Odd events

Stories in “Odd events”.

Soldiers. Machine guns. And emus.Crop damage in Western Australia prompted a military operation against emus. Armed soldiers struggled to cont…
Life on the Moon. According to a hoax.New York’s The Sun published a series claiming discoveries of lunar life and civilization. The reported obser…
One address. A flood of unwanted deliveries.In London in 1810, Theodore Hook sent letters ordering goods and services to a single house, drawing tradespe…
Spaghetti grew on trees. For one BBC broadcast.On April Fools’ Day in 1957, the BBC showed a supposed Swiss spaghetti harvest. Some viewers asked how to gro…
A giant in the ground. A hoax in the making.The Cardiff Giant, unearthed in New York in 1869, was promoted as a petrified man. It was a manufactured arch…
A human ancestor— until the fraud was exposed.Piltdown Man was announced in 1912 as an early-human fossil. Although doubts appeared early, the fraud was no…
Fairy photographs persuaded Sherlock Holmes’s creator.Arthur Conan Doyle embraced the Cottingley fairy photographs as evidence of supernatural phenomena. The pictu…
Three days across the Atlantic. A newspaper hoax by Poe.In 1844, a New York newspaper printed Edgar Allan Poe’s account of a three-day balloon crossing as fact. The…
A city’s dancing outbreak. An explanation still debated.Accounts describe prolonged dancing in Strasbourg in 1518. Several explanations have been proposed, and claim…
One pig. An international confrontation.The shooting of a pig helped trigger a confrontation between the United States and Britain in the disputed Sa…
The summer when a river’s smell became a political crisis.London’s Great Stink of 1858 made sewage pollution in the Thames impossible to ignore. It helped spur major s…
A beer flood. A real industrial disaster.In 1814, a brewery vat failure released a huge volume of beer into a London neighbourhood, killing residents.
The flood was made of molasses.A storage tank burst in Boston in 1919, sending molasses through the streets and causing deaths and injuries.
A laughter outbreak closed schools.An outbreak of laughter and other symptoms spread among students in Tanganyika in 1962. It disrupted schoolin…
The defendant was a deceased pope.In Rome in 897, the corpse of Pope Formosus was put on trial in what became known as the Cadaver Synod, amid…
A war named for a bucket. Not simply caused by one.The 1325 conflict between Bologna and Modena is remembered as the War of the Bucket. Long-running political r…
A tree-cutting operation backed by military force.After American officers were killed in the Korean Joint Security Area in 1976, Operation Paul Bunyan removed…
A moving-picture pioneer vanished during a journey.Louis Le Prince, known for early motion-picture work, disappeared in France in 1890. His fate has not been co…
Someone broke into the television signal.In Chicago in 1987, broadcast signals were hijacked to show a person wearing a Max Headroom mask.
A solar storm disrupted the telegraph age.The powerful geomagnetic storm of 1859 affected telegraph systems and produced auroras at unusually low latit…
The city took most of his lot. He built anyway.After a Vancouver street widening left Chang Toy a strip of land roughly 1.8 metres deep, he bet he could sti…
Bread. Stapled. To trees. That's the entire community.An online community collects photos of bread stapled to trees. Its core rules require actual bread, actual st…
Dog food stolen: 23 short tons.Over several months in 1977, bags of dog food vanished from a California feed store. The losses added up to a…
A journalist was bitten by a man dressed as Santa.In 1931, a disgruntled man in a Santa Claus costume appeared at a Canadian newspaper. An editor asked the lar…
A fairground stand makes about a million cookies a day.At the Minnesota State Fair, Sweet Martha's Cookies has capacity for 44,000 cookies every 12 minutes. Its ave…
Cat fever got its own economic buzzword.In Japan, spending on cat goods, cafés, and cat-related tourism has been dubbed “nekonomics,” a play on “Aben…
The Forbidden City has feline guards.Roughly 150 to 200 cats live in Beijing's Forbidden City. Museum staff manage their health and numbers, while…
Her skirt came off. It was planned.At Eurovision in 1985, the host's skirt appeared to snag and fall away. She then revealed another dress under…
A sports team's name drew a demand to change it.The Green Bay Packers were named for the meat-packing business that backed the early team. In 2000, PETA call…
The team is named for sausages. And long-range goals.Portland Bangers FC uses a name that points both to British sausages and to spectacular long-distance soccer…
A Game Boy accessory measured blood sugar.Glucoboy was a removable blood-glucose monitor for the Game Boy Advance. Designed for children with diabetes,…
A film about many children was named for a prolific bull.The Canadian comedy Starbuck follows a man confronted by numerous children from sperm donations. Its title co…
The developers shared their pirate game for free.When Pixel Piracy entered early access in 2013, its makers also released a free torrent. Their reasoning was…
It borrowed an airport's name. The airport was elsewhere.Two Japanese towns proposed merging as Minami-Centrair, referencing Chubu Centrair Airport. The airport was a…
A satellite dish went into an empty swimming pool.In 1977, Arizona's KUAT-TV began building a satellite dish inside a vacant university swimming pool. The inst…
This crab sometimes eats other crabs.The paddle crab hunts molluscs and crustaceans at night around New Zealand and nearby waters. It is also nota…
For a free PC test, shoot down 13 ships.UserBenchmark used a 3D CAPTCHA minigame for free testing slots during busy periods. Users had to shoot down…
The movie selection was bad. The host made it the joke.Florida's first TV station, WTVJ, had only a meager selection of old films in its early years. Host Alec Gibs…
Did the owners hide tables from their architect?A local paper reported a rumor that Fallingwater's owners hid tables Frank Lloyd Wright disliked whenever he…
To film an eclipse, roll the studio camera outside.WFRV-TV claimed to be the first station to show a live lunar eclipse in 1959. Its method was direct: wheel a…
It missed New Year's Eve, but made Lunar New Year's Eve.An Indiana TV station promised to launch by December 31, 1983. Weather delayed construction, and it finally s…
Copy the shoe? Then use the greener materials too.After criticizing an Amazon shoe for looking like its Wool Runner, Allbirds' founders publicly invited Amazon…
That eerie Yeti growl began as a toilet flush.The growl of the Yeti in Doctor Who was made by slowing down the sound of a flushing toilet. An everyday nois…
A music duo named itself after its delivery habit.The American duo Food House got its name from how often its members used Uber Eats, rather than from a plan t…
The episode was “World.” The poster said “Worlds.”Disney promotional posters for Doctor Who's 2024 Christmas episode Joy to the World added an s, calling it Jo…
Return to your Jeep. Find a rubber duck.Jeep ducking is the custom of leaving a small rubber duck on someone else's Jeep. It spread after a 2020 gest…
The bishop studied in Gaming. Not video games.Artur Bubnevych earned a theology degree at an institute in Gaming, Austria. The place name looks like the En…
Why add night officers? Chicken theft.During the Great Depression, chicken theft became a serious problem in Baltimore County in 1931. Police chief…
Two NFL players. The same name.Two men named Allen DeGraffenreid played in the NFL in the 1990s. One, born in 1970, was a wide receiver catc…
An architectural landmark changed hands for $10.Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower transferred to new owners in 2023 for a nominal $10. The deal also came with…
Forty-five streets renamed. Residents took signs down.In 2024, officials in Tultitlán, Mexico, renamed 45 streets after projects and phrases linked to a former pre…
An early Chinese pop hit. A critic heard a cat.Li Minghui's 1928 recording of Drizzle became an early Chinese popular-music success. Writer Lu Xun disliked…
Togo's first Winter Olympians trained elsewhere.Togo made its Winter Olympics debut in 2014 with two women athletes. The tropical country has no snow, and ne…
A famous house built for her. She left after a year.Aline Barnsdall commissioned Los Angeles's Hollyhock House from Frank Lloyd Wright. Early leaks and flooding…
They ran out to celebrate. It was only offside.Near the end of the 2024 MLS Cup final, LA Galaxy led 2–1. Bench players and staff mistook a whistle for a Re…
A painting called ○△□. Or perhaps □△○.Japanese monk-artist Sengai painted only a circle, triangle and square. The work is usually titled by reading…
A Frank Lloyd Wright house went up. The owner called it a pickle factory.Westhope, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oklahoma, was completed in 1931. As neighbours puzzled over its unusu…
Just 34 seconds long. It reached number nine in Britain.Jack Black's Steve's Lava Chicken, from A Minecraft Movie, runs about 34 seconds in its original version. In…
The score was recounted: tied. One referee had already gone home.In a 1930 Philippine college basketball championship game, Ateneo appeared to win by one point. A recount mad…
Science Fiction Chronicle became simply Chronicle.Around 2002, the US science-fiction magazine Science Fiction Chronicle shortened its name to Chronicle. One a…
At some shows, the band asks fans to sit down instead of stand.US band Racing Mount Pleasant tailors its shows to each venue and uses projections synchronized with the musi…
He painted his own credit card. The bank suggested cancelling it.British artist Babak Ganjei exhibited an oil painting of his Barclaycard in London in 2018 and tried to sell…
Green-white-orange or orange-white-green? The flags were mixed up.Ireland's and Côte d'Ivoire's flags use the same three colours in reverse order. At a 2013 bonfire in Belfast…
A commuter said station stairs seemed to lead nowhere.A 2006 letter about Singapore's Eunos station questioned stairs at its south exit. The operator said they wer…
The gaming creator is called Pocky. The name came from his dog.Japanese creator Pocky named his channel after a dog he had since fourth grade. He launched the current chann…
A private game beta leaked. The official release came early.Terraria launched on Steam for Windows on May 16, 2011, earlier than its creators had planned. A beta from a…
He found the cake bland. He published its recipe anyway.American chef James Beard considered red velvet cake bland and uninteresting. Even so, he included a recipe f…
A Google account was shut down. A Google game version was cancelled—then restored.In February 2021, Re-Logic said its Google account had been suspended without an explanation and cancelled th…
This tram had too many riders. In 1954, buses replaced it.The Okoshi tram line in Ichinomiya, Japan, was entirely single-track and could not carry growing numbers of p…
A satire embarrassed the archbishop. He ordered all 500 copies burned.Laurence Sterne published A Political Romance under his own name in 1759, satirising a dispute inside the chu…
He threw away one of two drives. It held a Bitcoin private key.In 2013, James Howells in Wales discarded a hard drive after mistaking it for another. It held the private ke…
It sprawls across its neighbours. So a grower hangs it through a pot's base.In cultivation, the Mexican cactus Mammillaria matudae tends to grow beyond its pot and over other plants. Ca…
To stop cars blocking his restaurant, he planted a fake fire hydrant.New York restaurateur P. J. Moriarty placed a theatrical prop hydrant outside his restaurant in 1955 to deter…
Evening riders were disappearing. The company pointed at TV.A transit company in Worcester, Massachusetts, cut off-peak service on 22 of 33 routes in 1952. It claimed pe…
Tomakomai appointed a tourism ambassador. He was a racehorse.Hokko Tarumae won Japan's 2014 Best Dirt Horse award. The Tomakomai Tourism Association then appointed the th…
A diner lobster became a musical joke. An animal-rights group gave it a prize.The 2018 Saturday Night Live sketch Diner Lobster turns a customer's order into an elaborate musical number.…
A TV station faced a tax bill. Its staff held up inside the studio.In 1977, WHCT in Connecticut disputed a $77,000 tax bill on its studio building. Station officials refused en…
Viewers emailed a TV newscast. The anchor read them live on air.In the 1990s, Indiana station WSJV introduced a 5 p.m. newscast that invited audience feedback by phone and e…
He translated the Odyssey. His preface took a swipe at a critic.Early English translator George Chapman angrily answered a rumour that he had worked from a Latin version rat…
A poet wrote that immortality could be learned. He reportedly avoided the topic with the emperor.Tang-era Daoist poet Wu Yun wrote a treatise titled Immortality Can Be Learned. Two traditional histories say…
An emperor penguin reached New Zealand. For a while, it eclipsed the prime minister.In 2011, an emperor penguin nicknamed Happy Feet appeared on a New Zealand beach roughly 3,200 kilometres fro…
The governor locked his office and left. A senator came in through the window.In Oregon in 1913, Governor Oswald West shut his office to avoid receiving bills. Senate president Daniel Mal…
He joined a new football team. His surname became the joke.When Canadian football player Charles Assmann joined Edmonton in 1998, a newspaper reported that teammates ma…
Japan coined a vivid name for crashes. The statistics tell a quieter story.The Japanese slang Prius Missile spread online after widely reported crashes. Yet transport-ministry data cit…
The programme tapes arrived. The broadcast rights had not.Former staff recalled that, during financial trouble in the early 1990s, US station WTVX received programmes…
The crew tried to make eerie dialogue. The first redo sounded like Yoda.For the Reservation Dogs episode Deer Lady, the sound team tried rearranging the nuns' words in new recording…
She recorded the new season. The screams came from the archive.While pregnant during recording for Phineas and Ferb's fifth season, Ashley Tisdale chose not to record new s…
A reserve keeper held a coin. The club lost two league points.Comorian club Djabal Club d'Iconi had two points deducted in the 2023–24 season after its reserve goalkeeper…
He was being flown back to Spain. His 'bomb' was made of soap.After the 1954 Guatemalan coup, Francoist agents put Spanish exile Alejandro Finisterre on a plane back to Sp…
The band lived together to rehearse. So did two giant snakes.While preparing the Brazilian album Fruto Proibido, Rita Lee lived in a borrowed house with her band and two…
Carrot recorder, pumpkin drum. They build fresh instruments for each show.The London Vegetable Orchestra plays instruments carved from produce, including courgette trumpets and auberg…
Its title says 2024. The video came in 2023; streaming in 2025.Playboi Carti put the video for 2024 on YouTube in December 2023. The track did not reach major streaming pla…
Blocked parking space? Carl Zoll picked up the car.Former wrestler and Packers player Carl Zoll was remembered for reportedly lifting his Ford Model T out of ti…
The name says Raleigh. The address says Zebulon.North Carolina's Olde Raleigh Distillery opened in 2021 in nearby Zebulon, not Raleigh itself. Moving to its…
A tower ready to send signals upward. Old tunnels lay underneath.While building a Pittsburgh TV station in the 1960s, crews found abandoned mine shafts beneath planned tower…
A developer posted a red box. The crowd turned it into a sports game.#IDARB began with a 2014 post showing a simple red box. Developer Mike Mika asked followers what to do with i…
Fifty-two warning sirens vanished. Officials suspected music competitions.In about a year up to May 2023, 52 tsunami sirens were stolen in Auckland. Emergency officials suspected link…
This is the entire park. Five square metres of granite.Chicago's Park No. 474 consists of a 54-square-foot granite slab with a sculpture. Funding rules required the…
Walk into his backyard. There is a museum about him.Former Jakarta governor Sutiyoso has a house in Bekasi, Indonesia. In its backyard stands the Bang Yos Museum…
A dogsled race. The humans sometimes run too.In Ivakkak, a dogsled race in Canada's Nunavik region, pairs of Inuit mushers travel on wide traditional sled…
'Back in two to four weeks.' The signal returned in 1994.Oregon television station KEBN went off the air in October 1992 while moving operations. A spokesperson expec…
The world's smallest state has a cycling team too.Vatican Cycling joined the Union Cycliste Internationale in 2021. It became the first Vatican sports body adm…
No ticket for the bridge concert? Watch from the river.Seventeen premiered 'Thunder' on a Seoul bridge in May 2025. Seats on the bridge were allotted by lottery. So…
A fishing contest in a desert. Jesus versus the devil.A Coptic Christian homily probably composed in Egypt between the sixth and eighth centuries imagines the devi…
Someone posted a photo on lettuce. The store was found in 15 minutes.In 2012, a Burger King worker in the United States anonymously posted a photo of someone standing on lettuce.…
The stadium stands were coming down. The field was still in use.Marquette Stadium in Milwaukee began removing its aging grandstand after a 1976 decision. Demolition continue…
A goat for city council? Voters unofficially chose him.Ioiô, a well-known goat in Fortaleza, Brazil, became the subject of a protest vote in a 1922 city council ele…
A Santa Claus special counts as education? One station said yes.Under 1990s US children's television rules, stations had to report educational programs. At least one station…
Did a duck say 'you bloody fool'? The recording survived for decades.Recordings of an Australian musk duck named Ripper, made in 1987, capture a door-slamming imitation and a voi…
'I'll coach seriously now,' said a fake post. Then the team started winning.Parody account NBACentel invented a 2024 quote claiming Milwaukee's coach would start taking coaching serious…
A new TV station went on air. Before week one ended, it had a buyer.Kansas City's KCMO-TV began broadcasting on September 27, 1953. Before its first week ended, its company agre…
The minister disliked his Wikipedia page. His ministry asked for it to be deleted.In 2019, Brazil's education ministry emailed a Portuguese Wikipedia administrator seeking deletion of the edu…
He filmed an abandoned hospital. He found a missing man's body.In 2020, Taiwanese streamer Goodnight Chicken explored an abandoned Taipei hospital and found the body of a m…
A station won the ABC affiliation. Then a $50,000 bribe emerged.Ohio's WKTR-TV became a primary ABC affiliate in 1970. A scandal followed: an ABC manager had told the statio…
Why was a fan favorite missing? 'He's too big' became the joke.Fans long wanted Metroid's Ridley in Super Smash Bros. The series director discussed how shrinking his huge b…
Guess the bargain price. Then viewers could buy the product.The 1987 US show Bargain Hunters mixed price-guessing games with home shopping, offering merchandise to peopl…
Play the music. Leave out the song names.In 1970s Minnesota, FM station WGGR favored a music-heavy format with little talking. News and weather were k…
CBS bought a television station. A golf-club membership came with it.CBS's 2011 purchase of WLNY included a membership at a golf club built by the station's former owner. A 2021…
Could paper towels empty a pool? It would take over a million.YouTuber Tyler Oliveira posted a 2020 video trying to absorb a swimming pool with large numbers of paper towe…
The opera was a tragedy. His costume dropped twice.During a 1935 performance of Rigoletto at Boston Opera House, singer Ettore Verna's lower costume fell to his…
Jean shorts became 'jorts'. Punks, skaters and rappers all wore them.The word jorts, shortened from jean shorts, is recorded from the 1990s and is sometimes used to mock unfashio…
Desert land came cheap. Finding water did not.Frank Lloyd Wright bought Arizona desert land for his winter studio in 1937. It was cheap partly because grou…
Who belongs in a book illustration? This publisher chose himself.Yu Xiangdou, a Chinese publisher active around the late Ming dynasty, liked placing portraits of himself in h…
The paper helped make a newscast. Then worried it might report first.The Philadelphia Inquirer was linked to the 1990s program Inquirer News Tonight. Editors sometimes withheld i…
Want to resign but dread telling your boss? Japan has a service for that.Japanese resignation agencies tell employers that a client intends to quit. They have existed since the late…
ABC launched a national morning show. One local station kept its own.In Tulsa, Oklahoma, KTUL's John Chick Show was a popular live morning music program. After ABC launched Good…
Staff learned their radio station was being sold. Its owner died that same day.Employees of WLOK in Lima, Ohio, were told on 30 July 1954 that their station was being sold. On the same day…
A station replaced its news anchors. Viewers showed up to protest.Florida TV station WPEC fired Reg Miller and moved Laurel Sauer to weekends in 1988. Viewers responded with p…
An early Green Bay Packer also worked for the packing company.Wally Ladrow played for the Green Bay Packers from their founding season in 1919. He also worked for the Indi…
A high-school radio station fell silent when its adviser went to Europe.California school station KAUG stopped broadcasting while its only qualified faculty adviser studied in Europ…
The roof leaked. The architect reportedly said to move the chair.Frank Lloyd Wright designed Wingspread, a Wisconsin house completed in 1939. It later suffered leaks. Accordi…
Emos and anti-emos clashed. A singing group helped end the fight.In March 2008, rival groups confronted each other at a Mexico City traffic circle. Police separated them, but…
Some shop managers did not know who owned their shopping mall.In 1997, several managers at Michigan's North Kent Mall told a local newspaper they did not know who owned th…
Vatican City had the world's highest murder rate in 1998. Its population explains why.Two people were murdered in Vatican City in a single 1998 incident. With so few residents, that produced the…
He argued that his life sentence ended when he was revived. The court disagreed.Iowa prisoner Benjamin Schreiber was resuscitated after severe illness in 2015. He later argued that his life…
Thieves broke into a cave and took formations that took millennia to grow.In August 2020, vandals forced open the gate of Fitton Cave in Arkansas and stole or destroyed formations inc…
The building called Wall Street Plaza has a Pine Street address.New York's Wall Street Plaza stands in the Financial District but does not adjoin Wall Street. Its address is…
Seattle's mayor sprained his ankle while hunting and was missing for over 30 hours.On 25 September 1902, Mayor Thomas J. Humes slipped and sprained his ankle during a bear hunt. He remained mi…
A Japanese town's giant squid statue sparked a debate about public money.Noto in Japan unveiled its Squid King statue in 2021. About ¥25 million of its ¥27 million construction cost…
A leader thought the tower too short. After his death, lightning struck it.Brigham Young had disliked the short tower of Utah's St. George Temple. In 1889, two years after his death, a…
His next team name looked almost identical to his last one.In 1984 Canadian football player Pieter Vanden Bos was traded to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, then moved wit…
Her sons entered her as a joke. She went on to win 28 times.Anne Woods first tried competitive gurning in England in 1977 after her sons entered her for fun. She surpris…
Before his NFL appearance, he was a world champion at throwing dried cow dung.Greg Jensen stepped away from football after high school. He won a state cow-chip throwing contest in 1985 an…
After a child's performance, Elizabeth II noticed something missing from the costume.Holly-Anne Hull performed at celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday in 2006 as part of a youth t…
Dressed as Cleopatra, she rode through town in a bathtub of milk.In 1984, Welsh farmer Thelma Adams protested Britain's milk quotas with a procession through Carmarthen. Her…
Who could call their chocolate cake the original Sacher torte?Vienna's Hotel Sacher and the Demel pastry shop disputed the right to market their versions as the original.…
A reviewer missed a pet bird in a Florence Nightingale film.An American trade magazine praised the 1915 film Florence Nightingale but criticized it for leaving out the R…
In some Indian rituals, two trees can be married.Ceremonial marriages between different tree species, and between people and trees, are practiced in parts of…
The lead actress brought bears and wolves to the film set.For the 1920s film The Grub-Stake, Nell Shipman moved her animal collection between filming locations. It inc…
He built a house door that his pets and people could all open.Writer Paul Corey made a door at his California home that his two cats, dog and human residents could operate…
The same 💩 can be encouragement in Japan and disapproval elsewhere.In Japan, the poop emoji can wish someone luck, helped by a pun linking the word for poop with the word for f…
The faces on this record sleeve were made with syrup.The cover of Tribalistas' 2002 album depicts the Brazilian trio using chocolate syrup. Artist Vik Muniz first…
When threatened, this rabbit may dive in and swim away.The swamp rabbit lives in wetlands of the southern United States. It is territorial and mostly active at nigh…
This historic bridge no longer has a surface to cross.New Zealand's Opiki Toll Bridge opened in 1918. After a nearby replacement bridge opened in 1969, its deck an…
He tried to lift soldiers' spirits with a ceremony for a gun—and was recalled.In 1861, Civil War chaplain Thomas Mooney 'baptized' a cannon at Fort Corcoran. His archbishop objected to th…
A laid-back dog drawing went viral, then became a cryptocurrency without its artist's consent.Phillip Banks posted Chill Guy in 2023. The image spread widely in 2024, and an unauthorized meme coin used i…
A monument slated for removal got a cape and helmet instead.In Odesa, Ukraine, artist Alexander Milov transformed a Soviet-era Lenin statue into Darth Vader in 2015. He…
The Vatican joined the world taekwondo federation without a registered team.Vatican Taekwondo became a World Taekwondo member in 2021. According to the federation's listing as of July 2…
A tank crushed the car. The monument reverses the scene.In Osijek, Croatia, a tank crushed a small red car in 1991. A monument unveiled in 2011 shows the car appeari…
One wall showed winners. Another displayed 600 arrowheads.At California's Chicken Ranch bingo hall in 1992, a gift shop displayed 600 arrowheads on one wall and photos…
That statue-like bird is watching for fishThe shoebill lives in African swamps and often stands almost motionless while hunting. It finds prey by sight…
A bird that spends the day as a branchPotoos hunt insects at night in tropical America. By day they perch upright, using their patterned plumage to…
A mammal colony with a queen and workersNaked mole-rats live underground in East Africa. A queen and a few males reproduce, while other colony member…
A shark whose jaws reach out from its faceThe goblin shark usually holds its jaws beneath its head. During feeding, they can extend dramatically toward…
A giant frog prepares pools for its youngGoliath frogs from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have been observed preparing pools beside rivers for breedi…
A tree trunk that looks splashed with paintRainbow eucalyptus is native to the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Its bark peels in strips, ex…
A butterfly you can see throughGreta oto, the glasswing butterfly, occurs in Central and South America. Much of each wing is transparent, wi…
Those waving leaves are not its engineThe leafy seadragon lives off southern and western Australia. Its leaf-like body extensions provide camouflag…
A fish that floats with a jelly-like bodyPsychrolutes marcidus lives in deep water under intense pressure. Much of its body is gelatinous tissue sligh…
Some snakes glide while wriggling in the airFlying snakes of the genus Chrysopelea can glide between trees. They flatten their bodies and make side-to-si…
Eel can arrive surrounded by jellyJellied eels are a traditional London dish in which cooked pieces of eel are cooled in their liquid. Componen…
A Norwegian dish is literally sheep’s headSmalahove is a traditional dish from western Norway made from a sheep’s head. The head is prepared through pr…
The mopane worm is a moth caterpillarThe edible mopane worm of southern Africa is the caterpillar of the moth Gonimbrasia belina. It feeds mainly…
A corn disease can become a fillingCorn smut is a fungal disease that produces swollen growths on maize. In Mexico these are eaten as huitlacoch…
Mexican caviar can mean ant larvaeEscamoles are the edible larvae and pupae of particular ants, eaten in Mexico. They are sometimes nicknamed M…
A spider builds a room full of air below the surfaceThe diving bell spider constructs an underwater web chamber and carries air to it using water-repellent hairs…
The fuzz on this deep-sea worm is a colony of bacteriaThe Pompeii worm, Alvinella pompejana, lives near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Its hairy-looking back is cove…
It hovers at flowers, but it is not a hummingbirdThe hummingbird hawk-moth hovers while drinking nectar through its long proboscis. Found across Eurasia, it f…
A furry-looking crustacean acquired a mountain monster’s nameKiwa hirsuta was discovered in the deep South Pacific in 2005. Numerous silky setae cover its legs and claws,…
A popcorn-like smell has an unexpected sourceBinturongs are associated with a popcorn-like odor. Their urine contains 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, a compound als…
The larva throws sand at prey trying to climb outSome antlion larvae wait at the bottom of funnel-shaped sand pits. When prey tries to climb out, the larva th…
A larva carries a little shelter of stones and leavesMany caddisfly larvae construct silk tubes reinforced with material such as sand, stones or leaf pieces. The…
A spider raises its colorful abdomen to court a mateMale peacock spiders in the Australian genus Maratus can raise a colorful abdomen and move their legs in cour…
Worker ants use their larvae’s silk to join leavesWeaver-ant workers pull leaf edges together, sometimes linking their bodies into chains to span a gap. Other…
Two streams of slime cross into a trapping netVelvet worms eject adhesive slime from openings on either side of the head. Oscillating streams cross in the…
A gelatin dish can contain meat rather than dessertAspic is a savory gelatin made with stock or broth, often molded around meat, seafood, vegetables or eggs. It…
Boza brings a sweet-sour taste and a dense textureBoza is a fermented grain beverage found in Turkey and parts of the Balkans, among other places. It has a thi…
Rye bread can become an ingredient in kvassKvass is a sweet-sour fermented cereal beverage. Traditional versions use rye bread or rye flour and malt, an…
Vegemite tried a punning name against its rivalVegemite was temporarily renamed Parwill to compete with Marmite. The campaign played on Ma might and Pa will…
Beer-making leftovers became something for toastMarmite is a yeast-extract spread made from beer-brewing by-products. Developed in Britain in 1902, it is tra…
Flowers appear on the surface of a pebble-like plantPseudolithos is a group of succulents named for a pebble-like appearance. Their stems have a tessellated surf…
Buried leaves admit sunlight through translucent topsMuch of a Lithops leaf remains below ground. A translucent upper surface, called a leaf window, lets light en…
A towering Andean plant flowers once, then diesPuya raimondii sends up a large flowering stalk in the Andes. It reproduces once and dies soon afterward. Tha…
A giant water lily’s flower changes around its visiting beetlesVictoria amazonica attracts beetles with a white flower and a fruity scent. The flower closes around the visi…
The towering bloom warms up to release a powerful odorThe titan arum’s central spadix heats as its inflorescence opens and releases a strong odor associated with r…
Some historical ketchup was made from mushroomsBritish ketchup historically included versions made mainly from mushrooms. A mushroom ketchup recipe also app…
Banana ketchup can borrow tomato ketchup’s colorPhilippine banana ketchup is made with bananas, sugar, vinegar and spices. Its natural color is brownish-yell…
Cullen skink is a fish soup, not a lizard soupCullen skink is a Scottish soup made with smoked haddock, potatoes and onions. Its name uses a Scots word tha…
This pudding belongs beside ham, not after dinnerPease pudding is a savory dish made from boiled legumes, typically split yellow peas. Common in northeast Eng…
Tomato preserves have a long printed historyTomato jam is a preserve made from tomatoes and sugar. An American recipe was published in 1840. Some sandwic…