Great Art – Memphis Flyer

Size Matters

Momo the lar gibbon, who lives at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden Mori Kirara in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, delivered a baby in February 2021, which surprised zookeepers, since Momo lived in her own enclosure with no males around. She was very protective of the offspring, United Press International reported, so it wasn’t until two years later that handlers were able to collect DNA from the youngster to determine who the father was. As it turned out, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, Itou, was the baby daddy. Zookeepers found that a partition between Momo’s exhibit and Itou’s off-display area had a perforated board with holes about 9 mm in diameter, and they believe the two were able to mate through one of those holes. The perforated board was replaced with a steel plate, but Momo and Itou will be introduced properly to each other so that they may live as a family. [UPI, 2/3/2023]

Great Art!

Marcelo “B-boy” De Souza Ribeiro of Sao Paolo, Brazil, is known as the most modified man in the world, with 1,500 tattoos covering his skin and now, a new transformation: a “devil hand.” The Daily Star reported that Ribeiro did a lot of research before undergoing the procedure, which split his hand between the middle and ring fingers. “I began to see the possibility of making an opening … through the middle where you can have opening and closing movements and a firmer folding of the hand,” he said. Over the years, he’s spent about $35,000 on his modifications, which also include a split tongue. Ribeiro said he thinks of his body as an “art exhibition.” [The Daily Star, 2/9/2023]

Wait, What?

The Exmoor Squirrel Project, a conservation endeavor in the United Kingdom aimed at saving the native red squirrel, has proposed that people set live traps for the non-native grey squirrel and that restaurants serve its meat, the BBC reported on Feb. 28. “Our woodlands, landscape, and the biodiversity isn’t set up to deal with the behaviors of the grey,” said the group’s manager Kerry Hosegood. “We’re going to introduce them to restaurants in the Exmoor area because they actually make for good eating,” she added. “This isn’t something that we like to do … just target greys. … It’s a very serious project.” She said the grey squirrels have caused about 40 million pounds’ worth of damage to trees annually. [BBC, 2/28/2023]

Suspicions Confirmed

Madison County (Illinois) coroner Steve Nonn solved a nearly year-old mystery on March 2 when he released the results of an autopsy on Richard Maedge of Troy, Illinois. Maedge’s wife, Jennifer, had reported him missing in late April last year after he failed to come home from work, KTVI-TV reported. His car, wallet, and keys were at the house, but she couldn’t find him. Police searched the house, which they described as a “hoarder home,” but did not locate him. In fact, they searched twice, as Jennifer was also looking for the source of a “sewerlike” odor in the dwelling. Finally, on Dec. 11, as Jennifer pulled out Christmas decorations from a concealed storage space, she discovered Richard’s mummified body. The coroner ruled that Maedge hanged himself and that there was no foul play in his death. [KTVI, 3/6/2023]

News You Can Use

Mushrooms have been in the news a lot lately, but you probably didn’t know that Texas has a state mushroom: the Devil’s Cigar or Texas Star. KXAN-TV reported that the Lone Star State’s designated fungus is ultra-rare, growing only on decomposing cedar elm or oak tree stumps and roots in the U.S. and Japan. It comes out of the earth in a cylindrical shape, then “will open up into a three- to eight-pointed star,” said Angel Schatz of the Central Texas Mycological Society. That’s when it releases its spores and sometimes hisses. “It is a very cool mushroom to have as our state mushroom,” Schatz said. [KXAN, 3/7/2023]

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Reprinted with permission.