More critters, hehe :)

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rOZZ
Music
Pictures

While not exactly a new critter this little mole is a great find:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-68720246

Swims through sand - how many of us as little kids faced with a really dry sandy beach tried to swim on it?
As for the lizard near the end of the piece - I just hope nobody finds one of those lurking under the sheets at the foot of their bed...

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

8-Foot Alligator Busts Through Florida Home's Front Door and Invades Woman's Kitchen

"Only in Florida are you going to get an alligator in the house," the woman who encountered the reptile said...

On March 28, the woman heard banging at the front screen door of her home in the Grand Palm Community in Venice, FOX 13 reported.

"I thought it was somebody else who didn't live here trying to get into the wrong house," Hollenback told the outlet.

In response to the commotion, the woman got up from the couch and checked who was at the door. She didn't find a confused person. Instead, she was faced with a sizable alligator.

Sent to a farm. Just life death row inmates. Don’t blame them. A gator home invasion.

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They're not as stupid as some would believe.

Sumatran orangutan becomes first wild animal seen using medicinal plant to treat wound.

A Sumatran orangutan has become the first wild animal seen self-medicating with a plant to heal a wound.

The male orangutan, named Rakus, had sustained a wound on his cheek pad, most likely from fighting other males, researchers said in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Rakus was seen chewing liana leaves without swallowing them, then using his fingers to apply the resulting juice onto the wound, the researchers said.

Finally, he covered the wound up completely with a paste he had made by chewing the leaves and continued feeding on the plant.

Five days after he was seen applying the leaf paste onto the wound it was closed, and a month later barely visible.........

Cheers,

Interesting.

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I guess this is a good place for this "critter" laugh!
WATCH: Forestry Staff act out cicada cycle in hilarious explainer video

Du Page County (West suburban Chicago) Forestry workers in Illinois donned insect costumes and put on an award-worthy performance in a hilarious video which explains how 17-year periodical cicadas will emerge from the ground in the weeks ahead.

Hey! lizard, lizard, lizard you don't belong here.
'Stay in the car:' It wasn't a gator or iguana. Woman videos 'huge' monitor lizard near Florida road

Monitor lizards can grow up to 5 feet long, have long tails and are active during the day.

(photo/video in linked article)

Elusive 'octopus squid' with world's largest biological lights attacks camera in striking new video

In the footage, the squid suddenly appears from the darkness and darts toward the camera, engulfing it with its arms before making a quick getaway. Moments before latching onto the camera, the squid shows off a pair of bright, light-emitting organs, known as photophores, at the tips of two of its arms.

This species' photophores — which emit bursts of light as a result of a chemical reaction — are the largest of their kind in the animal kingdom, researchers wrote in the statement. But scientists have rarely seen the squids' biological lights used in action.

Bear falls from tree at Pennsylvania school

A young black bear fell from a tree in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, landing in a giant bed of tarp held by a group of rescue officials who sedated it following reports of the bruin stalking a suburban neighbourhood.

The grizzly, which did not appear to be fully grown, was spotted around lunchtime in the residential area of Camp Hill, just outside the state capital of Harrisburg.

For those travelling in the north of Scotland "new" sign to watch out for

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The 2024 World's Ugliest Dog winner is a familiar face.

An 8-year-old Pekingese named Wild Thang took top honors at this year’s competition, held at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 21. It was his fifth time as a contender in the annual contest
https://people.com/a-pekingese-named-wild-thang-wins-the-2024-world-s-ugliest-dog-contest-8668102

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I told you not to get between me and the cameras.

A video has gone viral in 24 hours showing a Kings Guard horse “headbutting” a woman, causing her to fall flat on her face.

Tourists are told countless times not to stand too close to a King’s Guard horse outside Buckingham Palace – there’s also signs saying to ‘beware’ – yet one woman must have missed the warnings.

Video footage shows the moment a woman went flying across the pavement after she got too close to a guard horse while taking a photo.

The clip, shared to X, has been viewed more than 8 million times in just 24 hours.

The original clip is understood to have been taken around October last year but has since gone viral and after it was uploaded to the platform on Tuesday.

The woman can be seen posing in front of the King’s Guard horse at Buckingham Palace before the horse moves his head forward slightly to nudge the woman, causing her to trip and fall face down onto the ground.......

YouTube video Eagle Flies Away with Full Grown (baby) Deer

... That looks faked...

All a good click-bait giggle?


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

They're off and running again.

Escaped army horses bolt through central London for second time this year.

Runaway army horses have bolted through central London for the second time this year, after one was spooked by a bus and two tossed off the soldiers riding them.

The British Army said one horse had minor injuries but did not require further treatment after the incident on Monday morning local time.

Neither soldier involved in the incident was injured.

One of the horses collided with a black taxi in Pimlico, central London, with the moment captured on the vehicle's dash cam.......

Cities and horses don't mix these days.

One wrong move and...
A man is caught attempting to smuggle 100 live snakes into China in his pants

“Upon inspection, customs officers discovered that the pockets of the trousers the passenger was wearing were packed with six canvas drawstring bags and sealed with tape," a statement from China’s customs agency said Tuesday.

"Once opened, each bag was found to contain living snakes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors," the statement said, adding that many of the snakes caught in the smuggling attempt were non-native species.

One wrong move and...
A man is caught attempting to smuggle 100 live snakes into China in his pants

“Upon inspection, customs officers discovered that the pockets of the trousers the passenger was wearing were packed with six canvas drawstring bags and sealed with tape," a statement from China’s customs agency said Tuesday.

"Once opened, each bag was found to contain living snakes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors," the statement said, adding that many of the snakes caught in the smuggling attempt were non-native species.

Many years ago, my first wife and I smuggled 2 harmless baby snakes on a flight from Florida to New Hampshire. We put them in socks, and then in our pockets so they wouldn't be detected in an onboard luggage X-ray scan.. This was before 911, so security wasn't as tight. At one point we had a flight transfer, so we put the two socks in my wife's purse. We didn't expect to go through security again as we were just connection flights. We ended up having to go through security again, and we were terrified that the X-ray scan of her purse would show the skeletons of the two baby snakes. Nobody saw them, or at least identified them as snakes. That was a close one! :)

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Crows can count out loud like human toddlers — when they aren't cheating the test

Liao enrolled three male crows in the study all held at the university's aviary. She really had to work to design an experiment that the crows couldn't outsmart. First, she trained the birds to produce a different number of calls — one, two, three or four — in response to four arbitrary visual cues (a blue number one, an orange number two, a green number three and a pink number four) and to four arbitrary sounds (a guitar chord, a drumroll, a cash register noise and a tonal sweep).

... But it didn't take long for the crows to catch on and start making the correct number of sounds for each cue — or so Liao thought.

"I was like, 'Wow, these crows are brilliant,'" she says. "And then I realized they were actually adopting the simpler strategy of just vocalizing until I get a reward."

So Liao pivoted. She trained them to call a certain number of times, stop and then peck a screen to report their final answer. That stopped them from cheating. And this time, the crows pretty much nailed it.

Thank goodness for our spiders (even if it was just a Huntsman, and maybe even just a small 1).

Kourtney Kardashian reveals why she won't move to Australia

The US reality star enjoyed a lengthy stint in Sydney earlier this year while husband Travis Barker was touring the country with his punk band Blink-182.

The family trip in February, which marked the couple’s first international jaunt with their then four-month-old son Rocky, was the subject of the latest episode of Hulu’s The Kardashians, where Kourtney, 45, shared videos of her encounter with a large huntsman spider.

“The only reason I could never move to Australia is for the spiders,” Kourtney said in a confessional.

“It’s just terrifying and it’s just not the way I want to live my life.”.......

Cheers.