If you think a super smart pig that’s both massive and impervious to cold temperatures due to its size and ability to tunnel as many as six feet under the snow is the stuff of fiction, think again. The Guardian reports the so-called “super pigs”arose in Canada after farmers intentionally mated domestic pigs with wild boars in the 1980s. Some ended up busting out of farms and into the wild. Ryan Brook, head of the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian wild pig research project, says farmers thought the harsh winter temps would kill off any escapees. That’s not what happened. “It turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold,” notes Brook (they can weigh up to 270kg, versus 113kg for feral pigs). Now they are heading south.
Belly buttons are gross
Sixty belly buttons were sampled and 2368 different species of bacteria were found. The belly button study indicated that 1458 of them may be new to science. One had a rare bacteria found in Japanese soil and they had never been to Japan. Two had rare bacteria that thrived on ice caps and thermal vents. Not a single bacterium was common to all buttons. (The hairy lump of creamy crunchy black and yellow crud that forms in a belly button if people don’t clean properly is called an umbolith, or “navel stone”. It smells like death. Please wash properly.)
President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn Carter have the longest marriage in the history of US presidents but have known each other for the longest time possible. The couple, who met when Jimmy was 3 years old and Rosalynn was just 10 minutes old. Jimmy’s mother was a midwife and delivered Rosalynn, while 3-year-old Jimmy was in the next room. He was invited in to look at the newborn and the person who’d become his wife of 76 years and counting.
Happiness is ...
“I love being in bed. I don’t understand how people don’t get into bed and immediately feel happier. Sometimes I get into bed and that is my activity, just being in bed, because that’s how happy it makes me. I just lay there and think about how I’m in my bed and I’m happy about it.” (Via @_veuillez)
