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Fortean Headlines

Three B.C. friends, out for a recent hike together near Alouette Lake...

caveman06.jpg
 
Callum Gow, Josh Grossman and Carson Schiefner, all film workers in their early 20s, found a secret camp, fully supplied, that had not been visited in nearly 30 years.

Do I sense the premise for their low-budget Indie found-footage flick?

maximus otter
 
'Nature's Smallest Rainbow' Found on Australian Spider's Butt
https://www.livescience.com/61318-peacock-spider-smallest-rainbow.html

Here's another one - both another peacock spider story and another WTF headline ...
'Starry Night' replica found on peacock spider's butt

Now, an entomologist with Museums Victoria in Australia has described seven brand new species of peacock spiders ... Included among the new species is the looker shown in the photo above — Maratus constellatus, which entomologist Joseph Schubert named in honor of the twinkling blue-and-yellow heavens in Vincent Van Gogh's iconic painting "The Starry Night."

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/peacock-spider-van-gogh-butt.html
 
<Sniff> That image has more in common with Georges Seurat's pointillism technique as it does with van Gogh's swirly Starry Night stars. Just can't trust anything a science writer says these days. :nerd:
 
I guess that's yet another person out of a job . . .
 
Scientists Made A Drone To Capture Whale Snot

Right now, whales are facing myriad threats, from pollution and getting tangled in fishing gear, to warming and acidifying oceans. To understand how those threats are affecting whales, scientists need data. And to get that data, they’ve come up with a drone that can capture whale snot.

Whales push out massive amounts of snot—or more scientifically, “exhaled breath condensate”—through their blowholes. That mucus-like substance is sticky and nasty, but it’s also rich with biological information: DNA, stress and pregnancy hormones, and microbiomes, among other indicators of health.

So how do you collect whale snot? I present to you, the SnotBot.

FULL STORY: https://earther.gizmodo.com/scientists-made-a-drone-to-capture-whale-snot-1842664463
 
Looks like the virus is now spreading to companion animals.
Cats in New York test positive for coronavirus amid fears of spread among pets

"Two pet cats in New York state have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first confirmed cases in companion animals in the US, federal officials said.

"The cats, which had mild respiratory illnesses and are expected to recover, are thought to have contracted the virus from people in their households or neighbourhoods, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said."
 
Looks like the virus is now spreading to companion animals.
Cats in New York test positive for coronavirus amid fears of spread among pets

"Two pet cats in New York state have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first confirmed cases in companion animals in the US, federal officials said.

"The cats, which had mild respiratory illnesses and are expected to recover, are thought to have contracted the virus from people in their households or neighbourhoods, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said."

Specifically the virus that causes Covid19?
Cats are known to get Coronavirus (as my vet informed us) but is not the variant that causes the current illness in humans.
 
Looks like the virus is now spreading to companion animals.
Cats in New York test positive for coronavirus amid fears of spread among pets

"Two pet cats in New York state have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first confirmed cases in companion animals in the US, federal officials said.

"The cats, which had mild respiratory illnesses and are expected to recover, are thought to have contracted the virus from people in their households or neighbourhoods, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said."

The obvious comment is how did the cats get tested when the general populace cannot ?
 
For various reasons, we don't have adquate supplies to test people with mild symptoms, let alone people who have no symptoms. Testing in this country has been so insufficient that anyone serious about stopping the outbreak will follow up as many clues as possible. NY has been slammed so badly by this virus that they're doing as much as they can to understand and contain the outbreak. Some big cats in the Bronx zoo were tested after they showed symptoms. Their symptoms indicated that one of the humans working there had Covid but no employees had symptoms. People with no symptoms don't get tested. Domestic cats with symptoms show where Covid may be when there are no other obvious indications.
 
The obvious comment is how did the cats get tested when the general populace cannot ?
It is likely a common veterinary test for the variant/strain that affects animals. Not the one that is causing the current pandemic in humans.
 
The first cat was a tiger who had respiratory symptoms and was tested under anesthesia using samples from nose, throat and "respiratory tract". The subsequent tests on the other cats were used fecal samples. All cats tested positive for Covid-19. An employee who worked with the cats has since showed symptoms, but did not at the time the tiger became sick. The cats are all doing well; presumably the employee is recovering also.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/big-cats-test-positive-covid-19-zookeeper-accidentally/story?id=70303070
 
If you're going stir crazy, this is one way to beat the lockdown...

Meet The Redditors Using Astral Projection to Escape Quarantine
Paranormal enthusiasts say they're using out-of-body experiences to infiltrate forbidden spaces—including the Pentagon.

Late last year, the internet was crackling with plans to stage a million-strong raid on the supposed alien stronghold, Area 51. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing everyone to quarantine at home, venturing farther than the local park seems like a dream from a lost reality.

But what if there was a way to explore our planet that didn't put us in harm's way and was more stimulating than scrolling through Google Earth? And what if, while we were at it, we could storm Area 51 too?
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...-using-astral-projection-to-escape-quarantine
 
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