– I’d hate to see what would happen if he got hold of her Eggo: A woman in Akron, Ohio was arrested for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend repeatedly, allegedly because he ate all of her salsa (h/t Paul).
Look, I get how important salsa can be, and I don’t want to get too high and mighty about my condiments……but see, I’m from San Antonio, and we take our salsa very seriously. I mean, like, extremely seriously. I would take the Pepsi challenge with Ohio salsa any day, and you know what’s great about Texas? There is always more salsa.
– If you’re just going to let your mouth hang open like that…: The pitcher plant, at least from a conceptual standpoint, might be the most terrifying organism to have ever existed. Yes, I’m including spiders and sharks in my analysis. Pitcher plants are at least as terrifying as winged devourers, except that they have the added factor of being real. They just sit there, waiting for something to land on them, or crawl up on them, just to slip and fall into the pitcher, where they are digested, pretty much in the open air.
Pitcher plants…grow[] long tube-shaped leaves into which insects fall. Some of the largest have pitchers up to a foot deep and can consume a whole frog or even a rat unlucky enough to fall into them. Sophisticated chemistry helps make the pitcher a death trap. Nepenthes rafflesiana, a pitcher plant that grows in jungles on Borneo, produces nectar that both lures insects and forms a slick surface on which they can’t get a grip. Insects that land on the rim of the pitcher hydroplane on the liquid and tumble in. The digestive fluid in which they fall has very different properties. Rather than being slippery, it’s gooey. If a fly tries to lift its leg up into the air to escape, the fluid holds on tenaciously, like a rubber band.
Pitcher plants are like tiny, real-life Sarlaccs, except that everyone can hear you scream.
Also, no tentacles……yet……
One species that lives on the island of Borneo, however, seems to have found another means of sustenance: as a bat toilet:
A type of Hardwicke’s woolly bat and a subspecies of the Nepenthes rafflesiana pitcher plant have developed a mutually beneficial relationship in Brunei, a tiny country that’s part of the Southeast Asian island of Borneo.
The bat gets protection by roosting in the plant’s rounded leaves, while the plant—which also traps insects—gains vital nutrients from the mammal’s droppings.
“This was a most unexpected and surprising result,” study leader T. Ulmar Grafe, a scientist at University Brunei Darussalam, said in an email.
***
Because N. rafflesiana lives in trees, this pitcher plant species has more difficulty catching insects than its grounded counterparts, according to the study.
N. rafflesiana elongata has pitchers that are up to four times longer than other varieties but at least seven times less effective at catching insects, Grafe noted.
The longer pitcher is bat-friendly, as it’s big enough to stack two of the 1.6-inch-long (4-centimeter-long) bats. More importantly, Grafe said, this kind of pitcher plant has both less digestive fluid than other types and a “girdle” that prevents a bat from sliding down into the fluid.
Instead, bat feces may provide the plant with a superior method for survival, he said.
Such a relationship—which likely evolved independently—seems to be restricted to Brunei and to this one bat and pitcher plant pair.
It’s all just part of the circle of poo.
– Meanwhile, in Australia: It’s probably fair to say that every living thing in Australia wants to kill you in some way, if you give it a chance. So it’s probably no surprise that the world’s largest wasps’ nest was recently discovered in Tasmania (which is, I guess, where Australia does its particularly diabolical evolutionary experiments) (h/t Jason). The thing weighs 220 lbs. without any wasps in it.
Wasps seem to be a serious problem in Australia, even more so than crocodiles and kangaroos in boxing gloves. Here’s the real kicker: the wasps aren’t even indigenous to Australia.
It is often said that Australia is trying to kill you. Between the venomous snakes, deadly spiders, sharks, crocodiles and jellyfish, it can indeed seem like that, but the animal that causes the most grief to residents isn’t even a native species. European wasps arrived in southeastern Australia in 1959 by way of New Zealand, and multiplied to plague proportions from a lack of natural predators.
Oops. Circle of life, I guess. Or circle of colonialism, maybe.
– Too much of a mediocre thing: I’ve never understood some people’s love of iced tea. Turns out, it is possible to love it too much—as in, enough that the buildup of oxalate crystals from excessive iced tea consumption might eventually cause kidney failure (h/t Sallie). Ouch….unless, of course, this was an April Fool’s hoax. Either way, I don’t much care for iced tea.
– You misspelled “coyote”: A Houston news reporter asks the right question about a supposed chupacabra sighting in Conroe: “Why is it pictures of chupacabras and Bigfoot are always out of focus?” (h/t Melynda)
Is it me, or are these pretty obviously pictures of coyotes?
I like this quote, too: “He says he’ll give up his belief that chupacabras really do exist when science proves they don’t.”
That’s not how you science, but I think I’m moving past any serious urge to convince people of that when they’re clinging to a belief in something like a chupacabra. At this point, I really just want to help them get better at photography, so they can put up or shut up once and for all.
– But has he published? Apparently the real estate market in San Francisco is so competitive that people who want to lease a dog-friendly apartment have to submit a résumé. For their dog (h/t Sallie):
Oakland Athletics pitcher Sean Doolittle and girlfriend Eireann Dolan knew it wouldn’t be easy apartment-hunting in the Bay Area for a home they’d need only through the baseball season — maybe even the post season. The added challenge was that it had to be dog-friendly.
In mid-February, they found a spot… sort of. The catch was that the couple was required to write a resume for Stella, their loveable, friendly 5-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback. Nothing too complicated, the landlord assured them. He provided them with a three-page sample resume for dogs and a word of advice. “Think about it a little more in-depth than what you would do for yourself,” Dolan recalled. [Emphasis added.]
Even after submitting a résumé indicating Stella’s attendance at DePaw University, they didn’t get the apartment. Because their vehicle was too tall for the garage.
Circle of real estate, I guess.
– Speaking of poo: I have to believe that this was not just a ploy to make an insanity defense. I have to. What follows is NSFL.
A California man accused of robbing a bank apparently decided he was done taking crap from prosecutors, so decided to take matters into his own hands and eat some instead.
Andrew Gilbertson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity after allegedly robbing a San Luis Obispo bank in 2013, KSBY reported.
Police said during the robbery, 40-year-old Gilbertson disguised himself by wearing a hat and a pink child’s backpack before slipping a note to bank tellers demanding cash, according to Cal Coast News. He allegedly said it was the Virgin Mary who suggested the disguise.
Despite the previously poor advice, Gilbertson said he listened to the Virgin Mary again Wednesday when she told him to eat his own feces while on the witness stand. The suspect allegedly reached into his pants, removed his own waste and began eating the cheeky snack. In the chaos that followed Judge Donald Umhofer called for a recess.
It’s the CIIIIIIIIIRCLE OF NOPE.
