Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 283
March 22, 2019
China Cloned The Sherlock Holmes Of Dogs
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[March 17-23rd, 2019] Sherlock Holmes gets a clone, a steer walks into a Petco, astronauts are struck with space herpes, and the rest of the week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
The Sherlock Holmes Of Dogs
No matter how good a detective he may be, dogs can only serve a relatively brief amount of time in the police force. That’s why Chinese scientists decided to clone a Kunming wolf-dog that’s been called the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ of the canine world. Multiple murders have been solved using his sniffer, and early tests show the clone is already a consistent winner in training exercises.
All Pets Welcome
In a stress test of Petco’s welcome policy for “all leashed pets,” Vincent Browning of Texas brought his beloved African Watusi into a Houston-area store. A bull Watusi can weigh up to 1,600 pounds and carries a set of horns that can stretch over six feet wide. The store welcomed the steer—named Oliver—with open arms, though Browning was sure to avoid going down any narrow aisles.
Used At A Premium
Gucci is launching a line of “pre-distressed” sneakers. The shoes look like they’ve already gone through years of wear, but still cost $870. Despite the dirty-sneaker look, Gucci insists they’re made with the highest quality materials, and include instructions for maintenance, including stuffing them with tissue paper when they’re not being worn and regular dry-cleaning.
Hip Hop Makes For Some Funky Cheese
When a Swiss cheesemaker teamed up with Bern University to play music to cheese wheels as they aged, the question on everybody’s mind was… why? While no one was sure the music would affect the microbes, researchers secretly had hopes for their favorite genres. After six months of endless Mozart, Led Zeppelin, Yelo, A Tribe Called Quest, and Vril, the results were in. All cheese wheels exposed to music exhibited milder flavors than non-musical cheese, but hip-hop alone proved to provide a stronger aroma and flavor than all others.
Via Bern University
Space Herpes
Astronauts face a variety of stressful conditions when they spend time in space. Cosmic rays, radiation, even microgravity take a toll on their bodies, but a new symptom can last for months after they return to Earth. NASA astronauts are exhibiting increased rates of oral and genital herpes, chickenpox, and shingles. Up to 61% of space travelers are affected, shedding the viruses in their saliva and urine. Experts believe the extreme stress and immune system depression are leading to higher rates, and say they’ll have to take this new information into account as they plan for longer space missions to places like Mars.
March 21, 2019
Playing Dead Is, In Fact, Not An Act For Possums
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Opossums don’t actually play dead when they’re threatened. Instead, they involuntarily enter a catatonic state. Possums, as they are commonly called, are more likely to run the other way, bare their teeth and growl in dangerous situations. While their bravado is admirable, it’s not very difficult for most predators to overpower them.
When you see the marsupial “playing possum” it’s because it’s been attacked or caught unaware. If it feels threatened by a dog, fox, owl or other animal, it drops to the ground and either closes its eyes or stares off into space. Its body goes limp, its breathing appears to stop, it discharges its bowels, its tongue sticks out, and it drools. And if you poke it, the possum will not respond. By all indications, it appears to be dead.
This defense mechanism is intended to confuse its attacker and allow the possum to escape. Many people believe it’s a good act, but according to scientists the possum is actually in tonic immobility or thanatosis, and its body enters a catatonic state in response to fear. “Playing possum” isn’t an act; it’s an involuntary reaction to a threat.
The animal doesn’t feel any pain and has no reflexes when this occurs. It even stops blinking its eyes. A possum won’t respond no matter what a predator does, even if swats, bites or breaks the possum’s bones.
Many wild animals are turned off by dead prey, an evolutionary tactic that likely keeps carnivores from consuming diseased food. Most predators will give up on prey that plays possum.
It can take the marsupial anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to become mobile again. While they can survive these types of encounters, they can still be injured. Scientists have found many possums in the wild wandering around with healed wounds and fractures, likely from being attacked.
In addition to seemingly feigning death, possums have other remarkable traits. They have prehensile tails to climb tree branches, and they’re immune to pit viper venom. Females give birth to up to 18 babies at once just 12 to 14 days after conception.
They’re also very adaptable. The Virginia possum, for example, has expanded its territory to the north, which has a much colder climate. In some northern states, the animals survive frostbite on their tails and ears when they appear in the spring. They’re battered but resilient. And here’s a fun fact: opossum means “white dog” in the Native American Algonquian language.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
March 20, 2019
The Orphan Trains Of 19th-Century America
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
As the wheels of innovation propelled American cities into a new era of urban development, it would test the need for social services in its biggest civic centers. By 1850, nearly 30,000 orphans made up nearly five percent of New York City’s total population. With the troubles of the industrial revolution, however, also came the solution: the introduction of orphan trains.
During most of the 19th-century, there were few formal rules for adoption. Children who lost their parents for one reason or another were usually just raised by family or neighbors. Burgeoning cities, however, seemed to overwhelm this system of neighborly do-gooders. Children weren’t just homeless because their parents died in accidents, but were also turned to the streets because of poverty, addiction, or otherwise unfit parenting.
To protect themselves, these children often formed street gangs, inventing ways to make a living, selling things like newspapers or matches. Charles Brace formed the Children’s Aid Society with the intention of helping children live more fulfilling lives. His first move was to form newsy bunkhouses that offered education and reduced rent while children sold newspapers.
The bunkhouses alone weren’t enough. In the wake of the Civil War and reconstruction, displaced families were creating even more homeless children, and Brace decided to get creative. Just as the railroad allowed for American’s to conquer the Midwest, so to could it help tackle child homelessness.
Beginning in 1853, the Children’s Aid Society orchestrated a mass migration of orphans out of the city. They gave each child new clothes and a bible, loaded them on a train, then exhibited them to prospective parents. Brace felt that America’s breadbasket was the perfect place for these children. Farmers were seen as morally upright and flush with enough food to easily feed an extra child. No legal adoptions took place on the journey, but parents did have to promise to raise them as if they were their own. Many of the children were already used to being liable for their own welfare and saw this more as a job opportunity than an adoption. Many children were promised wages, education, and even bonuses once they turned 21.
Parents across the west seemed receptive to the orphan trains, offering a childless family the rare opportunity to adopt. Sometimes the adoptions were even pre-planned, with adopting parents able to place “special orders” ahead of time, dictating the age, sex, complexion, hair, and eye color of the child they wanted. Other times, the selection was much more free-form.
In some cases, children were paraded from the train station to the local playhouse, where they went up on stage one by one performing songs and giving small speeches for prospective parents who prodded their bodies and checked their teeth. While many adoptions turned out to be good for the children, some experienced pretty transparent child slavery, working on farms with little to no pay.
The orphan trains operated until 1929, bringing an estimated 250,000 parent-less children to the west. Today, states like Kansas and Oklahoma have begun tracing the lives of train orphans in an attempt to connect them with long-lost family.
March 19, 2019
A Pocket Guide To Sumatran Magic
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ritual books known as pustaha were the notes written by Batak shamans learning the sacred mystical arts of their people. Typically written on tree bark with plant resin, these small books contained the notes a priest needed to perform the complex rituals associated with their station.
Among many Indonesian cultures, shamans—known as datu—were second only to chieftains, wielding just as much sway over the tribe of any given area. Learning from traditional teachers while adding the influence of their own observations, pustaha detail everything from magical formulas and legends to divinations and laws. Some of these books even contain the recipe for a malevolent curry that the Batak people would feed their enemies.
Datu were one of the few classes of people in Sumatra who were able to travel. While tribal warfare would prohibit most people from venturing far from their home village, datu were mostly left alone due to the ferocity of their magic. Young shamans would travel to seek wisdom and mysticism from all over, using pustaha to record their learning.
The core mythology of the Batak is that their god’s first creation was a magical chicken with an iron beak and braceleted claws. This chicken laid three eggs that eventually created deities that birthed humans. Because so many pustaha exist, the Batak’s religion is largely scattered and fluid. Since the arrival of Christian and Islamic missionaries, much of Batak culture has been lost.
Though these books do serve as a written record of Batak tradition, many remain untranslated. The Sumatrans didn’t have a complex writing system that was standardized across the island. The datu largely developed their own unique writing system using a combination of shorthand and Sanskrit-styled script that historians believe they borrowed from a neighboring Hindu nation. The writing system was only used by the priests to record rituals and other sacred knowledge. For this reason, some pustaha have proven untranslatable because they use a form of shorthand that was likely only ever known by individual priests.
Ethnographers and explorers in the early 1900s had access to living datu to explain much of the contents of these works, but were even noted by their contemporaries to find the texts difficult to translate and—in their words—”monotonous” in content.
Pustaha acted as the sacred texts of the datu, though each had their own hand-written collection. Some could be large tomes with a few pages, others were small and easily transported like the one shown here.
By writing their ritual on a piece of flexible wood, they were able to fold them up and use fish or animal bones as covers. Steeped in a tradition that revered divination, datu followed the careful instructions of pustaha in ceremonies that predicted good fortune.
While it may seem to be just a superstition to some, many of these rituals were used to make calendar measurements. Sometimes a good luck ritual could actually be a way for determining if the weather and season were suitable for planting. Other rituals were more simply a checklist for diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Though the pustaha in the Ripley collection is untranslated, it does depict two central figures in the Batak religion: the rooster and the scorpion. Roosters were used in many datu divination rituals. Sometimes they would be cut open and omens were read from their intestines. Another ritual involved mortally wounding a chicken, then placing it under a basket until it did not move. The bird’s death state in relation to the compass rose would determine the omen. The passage of seasons was dictated by a giant snake-like dragon in the sky, and the new year was heralded by the scorpion. The presence of these three figures in our text means it is likely instructions for some form of divination.
Source: A Pocket Guide To Sumatran Magic
March 18, 2019
The Mysterious Cervicorn: Nature’s Unicorn Deer
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
This Massachusetts white-tailed deer proves that unicorns really do exist—but he probably wasn’t born like this. This “cervicorn” once belonged to the author of this article, and is now in the Ripley’s oddity collection!
Male deer of most species typically shed their antlers every year, then grow a new set. Hunters often seek the biggest, most impressive rack. This time, the hunter got a weird one instead.
Antler development is a complicated field of study, so it’s hard to know for sure what causes an anomaly like this. Natural light, testosterone, diet, and age affect how big the antlers grow. However, sometimes mutations, injuries, and testosterone disorders can disrupt their normal growth process. A 2013 study published in the journal The Wildlife Society found that many white-tailed deer have abnormal antlers because of injuries. A 1965 study published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology found that several types of trauma can cause a deer to have atypical antlers, including if the bud of the antler is injured before the antler grows. Even leg injuries can result in antlers on the opposite side growing wrong!
So, what happened to the cervicorn? Gabriel Karns, a Wildlife ecologist at Ohio State University, who has studied deer injuries, says the unicorn’s head was probably hurt somehow. “Car collision is as good a guess as any,” he explained.
The pedicle, or part where the antler meets the skull, was warped, and Karns says that each time the deer shed its antler, the antler got worse. “The antler configuration likely went from normal to odd to completely strange as well,” he said.
Ever resilient, the deer survived with one, central antler, a damaged left eye, and a cracked and uneven skull. He even found a friend, and traveled through the woods with another strange buck. The other deer had such a big set of antlers, there were 18 scorable “tines,” or points, on his head!
The unicorn’s luck ran out when he met Robert Galloway, hunting in Ipswich Massachusetts in 2000. Galloway shot both deer and took them home for meat. He put the antlers of the 18-pointer on his wall, and took the “cervicorn” to a taxidermist. The taxidermist took the hide and skull and cut the bones to make the “mount” for the hunter’s wall. However, the taxidermist found that the cervicorn was too difficult to taxidermize, so they cleaned and prepared the sliced skull as you see here.
Either way, the deer was most likely living a tough life. “The outcome [of this type of injury] is often a progression from bad to worse usually and ultimately ending with an abscess that proves fatal,” Karns said. “This buck was well on his way to that fate if I had to guess. I have seen deformation to this severity 3 or 4 times before and is definitely a severe case.”
Believe it or Not, with the right conditions, some animals can be unicorns!
By Kristin Hugo, contributor for Ripleys.com
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