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Marti

How clever is an octopus?

By Animals

Oh yes it can. It would appear that the humble octopus has a few tricks up its sleeve, including the ability to open a jar. Check out this video on YouTube….and this isn’t the only video displaying the marvels of the octopus. Apparently there is an Australian species which likes to hide under a coconut shell for protection.

And the winner is……

By Bill and Ben the little green alien men, Competitions

Congratulations to Bonita for being the first winner of the ‘Create a cartoon caption’ competition.  Your prize is in the mail! 

To see the fantastic submissions, click here to view them all. I must admit it was close, so I created a ‘Runners up’….and for those of you who I know are rather competitive, they are not listed in any particular order.

If you didn’t win this time, don’t worry, there’s always next time, and next time starts tomorrow! Yep, due to popular demand I’m having a competition every month.

Fussy fish

By That's life

Current science believes that the Universe began about 13.7 billion years ago. The earth came to existence about 4.5 billion years ago, with the first basic forms of life starting a mere 3.8 billion years ago.  Our friends the humble fish appeared about 500 million years ago and mammals only 65 million years ago.  Here’s a visual timeline of evolution I found.

No intelligence, just wood

By Animals

OK, 3 woodpecker facts to help you impress your work colleagues, whilst making a cup of coffee at work.

1. Woodpeckers don’t eat wood, they just peck at wooden trunks to find yummy bugs and sap hiding deep within the bark of the tree.

2. Woodpeckers have reinforced skulls structured to spread the impact force, and their brains are tightly cushioned and protected, which is handy because they can peck up to 20 times per second.

3. The majority of woodpeckers have zygodactyl feet (sounds like a dinosaur description to me). Two toes face the front and another two the back, which helps them grip trees and poles vertically. Combined with a stiff feathered tail and their zygodactyl feet they embrace the tree to enable them to climb vertically.

Ever wanted to be a fly on the wall?

By Insects

I can’t really think of where I’d like to be a fly on the wall, but I can tell you where I don’t want to be a fly on a wall – our house.  To entertain themselves, our dogs love to chase flies. When the unsuspecting fly lands on one of the walls (70cm and below), they’re more than likely cactus, as one of the dogs will lunge with its mouth to grab a treat.

So where have you wanted/not wanted to be a fly on the wall?

Leonardo’s last supper revisited

By Dung Beetles

Apologies for the continuous toilet humour. I obviously have dung on the mind. Must be somehow related to having two golden retrievers and a small backyard.

PS. Don’t worry, I can assure you all, no dung beetles were hurt in the making of this cartoon.

Back to the topic, Leonardo’s last supper is famous. Many artists have interpreted this amazing piece of artwork. Here are 3 images I found on Google.

1. Lego Last supper

2. Go out rocking

3. Apple technology last supper

Anyone for hippo soup?

By Animals

I was inspired to make this cartoon after reading the 7th top incredible food fact on this website. It claims that archeological evidence has shown that soup made over 8000 years ago contains the remnants of a hippo. Finding this potentially dubious, I started searching the net for the original archeological report / paper to give it more credibility, but alas my skills were left wanting and I ran out of desire to wade through the remaining 2,469,990 Google results.

The Devil discovers the wonders of social networking

By That's life

With a post like this, it’s worth contemplating some stats in the area of social networking….and guess who leads the pack with the most subscribers?…..Yes, Facebook (about 750 million users). Here are 3 interesting stats, for more, you can view the site I chose to take my stats from.

  1. 300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages (I wonder how many were paid and what you had to do to get accepted?)
  2. Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years) (I think the calculation into years puts the billion hours number into perspective – mind boggling – enough time to demonstrate Darwin’s theory of evolution)
  3. Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles (The old Encyclopedia Britannica books housed in my parents bookshelf didn’t stand a chance)

And one final reminder – the cartoon caption competition ends today 17:00hrs sharp! Winner will be announced 29 February.