Wood Ape Sightings: Correlations to Annual Rainfall Totals, Waterways, Human Population Densities and Black Bear Habitat Zones
NOTE: don't forget...these are the people who want to kill a Bigfoot
In Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, anecdotes about huge, hairy, apelike creatures said to dwell in the deep woods and, occasionally, near the peripheries of rural communities, have accumulated for centuries. Many of these accounts were related by highly reliable and trustworthy individuals, people who had nothing to gain by telling their stories.
Indeed, in many cases, these witnesses became the subjects of much ridicule, even among close friends and relatives. To the present day, most witnesses hesitate to share their incredible stories of seeing this strange, undocumented animal. Their reticence should come as no surprise given the treatment of the subject by the mass media and some mainstream scientists.
There are many skeptics; their concerns are legitimate. Skeptics demand to know why no skeletal remains have been found; they want to know why no hunters have killed one, or why no driver has collided with one on a secluded country highway. Would not a large primate, skeptics ask, leave an undeniable, discernable mark on the environment in perhaps the same manner as mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei)? Such questions are not invalid. Expecting skeptics to accept the likelihood of such a species existing beneath our proverbial noses may be asking just a tad too much. Nevertheless, the body of anecdotal accounts and accompanying evidence seems to indicate just such a possibility. Continue reading at Texas Bigfoot
The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster
UFO and Bigfoot Sightings in ALABAMA: A listing and examination of selected sightings
**********
The secret life of a mysterious creature that feeds on the decaying dead in the unlit depths of the ocean has been revealed.
The squid is so weird that it is known as a ‘phylogenetic relic’. It has the honour of occupying a taxonomic category all of its own, combining features of octopuses and squids in a unique evolutionary formula that has survived for millions of years.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a pair of scientists in California report on 30 years of chance encounters with vampire squids by robot submarine explorers, laboratory experiments and dissections.
Lone species
Vampyroteuthis infernalis – the ‘Squid from Hell’ – is the only species in the order Vampyromorpha, where it was placed in 1903.
The 13-centimetre (five-inch) cephalopod lives in temperate and tropical oceans, inhabiting waters at depths between roughly 600 and 900 metres (2,000–3,000 feet), a niche habitat where at the lowest levels there is just enough oxygen to support life.
It uses huge 2.5-centimetre (one-inch) eyes to detect the slightest gleam of movement, and deploys dark-blue bioluminescence to cloak its jelly-like body from predators below when it drifts at higher depths.
Unlike its latter-day cousins, the vampire squid does not tuck into living prey, they say.
‘Detritivore’: corpse-eater
Instead, examination of the squid's digestive tract, faeces and regurgitations suggest it is a ‘detritivore’ – it eats the corpses (or what remains of them) of larvae, crustaceans and zooplankton that sink gently to the ocean floor.
A bigger puzzle, though, is a feature of the vampire squid's mouth.
It opens up like a black umbrella, comprising a web that encompasses eight octopus-like arms, studded with suckers and finger-like spines called cirri.
It also has a second pair of arms called retractile filaments that can reach out to lengths that are far bigger than that of the squid itself, and can then be withdrawn into pockets within the web.
Unique to the vampire squid, these sticky filaments were long thought to be sensors to detect living prey and predators.
“Unlike any other cepholapod”
But the evidence says they are used to reach out and snare morsels of food, say Hendrik Joving and Bruce Robison at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
The scraps are then glued together into a little ball using mucus from secretory tissue in the suckers, and then transported to the squid's jaws by the cirri.
“Vampyroteuthis' feeding behaviour is unlike any other cephalopod," the authors said in the study.
"[It] reveals a unique adaptation that allows these animals to spend most of their life at depths where oxygen concentrations are very low, but where predators are few and typical cephalopod food is scarce." - cosmosmagazine
Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid
**********
The Mexican Mormon War
Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 44 minutes)
The Mexican drug cartels are at war… with Mormons. VICE founder Shane Smith went down to Ciudad Juárez, near the US border, to investigate this bizarre story.
We learn how the “Mormon Manson” turned his family into assassins, leading to the murder of 40 people, all in the name of blood atonement. The cartel boss “El Rikin” gets revenge against a local Mormon community leader.
The Mormons illegally arm themselves and implement counter-terrorism techniques the US military used in Iraq and Afghanistan. VICE team is stalked by the cartel after going on patrol with the police and drinking with the Mormons.
We also learn what Mitt Romney’s Mexican cousins think about his strict immigration policies. VICE talks to Mitt Romney’s Mexican relatives about the time a family member was kidnapped and held for ransom by the cartel.
Mormon Colonies in Mexico
Colonia Juarez: Commemorating 125 Years of the Mormon Colonies in Mexico
**********
Can a Foil Hat Keep People (or Aliens) from Reading Your Thoughts?
Let’s say that the conspiracy theorists are right. Let’s say some malevolent group—the government, powerful corporations, extraterrestrials—really is trying to read and/or control the thoughts of the Average Joe with radio waves. Would the preferred headgear of the paranoid, a foil helmet, really keep The Man and alien overlords out of our brains?
The scientific reasoning behind the foil helmet is that it acts as a Faraday cage, an enclosure made up of a conducting material that shields its interior from external electrostatic charges and electromagnetic radiation by distributing them around its exterior and dissipating them. While sometimes these enclosures are actual cages, they come in many forms, and most of us have probably dealt with one type or another. Elevators, the scan rooms that MRI machines sit in, “booster bags” that shoplifters sometimes use to circumvent electronic security tags, cables like USB or TV coaxial cables, and even the typical household microwave all provide shielding as Faraday cages.
While the underlying concept is good, the typical foil helmet fails in design and execution. An effective Faraday cage fully encloses whatever it’s shielding, but a helmet that doesn’t fully cover the head doesn’t fully protect it. If the helmet is designed or worn with a loose fit, radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation can still get up underneath the brim from below and reveal your innermost thoughts to the reptilian humanoids or the Bilderberg Group. Continue reading at Mental Floss
Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation
Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us
Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials
