Funky fungus puts hair on your chest

Don't blame me--blame the Associated Press for this awful pic, via IO9

Or at least that's what grown ups used to say to me to get me eat things that looked repulsive. I'm not sure why they thought that would work. All I know is there's nothing anyone could say to get me to eat this stuff. It's just about exactly what zombie brains would look like if I had to imagine them without the benefit of this horrifying photo.

According to a new study (or a really disgusting practical joke) the stuff is called "corn smut" (classy!) and contains lots of nutrients for making your bones healthy and your skin young and fresh. Sounds like a pact with the devil you say? Irony is way ahead of you my friends--it's also known as (gulp!) DEVIL'S CORN!

IO9 has the dirt on the fungi. Or something.

In Mexico, the fungus is called huitlacoche, and it's already considered a delicacy. But U.S. farmers, and the U.S. government, have spent millions of dollars to eradicate the blight and develop "smut-resistant strains" of corn.

It also has...

....beta-glucens, a soluble fiber that helps you cut your cholesterol. So it's actually better for you, and could turn out to be more valuable on the market, than the corn it "ruins."

Yeah, don't be surprised if it takes a while to catch on. Like never!

• More corn smut info than you can burn off with gasoline
• Here's a guy who was crazy enough to taste it out a can (it comes in cans?!) 

A choice quote from the Steve Don't Eat It! series of posts on The Sneeze:

Don't worry, I checked the ingredients before I tasted it. "Smoker's lung" was not on there. Before I even got the whole can open, I detected a vague aroma of sweet corn, along with what I can only describe as a deep musky funk. Put 'em together and it smells like corn that forgot to wipe.

Wow. Be sure to check out his site for even more repugnant photos and all the gory details. Bon Appetite!

Two-Story Tall Fungus Fossils Found

Image: Mary Parrish via MSNBC

Researchers say that waaaay back in the Silurian and Devonian periods (350-420 million years ago....you remember those from science class, right?) the world's largest fungus grew to around 26 feet tall--about the size of modern telephone poles. The fungus, called Prototaxites, was about the width of a tree trunk. From MSNBC:

"The above-ground structure -- what actually gets preserved as a fossil -- would have been involved in spore dispersal, like a mushroom," he added. "For that purpose, the higher off the ground you can get, the farther spores will travel on the wind."

He and his colleagues first began to suspect Prototaxites was a fungus and not a plant after they analyzed carbon isotopes in its fossils. These remaining carbon atoms can suggest what existing, and once-living, organisms ate. Boyce explained that since plants derive their energy from the sun and its carbon from carbon dioxide in the air, the carbon isotope signatures for plants tend to look the same.

Kinda cool, let's face it, also kinda creepy!
Full article....

Witch Bottle Wards Off Evil, Hygiene

Photo: National Geographic

File this one under: strange and slightly gross. How do witches and warlocks fight evil spirits? By concocting their own magic talismans in form of enchanted bottles of course! The practice was bigger in the 16th century, but fell out of favor sometime during the Age of Reason. Why? Because it was the Age of Reason. It's rare for a witch bottle to be found intact, but that's exactly what's happened. From Nat Geo:

In the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain, the supposedly cursed often put their toenails and fingernails, urine, and hair into the witch bottles.

These jugs, usually buried near a house or building, were meant to keep evildoers at bay.

Can you imagine finding 300-year-old pee and fingernails? “magic” wouldn't exactly be the first word that comes to my mind. An X-ray confirms nothing nasty in this bottle. (Thankfully!) But that didn’t keep it from being charged with powerful magic:

Despite their name, witch bottles were more often intended as all-purpose lucky charms against bad luck, Norton said—"a modern equivalent of hanging a horseshoe on your door."

The superstitious also stuck children's shoes inside walls or buried horse skulls by doors—animals were believed to be able to see spirits, he said.

Ah, so it imbues one with the power to see plot points in M. Night Shyamalan films? Now that IS magical!

Read more...

Giant Black "Blob" Attacks Alaska!

I guess there's more than one blob out there! This one is "definately organic" according to one official. And it likes cold water. Seriously creepy! From the Anchorage Daily News:

Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

Here's some choice quotes about it's physical description:

It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

and...

"It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.

Yuck!

Read more...

Photos courtesy of the North Slope Borough via Anchorage Daily News.

Chinese Cat Grows Wings!

This would definitely fall under an X-File type of story--a cat in China has apparently grown "wing-like" appendages due to a genetic malformation. From MSNBC:

While some think the bony limbs may be a mutation of some kind — or even a Siamese twin growing inside the cat — others speculate it's a genetic change perhaps caused by chemicals ingested by the kitty's mother while she was pregnant.

Did the mention of a twin inside the cat make you gag a little bit? You're not alone. Even more disturbing is the fact that this is nothing new. Click this pic from Sodahead for more weirdness:

No word on how much Red Bull these cats may have ingested.

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Props: Photos borrowed from MSNBC and Sodahead.