks in Paris at the time were also worn as a “protection against charges of being immodest,” Johnson says. It was rare for an upper-class woman to go walking in public alone but, he points out, not rare for prostitutes. A lady could walk out in public in a mask and not be seen as being that kind of girl.
You would think that women at this time would see the near-literal buttoning of their lip and “invisibility” in public as an inconvenience. However, for most, being covered up and unheard almost gave them a bit more freedom.
Masks could be “about protecting a psychic space when you don’t have physical space,” Johnson says, and that it was somewhat akin to the modern habit of “wearing sunglasses, not to disguise ourselves but to create a kind of psychic distance so that we don’t have to acknowledge people if we don’t want to.”
Meanwhile, Venice in the 1660s and 1670s was seeing the dawn of new social spaces like enclosed theaters, public cafes, and gambling halls. Venice had a rigid social hierarchy “in which the two or three percent of the population who are noble did not associate closely with or talk to commoners.” Now, suddenly, there were public spaces in which the mingling of classes could occur.
In a sartorial move, likely unique to Venice, “people began to wear masks in public as a way of facilitating being very close to a different social status,” in these new class-fluid spaces, Johnson says. Aristocrats could drink and gamble alongside absolute nobodies and no one would ever know.
Who Was That Masked Woman?
Venetian painter Pietro Longhi often showed masked figures in his work, including women in morettas, as in The Rhinoceros and The Meeting of the Procuratore and His Wife, which, as the University of Mary Washington blog observes, shows a lady removing her moretta for reasons unknown. As with the mysterious moretta, there’s some fun to be had in this little bit of mystery.
By Liz Langley, contributor for Ripleys.com
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