I don’t pretend to be a scientific expert in this area and I do believe in progress through science, but a few questions come to mind:
The report says that the mosquitoes will be manually sexed so that no females are released. (Apparently this is done by looking at the antennae.) How would you like to have that job?
If any of the females are missed and someone is bitten could that have any unforeseen affects? I’m guessing that part of the testing was for Oxitec to be bitten by a few of them.
If this happens it will be a grand experiment. Either it will all work exactly as predicted and these mutants will create a lot of benefit for the population by reducing pests and the disease that they carry. If not—well, there are plenty of comic books that suggest the possibilities. In either case we will know.
Outside of Tampla Florida, a Bigfoot hunter & enthusiast named Matt M. captured a video while canoeing in the swamps of Tampla, Florida.
What was thought to be a bear, has been analyzed further to be proven not to be. No bear has arms that lanky and long, and how it walks seems unnatural for a bear, even a weirdo one.
Matt saw this thing in the woods and smartly started filming this unknown creature as it dove into Gator infested waters, probably to show all the Gators why he’s a mythological creature and they’re not.
Check out the video below (which has been stabilized) and decide for yourself!
One of the largest Burmese Python in recorded history was captured and killed in the Florida Everglades this week. The female snake weighed in at a whopping 128 pounds with a length of 18 feet, 8 inches. Jason Leon spied the snake in a rural area southeast of Miami-Dade County and decided to take it upon himself, with the assistance of his friend Veronica, to kill the snake using a knife.
Wildlife officials have battled the growing epidemic of wild Burmese Pythons in Florida, an unfortunate problem stemming from people releasing their pets into the wild when they are unable to care for them any longer. The snakes have begun breeding at an alarming rate, threatening the local wildlife they prey on. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee have recently sanctioned the hunting of wild pythons in the million-acre Everglades. 63 pythons were captured as 1,600 people took part in the month-long hunt. Until now, the largest recorded python measured 17 feet, 7 inches.
This is the type of story the best B-horror films are made of! Move over “Night of the Lupine!” It’s time for the Giant African Land Snail to slime… I mean shine!
Florida is under siege from an invasion of Giant African Land Snails. These gargantuan mollusks that can grow to the size of a large rabbit, are reported to be able to mow through everything from the hardiest form of vegetation to the siding on your house! Their epic, if slow, path of slimy destruction has thrown Florida officials into panic as they scurry to contain the epidemic.
When one pictures a creature with the capability to cause mass panic, the snail is not necessarily the first to come to mind. As you can see in the picture below, they are not exactly the image of environmental catastrophe. Or… are they?
Someone might want to tell all of the people on the internet holding these creatures without gloves like pets that they also carry a human parasite called rat lungworm, which is a form of meningitis and potentially deadly. Suddenly, the Giant African Land Snail is slightly more menacing than I had originally pictured. The snails have also been sited as the cause of car crashes as shards from their shells can puncture tires. Steer clear of the mighty Land Snail, literally.
These snails can also reproduce quickly, producing up to 1,200 eggs per year. The young snails reach full maturity in a year’s time and have a lifespan up to nine years. Each week over 1,000 snails are caught and removed from the Miami-Dade county area, and since first discovered in 2011 over 117,000 snails have been successfully terminated.
One theory held by experts on how the mollusks came to live in the United States is that they “hitched a ride” on overseas luggage, bidding bon voyage to Africa. The search is on in Florida to contain this epidemic before the snails migrate to other states. Countries such as Ecuador and Barbados have now run out of ways to contain their own infestations. The Giant African Land Snail continues to slowly terrorize the planet.
Florida has plenty of natural resources for wildlife to thrive but.
A man named Tim Fasano has released footage of what he says is the best video evidence of Florida’s legendary Skunk Ape. Apparently though, this man has quite a reputation in the crypto-community already. Interesting…
Watch the video below and see what you can see:
Ghost Theory writes:
If you are unaware of who Tim Fasano is, let me fill you in. Tim is a controversial figure in the world of Bigfoot. However Tim is more interested in the cousin of Sasquatch, namely the Florida Skunk Ape.
Tim has been roaming the Florida everglades for many years in search of this elusive biped, which he is convinced exists.
He has several websites and he puts out videos with the best of them. You have to hand it to him, as he takes video footage at least once a month. If anyone deserves to find a Skunk Ape, it’s Tim.
Unless you’ve been too busy with the big election, you’d know by now that Spike TV is offering 10 million dollars to whoever gets irrefutable evidence of Bigfoot. That’s a lot of samolians!
This challenge apparently is no challenge to Tim as he believes he might already have the evidence. The video below is taken from a recent outing of Tim’s in the glades. I’ve lived in South Florida, so I’m allowed to use the abbreviation, “glades”, plus it sounds cooler! No? Ehh, what do you know?
Getting back to the video, Tim claims to have caught the Skunk Ape rising up behind some saw palmetto…
Here’s some commentary from Tim himself:
“I was about 300 yards from camp when I saw movement and took this video. At 4:09 you will see something peek up over the palmettos. When I pan back its in the open and tries to hide. I zoom so you can see. It was far away. I saw movement but did not know I had this capture until later. More vids of the expedition are at http://floridabigfoot.org”
I’m not so sure I see a Skunk Ape here, but you have to give Tim props, at least he’s out there looking and who knows, he may one day prove the subject of his quest. For now, I think the $10,000,000.00 is safe, but I wish Tim all the luck in the world.
I can’t say that Tim and I have been on the best of terms, but we have gotten along. I’ve covered a couple news items related to him and I do check in with his sites and videos from time to time. After all, if nothing else, he is entertaining.
Hey GTers, you guys are welcome to chime in with your thoughts. What do you think?
Thanks to Tim Fasano for providing the content of this article as well as Spike TV.
Joe Salter juggles while jogging and has called this weird fusion of things, simply, "joggling".
We here at the Museum of the Weird are fans of all things circus and sideshow and I’m even working on my very own juggling act. Joe Salter of Pensacola, Florida has taken that very same act you’d normally find under the big-top, and took it to the streets, sidewalks, and oceans while he competed in a triathlon recently!
If you ever tried to do a marathon or triathlon and failed, you have a good reason to hate Joe Salter, because he not only completed a triathlon, but did so while juggling the entire time — even swimming.
This 31-year-old public school counselor from Pensacola, Fla., pulled off the incredible achievement on April 21 when he swam a quarter-mile while juggling three balls, then biked 16.2 miles while juggling two balls in one hand and ran four miles, also juggling.
Even more amazing: He did this all in 1 hour and 57 minutes
Salter, who has been juggling since he was 8, got into “joggling,” the act of juggling while running, back in 2008 and soon became obsessed with that sport’s Holy Grail: Completing a complete triathlon while juggling.
Workers pull the snake from their craft, showing it's size.
Wow, how would you like to be working in the swamps and stumble upon this python the size of which you only see in movies?
…yeah, me neither.
MSNBC writes:
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. — Officials in the Florida Everglades have captured and killed a 16-foot-long Burmese python that had just eaten an adult deer.
Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, said workers found the snake on Thursday. The reptile was one of the largest ever found in South Florida.
Hardin said the python had recently consumed a 76-pound female deer that had died. He said it was an important capture to help stop the spread of pythons further north.
The python, killed by workers, with a very full stomach.
Why they had to kill it, I don’t know. It’s not exacty going to be the fastest, most dangerous snake after consuming a 76 pound deer. In fact, I betcha he wasn’t moving at all when the workers stumbled upon him during his well earned afternoon nap. I mean, I feel pretty lazy myself after eating a nice dinner, which usually isn’t anything more than a handful of food but, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how tired this dude was after eating an entire, full-sized animal in one sitting.
A 25-foot-long giant squid is splayed out on a tarp after it was picked up by a fishing crew over the weekend.
By Nidhi Subbaraman
Florida fishermen snared a real-life sea monster over the weekend: a giant squid measuring 25 feet in length.
“It’s really, really, really rare to get giant squids because they’re so huge, and live so deep,” John Slapcinsky, a collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told me. For museum workers and scientists who specialize in giant squids, this specimen is quite the catch.
University of Florida researcher Roger Portell injects preservative into the giant squid.
The animal was bobbing in the water when the fisherman chanced upon it on Sunday. They hauled it onto their boat, put it on ice, and brought it to shore. There, they alerted the Florida Fish and Wildlife conservation commission, who called in the Florida Museum of Natural History.
“I thought we definitely need to bring it in, because no one’s going to believe us if we don’t,” Robert Benz, one of the original squid finders, said in a press release. “I didn’t want to leave it out there and just let the sharks eat it.”
Somewhere along the way, the squid died.
It’s now been relocated to the Florida Museum of Natural History, where Slapcinsky and his colleagues are preserving the massive invertebrate. “Soft bodied squids spoil easily,” Slapcinsky told me.
The squid will be put through quite the regimen over the next month, and will be injected with and bathed in a cocktail of preservatives. These will kill the bacteria in the body of the squid and firm up the soft tissue of the animal, Slapcinsky explained.
A tentacle coils out from the dead squid's body. Studying the creature and sequencing its DNA should help scientists determine how various breeds of deep-sea squid are related.
Because they’re so rarely observed in the wild, or found dead (they get eaten pretty quickly), there’s a lot that scientists don’t know about the behavior of the enormous animals, like how they reproduce or what they eat. Also, a debate continues about whether giant squids make up a single species, or several, and Slapcisnky hopes that DNA analysis of this new squid will have some answers.
It’s not yet clear if the squid will make it into a museum exhibit, Slapcinsky says — the museum may not have the right equipment or the space to show off the spineless specimen. But it will be available for squid researchers to visit, to take a closer look.
