AFP report:

A replica of Michelangelo’s Renaissance sculpture David that was erected suddenly last summer is unnerving residents of a Japanese town, with some calling for the naked masterpiece to be given underpants.

Okuizumo town in western Shimane prefecture received five-metre (16-foot) replicas of David and of Greek treasure the Venus de Milo, as donations from a businessman who hails from the area.

The statues were put up in a large public park that also includes a full-size running track, a baseball stadium, tennis courts, a mountain bike course and a play area with apparatus for children.

So two things about this story. #1, the obvious: hahaha those wacky people in Japan want to put pants on David, how silly what sillies they are

More importantly, this rich guy who isn’t even named in the story apparently purchased multiple replicas of David and just dropped them off in a park without telling anyone. Who even does that?

This story is so ridiculous I’m just going to quote the punchline and save you all some time. Eric Pfiffer, Yahoo! News:

And finally, where exactly did Ketchum get her DNA sample? After all, if she was working from a reliable source, that alone might be the real story because no physical evidence of Bigfoot exists on record.

As it turns out, Ketchum says her DNA sample was obtained from a blueberry bagel left in the backyard of a Michigan home that, according to the owner, sees regular visits from Sasquatch creatures.

After years of roaming the worlds in Super Mario 64 alone, you can now do so with a friend! Just as Nintendo had originally planned, this modification turns all of SM64 multiplayer.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Gruesome AP report:

Seagulls around the city of Puerto Madryn discovered about a decade ago that by pecking at the whales as they come up for air, they can create open wounds. Then, each time the whales surface, it’s dinner time: Gulls swoop down and dig in, cutting away skin and blubber with their beaks and claws.

The problem has only grown more severe since then as more gulls caught on and the bird population exploded due to easy access to human detritus — not only open-air garbage heaps but fish parts as well, dumped directly into the water by fishermen and a seafood packing plant.

There’s even a picture! Don’t worry, it’s pretty safe.

I mean, it’s clearly not safe in the sense that it shows a seagull in the process of devouring a whale and what the fuck, but there’s no visible wound and the bird’s beak looks like it’s just resting on the whale, so if you didn’t know the context you wouldn’t even know that some bad shit was about to go down.

Wil Longbottom writing for the Daily Mail:

This Dutch traveller was caught trying to smuggle more than a dozen live hummingbirds in special pouches sewn into the inside of his underwear at Rochambeau airport in Cayenne, French Guiana.

The birds were individually wrapped in cloth and taped up to prevent them from ‘escaping’ from their sweaty travel container.

There are pictures. Whether you want them or not.

So here’s something that apparently happens in the United States: cow floating. From a 2011 article in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel by Karen Herzog:

When Chloe, the ailing Holstein cow, went down and couldn’t get up on the hottest day of the year Wednesday, her owner did what many modern Dairyland farmers would do:

He called a cow floater.

…

Thanks to her own buoyancy, Chloe began to float as a special tank she was moved into was filled with 80-degree water. Buoyancy reduced the weight she had to bear as she scrambled to get her footing.

The plan is for Chloe to receive 18 to 24 hours of water therapy to relax her muscles, reduce swelling and boost circulation before the water is drained Friday in hopes that she will walk out of the tank.

I cannot think of a single thing to say about this.

There’s a lot of gold in the “Production” section of the Bambi article on Wikipedia.

Sidney Franklin, a producer and director at MGM films, purchased the film rights to Felix Salten’s novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods in 1933, intending to adapt it as a live-action film. Deciding it would be too difficult to make such a film, he sold the film rights to Walt Disney in April 1937.

I can’t possibly fathom why this wouldn’t work as a live-action film!

There was a scene involving two autumn leaves conversing and eventually dying by falling to the ground, but the artist found that talking flora didn’t work in the context of the film and instead used a visual metaphor of two realistic leaves falling to the ground.

Screenwriters what were you on, dogs. Why would that have been a good idea.

There was a scene of Bambi stepping on an ant’s nest and showing all the devastation that he caused, but it was cut for pacing reasons.

Yes, it was cut because it threw off the film’s timing. Not because an ant massacre might not be appropriate for a movie like Bambi. No siree bob.

Ed Yong on Discover’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog:

Some flies, known as phorids, specialise in decapitating ants in a gruesome way. They lay their eggs inside their victims. When the maggots hatch, they move towards the ant’s head, where they gorge upon the brain and other tissues. The ant stumbles about in a literally mindless stupor until the connection between its head and body is dissolved by a enzyme released from the maggot. The head falls off and the adult flies burst out.

Nature is weird.

The game gained controversy when a designer inserted sprites of shirtless “himbos” (male bimbos) in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other, who appear in great numbers on certain dates. Their fluorescent nipples were drawn with a special rendering mode usually reserved for fog-piercing runway landing lights, so they could easily be seen from long distances in bad weather. An unintended emergent behavior of the code caused hundreds of himbos to swarm and crowd around the helicopter, where they would be slashed up by the blades, and then need to be air-lifted to the hospital — which earned the player easy money.

First off, what.

Secondly, what.