Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 74
August 2, 2022
Dead Spiders Transformed Into Reanimated Necrobots
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Few moments beat the cinematic brilliance of Gene Wilder channeling Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in 1974’s Young Frankenstein. As he waits for the monster he’s pieced together to stir, he screams heavenward, “Life! Life, do you hear me? Give my creation… LIIIIIIFE!!!” Of course, anybody familiar with this cautionary tale knows things go downhill for Frankenstein after the reanimation of his monster. Nevertheless, various researchers around the world continue to work on ways to circumvent death.
One of the latest endeavors is downright horrifying — it involves the reanimation of deceased spiders, namely wolf spiders, to create what can only be described as miniature versions of the claw machines seen at carnivals. Except these claws machines come with a gruesome biological twist. As if seeing one zombie-like spider isn’t enough, scientists have even used the Frankenstein-like arachnids to pick up other dead wolf spiders.
Researchers have turned dead spiders into necrobotic grippers capable of lifting items that weigh more than 100 times their own body weight. pic.twitter.com/GHYaJSXF5H
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 28, 2022
Starting to feel your skin crawl? Keep reading for the inside scoop on eight-legged necrobots.
A Dead Spider Curled Up in a BallAlthough the concept of necrobot spiders sounds a lot like a subplot of Mary Shelley’s famous horror tale, the discovery had nothing to do with the novel Frankenstein. Instead, it started with a group of researchers at Rice University. After discovering a dead spider curled up in a ball in their engineering laboratory, they were inspired to find out why spider legs ball up tightly against the abdomen after death, per Smithsonian Magazine. What they uncovered yielded the concept behind necrobots.
As researchers delved more deeply into the anatomy of spiders, they realized that arachnid legs are similar to hydraulic pressure systems. When a critter expires, the hydraulic system breaks down, hence the final contraction of the legs. Having stumbled upon this so-called hydraulic system, the team decided to reverse engineer it. Once they cracked the code, they could body-snatch dead arachnids, transforming them into veritable machines.
All Smoke, Mirrors, and Puffs of AirIf you assume the reanimation of spider corpses is some kind of magic or illusion, you’re far from alone. But we can assure you, there are no smoke and mirrors when it comes to hijacking spider cadavers. Rather, it’s all about perfectly placed puffs of air. Using these spurts of air at strategic locations along each wolf spider’s corpse brought success in straightening all the legs simultaneously before allowing them to curl up again.
But researchers didn’t want to stop there. Like Dr. Frankenstein, the allure of triumphing over death proved too attractive a concept to ignore. And, fortunately, the necrobots’ creators didn’t need lightning or human cadavers to bring their strange creations to life. Further experimentation even allowed them to move the legs in a claw-like motion facilitating the pick-up of various diminutive objects.
Why Wolf Spiders?You may be wondering why the researchers settled on wolf spiders for their experimentation. After all, couldn’t any old spider bodies do? Yes and no. You see, wolf spiders were a natural choice because of their ability to lift much heavier objects than themselves. Moreover, they have microscopic hairs on their legs, which translate into plenty of extra gripping power.
These biological advantages make wolf spiders the ideal creatures to pick up everything from irregularly shaped meshes to fragile electrical components and even those previously mentioned dead wolf spider bodies. Daniel Preston, senior author of the study, notes, “Our work here presents the first step in this new avenue of research, which we expect will extend to locomotion of necrobots by independently actuating each leg of the spider” (via The Register). Not everybody’s sold on the utility of spider corpses. But one thing’s for sure — the experiment has the potential to give even the biggest arachnid lover the heebie-jeebies!
By Engrid Barnett, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!
July 31, 2022
July 30, 2022
July 29, 2022
How World War II, The Slinky, And A Bolivian Cult Are All Connected
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Who walks the stairs without a care and makes the happiest sound? But of course, it can only be the Slinky! A crowd-favorite classic coil toy, the Slinky had a bit of an accidental origin.
The story begins in the small town of State College, Pennsylvania, where 1939 Penn State graduate, Richard T. James began his career as an engineer. In the years to follow he would obtain quite a few other titles: wartime employee, children’s toy inventor, and you know, Bolivian cult member.
Spring Into ActionOut on a shipyard in Philadelphia, Richard James worked the livelong day away as wartime engineering employee. He was responsible for devising plans for new naval battleships during World War II. It was here, amid stabilizing technology development, that he accidentally knocked a sample of tension springs off the shelf, sending them into a frenzy we find ourselves familiar with today! Tipping, toiling, and turning over on themselves, the springs were the accidental brain children of Richard’s soon-to-be hit toy, the Slinky.
DYK the slinky was invented by accident? Richard James was designing a device for the Navy in 1943 when he dropped the coiled wires and watched them tumble across the floor. He thought it would make a good toy.
Read @SmithsonianMag: https://t.co/pKZFGdQcpE#SlinkyDay pic.twitter.com/Q4QB19S2fB
— USPTO (@uspto) August 30, 2020
From this clumsy move came the age of experimentation. Richard and his crew, comprised of two colleagues, Coleman Barber and Dylan Gedig, as well as his wife, Betty, spent about two years testing different lengths, coil sizes, metals, materials, and formulas until they finally landed on the winner — our solo stair-walking Slinky.
An All-Out SmashA fellow Penn Stater, Betty became instrumental in the development and marketing of the toy. With full confidence in her husband and his brilliantly simple contraption, Betty accompanied him in founding James Industries — built from a $500 loan and a little spring in their step.
It was also Betty who picked the iconic “Slinky” name. Chosen from a Swedish word she found in the dictionary, the spring’s namesake stems from the sound it makes as it tumbles along down the stairs.
The couple’s first run was at a Gimbels department store in Philadelphia. They were given a sloped apparatus for demonstration, and after just a few climbs down the slant, money started flying their way. In just an hour and a half, the James pair sold out of their 400-toy stock. While it seems they could only go up from here, the pep in their Slinky step faded quickly.
Slinking AwayWith the initial fame and publicity filling his head with hot air, Richard’s demise from Slinky stardom came quickly. By the late ’50s, the fad had begun to fizzle, and Richard grew restless and eager for more. After making many hefty donations to shady religious organizations over the years, Richard picked up and moved to Bolivia to join a religious cult.
Betty, on the other hand, wasn’t ready to let her success go to shame. She refused to accompany him on his road to cult life and kept the legacy of the Slinky alive as she and their six children moved back to her hometown of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
Picking up the pieces from her husband’s poor financial and business decisions, Betty rebuilt the bones of their once-shared brainchild. She brought along the original design and manufacturing equipment — all of which is still in use today — and launched the Slinky’s television debut with a catchy jingle.
From here, the Slinky had nowhere to go but up. With Richard completely removed from the process and the family business, Betty became the queen of this Toy Industry Hall of Fame-inductee. She had a nearly 40-year-long stint as the President of James Industries before passing away at the age of 90.
A Lasting LegacyThe youngest of the James’s six children, Rebekah, said that her mother’s abilities to bring the company out of the ashes following her father’s departure — all while raising six children — was simply “amazing.” According to the New York Times, when Betty passed in 2008, there were enough Slinkys sold to circle the globe 150 times.
Today, more than 360 million Slinkys have been sold. And by our calculation, that number is going to be blown out of the water sooner rather than later. If you ask us, we’re glad Richard took a hike and left the Slinky legacy to our gal, Betty. She took care of our childhood favorite toy to give it an everlasting era!
By Steph Distasio, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!Source: How World War II, The Slinky, And A Bolivian Cult Are All Connected
Chess Robot Breaks 7-Year-Old Opponent’s Finger
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
A seven-year-old boy in Moscow learned a tough lesson about timing in chess last week when his robot opponent made a move that ended with a broken finger!
Clawing Its Way to the TopTension was thick during last Thursday’s Moscow Chess Open tournament, as the boy went head-to-head with a robot rented for the event. Things took a turn for the dramatic when the boy made a major blunder by acting a bit too fast to make a move before the robot’s turn was complete.
A video on social media shows the horrifying moment when the robot captured — and ultimately broke — the boy’s fast finger, followed by four adults rushing in to free him from its grasp.
Moscow Chess Federation president Sergei Lazarev confirmed the news, telling the Russian TASS agency, “the robot broke the child’s finger. Of course, this is bad.”
Fortunately, children are resilient little things, and the boy was able to return to the board the next day to finish the tournament.
Revenge of the Robots
In a terrifying incident of technology gone rogue, a robot has broken the finger of a seven-year-old boy during a chess tournament in Moscow.
Security camera footage shows the moment the robot grabs the child’s finger and crushes it after he rushed to make his move. #9News pic.twitter.com/YggDI50O5t
— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) July 25, 2022
This wasn’t the robot’s first time over the board, having been rented by the Federation for several previous events. Lazarev quickly noted that the Federation played no role in the robot’s programming but noted that the operators will need to strengthen protection on the machine to prevent further incidents, touching on a hot-button topic regarding the power robots could have in the future.
As robots and artificial intelligence advance, accidents are bound to happen, which means finding a way to minimize them as much as possible through interfaces that rely on humans to safeguard and prevent the machines from ever fully thinking for themselves.
Fear of a robot uprising has had a stronghold on pop culture ever since Wolfgang von Kempelen’s 1769 invention, the chess-playing Mechanical Turk, went on tour, besting everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Napoléon Bonaparte. Nobody could understand how a machine could ever beat a man at a game of strategy.
For now, cases like this can be attributed to a mere malfunction, so everyone can rest assured that no robot uprising is currently taking place.
By Meghan Yani, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!
July 28, 2022
No Humans Are Allowed On This Island Covered In Deadly Snakes
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Approximately 90 miles off the coast of Brazil is the tiny island Ilha da Queimada Grande, which would be a beautiful place to spend an afternoon… if it weren’t for the thousands of golden lancehead vipers that inhabit its 160 acres.
This species does not exist naturally anywhere else on Earth. Some experts believe the island is so populated with these reptiles that if people were allowed to roam around there, they would come across a snake every few steps — a horrifying notion, particularly for those with ophidiophobia!
Snake ParadiseKnown more commonly as Snake Island, the land mass separated from Brazil during the last Ice Age, taking a population of jararaca snakes with it, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune. The snakes didn’t have any predators, so they multiplied. Eventually, their food source (rodents) waned, but the snakes adapted and evolved into a completely new species.
Ilha da Queimada Grande. Credit: Prefeitura Municipal de Itanhaém via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5).
Remarkably, they learned how to catch and eat birds. Their venom got up to five times stronger than a typical snake’s venom, and they developed a way to trap the birds so they couldn’t escape, making it easier for them to consume their meals. This mutation created an über-deadly snake that can kill a person in under an hour! And because they are on top of the food chain, the island contains a significant number of them (between 2,000 and 4,000).
Venomous ViewsThe only people who have lived on the island were those who operated a lighthouse there from 1909 through the 1920s. One local legend claims that the final lighthouse keeper and his family were killed when several snakes attacked them after gaining access through a window in their home, according to the Smithsonian Magazine. Being bitten by a lancehead viper can cause intestinal bleeding, brain hemorrhaging, muscular tissue necrosis, and kidney failure if medical attention is not administered quickly.
World snake day – Bothrops insularis (Golden lancehead pit viper) I photographed in situ on the Brazilian island Quemada Grande. Such an amazing place! My expeditions there have been amongst the highlights of my career
🤘☣️🤘 pic.twitter.com/k5qePjMAed
— Bryan Grieg Fry ☣
🦇🦎🦂
☠️
(@Venom__Doc) July 15, 2021
These days, the Brazilian Navy has the job of making sure the lighthouse is operating correctly, and only scientists make the occasional trek to the island (with a doctor in tow, just in case). However, the island is tempting to those who are brave enough to travel there with the intention of making a few (illegal) dollars: one golden lancehead viper is worth a whopping $10,000–$30,000 on the black market. Mainland Brazil even has a population of lancehead vipers because some have been released there, either deliberately or unintentionally. In fact, most snake bites in the South American country are due to the deadly species.
All That Slithers Is Not GoldThere is a silver lining. It’s possible that the golden lancehead venom could be used for pharmaceutical purposes and to treat ailments such as heart disease, circulation issues, and blood clots, scientist Marcelo Duarte of the Brazilian Butantan Institute told Vice.
It’s also believed that efforts by the Brazilian Navy to remove vegetation on the island combined with disease have cut the snake population on Ilha da Queimada Grande by almost half in the past 15 years. But even though the species is considered endangered and is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, visitors continue to be banned from stepping foot on Snake Island.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!Source: No Humans Are Allowed On This Island Covered In Deadly Snakes
July 27, 2022
Will Eating Apple Seeds Poison You?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
You may have taken some precautions while eating this crunchy snack as word on the street is that their tiny seeds can kill you!
Well, it turns out that’s not completely true. You’d have to try really hard to feel any negative effects from swallowing apple seeds. Keep reading to find out how apple seeds got their deadly reputation and why this fruit is far from fatal under normal circumstances.
A Seed of TruthApple seeds contain amygdalin, which is a cyanogenic glycoside composed of cyanide and sugar. When amygdalin is metabolized by the body, it disintegrates into HCN, otherwise known as hydrogen cyanide (in fancy terms). HCN is highly poisonous and can result in death within a few minutes — if enough is consumed.
Luckily for apple lovers, the amygdalin in apple seeds is only active if the seeds are crushed. Plus, the human body can process HCN in small amounts, which means it would take a ton of seeds to actually do damage — anywhere between 100 and 500 to be exact.
To put it in perspective, one apple contains approximately 5-8 seeds, which is nowhere close to the hundreds that can cause illness or death. A few whole apple seeds that are swallowed on accident will simply pass through the digestive system without harm.
To err on the side of caution, we recommend avoiding apple seeds if possible. Although, continue to eat your apple a day because they do provide lots of nutritional benefit and of course, a delicious taste!
By Sam McCormack, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog
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