In the 8th episode of Bizzarro Bazar: the most extraordinary lives of people born with extra limbs; a wax crucifix hides a secret; two specular cases of animal camouflage. [Be sure to turn on English captions.]
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Here we are for a new edition of LC&MW, the perfect column to dawdle and amaze yourself at the beach!
(It is also perfect for me to relax a bit while writing the new book for the BB Collection.) (Speaking of which, until Septembre 15 you can get 20% discountif you buy all 4 books in one bundle — just insert the coupon BUNDLE4 at check out. Comes with a free Bizzarro Bazar Shopper.) (Oh, I almost forgot, the above chameleon is a hand, painted by great Guido Daniele, whose job is to… well, paint hands.)
Alright, let’s begin!
In Mexico City, at the Templo Mayor, archeologists finally found one of the legendary Aztech “towers of skulls” that once terrorized the Spanish conquistadores. These racks (called tzompantli) were used to exhibit the remains of warriors who valliantly died in battle, or enemies and war prisoners: they were descibed in many codices and travel diearies. The newly-discovered “tower” could well be the famed Huey Tzompantli, the biggest of them all, an impressing rack that could hold up to 60.000 heads, according to calculations (just imagine the nightmarish view).
On this new site 650 skulls have been found, but the number is bound to increase as the excavation proceeds. But there’s a mystery: the experts expected to find the remains, as we’ve said, of oung warriors. Until now, they have encountered an unexplicable high rate of women and children — something that left everyone a bit confused. Maybe we have yet to fully understand the true function of the tzompantli?
During the night on August 21, 1986, in a valley in the north-west province of Cameroon, more than 1700 people and 3500 cattle animals suddenly died in their sleep. What happened?
Nearby lake Nyos, which the locals believed was haunted by spirits, was responsible for the disaster.
On the bottom of lake Nyos, active volcanic magma naturally forms a layer of water with a very high CO2 concentration. Recent rainfalls had facilitated the so-called “lake overturn” (or limnic eruption): the lower layer had abruptly shifted to the surface, freeing an immense, invisible carbon dioxide cloud, as big as 80 million cubic meters, which in a few minutes suffocated almost all living beings in the valley. [Discovered via Oddly Historical]
If you find yourself nearby, don’t be afraid to breathe. Today siphons bring water from the bottom to the surface of the lake, so as to free the CO2 gradually and constantly.
Ok — what the heck is a swimsuit ad (by Italian firm Tezenis) doing on Bizzarro Bazar?
Look again. That neck, folks.
Photoshopping going wrong? Maybe, but I like to think that this pretty girl is actually the successor of great Martin Joe Laurello, star of the freakshow with Ringlin Bros, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Barnum & Bailey and other travelling shows.
Here you can see him in action, together with fellow performer Bendyman.
Meanwhile in Kenya there’s a lawyer who (for the second time!) is trying to sue Israel and us Italians for killing Jesus Christ. That should teach us a lesson. You can murder, plunder and destroy undisturbed for centuries, but never mess with somebody who has connections at the top.
P.S. An advise for Greek friends: you may be next, start hiding all traces of hemlock.
On this website (click on the first picture) you can take a 360° tour through the crytpt of Saint Casimir, Krakow, among open caskets and exposed mummies.
The above pic shows one of the casts of Pompeii victims, and it has recently gone viral after a user speculated ironically that the man might have died in the midst of an act of onanism. You can figure out the rest: users making trivial jokes, others deploring the lack of respect for the dead… Now, now, children.
From July 21 to 24 I will be at the University of Winchester for the conference organised by Death & The Maiden, a beautiful blog exploring the relationship between women and death, to which I had the pleasure of contributing once or twice. The event looks awesome: panels aside, there will be seminars and workshops (from shroud embroidery to Victorian hairwork techniques), guided tours to local cemeteries, concerts, art performances and film screenings.
I am bringing my talk Saints, Mothers & Aphrodites, which I hope I will be able to take on tour throughout Italy in autumn.
Picture a mythological beast, a half-snake, half-spider hybrid, likely to make both arachnophobics and herpetophobics sleepless. Imagine its tail, from which eight mutant legs stick out, and where several small, black and shiny eyes open up to scrutinize their prey. It could well be a lovecraftian horror fantasy, or a new incarnation of the alien from The Thing.
And yet, such an animal exists. Even if reality is, of course, not so dramatic.
In 1968, William and Janice Street were exploring Iran. It was their second naturalistic expedition on behalf of the Field Museum of Chicago (in the following decade they would carry out three more, in Afghanistan, Peru and Australia), with the aim of expanding the Museum’s collection with new specimens. Their mission was mainly focused on mammals, but during their trip the Streets were also collecting several reptiles.
One day they noticed a snake which seemed to have a solifugid — a type of arachnid living in arid and sandy regions — attached to its tail. Once brought back to the Museum, the specimen was examined by researcher Steven Anderson, who realized the alleged spider was in reality a part of the viper’s own morphology: since only one specimen was known, he speculated that either a tumor, a congenital defect or a parasite could be responsible for that strange appendage. The snake was identified as Pseudocerastes persicus, the persian horned viper, and almost forgotten in the shelves of the Museum for nearly fourty years.
Then, in 2003, researcher Hamid Bostanchi came in possesion of a second specimen, identical to the one previously classified. He thus began suspecting the mutation was more than a physical defect, given that 35 years had passed from the first finding. He was therefore the first to speculate that this was an unknown species.
A third specimen was found in the poisonous animals section of the Razi Institute in Karaj, Iran: it had been mistakenly classified as a horned desert viper.
At this point Bostanchi, together with the first discoverer Steven Anderson and other collegues, published his findings and baptized the new snake Pseudocerastes urarachnoides (“with a spider-like tail”) in a 2006 essay.
X-rays showed the caudal vertebrae, bearing no sign of malformation, extending well into this anomalous structure, which was evidently formed by modified scales. As many vipers move their tails to lure preys, Bostanchi hypotesized that this bizarre spider-shaped protuberance was nothing else than an elaborate hunt bait.
In 2008 a live P. urarachnoides was captured and the animal, held in captivity, seemed to actually use its tail to lure sparrows and baby chickens near him; then, with a sudden twitch, it bit them and poisoned them in less than a half second. In its stomach fowl remains were found, indicating that this bait could have evolved specifically to catch birds.
To clear any doubt and verify the hypothesis, other observations followed, also in a natural environment. Here is a recent and wonderful video of the spider-tailed viper using its caudal bait to deceive and catch a bird.
If a viper imitating a small arachnid might seem an exceptional case of mimicry, what’s really astonishing is that in nature a perfectly specular example can be found: an insect, that is, mimicking a snake.
It’s the Dynastor darius, a butterfly which during its pupa stage locks itself inside a chrysalis that would definitely look far from tempting to a possible predator: in fact, it resembles a reptile’s head.
The pupa is still aware of the world outside the chrysalis, and if it feels threatened it can shake its “mask” from side to side, to make it even more convincingly realistic.
Sometimes it is asserted that man is the only animal capable of lying.
Yet, from crypsis to mimicry, it’s clear that fiction and deceit are extremely widespread behaviors among the rest of living creatures: they are weapons of attack and self-defense, sharpened in time. The predator has to disguise its presence, the prey has to dupe the senses of its enemy, and so on, in a constant game of mirrors in which nothing is really as it seems.
La vipera di Russell è il responsabile numero uno degli avvelenamenti in India, dove circa 10.000 persone all’anno muoiono a causa del suo morso. Rispetto ad altri serpenti, il cui veleno attacca il sistema nervoso, questa vipera ha sviluppato delle emotossine, che agiscono quindi sul sangue. Guardate cosa provoca nel giro di pochi secondi una goccia di veleno lasciata cadere in un bicchiere di sangue.
