2012 – Page 27 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Guest Blogger

GIANT ‘TREE LOBSTER’ ONCE THOUGHT EXTINCT, FOUND ALIVE!

Nick Carlile, seen here with the Lord Howe Island stick insect, discovered the thought-to-be extinct phasmid in 2001 on Ball's Pyramid. -Daily Mail

Here’s a cool little story about a not-so-little bug that was once widely accepted as extinct, only to be discovered 80 years later, hidden from the world on a huge, lonely rock out in the middle of the ocean.

The giant stick bug or ‘tree lobster’ that was once found on Lord Howe Island near Australia, was believed to have gone extinct over 80 years ago when a grounded ship allowed black rats to escape from it’s cargo and subsequently find their new favorite meal, huge phasmid insects called, easily enough, stick bugs. Just a few years later, the bugs were nowhere to be found… and the rats had gotten fat.

A couple of researchers thought they may have some luck finding these guys still alive after some info came down the pipe-line about a possible sighting on another island just a few miles away called Ball’s Pyramid.

Ball's Pyramid, the giant rock jutting out of the ocean all by itself, where the giant stick-bug was found.

Sure enough, they were there, clinging to the one plant that survived on the lifeless island. The researchers quickly made a plea to the Australian government to take some specimens and attempt to build a population large enough to re-introduce back to the island it once inhabited, after the black rats are taken care of, of course.

The Daily Mail writes:

A narrow and forbidding rock that stands higher than the Empire State Building, it does not look like the most welcoming place to set up home.

But that did not stop an insect which was thought to be extinct for 80 years from building its last known colony on the 1,844ft high Ball’s Pyramid.

Scientists have discovered 24 of the creatures living 500ft above the South Pacific Ocean around the single plant that had survived on the rock.

The ‘tree lobster’ insect, which is as large as a human hand, had somehow made its camp despite the lack of food and the harsh conditions.

Nobody could say how they got there in the first place – but four have now been taken off and have bred thousands more to ensure their species survives.

DOG-HEADED PIG MONSTER ATTACKS!

A dog-headed pig monster has began to terrorize villagers in northern Namibia, which is on the southwest coast of Africa, and seems to have caused quite a bit of trouble by attacking dogs, goats and anything else that gets in its way.

People of the region just beyond the Kalahari desert have never seen anything like this creature before and say it must be the work of aliens or ‘black magic’.

Although there are no photos of said monster, it has worked it’s way into the headlines of major news outlets around the world.

Yahoo News writes:

Residents in northern Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, have reported being terrorized by a bizarre dog-pig hybrid creature.

The animal is said to be mostly white and unlike anything the villagers have ever seen, with a doglike head and the broad, round, nearly hairless back and shoulders of a giant pig. The beast was spotted chasing and attacking dogs, goats and other domestic animals in this arid region not far from the Kalahari desert.

As often happens when rumors of monsters spread in rural areas around the world, some locals have taken extra safety precautions, such as traveling in groups and arming themselves with weapons.

In 1995 and 1996, some Puerto Ricans armed themselves against the vampire beast el chupacabra; last year, Malaysian residents patrolled the streets searching for the mysterious orang minyak, or “oily man” creature that had recently terrorized them.

WORLDS FIRST MAN THAT LIVES WITH NO HEART

X-ray showing dual turbine-like blood pumps that have a 'continuous flow'.

Doctor’s here in Texas have a made a huge break-through in medical science and surgery. They have successfully replaced a heart with a dual turbine-like blood pump that has a ‘continuous flow’ to it, so it hums like a hard-drive instead of having the traditional “pum-pump” you’re used to hearing.

Thousands of people around the world already have something similar to this installed in their bodies, the difference in this case being that most of them have a device that helps an already beating heart, this one just replaces it all-together.

There has even been a documentary made about the incredible process the 2 doctors and patient went through called “Heart Stop Beating”.

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Heart Stop Beating is the story of Billy Cohn & Bud Frazier, two visionary doctors from the Texas Heart Institute, who in March of 2011 successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a ‘continuous flow’ device they developed, proving that life was possible without a pulse or a heart beat.

The Daily Mail writes:

In March of last year, Craig Lewis, 55, was dying from a heart condition that caused build-ups of abnormal proteins, and not even a pacemaker could help save his life.

But two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute proposed a revolutionary new solution – install a ‘continuous flow’ device that would allow blood to circulate his body without a pulse.

Dr Billy Cohn and Dr Bud Frazier installed the device after removing Mr Lewis’ heart. Within a day, the patient was up and speaking with physicians.

The two doctors had developed the device some time before and had tested it on nearly 50 calves.

They removed the animals’ hearts, and by the next day, the calves were doing everything they were the day before – eating, sleeping, and moving – but this time, without a heart pumping blood through their bodies.

MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD ON THE NEWS!

A section of the front of the shop as seen from the world famous 6th Street in downtown Austin, Tx.

Hey there fellow weirdos, just a bit of neat info for you!

We’ve been featured on a local news station here in Austin and we would like to share it with you. This town is super great to us and seems to support what we got going on full-heartedly, and we couldn’t be happier!

Head on over to YNN (Your News Now) to check out our feature under their “Local Wonders” section and leave some feedback with them about any experiences you may have had with us! <–click here

Thanks again Austin, and all the other folks from cities across the world that visit our website and make the trip in to see the Museum of the Weird. We certainly appreciate your support and will continue to keep Austin, and the rest of the world, weird!

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Guest Blogger

MYSTERY MUSIC FLOATS THROUGH YELLOWSTONE

Mystery music floating along the shores of Yellowstone Lake has puzzled many hikers and park goers for over a hundred years now, and doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop anytime soon.


Imagine going on vacation from the hum drum of 9-5 life, to the majestic wonder of the Yellowstone National park! Now imagine, being at one with nature amongst the mountains, plains, and valleys. Then, coming to rest on the egde of Yellowstone Lake after an exhausting morning hike through the wilderness.
As you sit there, enjoying your ham and cheese sandwich with a little baggie of granola mix, a feint humming begins to tickle your ears. First distant, then slowly growing closer. Just a buzz of noise from far away but as it comes nearer, you begin hearing notes, then a melody!
Crystal clear harps harmonizing on the wind with trumpets and horns serenading you from the skies! Growing louder and more intense! How wonderful! …and strange.Where is this amazing music coming from? You search the clear blue, cloud dotted sky for any signs of, well… anything.
Nothing.
As quickly as it came, it begins to slowly fade away. The hum trails off in the distance as the mysterious sound disappears into the breeze.You’re left with a half-eaten sandwich in your hand and a half-chewed bite in your mouth that’s hanging wide open as you sit, perplexed at what just occurred.


THAT is basically what has actually happened to a few people visiting the park!


Be it natural wonder or something more extraordinary, we may never know, but we can imagine all the different possibilities of this mystery music that seemingly comes from the heavens. Give us some of your thoughts on what it could be in the comments below!

Yellowstone Gate writes:

Yellowstone Lake and the rugged backcountry that surrounds it is a place where millions go seeking solitude and silence. Yet it in a well-documented but rarely discussed phenomenon, some visitors to the Lake area have experienced remarkable celestial sounds of unknown and unexplained origin.

“They resemble the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees, beginning softly in the distance, growing rapidly plainer until directly overhead, and then fading as rapidly in the opposite direction,” wrote Hiram M. Chittenden in 1895 in his book, “The Yellowstone National Park.”

Chittenden’s description is one of several in the historical record — as well as many more from popular anecdotal accounts — of strange sounds or “lake music” coming from the skies around Yellowstone Lake and Shoshone lake.

GOVERNMENT “X-FILES” RELEASED TO PUBLIC

New Zealand releases real life 'x-files' to the public.

New Zealand has compiled and made public 9 books and over 50 years worth of government papers documenting ufo sightings and activity.

You can even browse the documents in pdf form right in your web browser!

Ghost Theory writes:

Here we go again. Another government takes a step in the right direction. New Zealand has just released official UFO reports from the years 1952 to 2009. In a digital library collection, the UFO reports fill up nine volumes of civilian and military reports on the little green men.

Read more and browse the official documents over at ghosttheory.com

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Guest Blogger

298 MILLION YEAR OLD PREHISTORIC FOREST FOUND!

New discoveries and revelations happen daily about everything, from our past to our future, that are astonishing and profound, just like this one made recently.

A prehistoric forest that dates back 298 MILLION years has been disocovered INTACT below a coal mine in China after being perfectly preserved under volcanic ash this whole time. Wow, just wow!

The forest is so perfectly preserved that researchers can literally recreate the forest exactly as it was almost 300 million years ago.

Their findings are so precise they have created images of what it would have actually looked like to our eyes, how fantastic!

Here is exactly what we would have seen, had we been around 298 million years ago.

Gizmodo writes:

American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.

They are calling it the Pompeii of the Permian period because, like the ancient Roman city, it was covered and preserved by volcanic ash.

Like Pompeii, this swamp forest is so perfectly maintained that scientists know where every plant originally was. This has allowed them to map it and to create the images above. This extraordinary finding “is like Pompeii”, according to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, who characterized it as “a time capsule.”

“It’s marvelously preserved. We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.”

They are in fact finding entire trees and plants exactly as they were at the time of the volcanic eruption, just like archeologists in Pompeii found humans, animals and buildings at the base of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Except Pompeei was buried in AD 79 and this forest was covered in ash 298 million years ago, during the Permian period.

RARE WHITE BEAR FOUND IN GREEN FORESTS!

The "Spirit" bear aka the Kermode bear, or just plain "the white bear", lives in the forests of British Columbia amongst it's black bear bretheren.

A magnificent and extremely rare animal has finally been spotted and captured on film by wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen in Canada.

Although it looks like a polar bear has gotten loose from a local zoo and has wandered off into the woods, this beautiful white bear is there on purpose, courtesy of mother nature!

With only 200 of these guys running around in the wild, a sighting is extremely rare, and taking photographs of the “Spirit” bear is even rarer.

The uber-rare white bear dealing with it's common brother invading his territory, the black bear.

One man has the patience enough to have made these pictures possible, Paul Nicklen waited and wandered the deep and dense forests of British Columbia, Canada all for the chance of getting a glimpse of, and photographing what he’s dreamt of since he was a child, and for that we must thank him.

So, thank you Paul Nicklen!

The Daily Mail writes:

You could be forgiven for thinking it was a polar bear that had wandered off the ice and somehow found itself in a forest. But this golden, almost white, beautifully unique creature is in fact a white variant of the North American black bear known as the spirit bear.

The animal, also known as the Kermode bear, lives among more conventional-looking black bears in the dense green forests of British Columbia in Canada.

Once thought to be a myth, these legendary creatures are now so precious to the people of British Columbia, the Government has made it an offence to shoot one – with a fine of up to $100,000 CAD. Wildlife photographers now travel from across the globe for the chance to capture the white bear on camera, which are virtually impossible to photograph, due to their scarcity.

But one lucky photographer who captured this series of images of the spirit bear in it’s natural habitat is Paul Nicklen. The 43-year-old from Vancouver, Canada, said: ‘This little bear is amazing its pure white, it’s not a polar bear and there are only 200 left in the world – it’s more rare than a panda.

30,000 YEAR OLD PLANT RESURRECTED!

Here is a plant that lived among woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers, brought back to life in present day.

We’re already able to recreate the world as it was thousands and thousands of years ago using data, science, and computers, but now we’re getting closer and closer to being able to bring that prehistoric world to life in our current reality.

Scientists from Russia have extracted ancient fruit, frozen in permafrost, hidden by a prehistoric squirrel over 30,000+ thousand years ago to regenerate a plant/flower that existed when ancient creatures like woolly mammoths, and even sabre-tooth tigers roamed the Earth.

Discover Magazine writes:

Fruits in my fruit bowl tend to rot into a mulchy mess after a couple of weeks. Fruits that are chilled in permanent Siberian ice fare rather better. After more than 30,000 years, and some care from Russian scientists, some ancient fruits have produced this delicate white flower.

These regenerated plants, rising like wintry Phoenixes from the Russian ice, are still viable. They produce their own seeds and, after a 30,000-year hiatus, can continue their family line.

The plant owes its miraculous resurrection to a team of scientists led by David Gilichinsky, and an enterprising ground squirrel. Back in the Upper Pleistocene, the squirrel buried the plant’s fruit in the banks of the Kolyma River. They froze.

Over millennia, the squirrel’s burrow fossilised and was buried under increasing layers of ice. The plants within were kept at a nippy -7 degrees Celsius, surrounded by permanently frozen soil and the petrifying bones of mammoths and woolly rhinos. They never thawed. They weren’t disturbed. By the time they were found and defrosted by scientists, they had been buried to a depth of 38 metres, and frozen for around 31,800 years.

TEST-TUBE BURGERS AVAILABLE THIS YEAR!

Shown here is real "meat", actually growing in a lab!

Our world grows more artificial by the second, especially when scientists are racing to come up with solutions to some serious problems we’ll be facing in our future.

One of those problems being the shortage of food to come as our population grows exponentially larger and more crowded. If these scientists, currently working on creating artificial meat in test tubes, are successful, hopefully hunger won’t be such a big problem for the world as it today with thousands dying daily due to starvation.

What these researchers are hoping to do is eventually create a factory-like setting to mass produce the “burgers” and distribute them to the world after they get the first one official, which would be no earlier than October of this year.

The Telegraph writes:

By generating strips of meat from stem cells researchers believe they can create a product that is identical to a real burger.

The process of culturing the artificial meat in the lab is so laborious that the finished product, expected to arrive in eight months’ time, will cost about £220,000 (EUR250,000).

But researchers expect that after producing their first patty they will be able to scale up the process to create affordable artificial meat products.

Mass-producing beef, pork, chicken and lamb in the lab could satisfy the growing global demand for meat – forecast to double within the next 40 years – and dramatically reduce the harm that farming does to the environment.