– – The Guinness Book of World Records has picked (no pun intended) the world’s largest human nose. The schnoz belongs to a 61-year-old Turkish gentleman, and measures an impressive 3.46 inches from bridge to tip.- -Any bigger than this, and the nose would qualify for its own zip code!
There’s gotta be a few good jokes hanging there, but we’ll spare you…
– – This is “Shark Week” on The Discovery Channel, and it appears that sharks are staging their own commemorations off the New Jersey coast…
…during the month of July alone, three shark sightings have occurred off the Jersey coast, one at Ocean Beach and two at South Seaside Park Beach. This past Saturday at Seaside Heights, N.J. a young blue shark swam toward the shoreline before turning around and heading back for deeper water…atypical behavior for the species.
There have been no injuries so far, but shark sightings have led to beach closings in New Jersey and along the Atlantic coast this summer (theme from Jaws plays)…
– – For those of you hungry for a MonsterQuest fix, Syfy’s new show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files may offer you an alternative. The show has been described as what Fox Mulder might have done after leaving the X-Files; in fact, the show features former FBI agent Ben Hansen. Adding to the diversified investigative team is a scientist, a journalist, an effects specialist, a photography expert, and a stunt expert who explore video submissions and famous paranormal footage to determine which can be validated or debunked through experimentation.
Topics investigated are a mixed bag that include UFO’s, ghosts, cryptids, and unexplained phenomenon. A lot of grainy videos are screened by the team in a “situation room” to weed out the obvious fakes and determine which cases are worthy of further investigation. While it’s too early to tell if this series will be a hit, if you liked Ghost Hunters, Paranormal State, and Destination Truth, you’ll probably like this one. Fact or Faked is a banquet, so take what you like, and leave the rest of it lying on the buffet table…we think it merits a look!
– – Rabbits generally aren’t perceived as scary, with the possible exception of the wonderful specimen shown here from the movie, Donnie Darko. Now granted that my killer dust bunnies are at least annoying and Bugs Bunny is a master of psychological warfare, but usually most people don’t find rabbits fear-arousing…
Now every rule has its exceptions (including this one), and a 60-year-old geography teacher in Germany had a paralyzing fear of rabbits! It then became possible for a 16-year-old student to get her teacher’s goat (so to speak) by drawing pictures of rabbits on the blackboard and spreading stories about her teacher’s rabbit phobia; kids are remarkably resourceful for seeking out and detecting such Achilles heels! In 2008 the teacher took a different student to court and reached a settlement that prevented the student from ever speaking about the teacher’s fear of rabbits to anyone else.
This time, however, the presiding judge dismissed the case without explaining the verdict. The lagomorph loather has a month to appeal the decision…
…and maybe Elmer Fudd had some kind of fear and loathing thing going on with Bugs…and wouldn’t Rabbits of Doom be great antiheroes?!
– – Two-headed calves have been staples at sideshow exhibitions for ages, some legitimate specimens and others shameless patch jobs. Most of the genuine items, however, were preserved animals that didn’t live long. Two-headed animals who live can become a valuable commodity.
A two-headed calf born this month in Egypt is the real deal, having two heads each with its own set of eyes and a mouth; it is expected to live. Similar specimens may command thousands of dollars, depending on the bidding war over them.
– – Once again a supposed chupacabra has reared his ugly head, again in Texas. In Hood County, an animal control officer shot and killed in an old barn an unsightly creature described as having deer-like ears, big teeth, and pinkish skin that was unlike anything he had seen before. A few days later and within ten miles, a rancher also shot and killed another of the bizarre creatures, leading some to speculate that there were a pack of them.
Hood County Animal Control has sent one of the deceased creatures to Texas A&M for DNA testing, but don’t bet the rent on it being a chupacabra. Until test results are in, doctors have only said that it’s some kind of coyote hybrid…very possibly with mange, I might add…
– – When MonsterQuest has a re-run marathon fest, I can usually tell by the number of renewed hits that I get on my old posts on past episodes of The Quest. It’s the good episodes that get the hits…like myself, most people aren’t as interested in installments on wild dogs, rats, or bees.
So mundane and unexciting were some of these episodes, in fact, that we can bring you this picture of a MonsterQuest reject…in fact, he might have been more interesting than some of the episodes that aired!
– – What could be cooler than a battle royal between a colossal squid and a sperm whale?–Well, maybe a three-way between the whale, giant squid, and a T-Rex, but that’s just for rich fantasies! Sadly, even the image of the giant squid as the Kraken which attacks ships is not all that it’s cracked up to be…
Marine biologists reporting in the April issue of the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom have painted a picture of a mostly sedentary creature that would wait to ambush passing fish rather than even bother to swim after them.–What a slacker squid! As a cold-blooded creature, the colossal squid was not even great whale food; it simply wasn’t that nutritious!
I still look for colossal squid to enter the United States by coming through Arizona, evading the police, and taking jobs that no native-born American would want…then they’ll be able to get health care!
– – Now get your minds out of the gutter; this is a high-class place, at least occasionally! We are talking today about humans who grow horns, most often cutaneous horns which are composed of keratin, the same substance as fingernails.
A 101-year-old grandmother in China has a rather impressive 2-1/2 inch specimen of such sprouting from her forehead. Furthermore, another horn is beginning to poke out on the opposite side. If one has to grow horns, one might as well be happy about it, and the person afflicted, Zhang Ruifang, has refused offers to have the horns removed.
Human horns, while rare, are not a new phenomena. Robert Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!” fame had described a case from the 16th century, and in 1930 brought a photo of a Manchurian farmer with a 13-inch protrusion on the back of his head to the world’s attention.
More recently in October of 2007, a 95-year-old Chinese woman was revealed with a 6-1/2 inch horn protruding from her forehead that grew downward over her face. One month later, a 93-year-old Chinese male showed the media a 4-inch horn growing on the top of his head.
Cutaneous horns have also been known to grow on the arms, legs, buttocks, and even nipples…Believe It, Or Not!
– – They’ll never call a tuna that…but they’ve found an enormous crustacean scouring the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, a giant isopod called Bathynomus giganteus related to shrimp and crabs that measured 2-1/2 feet long and was found hooked onto the bottom of a remotely-operated vehicle at a depth of 8,500 feet!
Now most giant isopods are less than a foot long, making the recent discovery a supersized version. This could be because of a condition called gigantism, which is thought to be common among crustaceans inhabiting especially cold water regions. In addition to larger size, colder temperatures tend to be conducive to longer life spans, and the deeper the water, the bigger the critter.
Giant isopods are predators that feed on carcasses of dead whales and fish, and have also been known to attack sea dwellers that are alive and swimming. Such creatures have existed for more than 160 million years.- -Nature is scary, which is just how I like it!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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