On March 21, 2003, in one of the first combat operations of the U.S.-led invasion or Iraq, a combined force of American, British, and Polish troops attacked and captured the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr. Throughout the invasion and the subsequent occupation, Umm Qasr would serve as a vital shipping terminal for humanitarian aid. But before any supplies could […]

What is the strangest job you have ever had? Snake milker? Professional cuddler? Dog food taster? Online educational content creator? Professional queuer (and yes, these are all very real)? Well, if you have a taste for offbeat employment, why not consider a career in chick sexing? No, not having spicy time with our delicious avian drumsticks, but the fine art […]

If you’ve ever been thrown into a highly stressful situation and left to fend for yourself, you’ve likely been told that your options are to “sink or swim.” This idiom, which has existed since at least the 14th Century and has appeared in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare, is thought to have originated either from the fact that throughout […]

If ever there was a poster child for human-caused extinction, it was the Dodo. This odd-looking flightless bird, native to the remote island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, was first encountered by Dutch sailors in 1598. Barely six decades later, the Dodo was all but extinct, wiped out by hungry sailors and invasive species like rats and pigs brought […]

Somewhere in Siberia around 23,000 years ago, a particularly brave wolf or wolves wandered into a human campsite in search of food and the humans and said animal were apparently like “Did we just become best friends?!?!?!?” 23 millennia of selective breeding later, and we have succeeded in turning a once wild and fearsome beast into chihuahuas… And also such […]

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. First conceived by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1735, this system for classifying life on earth, known as Linnaean Taxonomy, has been in use for nearly 300 years and is taught in every high school biology class. In recent years, however, a better understanding of genetics and evolution has resulted in Linnaean Taxonomy […]

Dignified, loyal and, above all, very fury, guide dogs are a vital tether to the outside world for many blind and visually impaired people that allow them to live more independent, if dog hair covered, lives. As you’d expect, training one of these wonder-dogs is no easy feat and requires teaching the canine in question to ignore many of its […]

Nick G. asks: Please do one on the myth of people sticking small rodents up their anus. Few people are more creative than horny men and if you’ve searched around online for the more… unusual ways people get off, like we’ve had to do EXTENSIVELY in researching this article… only for that reason…, you may have stumbled across allusions to […]

In 1999, British radiologist Nicola Strickland went on holiday with a friend to the Caribbean island of Tobago. While exploring a deserted beach looking for seashells, the pair came upon a number of small, round, yellow-green fruits scattered among the fallen coconuts and mangoes. Intrigued, they decided to try the fruits and found them to be pleasantly sweet. But that […]

We’ve all heard the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, and then, along with his father Geppetto, creating a fire so that the whale sneezes them out … Or something like that. Whatever the case, being swallowed whole is a fate that has permeated our mythology and stories throughout time. But what is the actual typical progression to […]

Pezoporus occidentalis, better known simply as the “night parrot”, is often described by ornithologists as being the most mysterious and enigmatic bird on Earth- a moniker the night parrot earned by being so rare and elusive that fewer people alive today have seen one with their own eyes than have ever walked on the Moon. Described bluntly by one of […]