Date Night.
BEEP BEEP
Anyone want a chocolate-covered scorpion? What about a caramel mealworm apple? C’mon…anyone?
“For over 25 years, California-based candy company HOTLIX has been creating weird sweets like chocolate-dipped-scorpions and bug lollipops. Think of it as a real-life Willy Wonka nightmare.
The first insect candy created by HOTLIX was a tequila-flavored lollipop with a worm inside it. This was back in 1982, but fast-forward to present day and HOTLIX insect sweets have spread worldwide and are more popular than ever. 70-year-old Larry Peterman was the man with the original idea of bug candy,and now he supervises the farm producing the insects needed to make these outrageous sweets.
Larry and his empolyees work hard at keeping the secret of his insect delicacies and so far they’ve stayed one step in front of the competition, despite several copying attempts. One thing they do reveal is the worms are fed things like apple and banana peal, as well as oatmeal.
If you’re wondering about the safety of eating chocolate-covered scorpions, you should know there’s no danger at all. Once dead, scorpions are no longer poisonous and their stinger is cut-off just in case. Bon appetit!”
[via Oddity Central]
It’s Weird Candy Day on Geyser of Awesome!
This week, Busch Gardens Tampa is celebrating a milestone anniversary for a very special relationship. Monday, April 16 marked the one-year anniversary of the first time park guests got to see an 8-week-old male cheetah cub and a 16-week-old female yellow Labrador puppy start to strike up a friendship that the park’s animal experts expect to last a lifetime.
Ambulocetus
Reconstructions by Carl Buell
When: Eocene (~50 to 48 million years ago)
Where: Pakistan
What: Ambulocetus is fossil whale relative. This beast was about 10 feet (~3 meters) long, and not very agile in either the land or the water. It was capable of movement on land, but it would have been rather slow and lumbering, as its forelimbs were shortened compared to its fully terrestrial ancestors. In the water it would have been capable of swimming with some speed, but it would not have been able to make quick turns as it chased its prey. Therefore, it has been reconstructed as an ambush-style predator, in the same niche as the modern crocodile. It would have laid in wait in the water, with its relatively dorsal eyes and nose peeking above the sufrace, able to see and smell approaching prey. Once a prey animal got close enough, Ambulocetus would launch itself from the water and try to catch the animal in its powerful jaws, such as is shown above. I think it is some form of basal horse that is trying to avoid the snapping jaws of Ambulocetus. This ambush style strategy could have also worked with aquatic prey, such as schools of fish. Ambush predation is seen in some species of whales today, Orcas (the killer whales) have been recorded ambushing seals on ice flows.
Ambulocetus lived on the edge of the Tethys Sea (a body of water between India and Asia) in what is now Pakistan. At the time this region was one of many islands off the shore of the island continent of India, which had not yet collided with Asia (this would not happen for tens of millions of years). This warm seaway was full of mammals starting to return to the seas, including other lineages of whale relatives. In the cetacean family tree, Ambulocetus falls between Indohyus and modern whales; it was carnivorous - as all modern whales are-, and far more adapted for aquatic locomotion than Indohyus was, with shortened legs and a much more powerful tail.
“Mushrooms”
The entire collection from “Just Like Us” is online at Gallery1988.com, where you can purchase the remaining prints & originals.
If you’ve ever wanted to wash your face with a freshly baked brownie or macaron, you should check out these deceptive little creations made by Kasey Hachler. Kasey runs an Etsy shop called KcSoapsNmore where she sells awesome goat’s milk and glycerin soaps carefully made to look good enough to eat. They’re even packaged as though you’d just been to the bakery! While we know that these items really are soap and are meant for washing, not eating, they appear so real that our stomachs are growling just looking at the photos.
[via thaeger]
